Sinergia Animal

See our theory of change table for a detailed account of Sinergia’s activities, outputs, and intended outcomes and impact. Below, we highlight the key activities that we believe are the most impactful drivers of their Theory of Change and give details on the reasoning and evidence base, as well as an account of risks, limitations, and mitigating actions.

Key Activity 1: Corporate and producer engagement (Direct outreach)

Activity description: Sinergia uses campaigns and negotiations to persuade food companies (including retailers and producers) to adopt cage-free commitments for egg-laying hens and welfare improvements for pigs in countries across Latin America and Asia.

Supportive reasoning and evidence base

• Most of Sinergia’s 2023 cage-free commitments for egg-laying hens were secured from companies based in Argentina and Colombia. At any one time, the farmed egg-laying hen population is 52 million in Argentina (the 24th largest of all countries in the world) and 62 million in Colombia (the 21st largest).⁵
• All of Sinergia’s 2023 crate-free commitments for pigs were secured from companies based in Brazil. At any one time, the farmed pig population in Brazil is 44 million (the 3rd largest of all countries in the world).⁶
• Corporate outreach for welfare improvements appears to have a strong track record of success, playing a crucial role in welfare improvements for hundreds of millions of animals. For example, the Open Wing Alliance reports that, as of May 2024, 89% of cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2023 or earlier have been fulfilled, and Open Philanthropy reports that 220 million egg-laying hens are out of cages thanks to corporate welfare campaigns.⁷ A 2019 report by Rethink Priorities estimates, with various caveats, that historic corporate campaigns affected 9 to 120 years of chicken life per dollar spent.⁸
• It appears highly likely that transitioning to cage-free systems brings about significant improvements to hens’ wellbeing. Welfare Footprint Project found cage-free aviaries to be clearly superior to caged systems, avoiding an average of at least 275 hours of disabling pain, 2,313 hours of hurtful pain, and 4,645 hours of annoying pain for each hen during the egg-laying portion of her life, relative to a conventional cage. Negative impacts on wellbeing (such as the higher rate of mortality in cage-free systems, at least while farmers grow accustomed to the transition) appear to be significantly outweighed by the positive impacts (such as greater freedom to move and express natural behaviors).⁹
• Likewise, it appears likely that transitioning away from gestation crates for sows brings about significant net improvements to sows’ wellbeing.¹⁰
• In addition to the direct impacts of their work, Sinergia reports planning to use corporate campaigns to pave the way for legislative reform in the future (though their legislative reform work is currently a very small proportion of their work, Sinergia plans to dedicate more capacity to this once they have sufficient funding). Several leaders in the movement have noted this as a promising approach (such as in ACE’s conversation with David Coman-Hidy), with the E.U.’s previously proposed legislation banning cages being cited as a specific example.¹¹
• In the long term, while evidence is mixed, it seems likely that corporate welfare reforms can be expected to drive up the costs of producing animal products, which will ultimately be borne either by consumers or at other stages throughout the supply chain, while also in principle making the sector less appealing for new entrants.¹² While demand for animal products is considered relatively price inelastic, increasing the price of animal products does seem to decrease consumption, though evidence is fairly limited.¹³ As such, in theory, raising costs for the animal agriculture industry should make it less profitable and sustainable, especially given that it already tends to operate on very thin profit margins.¹⁴
• The available empirical evidence on the effects of welfare reforms on public attitudes toward animal welfare suggests that such effects are either negligible or slightly positive; i.e., tending toward promoting pro-animal attitudes rather than promoting complacency.¹⁵ Despite this, it appears pragmatic to position corporate welfare reform campaigns as part of a longer-term trajectory to a future free from animal exploitation, rather than an end goal.¹⁶ Sinergia Animal’s approach appears to align with this, given that they also run programs that are more focused on the need for a transition to veganism.
• In terms of their track record, Sinergia reports contributing to 39 corporate cage-free commitments for egg-laying hens and 10 crate-free commitments for sows in 2023, in almost all of which they report playing the sole or leading role.
• For their corporate work focused on egg-laying hens, Sinergia monitors progress through their Cage-Free Tracker.¹⁷ In the 2023 update for Latin America, 58 companies out of the 115 contacted (50.4%) reported making some form of progress, of which 22 reported fully transitioning to cage-free. In the 2023 update for Asia, 21 companies out of the 65 contacted (32.3%) reported making some form of progress, of which two reported fully transitioning to cage-free. (Sinergia notes that 56 companies have fully transitioned to sourcing 100% cage-free eggs in at least one Asian country, but almost all of these were prior to 2023.)
• For their corporate work focused on pigs, Sinergia notes that other organizations are already focused on the monitoring angle. For their part, Sinergia publishes the annual Pigs Monitor (Porcos em Foco) ranking, which ranks Brazil’s largest pork producers and their animal welfare policies (such as the use of gestation crates, mutilations, and the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics).

