Could you please list some of the past grantees? Which past grants are you the most proud of? And conversely have there been some lessons learned or updates to the methodology?
william
Karma: 92
How has the EA fund grown over the years? Do you have a sense of what percentage of overall EA Animal Welfare giving is being done through the fund as opposed to direct donations from EAs to orgs? How it is being advertised both within the EA community and outside of it?
Hi Kieran, thanks for organizing the AMA! What is the EA fund? How does it work and how does it make decisions? Is the fund trying to find grantees that will have the highest expected impact, or is it also using other criteria? And finally, how does its focus differ from ACE’s Movement Grants? Thank you!
Thanks Saulius, it actually so happens that the organization running the baitfish petition in France, Paris Animaux Zoopolis, was founded by Amandine Sanvisens… who is also the director of ALI in France! But, and that goes to your next point, we were not aware of the relative scale of baitfish farming; so if we do end up prioritizing it over another intervention, the credit for the additional impact of doing that campaign over the one we would have done otherwise would go to you and RP! Would love to chat more and we’ll keep you updated.
Hi Saulius, thank you for your comment! To add some more context, ALI is based in New York, but we indeed have a global team. I’m very glad you’re bringing up baitfish. Our focus for 2020 was the creation of the Aquatic Animal Alliance, the drafting of our coalition welfare standards and the launch of our certifier campaign. We’ve done great progress on all of them, and actually already had our first victory with GlobalGAP (which certifies more than 1% of the global aquaculture market). For next year, we plan on continuing our certifier campaign but also wanted to pursue 2 additional campaigns through the Alliance: lobbying and a fish restocking campaign. On the lobbying front, we’ve already been active in France and plan to do more work there and at the EU level. Regarding fish restocking, we plan on starting working with US states departments of Fish and Wildlife to get them to adopt some or all of our welfare standards. We have already contacted vets who work at these agencies; and through our producer sentiment roundtables we organized in the fall, we have already found fish restocking producers who also are open to working with us. I’m really glad you bringing up baitfish, because we were not planning to focus on it, but you make a compelling case, I would love to follow up on that. That being said, it’s also true that we are running a tight ship, so it will also depending on funding, the interest of the other Alliance members and the progress of our certifier campaign. If you have any questions about the Aquatic Life Institute, the Aquatic Animal Alliance, or any of the work we are currently doing please reach out to us at kiara@ali.fish. We hope to share more of our research pieces and accomplishments very shortly!
What are the fund’s current focus areas? And Kieran, congratulations on being the new fund chair. Projecting yourself into the future, what would you say future areas of focus might be a year from now? 5 years from now?