Animal Advocacy Strategy Forum 2023 summary
Introduction
In July 2023, the Animal Advocacy Strategy Forum1 was held over three days with the purpose of bringing together key decision-makers in the animal advocacy community to connect, coordinate, and strategize. At the end of the forum, 35/44 participants filled out a survey similar to last year’s Forum survey (Duffy 2023) that sought to better understand the future needs of effective animal advocacy groups and the perceptions of animal advocates about the most important areas to focus on in the future.
The attendees represented approximately 27 key groups in the animal advocacy space. 23/35 survey participants were in senior leadership positions at their organization (C-level, founder, and various “Executive” and “Director” roles).
This report summarizes the results of that survey and workshops of the forum itself. A copy of the full report is available to animal advocates upon request. Please email neil@rethinkpriorities.org.
Organizational status
The survey asked respondents about their organization.2
- 66% (23/35) of respondents felt cost is always or often a practical limiting factor.
- 60% (21/35) of respondents felt they could hire some or many outstanding candidates who want to work at your org if they chose that approach.
- 52% (18/35) of respondents were from organizations with 15 or fewer people.
- 66% (23/35) of respondents were from organizations with $5M or less in spending.
Goals of the movement
Over the course of the Forum and in the survey, participants were asked to consider what they wanted to see in the next five years (by ~2028) in terms of resource allocation, specific objectives, and talent gaps filled. Specific objectives have been shared with participants and the animal advocacy community but have been excluded from this summary for strategic reasons.
Resource allocation
- The areas where the movement should devote the highest percentage of
resources over the next five years are described below and visualized in
boxplots3:
- Geography: Overall, participants thought significant shares
of the movement’s resources should be allocated to Asia and the Pacific (23%)
and Latin America and the Caribbean (18%), which have historically been
neglected, while also maintaining significant resources for Western European
countries, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (30%). (Full details in
Table 2 in the appendix).
- Compared to last year’s survey, the ordering was slightly different (Asia-Pacific and the Western Europe-Anglosphere were reversed as top two, and the order was also reversed for Middle East & North Africa and SubSaharan Africa), and there was no “other regions” option last year. Broadly, both surveys reflect a desire for just over 50% of resources to go to Western Europe-Anglosphere and Asia-Pacific.
- Geography: Overall, participants thought significant shares
of the movement’s resources should be allocated to Asia and the Pacific (23%)
and Latin America and the Caribbean (18%), which have historically been
neglected, while also maintaining significant resources for Western European
countries, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (30%). (Full details in
Table 2 in the appendix).
- In last year’s survey, “Farmed invertebrates” topped the list at a 17% average resource allocation. However, this year the survey used different categories, and the closest analogy is combining the categories farmed crustaceans (11%) and farmed insects (9%), which together are higher than last year at 20%. Last year, relatively more resources were desired for farmed fish than broilers and hens, and wild animals were prioritized ahead of pigs. Broadly though, again, the movement desires to allocate resources to the animal groups farmed in the largest numbers.
Talent Gaps
The most pressing talent gaps identified in the survey aligned mostly with the topline goals discussed in the Forum: providing more support to the Global South and fundraising were the top two, and movement building was in the top five. Government and policy and/or lobbying experts was ranked third, so it continues to be seen as a top talent gap, as it has been in similar movement surveys in previous years (Duffy 2023, Harris 2021, Animal Charity Evaluators 2018).
Table 1: What types of talent do you currently think the movement as a whole will need more of over the next five years?
| Talent | Number of responses | % of participants |
| Experts on the developing world or specific neglected but populous countries | 25 |
71% |
| Fundraising | 24 |
69% |
| Government and policy and/or lobbying experts | 23 |
66% |
| Movement building (skilled at providing training) | 15 |
43% |
| Management | 14 |
40% |
| The ability to really figure out what matters most and set the right priorities | 13 |
37% |
| Skills related to entrepreneurship/founding new organizations | 12 |
34% |
| Campaigners | 10 |
29% |
| Alt-protein technical expertise | 9 |
26% |
| Economists and other social scientists | 9 |
26% |
| Biology | 7 |
20% |
| Marketing and outreach (including content) | 7 |
20% |
| One-on-one social skills and emotional intelligence | 7 |
20% |
| Forecasting ability | 6 |
17% |
| Personal background and experience that differ from those of existing members/staff (e.g., different demographics than those already common to the movement) | 6 |
17% |
| Quantitative expertise not held by economists and other social scientists | 6 |
17% |
| General operations | 5 |
14% |
| Broad general knowledge about many relevant topics | 4 |
11% |
| Generalist researchers | 2 |
6% |
| Other (please specify) | 2 |
6% |
| Communications other than marketing and movement building | 1 |
3% |
| Software development | 1 |
3% |
High priority issues
Participants engaged in a S.W.O.T. session to identify the movement’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Participants were asked to spend 30 minutes answering a survey to assign a priority level (on a 1-5 scale) to each item from the list of weaknesses or threats. "High priority" (5) means issues that one believes we should definitely discuss during the forum, while "low priority" (1) are matters that, for different reasons, can be addressed later. The items that received at least 65% of the maximum theoretical score (160) were:
- Reliant on a small number of donors.