Risks, limitations, and mitigating factors

• Limitation: Corporate campaigns may be subject to diminishing returns as the number of large, tractable corporations without a welfare commitment decreases.
  • Mitigating factors: Once Sinergia reaches this point, they plan to turn their attention to legislative reform and to informal markets rather than retail companies. For this reason, their current expansion plans include hiring a public policy manager to start investigating potential legislative opportunities.

• Limitation: There is less of a record of successful corporate campaigns outside of the U.S. and Western Europe.¹⁸ Different national contexts may make corporate campaigns less effective, such as lower awareness of animal welfare concerns (meaning less consumer pressure for major food companies to improve their welfare standards) or less centralized supply chains (making it harder to improve the lives of many animals by targeting a few large companies).
  • Mitigating factors: Sinergia reports taking a tailored approach to work in each of the countries where they operate, including through the recent appointment of new Country Directors to set the strategy for each country, the planned appointment of further country-specific leadership positions if they receive sufficient funding, and the collaboration with local lawyers to understand the risks and opportunities associated with different kinds of work in each country. They also report using their corporate campaign work to spread public awareness of animal welfare concerns more broadly, e.g., through their pressure campaigns on companies (which can involve social media campaigns, online ads, and physical demonstrations), their publication of reports on companies’ progress toward their commitments, and companies’ own statements about their welfare improvements. They have also shown evidence of pivoting their approach in countries where work has proved more challenging (such as in Ecuador and Peru).

• Risk: Promoting companies for achieving incremental welfare gains could disproportionately improve their reputation among consumers and help maintain social acceptance of the consumption of animal products.
  • Mitigating factors: As mentioned above, the available empirical evidence suggests that welfare reforms tend to promote favorable attitudes toward farmed animal advocacy rather than promote complacency toward animal welfare.¹⁹ Sinergia reports that they seek to use their campaigns not only for the direct short-term benefits to animals but also to raise public awareness about animal welfare issues (as outlined above). Sinergia reports that they also seek to use campaigns to build their own capacity to bring about systemic food system change, including by paving the way for legislative reform. They also note that they expect significant welfare reforms to increase animal product prices in the long term, ultimately lowering consumption, which aligns with the evidence (albeit weak evidence) mentioned in the ‘Supportive reasoning and evidence base’ section above.

• Limitation: Companies may resist implementing new welfare standards due to perceived costs, complexity, or disruption to current operations (for example, see World Animal Protection’s Animal Protection Index).²⁰ This limitation is exacerbated by the difficulties reported by some companies in finding cage-free eggs and crate-free pig meat.²¹
  • Mitigating factors: Sinergia seeks to convince companies’ leadership by showing them evidence of the growing number of corporate cage-free commitments, success stories of companies that have transitioned to cage-free systems, lists of cage-free producers in their countries, marketing materials they could implement in stores and packaging, evidence on the benefits for animal welfare, and surveys indicating consumer demand for such commitments. When this more positive approach is not enough, companies are informed in advance of a possible campaign launch and the actions that would be taken that could be unfavorable to the company’s image and reputation, given its disregard for animal welfare. In terms of enforcement, Sinergia conducts annual tracking programs, and they report that this year, they will begin enforcement-focused pressure campaigns targeting companies that have not reported on their progress in implementing their commitments. External experts that we consulted on this point thought that, even if some companies did not keep to their 2025 and 2026 deadlines for these commitments, they would probably still meet them by 2030 thanks to Sinergia’s work, thereby still delivering significant welfare benefits.

