Shrimp Welfare Project aims to improve the lives of billions of farmed shrimps worldwide.
Why did Shrimp Welfare Project receive our recommendation?
SWP’s work to improve welfare standards, increase engagement in animal advocacy, and increase knowledge and skills for animal advocacy is highly promising because it focuses on animal groups, countries, and interventions that we consider high priority. Their producer outreach work to help farmed shrimps in India seems to have a particularly high impact potential. While we expect all of our evaluated charities to be excellent examples of effective advocacy, SWP is exceptional even within that group. Giving to SWP is an excellent opportunity to support initiatives that create the most positive change for animals.
Are Shrimp Welfare Project’s programs cost effective?
After analyzing the recent achievements and expenditures of SWP’s programs, we assess that they utilize their available resources in a cost-effective manner. Of SWP’s achievements, we think their achievements in skill and network building are particularly cost effective because they reach a high number of individuals and organizations for relatively low expenditures compared to other charities we evaluated. We predict SWP will use your donations responsibly.
$950K
Funding Gap
2024-2025
10–19
Staff Size
2021
Year Founded
How is Shrimp Welfare Project’s organizational health?
Organizational factors can influence a charity’s effectiveness and stability. Our assessment showed that SWP has the key policies and processes in place necessary for healthy workplace conditions, governance, and staff engagement. We also positively noted their strong commitment to their staff’s self-development and to using a “Freedom and Responsibility” model to ensure that staff feel ownership of their work.
Why should you support Shrimp Welfare Project?
We estimate that SWP could effectively use $950,000 in additional donations (beyond their projected revenue) through 2025. With that funding, they plan to secure welfare commitments, work on producer outreach, conduct research, and raise issue salience for shrimps. By supporting Shrimp Welfare Project, you play a crucial role in helping them achieve their plans and creating a better world for shrimps.
Read our comprehensive review of Shrimp Welfare Project to learn more about their work and our evaluation methods.
Support Shrimp Welfare Project or all of our Recommended Charities
Make a DonationIntroduction
At Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), we provide comprehensive reviews of all the organizations we recommend after conducting our yearly charity evaluations. During the evaluation period, our researchers thoroughly analyze publicly accessible information about each organization. Additionally, we ask participating organizations for supplemental materials and information to aid our assessments and help us identify the charities to recommend.
This review is based on our assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project’s performance on ACE’s four charity evaluation criteria. Each section of the review focuses on a different criterion: (i) Impact Potential, an overview of the charity’s programmatic work and an assessment of its impact potential; (ii) Cost Effectiveness, an analysis of the charity’s recent expenditures and achievements; (iii) Room for More Funding, an overview of the charity’s future plans and an estimate of how much additional funding they can effectively use in 2024 and 2025; and (iv) Organizational Health, an assessment of whether there are any management or governance issues substantial enough to affect the charity’s effectiveness and stability. Each of the four sections is divided into these subsections: Introduction, Our Method, Limitations of Our Method, Our Analysis, and Our Assessment of the charity in that criterion. Finally, we conclude with a summary of why we recommend this charity based on our evaluation.
Impact Potential: How promising are Shrimp Welfare Project’s programs?
With this criterion,1 we assess the impact potential (IP) of a charity’s programs without considering their specific program achievements. During our assessment, we analyze the groups of animals the charity’s programs target, the countries where they take place, and the intervention types they use. We also examine how the charity allocates expenditures among different animal groups, countries, and interventions. A charity that performs well on this criterion has programs with great potential to reduce animal suffering or improve animal wellbeing. The key aspects that ACE examines when evaluating a charity’s programmatic work are discussed in detail below.
Our Analysis of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Impact Potential
Animal groups
Shrimp Welfare Project’s programs focus exclusively on helping farmed animals, which we assess as a high-priority cause area. In particular, Shrimp Welfare Project focuses on helping farmed aquatic invertebrates—specifically shrimps.
Fig. 1: Shrimp Welfare Project’s spending toward each animal group
In the table below, we report for each animal group our scores (on a 1–7 scale) for Scale, Tractability, and Neglectedness, as well as the general IP score and the uncertainty score. We also provide our overall impression of each animal group based on the latter two scores. For more details on how we scored animal groups, see the Prioritizing animals section.
Animal group | Scale | Tractability | Neglectedness | IP Score | Uncertainty | Overall impression |
Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates | 4.4 | 4.5 | 7 | 5.3 | 2.4 | High priority, moderate uncertainty |
Countries
Shrimp Welfare Project’s headquarters are currently located in the United Kingdom. They have a subsidiary in Vietnam that operates as a company.
Shrimp Welfare Project runs their programs in the United Kingdom, India, and Vietnam. Most of their work is not directed toward any specific country.