- Countries outside of Western Europe and the Anglosphere are not getting as much funding as they should.
- The number of farmed animals used and killed keeps growing.
- Lack of explicit theories of change across interventions, and no explicit theories of victory. No roadmaps to victory written out in ways that are testable.
- Little funding for exploring other interventions beyond those with successes already.
- A generally lacking evidence base to help animals effectively.
- Donors and others with power are hard to influence.
- We’re still a relatively fringe movement.
- Misallocation of resources per area–some animal problems should get significantly more resources.
- Gaps in knowledge in certain regions and markets.
- Insufficient resources (funding, expertise) for policy change.
- Talent constraints: government, policy, or lobbying expertise; management skills; economics and social sciences expertise; entrepreneurship talent.
Acknowledgments
This report was written by Neil Dullaghan. Thanks to Daniela R. Waldhorn for their guidance, and Kieran Greig and Laura Duffy for their helpful feedback and to Adam Papineau for copy-editing. The post is a project of Rethink Priorities, a global priority think-and-do tank, aiming to do good at scale. We research and implement pressing opportunities to make the world better. We act upon these opportunities by developing and implementing strategies, projects, and solutions to key issues. We do this work in close partnership with foundations and impact-focused non-profits or other entities. If you're interested in Rethink Priorities' work, please consider subscribing to our newsletter. You can explore our completed public work here.
Appendix
Table 2: Resource allocation by region
| Region | Mean | Standard Deviation |
| Western European countries, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand | 30.3 |
13.1 |
| Asia and the Pacific | 22.6 |
8.8 |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 18.3 |
6.2 |
| Eastern Europe | 9.4 |
6.6 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 9.1 |
7.2 |
| North Africa & the Middle East | 8.1 |
5.3 |
| Other regions or countries | 2.2 |
3.3 |
Table 3: Resource allocation by animal type
| Species | Mean | Standard Deviation |
| Egg laying chickens | 18 |
10 |
| Broiler chickens | 16 |
6 |
| Farmed fish | 15 |
5 |
| Farmed crustaceans (e.g., shrimp and crab) | 11 |
7 |
| Farmed insects | 9 |
7 |
| Farmed Pigs | 8 |
6 |
| Other wild animals (not wild-caught ones) | 5 |
6 |
| Wild-caught fish | 5 |
5 |
| Farmed Cows | 4 |
4 |
| Wild-caught crustaceans (e.g., shrimp, crabs) | 4 |
4 |
| Other farmed birds | 3 |
5 |
| Other farmed mammals | 3 |
5 |
Table 4: Resource allocation by type of work
| Type | Mean | Standard Deviation |
| Government (regulation, legislation, public officials) | 26 |
10 |
| Business (farmers, institutional retail buyers, alternative protein production, investment/divestment) | 36 |
11 |
| Public (general public, consumer behavior, mass mobilization) | 18 |
11 |
| Movement (training and education, monitoring and evaluation, research, coalition building) | 19 |
9 |
Notes
-
Formerly known as the Effective Animal Advocacy Coordination Forum. ↩
-
Note this is the share of respondents, not the share of organizations, since respondents were anonymous so we can not group responses by organization. ↩
-
The horizontal lines in the boxplots represent the median response, whereas the lower and upper edges of the box are the 25th- and 75th-percentile responses, respectively. The upper “whiskers” of the boxplot extend to the highest data point from the median which is also less than 1.5 times the interquartile range (the distance between the 75th and 25th percentile data points) from the 75th-percentile data point. The analogous situation applies to the lower whisker. All data points that fall further than 1.5 times the interquartile range from their nearest quartiles are considered outliers and are marked explicitly as dots. ↩