• Limitation: Based on the number of animals, Sinergia’s corporate campaigns focused on pigs might be expected to affect significantly fewer animals than their campaigns focused on egg-laying hens, given that there are many more farmed chickens than farmed pigs. For example, in Colombia, there are 61.5 million farmed egg-laying hens alive at any one point compared to 9.7 million farmed pigs.²² Intensive chicken farms typically house many more animals than intensive pig farms do; as an indication of this, the USDA defines any farm with more than 2,500 pigs or 125,000 chickens as an intensive farming system, while in the E.U. it is 2,000 pigs and 21,400 egg-laying hens.²³
  • Mitigating factors: Sinergia devotes significantly more funding to egg-laying hens (49% of their expenses) than to pigs (9% of their expenses). However, they also report that they often hear from U.S.-based advocates that they regret moving on too quickly from crate-free commitments for pigs before ensuring that those commitments were actually enforced. Sinergia highlights that this is extremely important because the largest producers of pork products in Brazil (such as JBS and BRF) are also the top broiler producers, and Sinergia wants to set a good precedent for future broiler commitments by holding them accountable to their crate-free commitments for pigs.
  • Regarding the potential for broiler chicken campaigns, Sinergia notes that animal advocacy organizations in Brazil generally agree that it is currently too soon to commit to working on broiler corporate campaigns, given the need to focus on implementation of the cage-free campaigns for egg-laying hens that they have already begun. Sinergia reports that they plan to conduct broiler chicken campaigns only after egg-laying hen and pig welfare policies are closer to implementation, to increase the chances of success.

Key activity assessment

Overall, taking into account the limitations and mitigating factors, we assess the logic and evidence of this key activity as strong. We positively note that:

• Sinergia appears to have a strong track record of productive engagement with producers and retailers, and their Cage-Free Tracker also appears to be a valuable resource for the movement in Latin America and Asia.
• There is strong evidence in favor of the short-term impacts of corporate outreach work. Evidence about the long-term impacts is more limited and mixed, but the likely positive impacts appear to outweigh the risks (such as inadvertently promoting complacency among consumers or granting animal production companies unwarranted positive publicity).
• We also appreciate how Sinergia plans to capitalize on the potential complementarity between corporate and legislative work, even if their legislative work is not yet fully underway.

Some potential challenges include:

• One factor that makes us somewhat less confident in Sinergia’s corporate outreach work is the concern that many—even most—companies in Latin America will not adhere to their cage-free commitments. While we recognize that Sinergia is planning to start focusing more on enforcement later this year, and that some other organizations are focusing on this already, this has been less of a focus of theirs to date.
• Corporate outreach work appears less tractable in some countries (e.g., for Sinergia, it seems to have proved more challenging in Ecuador and Peru). There is the question of when corporate outreach campaigns will reach diminishing returns. However, Sinergia seems ready to adapt as needed when this appears to be the case, and they have a robust track record of doing so.

Key Activity 2: Nourishing Tomorrow (Institutional outreach)

Activity description: Sinergia engages public and private institutions (mostly schools and universities) to persuade them to reduce the proportion of animal products in their offerings by offering only fully plant-based meals at least once a week.