Shrimp Welfare Project notes that although they have done some scoping work for Vietnam, they are not currently considering Vietnam as a focus country for their producer outreach work due to tractability concerns. Instead, they are considering conducting corporate outreach work in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Fig. 2: Shrimp Welfare Project’s spending toward each country
In the table below, we report our scores (on a 1–7 scale) for Scale, Tractability, Global Influence, and Neglectedness, as well as the IP score for each country where the Shrimp Welfare Project runs programs to help farmed animals. We also provide our overall impression of each country based on its IP score. For more details on how we scored countries, see the Prioritizing countries section.
Country | Scale | Tractability | Global Influence | Neglectedness | IP Score | Overall impression |
United Kingdom | 4.4 | 6.3 | 6.4 | 3.7 | 5.1 | High priority |
India | 6.2 | 4.4 | 5.9 | 6.3 | 5.7 | High priority |
Vietnam10 | 5.5 | 4.5 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.3 | High priority |
Interventions
Shrimp Welfare Project uses the following intervention types to improve welfare standards: corporate outreach and producer outreach. They also conduct research to increase knowledge/skills for animal advocacy and engage in skill and network building to increase engagement in animal advocacy.
Fig. 3: Shrimp Welfare Project’s spending toward each intervention
We use theory of change diagrams to communicate our interpretation of how a charity creates change for animals through interventions and outcomes. It is important to note that these diagrams are not complete representations of real-world mechanisms of change. Rather, they are simplified models that ACE uses to represent our beliefs about mechanisms of change. For the sake of simplicity, some diagrams may not include relatively small or uncertain effects.
Fig 4: Shrimp Welfare Project’s theory of change diagram
In the table below, we report for each intervention-outcome combination our scores (on a 1–7 scale) for Scale (short term), Scale (long term), Tractability, and Neglectedness, as well as the general IP score and the uncertainty score. We also provide our overall impression of each intervention type based on the latter two scores. For more details on how we scored interventions, see the Prioritizing interventions section.
Intervention | Outcome | Scale (short term) | Scale (long term) | Tractability | Neglectedness | IP Score | Uncertainty | Overall impression |
Corporate Outreach | Improvement of welfare standards | 5.0 | 3.3 | 6 | 2.8 | 4.4 | 4.6 | High priority, high uncertainty |
Research | Increased knowledge/ skills for animal advocacy | 5.0 | 5.8 | 4.5 | 6.0 | 5.3 | 4.1 | High priority, moderate uncertainty |
Producer Outreach | Improvement of welfare standards | 5.0 | 3.5 | 6 | 3.5 | 4.6 | 5.4 | High priority, high uncertainty |
Skill and Network Building | Increased engagement in animal advocacy | 4.3 | 5.3 | 3.8 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.1 | High priority, moderate uncertainty |
Research on the impact potential of interventions
Below, we summarize the most relevant research on the effectiveness of each of these intervention types.
Corporate Outreach for Welfare Improvements
We are unaware of any cost-effectiveness estimates on corporate campaigns for farmed shrimp welfare, as it seems to be a highly neglected intervention. However, there is some evidence that corporate outreach can lead food companies to change their practices related to chicken welfare, and some cost-effectiveness estimates suggest that corporate outreach improves the welfare standards of farmed chickens.11 A 2022 Effective Altruism (EA) Forum post argued that although corporate welfare reforms might be an impactful and scalable approach to helping animals, the effective animal advocacy (EAA) movement was relatively overinvesting in this intervention.12 The post cites a 2021 analysis of EA funding within animal welfare, suggesting that three major funders (Open Philanthropy, the EA Fund, and ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund) spent an estimated 60% of their animal welfare grants from 2019–2021 on corporate welfare reforms.13
Research
ACE’s 2021 research brief on conducting animal advocacy research suggests that it is a promising intervention, especially when considering its potential impact in the longer term. However, our confidence in the short-term effects of this intervention is low due to the lack of empirical evidence about the extent to which animal advocates use research results to prioritize and implement their work. Additionally, we note that the impact of research can vary significantly, with some research projects being far more influential than others. Researchers’ rigor seems to be a key factor in projects’ impact.
A 2022 essay argues that the research, measurement, and evaluation of farmed animal advocacy is severely underfunded, receiving only 3% of the total funding for improving the lives of farmed animals.14 The author largely attributes this to a lack of knowledge about intervention effectiveness within the animal advocacy movement.
Producer Outreach
A 2020 semi-systematic review suggests that increasing farmers’ knowledge of farmed animal welfare is an important factor in influencing their views on farmed animal welfare.15 The review also suggests that the economic disadvantages of implementing farmed animal welfare measures are a major influencing factor in farmers’ views and behaviors to improve animal welfare.
