2019 Prospective Goals

2018 was a year of transition for ACE. We had a number of changes in key staff and carried out an extensive and thoughtful Executive Director selection process. One of our primary goals for 2019 is to focus on navigating these changes, working to improve our internal infrastructure in a way that enables us to continue growing sustainably into the future. This prioritization is reflected in our goals for the year, which include a smaller number of projects with a greater degree of specificity on outcomes.

There are two main factors that will play a key role in determining how many of these goals we are able to achieve: (1) the amount of available funding, and (2) the level of success we have in attracting appropriate applicants for the available positions. Because the goals mentioned here are numerous, we have, in general, listed the higher priority goals closer to the top of each respective section.

Note that as we are publishing this list halfway through the year, many of these goals are already accomplished or underway.

Research

Charity evaluations

• Update our charity evaluation process
  • Implement changes that we expect will (1) eventually reduce the amount of time we spend per review, (2) improve the quality of the reviews, and (3) make the reviews more readable for a wider audience
• Conduct charity evaluations
  • Continue expanding our search for effective charities internationally, focusing on potentially high-impact regions
  • Conduct 10–15 charity evaluations and provide a new set of recommendations by December 3, 2019

Intervention research

• Develop a system for intervention research that allows us to publish smaller pieces more frequently, rather than publishing major reports roughly once per year
• Produce an annotated bibliography of the research on at least five commonly used interventions by the time we begin our 2019 charity evaluation process
  • Possible topics include: humane education, documentaries, pledge programs, undercover investigations, and institutional meat reduction campaigns
• Complete a fish welfare project; plan and complete a broiler chicken welfare project
• Revise our leafleting and protest reports, breaking them down into sections that can be published separately

Foundational research

• Revisit our research on the effects of vegetarian and vegan diets, including developing a new estimate of the number of animals spared per vegan year
• Submit at least three original papers to academic peer-reviewed journals
• Determine which dietary assessment outcome measures we are the most confident in
• Develop clear guidelines and a template for all future literature reviews
• Add “Why Farmed Chicken?” and “Why Farmed Fish?” sections to our “Why Farmed Animals?” page
• Conduct our annual survey of ACE and Top Charity donors, adding a section for donors to our new Effective Animal Advocacy Fund
• Create a “work in progress” page for research projects

Grant making

• Continue to make bi-annual grants from our Recommended Charity Fund and our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund (EAA Fund)
• Revise our EAA Fund grant-making process
  • Hold a retrospective on our first round of EAA Fund grant allotments
  • Conduct a 4-month follow-up survey of our first round of grant recipients; publish the results in a blog post
  • Consult with experts on best practices in grant making
  • Reassess our grant schedule for a better fit with our charity evaluation schedule
  • Consider bringing on a new Program Officer to manage the EAA Fund
  • Develop handbooks (for our Researchers and for our grantees) to document the processes and policies of the EAA Fund
  • Solicit grant applications from those working in important and neglected areas
    • E.g. wild animal suffering, legal and legislative work, and multi-issue work

• Complete two rounds of funding through the Animal Advocacy Research Fund (AARF) following our current operating model, which includes conducting regular check-ins with grantees to track progress and to assess the impact of the fund
  • Evaluate the AARF outcomes and identify improvements for the future
  • Identify and promote research priorities so that AARF applicants and other EAA Researchers have a better idea of what we feel are the most pressing research questions
  • Streamline application review process to reduce time invested by the Program Officer

General

• Develop a system to track how long each piece of research content has been on our website and to flag pieces for regular updates
• Make revisions to our internal review process, especially to solicit external feedback on our project plans (in addition to drafted projects) and to reduce staff time providing feedback such that not all research team members need to provide feedback on every project
• Conduct retrospectives within three months of the completion of every major research project to reflect on the project’s impact
• Check in on the impact of all published research once per year in order to determine how to use our time most effectively on future projects
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our project prioritization process, perhaps reaching out to other groups to inquire about their processes

Communications

Content Creation

• Increase the amount of communications-owned content including through our interview series, roundtable blog post series, and staff op-eds on Medium
• Repurpose existing content into more engaging formats like explainer videos, Instagram stories, interactive charts, and audio downloads
• Publish our 2019 Guide to Giving
• Publish our 2018 Year in Review

Website

• Conduct website speed audit and improve through content delivery network (CDN) and caching configuration
• Conduct two user experience tests via UserTesting to identify areas where we can improve our website user experience and content organization
• Update the presentation and publication timelines of our intervention research
• Implement website chatbot
• Add “time to read” stamps to our website on select blog posts and pages
• Redesign the Animal Advocacy Research Fund website and make improvements to the grant application process

Analytics and Reporting

• Migrate to Salesforce CRM and merge data silos into one “source of truth”
• Build Google Data Studio dashboards and distribute quarterly reports on communications-related impact metrics

Advertising / Promotional Content

• Reduce paid advertising on social media and focus primarily on maximizing monthly spend of Google Ads grant
• Increase email marketing fundraising appeals

General

• Give at least eight talks at conferences or other events
• Refine and reassess ACE’s social media strategy

Philanthropy

• Raise $1 million to cover the cost of ACE’s 2019 programs
• Influence $7 million in donations to effective animal advocacy charities, including via our Recommended Charity Fund and our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund
• Launch an ACE fundraising campaign
  • Increase awareness of other ways to give
• Coordinate Giving Tuesday campaign to promote our Top Charity recommendations
• Offer end-of-year matching campaign to support our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund
• Improve donor retention by 2%
• Grow the philanthropy department staff

Operations

• Integrate our communications and tracking tools (e.g., Mailchimp) with Salesforce
• Host two all-staff retreats and a research retreat
• Maintain registrations for soliciting in many U.S. states
• Register as a Public Benefit Organization in the Netherlands so that donors there can make tax-deductible donations
• Manage the organization’s budget and finances, including an annual financial audit
• Review and improve the organization’s human resource (HR) policies and benefits
  • Manage benefits such as the Health Reimbursement Arrangement and paid leave
• Investigate and consider HR service options to assist with legal compliance across states and countries in which we have employees
• Investigate and consider using the services of an external HR consultant who could be available periodically or on an ongoing basis

Organization-Wide

• Work with an external consultant to review and improve our internal communications processes, organizational structure, decision-making processes, internal transparency policies, and project management framework, and to develop a code of conduct
• Professional development:
  • Ensure that all staff use their full professional development time and budget
  • Provide all staff members who have direct reports with an increased professional development budget in order to cover a management training course
  • Develop an internal management training curriculum
  • Host regular Q&A sessions with external experts on topics related to research, effective altruism, animal advocacy, or other professional development topics
• Make improvements to onboarding process
  • Help new employees engage right away with team culture, balancing admin tasks with more engaging activities
  • Help new employees better understand our mission, philosophical commitments, and programs, and the ways in which they can contribute to discussions
• Improve and formalize our recruiting process to ensure that we are (1) avoiding bias as much as possible, (2) identifying high-performing candidates, and (3) ensuring new hires will be a good team fit by adding an explicit culture fit interview to the process
• Improve our performance evaluation process to increase frequency of feedback and to formally include feedback from peers and direct reports
• Formalize our salary model to better ensure fairness and to attract and retain high-performing candidates in all of our roles
• Improve the internship application process, application review process, onboarding, and work experience, and consider opening up other roles such as research fellow or visiting scholar
• Improve the volunteer application process, application review process, onboarding, and work to keep volunteers more engaged and included in our work
• Implement a formal planning and reporting process for ACE representatives attending events and conferences