Supportive reasoning and evidence base

• In 2023, all of Sinergia’s Nourishing Tomorrow commitments were from institutions in Argentina, Colombia, and Indonesia. Sinergia estimates that this work will spare fishes and broiler chickens in particular.
  • Argentina has a population of 65 million farmed chickens raised for meat and 2 million farmed fishes, and catches 6.1 billion wild fishes each year.
  • Colombia has a population of 154 million farmed chickens raised for meat and 107 million farmed fishes, and catches 1.1 billion wild fishes each year.
  • Indonesia has a population of 3.1 billion farmed chickens raised for meat and 7.4 billion farmed fishes, and catches 106.9 billion wild fishes each year.²⁴
• Overall, compared to most other interventions, there is a substantial amount of peer-reviewed research supporting plant-based campaigns in institutional settings, with generally positive effects on plant-based choices.²⁵ Several studies from schools and universities showed reduced meat consumption after implementing meat-free days.²⁶ Some researchers argue that targeting institutions is more efficient and has lower potential to backfire than targeting individual consumers, and there may be higher support for a reduction in animal product consumption when framed as a collective rather than individual responsibility.²⁷
• Rethink Priorities conducted a shallow overview of plant-based meal campaigns in the U.S. and Western Europe. They noted that the most rigorous analyses they could find indicated a cost-effectiveness of 0.4–2.5 animals spared per dollar spent on institutional meat reduction policies. They spoke to four organizations conducting such campaigns and estimated their impact to range from 1.5–18 animals spared per dollar spent, though they suggest discounting that estimate by a significant, indeterminate amount based on various caveats.²⁸ In practice, it is uncertain how applicable these estimates are to the regions Sinergia works in, given that the impacts are likely to be very context-dependent.
• Sinergia consulted external expert Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim, the Research Director at the Welfare Footprint Project, to estimate the number of animals spared by their Nourishing Tomorrow campaign. In 2023, the committed institutions (mostly schools and universities) estimated that 998,000 meals would be replaced as a result of their commitments, sparing an estimated total of 134,000 animals. In the period 2020–2022, using the same methodology, Sinergia Animal estimated that they impacted, on average, 564,000 meals per year.

Risks, limitations, and mitigating factors

• Risk: Based on Sinergia’s health and environmental messaging, there is a risk of institutions consuming more white meat (such as fish and chicken products) and less red meat (such as beef). This would lead to the small animal replacement problem, with supposedly improved diets causing the suffering of far more animals, given that many more small animals have to be killed in order to produce the same amount of meat.²⁹
  • Mitigating factors: Sinergia reports delivering educational materials and events that specifically warn against such a switch (for example, by emphasizing industrial animal agriculture’s role in pandemic risk, poultry farming’s role in the spread of antimicrobial resistance, and the role of animal feed in deforestation). They also report that red meat is uncommon in institutions in Latin America and Asia, given the higher cost compared to eggs and chicken meat.

• Risk: There may be spillover effects, such as consumers compensating for a meat-free meal by consuming more meat outside of the institutional setting.³⁰
  • Mitigating factors: As mentioned above, Sinergia reports delivering lectures and other educational materials as part of their campaigns to help ensure that all such key stakeholders understand the benefits of plant-based meals. They also note the importance of familiarizing people with satisfying, tasty plant-based foods, which in combination with the educational outreach should in principle make it more likely that people will be open to consuming plant-based foods in their everyday lives.

• Limitation: While most committed institutions implement the program for at least one year, overall implementation decreases from the second year onwards. Implementation also varies by country; for example, Sinergia reports that implementation is more consistent in Colombia than it is in Argentina and Indonesia. This is also reflected in the evidence base on this type of intervention; Rethink Priorities cites an unpublished report that found roughly one-third of institutions either did not fully maintain their commitments or stated that they would have made such changes anyway without engagement from external groups.³¹
  • Mitigating factors: With additional funds, Sinergia plans to hire a larger team to work on this program and hold the committed institutions accountable.

• Risk: Institutional campaigns might be met with backlash from parents, students, school staff, or other key stakeholders, leading to campaigns being discontinued or watered down, with potentially negative implications for these stakeholders’ views on plant-based diets and the animal advocacy movement more broadly.
  • Mitigating factors: Sinergia reports delivering lectures and other educational materials as part of their campaigns to help ensure that all such key stakeholders understand the benefits of plant-based meals. They particularly emphasize the health and environmental aspects, based on a review of studies indicating that flexitarians and other meat-reducers in the countries where they operate are primarily driven by health and environmental concerns.