A 2020 report by Charity Entrepreneurship suggests that subsidizing farmers in Vietnam to improve shrimp welfare by improving water oxygenation is a very promising intervention.16 It scored well under all their criteria and better relative to other interventions they had considered. A 2022 report by Charity Entrepreneurship suggests that improving fish welfare in the Philippines by reaching out to farmers could be promising and that improving water quality and stocking densities could be highly tractable and scalable approaches.17 Both reports conclude that they want to see another organization working on improving shrimp and fish welfare, respectively. However, they are less certain about what interventions these organizations should work on, what approach they should take, and where this work should be done.
Skill and Network Building
The National Council of Nonprofits argues that capacity building enables organizations to develop the competencies and skills to make their team more effective and sustainable, thus increasing their potential to fulfill their mission and create change.18 They also suggest that networks can be especially effective for capacity building because they catalyze innovation, improve communications, reduce duplication of past mistakes, and spread ideas faster and more efficiently than other capacity-building approaches.19
ACE’s 2018 report on the allocation of movement resources suggests that capacity building is neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry.
A 2012 article argues that investments in capacity building are an effective adaptation response to global change and that strong and well-supported scientific networks are an indispensable component of capacity building, as they are a key source for new knowledge that enables continual and dynamic adaptation practice.20
Synergy impacts
Shrimp Welfare Project’s programs can be interpreted as seven combinations of different types of interventions used, countries where those interventions are conducted, and/or animal groups aimed to be helped. In the table below, we report the IP score (on a 1–7 scale, ranging from lowest to highest IP) for each intervention-animal-country combination that applies to Shrimp Welfare Project. Note that we did not produce any IP scores for synergy combinations that are not specific to a particular country. For more details on how we scored the synergy impacts, see the Assessing synergy section.
Synergy combinations | % Annual Expenditures | IP Score |
Corporate Outreach for Welfare Improvements to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates | 63.0 | n/a |
Research to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates | 12.7 | n/a |
Producer Outreach to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates | 6.0 | n/a |
Skill and Network Building to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates | 2.5 | n/a |
Corporate Outreach for Welfare Improvements to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates in United Kingdom | 9.0 | 4.5 |
Producer Outreach to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates in India | 4.3 | 5.5 |
Producer Outreach to Help Farmed Aquatic Invertebrates in Vietnam | 2.5 | 5.3 |
Our Assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Impact Potential
We estimate that 100% of Shrimp Welfare Project’s expenditures on programs go toward high-priority animal groups (farmed aquatic invertebrates), at least 16% goes toward high-priority countries (United Kingdom, India, and Vietnam),21 and 100% goes toward high-priority interventions (corporate outreach, research, producer outreach, and skill and network building). Their work on producer outreach to help farmed aquatic invertebrates in India seems to have a particularly high impact potential.
In general, we are highly uncertain about the impact potential of corporate outreach and producer outreach relative to other interventions. This uncertainty is due to the high standard deviation in team IP scores, which can be interpreted as a relatively high level of disagreement among our team members regarding the impact potential of using these intervention types. The high uncertainty is also due to the low quality of research about the effectiveness of corporate outreach and the relatively low quantity of research about the effectiveness of producer outreach.
Overall, we assessed the impact potential of Shrimp Welfare Project’s programs as moderate, with an IP score of 4.9 (on a 1–7 scale), placing them in the 2nd quartile (higher than the bottom 25%) of the charities we evaluated in 2023. Based on the final uncertainty score, we assessed our overall uncertainty in Shrimp Welfare Project’s impact potential as moderate. For more detailed information, see Shrimp Welfare Project’s IP Assessment spreadsheet.
Cost Effectiveness: How much has Shrimp Welfare Project achieved through their programs?
With this criterion, we assess the effectiveness of a charity’s approach to implementing interventions, their achievements, and the costs associated with those achievements. Charities that perform well on this criterion likely use their available resources in a cost-effective manner. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining cost effectiveness are reviewed in detail below.
Our Analysis of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Cost Effectiveness
The following tables show Shrimp Welfare Project’s key achievements and achievement expenditures per intervention category from April 2022 to March 2023, the quantity of achievements per $1/$100,000, and the achievement cost-effectiveness score. The tables show the five highest-expenditure achievements per intervention category. For a full list of Shrimp Welfare Project’s achievements, please see their Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet.
