Animals Now

How Animals Now Performs on our Criteria

Interpreting our “Overall Assessments”

We provide an overall assessment of each charity’s performance on each criterion. These assessments are expressed as two series of circles. The number of teal circles represents our assessment of a charity’s performance on a given criterion relative to the other charities we’ve evaluated.

The number of gray circles indicates the strength of the evidence supporting each performance assessment and, correspondingly, our confidence in each assessment:

Criterion 1: Does the charity engage in programs that seem likely to be highly impactful?

When we begin our evaluation process, we consider whether each charity is working in high-impact cause areas and employing effective interventions that are likely to produce positive outcomes for animals. These outcomes tend to fall under at least one of the categories described in our Menu of Outcomes for Animal Advocacy. These categories are: influencing public opinion, capacity building, influencing industry, building alliances, and influencing policy and the law.

Cause Areas

Animals Now focuses primarily on reducing the suffering of farmed animals, which we believe is a high-impact cause area.

Theory of Change

To communicate the process by which we believe a charity creates change for animals, we use theory of change diagrams. 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.

A note about long-term impact

We do represent some of each charity’s long-term impact in our theory of change diagrams, though we are generally much less certain about the long-term impact of a charity or intervention than we are about more short-term impact. Because of this uncertainty, our reasoning about each charity’s impact (along with our diagrams) may skew towards overemphasizing short-term impact. Nevertheless, each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most. The potential number of individuals affected increases over time due to both human and animal population growth as well as an accumulation of generations of animals. The power of animal charities to effect change could be greater in the future if we consider their potential growth as well as potential long-term value shifts—for example, present actions leading to growth in the movement’s resources, to a more receptive public, or to different economic conditions could all potentially lead to a greater magnitude of impact over time than anything that could be accomplished at present.

Interventions and Projected Outcomes

Animals Now pursues several different avenues for creating change for animals: They work to influence public opinion, build the capacity of the movement, and influence policy and the law. Below, we describe the work that they do in each area, listed roughly in order of the financial resources they devote to each area (from highest to lowest).

Influencing public opinion

Animals Now works to influence individuals to adopt more animal-friendly attitudes and behaviors through humane education, undercover investigations, media outreach, online outreach, and Challenge 22—a vegan pledge and support program. The effects of public outreach are particularly difficult to measure for at least two important reasons. First, most studies of the effects of public outreach rely on self-reported data, which is generally unreliable.² Second, even if we understood the effects of public outreach on individual behavior, we still know very little about how animals are impacted by individual behavior such as diet change, voting, or activism. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of most public outreach interventions, we do think it’s important for the animal advocacy movement to target at least some outreach toward individuals. A shift in public attitudes and consumer preferences could help drive industry changes and lead to greater support for more animal-friendly policies; in fact, it might be a necessary precursor to more systemic change. On the whole, however, we believe that efforts to influence public opinion are much less neglected than other types of interventions, as we describe in our Allocation of Movement Resources report.

Animals Now’s flagship program is Challenge 22, which they have recently expanded from their base in Israel to the U.S. and the U.K., and launched a version in Spanish. Participants in Challenge 22 pledge to follow a vegan diet for 22 days and receive group support, personal mentorship, and nutrition advice. A recent study indicates that vegan pledge programs are likely to recruit new people to the movement, normalize veganism, and raise awareness of veganism and animal-related issues. However, many participants are likely to return to eating animal products afterward.³ The support that Animals Now provides through their Challenge 22 program is intended to improve vegan retention. A study that Animals Now conducted in collaboration with Faunalytics indicated a significant reduction in meat consumption even seven months after participating in Challenge 22.⁴

Animals Now also works to expose the suffering of animals in factory farms through undercover investigations. These investigations are then made public, and Animals Now makes an effort to get them as much exposure as possible. Their investigations often draw widespread media attention, lead to criminal charges, and play a role in the passage of legislation.⁵

Animals Now gives lectures to students at schools, provides training and support to teachers to help them incorporate animal issues into their lesson plans, and distributes posters about farmed animal welfare to classrooms. Humane education may build the movement’s capacity, as it targets young people who might be more likely to change their minds and who can spend more of their lifetime advocating for animals. At least in the short term, humane education may increase people’s knowledge of and empathy towards animals. However, there is little evidence as to whether these gains cause behavioral change.

Influencing policy and the law

Animals Now engages in lobbying and grassroots political campaigning. While legal change may take longer to achieve than some other forms of change, we suspect its effects to be long-lasting. We believe that encoding protections for animals into the law is a key component of creating a society that is just and caring towards animals.