Key activity assessment

Overall, taking into account the limitations and mitigating factors, we assess the logic and evidence of this key activity as moderate to strong. We positively note that:

• Sinergia appears to have a strong track record of productive engagement with schools and universities.
• Sinergia partnered with an external expert to conduct a robust impact assessment of their Nourishing Tomorrow program.
• The evidence in support of institutional outreach appears positive overall, albeit somewhat limited.
• Sinergia reports placing a strong emphasis on delivering lectures and other educational materials in order to bring stakeholders on board, which seems important for ensuring that institutions sustain commitments and that pupils become more likely to increase their consumption of plant-based food outside of the institution.

Some potential challenges include:

• Many institutions have a track record of failing to uphold their commitments. However, Sinergia reported plans to expand their institutional outreach team to allow them to better hold institutions accountable to their commitments.
• The available cost-effectiveness estimates for such institutional outreach work suggest it is typically significantly less cost-effective than corporate welfare campaigns (though these estimates are highly context-dependent and uncertain). Our own cost-effectiveness estimate of this program is subject to significant uncertainty.

Additional Considerations

• We also conducted an assessment for a third program (movement building) that needs to be kept confidential. We assessed the logic and evidence behind this activity as moderate to strong, noting that it has the potential to strengthen the animal advocacy movement in various countries where it is critically needed.
• We positively note that Sinergia had thorough data readily available on the number of organizations they had engaged with through their corporate commitment work. They also appeared broadly aware of, and open about, the main risks to their work, such as the risk that institutional and corporate commitments would not be fully implemented.
• Sinergia Animal spends a small proportion of their budget (2%) on their Influencing Financial Institutions program, which entails lobbying commercial banks to divest from companies with poor welfare standards and invest instead in plant-based alternatives and higher-welfare systems, as well as lobbying development banks to stop funding industrial animal agriculture. Generally speaking, divestment from harmful companies appears to have limited direct impact, but it may have some potential for indirect impact in terms of stigmatization of the target industry and movement building.³² Regarding the development banks program specifically, we are convinced by Sinergia Animal’s reasoning that companies would probably be forced to apply for loans from commercial banks instead, which are not subsidized by governments and therefore likely to be on worse conditions (e.g., higher interest rates) and thereby have a negative impact on the company’s profits.
• Throughout our evaluation, we made attempts to independently verify the information we received from Sinergia, especially when assessing cruxes and assumptions in the logic of their theory of change. For example, we spot-checked the implementation deadlines and announcement dates of several of the companies from which Sinergia helped secure a cage-free commitment. All of the information was either fully or partially verified, to the extent that we trust Sinergia was sufficiently transparent with us.

See Sinergia’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheet for a detailed account of the data and calculations that went into our cost-effectiveness analysis.

We focused our cost-effectiveness analysis of Sinergia on three programs: (i) cage-free campaigns, (ii) institutional meat reduction (Nourishing Tomorrow), and (iii) pig welfare in Brazil. We focused on these programs because they are Sinergia’s three highest expenditure programs. They account for the great majority of Sinergia’s programmatic expenditures (about 84%). The cost-effectiveness analysis doesn’t include Sinergia’s work related to outreach to financial institutions, which has a seemingly smaller potential impact on animals compared to their other programs.

• Program 1: Cage-free campaigns
  • We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of this program is 54 (lower bound: 12, upper bound: 117) hens affected per dollar or 935 (lower bound: 216, upper bound: 2,051) Suffering Adjusted Days (SADs)³³ averted per dollar. These estimates include cage-free commitments made by 39 food companies from different countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
  • Because of the lack of data on the number of eggs used per retailer, especially because food companies do not seem open to publicly sharing these data, we used (confidential) estimates from similar retailers of four sizes (provided by Sinergia). We then extrapolated those numbers to the different companies Sinergia reached in 2023, depending on their size. See all data and sources of these data in Sinergia’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheet.
  • The SADs estimate only includes effects of the cage-free commitments on egg-laying hens, excluding effects of other activities that Sinergia conducted within this program, e.g., movement building via mobilization and campaign actions.