Corporate outreach for welfare improvements
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD)34 | Number of companies targeted and commitments achieved | Number of companies targeted and commitments achieved per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7)35 |
Secured a welfare commitment from MER Seafood36 | $70,000 | 1 company targeted; 1 commitment | 1.4 companies targeted; 1.4 commitments | 4.1 |
Secured a welfare commitment from Seajoy farms37 | $60,000 | 1 company targeted; 1 commitment | 1.7 companies targeted; 1.7 commitments | 4.3 |
Encouraged U.K. retailers to improve shrimp welfare standards | $20,000 | 4 companies targeted; 3 commitments | 20 companies targeted; 15 commitments | 4.5 |
Participated in certifier working group (Aquaculture Stewardship Council)38 | $6,600 | 8 organizations39 | 121.2 organizations | 4.4 |
Signed a memorandum of understanding with fish processing system producer Optimar, committing to promote humane slaughter practices for shrimps | $2,000 | 1 company targeted; 1 commitment | 50.0 companies targeted; 50.0 commitments | 4.3 |
Producer outreach
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of producers targeted and commitments achieved | Number of producers targeted and commitments achieved per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Launched the Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India (SSFI) platform | $15,000 | 45 producers targeted | 300 producers targeted | 4.3 |
Signed memorandums of understanding with shrimp farming stakeholders (shrimp farmers, processors, and hatcheries) in India | $2,000 | 7 producers targeted; 7 commitments | 350 producers targeted; 350 commitments | 5.0 |
Signed memorandum of understanding with ThinkAqua, a nonprofit that specializes in aquaculture improvement and innovation, on shrimp welfare improvements | $2,000 | 1 producer targeted; 1 commitment | 50 producers targeted; 50 commitments | 4.7 |
Research
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of research projects | Number of research projects per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Published scoping reports for India and Vietnam | $10,000 | 2 | 20.0 | 4.6 |
Published the Shrimp Welfare Report | $2,000 | 1 | 50.0 | 5.0 |
Successfully encouraged Open Philanthropy to fund a study on optimizing electrical stunning in shrimp | $2,000 | 1 | 50.0 | 4.3 |
Conducted a pilot study on fish stocking densities in India | $1,800 | 1 | 55.6 | 4.3 |
Wrote the internal Supply and Demand Effects report | $1,000 | 1 | 50.0 | 4.3 |
Skill and network building
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of individuals or organizations reached | Number of individuals or organizations reached per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Advocacy at seafood industry conferences | $5,000 | 771 individuals | 15,420 individuals | 5.2 |
Advocacy within the animal welfare community | $3,000 | 429 individuals | 14,300 individuals | 5.4 |
Advocacy within the effective altruism community | $2,500 | 1,222 individuals | 48,880 individuals | 5.4 |
Joined and participated in coalition organizations | $500 | 3 organizations | 600 organizations | 5.0 |
Our Assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Cost Effectiveness
Shrimp Welfare Project’s overall cost-effectiveness score is 4.3, placing them in the 3rd quartile (scoring higher than 50% of charities) among all charities evaluated in 2023. This score was reached by averaging the individual scores calculated for each achievement, weighted by the relative expenditures on the achievement.40 This overall score is an estimate of how well Shrimp Welfare Project has implemented their interventions from April 2022 to March 2023, taking their expenditures into account.
We think that out of all of Shrimp Welfare Project’s achievements, their achievements in skill and network building are particularly cost effective because they reach a high number of individuals and organizations for relatively low expenditures compared to other charities we evaluated. (See caveats in the paragraphs below.) In contrast, we think that Shrimp Welfare Project’s achievements in corporate outreach for welfare improvements are less cost effective, partly because other charities achieved more commitments per $100,000. (Again, see caveats in the paragraphs below.)
We think our score may overestimate Shrimp Welfare Project’s cost effectiveness for the following reason: The attendee numbers for some of Shrimp Welfare Project’s skill- and network-building achievements are rough estimates. While it is unclear whether these numbers over- or underestimate the number of individuals reached, they are sometimes based on the number of attendees at larger events such as conferences, and it is plausible that not all event attendees actually attended Shrimp Welfare Project’s sessions. The achievement quantity scores for this intervention category might therefore be slightly inflated.
We think our score may underestimate Shrimp Welfare Project’s cost effectiveness for the following reason: Our achievement scores take into account the animal group targeted by an achievement, and shrimps belong to one of the highest-priority animal groups in our prioritization of animal groups. However, our linear 1–7 scales cannot capture with complete accuracy the vast number of shrimps farmed and killed for food compared to other animal groups. Therefore, the achievement quality scores likely underestimate the scale of Shrimp Welfare Project’s achievements.
Our uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness score is high (above the median of all evaluated charities). This is based on a moderate amount of missing information when scoring achievements, a moderate-to-high uncertainty score of the relevant intervention categories, and the outcome of our verification process. Of the nine achievements selected for verification, one was verified as true, seven were partially verified as true, and one was rated as unverifiable.
Room For More Funding: How much additional money can Shrimp Welfare Project effectively use in the next two years?
