A well-documented concern with advocacy for animals, particularly with regard to creating behavior change surrounding food choice, is insufficient quality and quantity of research that shows strong evidence for what works. Past research, including ACE’s own studies, has often lacked sufficient sample size to be statistically significant, and other studies have suffered from methodological or bias issues. A generous benefactor has seen these problems and decided to take action by funding quality research.
Specifically, this benefactor is offering up to $1,000,000 (spread over three years) for rigorous research on the effectiveness of animal advocacy. To run this advocacy research program, an advocacy Program Officer will be hired through ACE, and we are currently accepting applications for the position. The job description describes the framework for the position.
The framework is intentionally broad so that this new advocacy research Program Officer can help select an ideal structure once hired. There are many different directions that this program could follow; while one million dollars spread out over three years is a considerable amount of funding, quality research is expensive. We will prioritize quality with this research, and therefore it will be especially important to weigh the value of different approaches with the selected candidate.
Once hired, the Program Officer will work with ACE staff, Faunalytics, and a special oversight committee to ensure that funding is optimally directed to the most impactful projects. The oversight committee will include representatives of advocacy leadership as well as academics from relevant fields; that way we can ensure that the research will provide useful information while ensuring quality control.
We’re proud to be involved with this project, and are excited to work together with our new advocacy research Program Officer, Faunalytics, and representatives from the advocacy and academic community. We look forward to generating information that can be used by all groups to improve the quality of their work.
About Jon Bockman
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Wow, congratulations and good luck! This is just the sort of thing I’ve been hoping for.
How exactly is the grant restricted, and where, as a result, will ACE continue to have funding gaps in the coming year or two? Thanks!
Hi Denis,
Thanks for asking! This funding is restricted to this program, so none of the $1m will go to our general operating expenses other than to pay the salary for this specific position.
We’ll still very much have funding gaps over the coming years – we hope to continue building our core research team and communications staff. Additionally, as our budget for this year shows, our team receives much lower compensation than we can offer for this specific position (our entire budget of $125K is spread thin between 6 employees (4.5 FTE) and operating expenses), so we have a need to increase funding so we can offer more competitive salaries and retain our current staff members.
Feel free to ask additional questions, either here or by messaging me directly.
Thanks for the information!