• Program 2: Institutional meat reduction (Nourishing Tomorrow)
  • We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of this program is 3.4 meals replaced per dollar, or 0.5 animals spared per dollar, or 3.1 (lower bound: 0.3, upper bound: 5.9) SADs averted per dollar. These estimates include the numbers of meals replaced by 25 institutions in Argentina, Colombia, and Indonesia.
  • It’s likely that these estimates are underestimates because, given the lack of data on the exact number of years each commitment will last, we assumed that each commitment would last for one year only. Sinergia notes that it’s likely that 50% of the institutions in Colombia and Argentina will continue with the meat replacement program for longer. See all data and sources of these data in Sinergia’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheet.
  • The SADs estimate only includes the effects of the program in terms of animal-based meals replaced, excluding effects of other activities that Sinergia conducted within this program in 2023, e.g., skill building via the free plant-based course, and raising awareness via talks, workshops, educational materials, interviews.

• Program 3: Pig welfare in Brazil
  • We estimate that the cost-effectiveness of this program is 21 sows and 354 piglets affected per dollar, or 1,670 (lower bound: 1,452, lower bound: 1,888) SADs averted per dollar for all years. This estimate includes numbers of pigs for 10 producers in Brazil that made different types of commitments in 2023 to improve the welfare of sows and/or piglets, including crate-free or group housing for sows; and banning surgical castration, teeth clipping, or ear notching for piglets. See all data and sources of these data in Sinergia’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheet.
  • The SADs estimate only includes the direct effects of the program on pig welfare, excluding effects of other activities that Sinergia conducted within this program in 2023, e.g., raising awareness via investigations for dairy cattle campaigns.

If Sinergia was to find additional revenue to expand their organization, they would primarily use the money to expand their region-specific teams. In particular, they would prioritize hiring a Head of Impact and Strategy, People & Operations Assistant, and Public Policy Manager for each of the countries or regions where they operate. We found their plans for hiring a Communications Manager, Communications Director, and Finance Director particularly promising, as these are likely to increase Sinergia’s capacity for fundraising and communications while freeing up senior leadership to focus more on overarching strategy and management. We have confidence that these uses of funding will be as effective as their past work up to a total annual revenue level of roughly $2.9M, which we refer to as their funding capacity.

The chart below shows Sinergia’s revenues from 2021–2023, their projected revenue for 2024, and their funding capacity for 2025 and 2026.

Figure 2: Revenue (2021–2024) and Funding Capacity (2025/2026)

A more detailed summary of their future plans and the reasoning behind our assessments can be found in the “Future Plans” tab of their Financials and Future Plans spreadsheet.

People, Policies, and Processes

The policies that the charity reported having in place are listed below.³⁵

Has policy

Partial / informal policy

No policy

COMPENSATION
Paid time off
Paid sick days
Paid medical leave
Paid family and caregiver leave
Compensation strategy (i.e., a policy detailing how an organization determines staff’s pay and benefits in a standardized manner)
WORKPLACE SAFETY
A simple and transparent written procedure for filing complaints
An anti-retaliation policy protecting whistleblowers and those who report grievances
A clearly written workplace code of ethics or conduct
A written statement that the organization does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other irrelevant characteristics
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
Conflict of interest policy
Training on topics of harassment and discrimination in the workplace
CLARITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND BIAS MITIGATION
Clearly defined responsibilities for all positions, preferably with written job descriptions
Clear organizational goals and/or priorities communicated to all employees
New hire onboarding or orientation process
Structured hiring, assessing all candidates using the same process
Standardized process for employment termination decisions
Process to evaluate leadership performance
Performance evaluation process based on predefined objectives and expectations
Two or more decision-makers for all hiring, promotion, and termination decisions
Process to attract a diverse candidate pool
ORGANIZATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS
Documentation of all key knowledge and information necessary to fulfill the needs of the organization
Board meeting minutes
Records retention and destruction policy
Systems in place for continuously learning from the past (e.g., feedback norms, retrospectives)
Recurring (e.g., weekly or every two weeks) 1-on-1s focused on alignment and development
ASSESSMENTS
Annual (or more frequent) performance evaluations for all paid roles
Annual (or more frequent) process to measure employee engagement or satisfaction
A process in place to support performance improvement in instances of underperformance