A recommendation from ACE could lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding. With this criterion, we investigate whether a charity would be able to absorb the funding that a new or renewed recommendation may bring, and the extent to which we believe that their future uses of funding will be as effective as their past work. All descriptive data and estimations for this criterion can be found in the model spreadsheet.
Our Analysis of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Room For More Funding
The chart below shows Shrimp Welfare Project’s revenues, expenditures, and total staff size from 2020–2022, as well as their own projections for the years 2023–2025.
Fig. 6: Shrimp Welfare Project’s financials and staff size (2020–2025)
Assessment of Projected Revenue and Expenditures
Concerns about alignment with previous projections47 | Level of concern about charity’s sustainability (1–7) | Reasoning |
N/A | 4 | Projecting a sizable increase in projected revenue and expenditures, but largely because of the cost of stunners, rather than hiring/training new staff |
We consider the charity’s projected growth (uncertainty level 4 out of 7) to be supported by contextual information and history. A more detailed summary of their financials, including breakdowns by intervention, animal group, and country, can be found in the “Overall Financials” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Assessment of Hiring Plans
Year | # FTEs | Hiring plans | Uncertainty (1–7) |
2020 | 0 | N/A | N/A |
2021 | 2 | N/A | N/A |
2022 | 6 | N/A | N/A |
Projection for 2023 | 9 | Expanded focus on producer outreach | 1 |
Projection for 2024 | 9 | No projected hires | 1 |
Projection for 2025 | 10 | Increased focus on corporate outreach | 2 |
Overall, we consider it likely that the charity will be able to find and train the FTEs projected. A more detailed summary of their hiring plans and our reasoning behind their uncertainty scores can be found in the “Assessment: Hiring Plans” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Plans for expansion
Shrimp Welfare Project plans to proportionally increase their spending on their current interventions: securing welfare commitments, doing producer outreach, conducting research, and raising issue sailence for shrimp welfare.
A more detailed summary of their future plans can be found in their model spreadsheet.
Unexpected funding
Shrimp Welfare Project shared that they could absorb a total of $955,000 beyond their most likely scenario projections while still meeting the high standards of their current programs. They provided the following plans:
Priority for Funds | Amount of Funds | Type of Work Funded | Uncertainty about Effectiveness of Plans (1–7) |
1 | $362,000 | 2024: Deployment of electrical stunners x5 (~$65000 each), plus $50,000 for a logistics hire to support this work | 3 |
2 | $468,000 | 2025: Deployment of electrical stunners x7 (~$65000 each) | 3 |
3 | $60,000 | Wild-caught scoping ($30,000 each for Shrimp Paste fisheries and warmwater/coldwater fisheries – 6-month projects) | 1 |
4 | $25,000 | Policy / Institutions scoping (6-month project) | 1 |
5 | $40,000 | Proactive country scoping ($20,000 each for Ecuador and China – 6-month project) | 2 |
Based on these plans and Shrimp Welfare Project’s financial projections, we believe that the charity can effectively use approximately the above amounts in the next two years in a way that is as effective as their past work. Overall, we consider the charity well-positioned to do further exploratory scoping work and scale the deployment of electrical stunners. However, we have uncertainty about the charity’s focus on slaughter and humane killing in 2024 and 2025.
A more detailed summary of their plans for unexpected funding and the reasoning behind our uncertainty assessments can be found in the “RFMF Estimate” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Reserves
With more than their target amount of 50% of annual expenditures held in net assets (as reported by Shrimp Welfare Project for 2023), we believe that they hold a sufficient amount of reserves.
Our Assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Room For More Funding
Based on our assessment that they have sufficient reserves and our assessment of their plans to use unexpected funding, we believe that overall, Shrimp Welfare Project has room for $400,000 of additional funding in 2024 and $550,000 in 2025. These two figures represent the amount beyond their projected revenues of $1,015,598 and $1,172,370 in 2024 and 2025, meaning that we believe that they could effectively use a total revenue of up to $1,415,598 and $1,722,370.
Organizational Health: Are there any management issues substantial enough to affect Shrimp Welfare Project’s effectiveness and stability?
With this criterion,48 we assess whether any aspects of an organization’s leadership or workplace culture pose a risk to its effectiveness or stability, thereby reducing its potential to help animals. Problems with leadership and workplace culture could also negatively affect the reputation of the broader animal advocacy movement, as well as employees’ wellbeing and their willingness to remain in the movement. For example:
- Schyns & Schilling (2013) report that poor leadership practices result in counterproductive employee behavior, stress, negative attitudes toward the entire company, lower job satisfaction, and higher intention to quit.
- Waldman et al. (2012) report that effective leadership predicts lower turnover and reduced intention to quit.