Transparency

Sinergia was transparent with ACE throughout the evaluation process.

All of the information we required for our evaluation of organizational health is made available on the charity’s website. This includes a list of board members; 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 organization collects, uses, and shares third-party information; and financial statements.

However, Sinergia does not share all its policies with staff yet, which prevents full transparency. Currently, Sinergia is in the process of reviewing its policies and practices related to staff communication. The organization has indicated that some information has not yet been shared with all employees due to legal considerations regarding contractor relationships and an ongoing review of remuneration grading by an external consultancy. Sinergia is committed to enhancing transparency and plans to reduce the number of contractors, transitioning team members to formal employment status in the near future. Additionally, the organization aims to make remuneration grading available to all staff members upon the conclusion of the current review.

Leadership and Board Governance

• Executive Director (ED) (International): Carolina Galvani, has been involved in the organization for seven years.
• Number of board members: five members, including the Executive Director, Carolina Galvani.

We found that the charity’s board aligned with our understanding of best practices. The Governance Board meets three times per year (regular meetings) and has specific meetings whenever necessary. Combining regular and specific meetings, the board usually meets six times per year. Sinergia Animal has a conflict of interest policy that aims to avoid any potential conflict of interest between the ED and the board.

Eighty-seven percent of staff respondents to our engagement survey agree that Sinergia Animal’s leadership team guides the organization competently.

Sinergia is based in Brazil and has national teams in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Thailand. They also conduct work in Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, all of which are overseen by a regional director. The subsidiaries are not financially independent. Country directors are involved in the decision-making process for the grant proposals submitted to support their work financially. National adaptations follow legal recommendations, and cultural approaches are decided by team members and country directors. International leadership is cautious in recognizing that some countries are more challenging than others, and goals for achievements differ so that these national realities are respected.

Financial Health

Reserves

With more than 100% of annual expenditures held in reserves (as reported by Sinergia Animal for 2024), we believe that they hold a sufficient amount of reserves.

Recurring Revenue

Seventy-six percent of Sinergia’s revenue is recurring (e.g., from recurring donors or ongoing long term grant commitments).³⁶

Liabilities to Assets Ratio

Sinergia Animal’s liabilities-to-assets ratio did not exceed 50% or pose a risk to operations at the time of assessment.

Staff engagement and satisfaction

Sinergia has 54 staff members (full-time, part-time, and contractors), including the Executive Director. Fifty-three staff members responded to our staff engagement survey, yielding a response rate of 98%. The Executive Director was asked not to take the survey.

Sinergia has a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. Of the staff that responded to our survey, about 76% report that they are satisfied with their wage. Sinergia offers paid vacation and sick days. About 77% report that they are satisfied with the benefits provided. This suggests that, on average, staff exhibit high satisfaction with wages and benefits.

The average score among our staff engagement survey questions was 4.4 (on a 1–5 scale), suggesting that, on average, staff exhibit high engagement.

Harassment and Discrimination

ACE has a process separate from the engagement survey for receiving serious claims about harassment and discrimination, and all Sinergia staff were made aware of this option. If staff or any party external to the organization have claims of this nature they are encouraged to read ACE’s Third-Party Whistleblower Policy and fill out our claimant form. We have received no such claims regarding Sinergia.