- Wang (2021) reports that organizational commitment among nonprofit employees is positively related to engaged leadership, community engagement effort, the degree of formalization in daily operations, and perceived intangible support for employees.
- Gorski et al. (2018) report that all of the activists they interviewed attributed their burnout in part to negative organizational and movement cultures, including a culture of martyrdom, exhaustion/overwork, the taboo of discussing burnout, and financial strain.
- A meta-analysis by Harter et al. (2002) indicates that employee satisfaction and engagement are correlated with reduced employee turnover and accidents and increased customer satisfaction, productivity, and profit.
Our Analysis of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Organizational Health
People policies and processes
The policies that the charity reported having in place are listed below. They reported that they proactively make all relevant policies accessible to their staff.
They are also planning to carry out an organizational health assessment by the end of 2023, which will probably involve formalizing some of the currently informal policies listed below.
Has policy | Partial / informal policy | No policy |
Compensation | |
Paid time off | |
Paid sick days | |
Paid medical leave | |
Permission to use sick days for mental health purposes | |
Healthcare coverage or health insurance | |
Paid family and caregiver leave | |
Paid internships (if relevant) | N/A |
Compensation strategy (i.e., a policy detailing how the charity determines their staff’s pay and benefits in a standardized way) | |
Accountability | |
An anti-retaliation policy protecting whistleblowers and those who report grievances | |
Board meeting minutes | |
Conflict of interest policy | |
Records retention and destruction policy | |
Workplace safety | |
A clearly written workplace code of ethics/conduct | |
A written statement that the charity does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other irrelevant characteristics | |
A simple and transparent written procedure for filing complaints | |
Mandatory reporting of harassment and discrimination through all levels, up to and including the board of directors | |
Explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment or discrimination | |
Documentation of all reported instances of harassment or discrimination, along with the outcomes of each case | N/A |
Training on topics of harassment and discrimination in the workplace | |
Organizational design and communication | |
Clearly defined responsibilities for all positions, preferably with written job descriptions | |
Clearly defined objectives and expectations for all roles | |
Documentation of all key knowledge and information necessary to fulfill the needs of the organization | |
Mission and/or vision, defining the purpose and future of the organization | |
Clear organizational goals and/or priorities communicated to all employees | |
Performance and recruitment assessments | |
Annual (or more frequent) performance evaluations for all roles | |
Performance evaluation process based on predefined objectives and expectations | |
Annual (or more frequent) process to measure staff engagement or satisfaction | |
A process in place to support performance improvement in instances of underperformance | |
Learning and development | |
New hire onboarding or orientation process | |
Training and development available to each employee | |
A simple and transparent written procedure for employees to request additional training or support | |
Workplace conditions | |
Flexible work hours | |
Remote work option | |
Representation, equity, and inclusion | |
Process to attract a diverse candidate pool | |
Structured hiring, assessing all candidates using the same process | |
Standardized process for employment termination decisions | |
Two or more decision-makers for all hiring, promotion, and termination decisions |
Transparency
Shrimp Welfare Project was transparent with ACE throughout the evaluation process.
Most of the public-facing information we requested was available on the charity’s website. This included: a list of key staff members; information about the organization’s key accomplishments; the organization’s mission, vision, and/or theory of change; a privacy policy disclosing how the charity collects, uses, and shares third-party information; and an IRS Form 990 or equivalent tax form. The only information not publicly available on the charity’s website was a list of their board members (as they are currently in the process of professionalizing their board) and their financial statements (which Shrimp Welfare Project shared with us, but are not publicly available on their website).
Leadership and governance
Shrimp Welfare Project’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla, who has been involved in the charity for two years.
Shrimp Welfare Project’s Board of Directors has five members. The CEO is a voting board member but does not vote on matters where there may be potential conflicts of interest.
We found that the charity’s board of directors mostly aligned with our understanding of best practices. Most of their board members are independent from the charity and the board meetings take place twice per year. There are currently no term limits or performance evaluation processes in place, but Shrimp Welfare Project is in the process of introducing these.
Among Shrimp Welfare Project staff who responded to our engagement survey, the average score across questions regarding confidence in leadership and management was 4.9 on a 1–5 scale, indicating very high confidence. 100% of staff agreed with the statement “I have confidence in the leaders at our organization.”
Shrimp Welfare Project is based in the U.K. and has a subsidiary in Vietnam. This Vietnamese entity exists due to specific complications with operating as a nonprofit within Vietnam rather than as a separate entity in terms of Shrimp Welfare Project’s operations. Shrimp Welfare Project has various measures in place to mitigate and address power imbalance across their offices in different regions, including regular strategy-setting meetings to ensure that everyone has a representative say in the organization’s strategy and the explicit embedding of Inclusion and Equity into every team member’s personal objectives.
Staff engagement and satisfaction
Shrimp Welfare Project has 11 staff members (including full-time staff, part-time staff, and contractors). Nine staff members responded to our engagement survey, yielding a response rate of 82%.
Shrimp Welfare Project has a partial or informal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. Survey respondents’ average score to questions regarding satisfaction with wages and benefits was 4.4 on a 1–5 scale, indicating high satisfaction.
The average score across all questions was 4.7 on a 1–5 scale, suggesting that, on average, staff exhibit very high engagement and satisfaction.
Harassment and discrimination
We did not receive any reports of harassment or discrimination at Shrimp Welfare Project.
Our Assessment of Shrimp Welfare Project’s Organizational Health
We did not detect any concerns in Shrimp Welfare Project’s leadership and organizational culture. Based on our assessment, they appear to have strong policies and processes in place and high levels of staff engagement. We also positively noted their commitment to their staff’s self-development and to using a ‘Freedom and Responsibility’ model to ensure that staff feel ownership of their work.
Overall Recommendation
Shrimp Welfare Project’s work to improve welfare standards, increase engagement in animal advocacy, and increase knowledge and skills for animal advocacy is highly promising because it focuses on animal groups, countries, and interventions that we consider high priority. Their producer outreach work to help farmed aquatic invertebrates in India and Vietnam seems to have a particularly high impact potential. We assess Shrimp Welfare Project’s recent work as highly cost effective and believe they are in a strong position to use additional funding. These efforts are well-aligned with ACE’s organizational values and theory of change.
Shrimp Welfare Project performed very strongly compared to other charities we evaluated in 2023. During the decision-making phase of our evaluation process, we took into account their performance on our four evaluation criteria—Impact Potential (moderate), Cost Effectiveness (high), Room for More Funding across 2024 and 2025 ($1,400,000), and Organizational Health (no major concerns)—as well as our level of uncertainty in their scores. In this particular case, our uncertainty in Shrimp Welfare Project’s Cost Effectiveness score was roughly equal to our uncertainty in their Impact Potential score, so we put equal emphasis on each when making recommendation decisions. Overall, we find Shrimp Welfare Project to be an excellent giving opportunity for those looking to create the most positive change for animals.
To view all of the sources cited in this review, see the reference list.
This criterion was called Programs from 2020 to 2022. We decided to rename it Impact Potential to better reflect its focus on assessing the effectiveness of charities’ programs without considering their implementation. This name is more specific and less confusing internally, especially since we recently changed the name of our research team to the Programs team.
Rethink Priorities adjusted their welfare range estimates for use in ACE’s evaluations. Because ACE compares animal charities with each other rather than with human charities, Rethink Priorities reindexed the ranges to pigs instead of humans—see this page for more information.
An “egalitarian” score is a score of 1 that we assign to each animal group to represent the view that all animal groups have equal welfare range or probability of sentience.
The framework we used to prioritize countries only applies to farmed animal advocacy. We have not developed a framework to prioritize wild animal welfare work because there are very few organizations that work on wild animal welfare, and those we have considered so far are focused on indirect work such as research and academic development, which is less country-specific.
For example, when scoring the intervention category “apps and other digital resources,” we considered the following tractability proxies: the Global Innovation Index, Education (mean years of schooling), and Internet Penetration rate.
For more information on the limitations of FAOSTAT data, see Šimčikas (2019). For more information on Rethink Priorities’ welfare ranges project, see Fischer (2020).
For arguments supporting the view that the most important consideration of our present actions should be their long-term impact, see Greaves & MacAskill (2019) and Beckstead (2019).
As mentioned above, although the Shrimp Welfare Project has done some scoping work for Vietnam, they are not currently considering Vietnam as a focus country.
For example, Šimčikas (2019) and Grilo (2022).
The remaining 84% of Shrimp Welfare Project’s expenses go toward unspecified countries.
We asked that reported achievements and associated expenditures amount to at least 90% of a charity’s total program expenditures during the reporting period. We also adjusted achievement expenditures by taking the charity’s reported expenditures and adding a portion of their non-programmatic expenditures (i.e., overhead or administration). This process allowed us to incorporate general organizational running costs into our consideration of cost effectiveness.
We selected key claims from the achievements with the highest expenditures, given that those achievements contribute most to the cost-effectiveness score.
For more information about Weighted Factor Models, see Charity Entrepreneurship (2019).
We standardized this unit to achievements per one U.S. dollar or per $100,000, depending on which was easier to interpret, to allow for comparison across achievements. For example, we calculated how many individuals a social media campaign reached per dollar spent or how many legal actions a charity filed per $100,000 spent. For some intervention categories, the number of achievements was too low to normalize the achievement quantity. In these cases, we used the average of two researchers’ subjective assessment of the quantity on a 1–7 scale.
See here for the full rubric. Two researchers scored each achievement on the rubric and discussed significant disagreements before a second round of revising scores. We averaged the two researchers’ scores for each factor. Where we did not have enough information to score an achievement, we set the corresponding factor weight to zero.
We defaulted to giving achievement quality 75% and achievement quantity 25% weight. In some cases, e.g., if we were particularly uncertain about the achievement quantity, we gave achievement quality a higher weight.
By using a multiplicative method, we avoid giving high scores to achievements that implement promising interventions poorly (i.e., high intervention score but low implementation score). Consider the example where a charity focuses on an intervention like cage-free campaigns, which has the potential to be highly impactful, but fails to achieve any significant commitments. With a weighted average approach, the charity would still receive a relatively high score despite an unsuccessful implementation of their campaigns. However, by using a multiplicative method, the overall score accounts for the interaction between intervention and implementation scores. This means that if the implementation quality is lacking, the overall score will appropriately reflect that.
We encouraged charities to give as much information as possible about each achievement. In order to protect their capacity, we also marked some questions as optional. Where we did not have the relevant information to score an achievement on a factor in the scoring rubric, this increased our uncertainty score for that achievement.
We increased the uncertainty score for charities that reported fewer than 10 achievements to account for the fact that measurement errors and uncertainties have a higher impact on the final score when fewer achievements are averaged.
For interested readers, we compiled a list of existing quantified cost-effectiveness estimates for animal advocacy interventions here. You can find our summaries of existing empirical research on the impact potential of interventions here.
For more information about Weighted Factor Models, see Charity Entrepreneurship (2019).
Some factors and factor weights were adjusted slightly after receiving the data from charities.
We adjusted the achievement expenditures charities reported to us by adding a portion of their overhead costs, weighted by the relative achievement expenditures, in order to take general organizational running costs into account in our cost-effectiveness assessment.
To calculate the achievement score, we multiplied the intervention score by the implementation score. We then min-max normalized those scores against all other achievement scores across charities and converted the result to a 1–7 scale.
Shrimp Welfare Project estimates that this commitment will help 369,642,857 shrimps.
Shrimp Welfare Project estimates that this commitment will help 1,339,285,714 shrimps.
Shrimp Welfare Project estimates that the Aquaculture Stewardship Council has certified 28,778,571,429 shrimps as of July 2023, based on their impact report.
Excluding Shrimp Welfare Project, there were eight member organizations in the Aquaculture Stewardship Council working group in January 2023.
Please see Shrimp Welfare Project’s Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet and the Our Method section for more detailed information.
Sustainability of growth is based on historical revenue/expenditures and other context-dependent variables, such as nonfinancial barriers to the scalability of their programs (e.g., time).
National Council of Nonprofits; Propel Nonprofits; Boland & Freedman (2021)
To be selected for evaluation, we require that a charity has a budget size of at least about $100,000 and faces no country-specific regulatory barriers to receiving money from ACE.
This assessment is only applicable to charities that provided projected financial information in a previous ACE evaluation.
This criterion was called Leadership and Culture from 2020 to 2022. We found that ‘leadership’ was often misunderstood as referring solely to the qualities of individual leaders and that ‘culture’ was understood in very different ways across countries and demographics. With the new name Organizational Health, we intend to highlight the broad focus of this criterion and to clarify that its goal is to identify any significant risks to the organization’s effectiveness and stability.
For example, in a study by Anderson (2020), 49% of paid animal advocates and 28% of unpaid animal advocates reported having experienced discrimination or harassment. Advocates who were members of a minoritized group (i.e., people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people) were significantly more likely to leave the movement as a result of discrimination than non-minoritized advocates.
Examples of such social characteristics include: race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, and genetic information.
ACE defines “harassment” as bullying, intimidation, and other behavior (whether physical, verbal, or nonverbal) that has the effect of upsetting, demeaning, humiliating, intimidating, or threatening an individual. Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
ACE defines “discrimination” as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain social characteristics.
ACE defines the “workplace” as any place where work-related activities occur, including physical premises, meetings, conferences, training sessions, transit, social functions, and electronic communication (such as email, chat, text, phone calls, and virtual meetings).
Charity Navigator defines transparency as “an obligation or willingness by a charity to publish and make available critical data about the organization.”
BoardSource (2016), p. 4
Anheier (2005), p. 370. More broadly, a review by Greer et al. (2017) maintains that teams with a high degree of power dispersion (i.e., high power concentration vs. balanced distribution) have poorer outcomes and more unproductive conflict.
For example, see Mitchell et al. (2001).
The publicly accessible version of this form can be found via ACE’s Third-Party Whistleblower Policy on our website.