Animals Now is campaigning to ban live transport of cattle⁶ and sheep from Australia and Europe to Israel. They are also campaigning to improve the enforcement of the Animal Protection Act and to ban the use of battery cages in the egg industry. They report that their advocacy played a role in the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to ban foie gras.⁷ Animals Now reaches out to both members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) and to ministries such as the Ministry of Environmental Protection, with whom they work on their Humane Education program.

Capacity building

Working to build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement can have far-reaching impact. While capacity-building projects may not always help animals directly, they can help animals indirectly by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations. Our recent research on the way that resources are allocated between different animal advocacy interventions suggests that capacity building is currently neglected relative to other outcomes such as influencing public opinion and industry. Animals Now supports other animal activist organizations in starting vegan pledge and support programs like Challenge 22, which is a form of capacity building.

Animals Now provides support to other organizations in developing local vegan support programs. It has supported animal advocacy groups in Thailand, Romania, and Taiwan. While ACE has not specifically identified these as high-priority countries to operate in, they are countries with relatively small animal advocacy movements where capacity building is likely to be particularly important at this time.

Criterion 2: Does the charity have room for more funding and concrete plans for growth?

We look to recommend charities that are not just high impact, but also have room to grow. Since a recommendation from us can lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding, we look for evidence that the charity will be able to absorb and effectively utilize funding that the recommendation may bring in. We consider whether there are any non-monetary barriers to the charity’s growth, such as time or talent shortages. To do this, we look at the charity’s recent financial history to see how they have dealt with growth over time and how effectively they have been able to utilize past increases in funding. We also consider the charity’s existing programs that need additional funding in order to fulfill their purpose, as well as potential areas for growth and expansion.

Since we can’t predict exactly how any organization will respond upon receiving more funds than they have planned for, our estimate is speculative, not definitive. It’s possible that a charity could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. We check in with each of our Top Charities mid-year about the funding they’ve received since the release of our recommendations, and we use the estimates presented below to indicate whether we still expect them to effectively absorb additional funding at that point.

Recent Financial History

The following chart shows Animals Now recent revenue, assets,⁸ and expenses.^{9, 10} In this chart, the 2019 revenue and expenses are estimated based on the financials of the first six months of 2019.¹¹ Animals Now is planning to invest more to build their organization’s capacity and expand their supporter base. They expect to increase their budget by 20%–30% in the next year. They also note that 73% of their budget comes from small donors.¹² Animals Now notes that this year was a unique year financially and that they unexpectedly had to change their campaigns due to a political situation.¹³

Estimated Future Expenses

A charity may have room for more funding in many areas, and each area likely varies in its cost-effectiveness. In order to evaluate room for more funding over three priority levels, we consider each charity’s estimated future expenses,¹⁴ our assessment of the effectiveness¹⁵ of each future expense, and the feasibility of meeting each expense if more funding were provided.¹⁶

Estimated Room for More Funding

The cost of Animals Now’s plans for expansion over the three priority levels is estimated via Guesstimate and visualized in the chart above. The cost of expansion is expected to be between $0.53M and $1.2M. Our room for more funding estimates include a linear projection of the charity’s revenue from previous years to predict the amount by which we expect the revenue to increase or decrease in the next year. Comparing Animals Now’s estimated revenue for 2019²³ and 2020,²⁴ we expect that in the next year, it will change between -$0.12M and $0.33M. The estimates for change in revenue are more uncertain than the estimated costs of expansion, so we put limited weight on them in our analysis.

Criterion 3: Does the charity possess a strong track record of success?

Information about a charity’s track record can help us predict its future activities and accomplishments, which is information that cannot always be incorporated into our other criteria. An organization’s track record is sometimes a pivotal factor when our analysis otherwise finds limited differences between two charities.

In this section, we consider whether each charity’s programs have been well executed in the past by evaluating some of the key results that they have accomplished. Often, these outcomes are reported to us by the charities and we are not able to corroborate their reports.²⁵ We do not expect charities to fabricate accomplishments, but we do think it’s important to be transparent about which outcomes are reported to us and which we have corroborated or identified independently. The following outcomes were reported to us unless indicated otherwise.

Animals Now (formerly Anonymous for Animal Rights) was founded in 1994. Below is our assessment of their programs, ordered according to the expenses invested in each one (from highest to lowest) in 2018–2019:

Criterion 4: Does the charity operate cost-effectively, according to our best estimates?

A charity’s recent cost-effectiveness provides an insight into how well it has made use of its available resources and is a useful component to understanding how cost-effective future donations to the charity might be. In this criterion, we take a more in-depth look at the charity’s use of resources and compare that to the outcomes they have achieved in each of their main programs.

This year, we have used an approach in which we more qualitatively analyze a charity’s costs and outcomes. In particular, we have focused on the cost-effectiveness of the charity’s specific implementation of each of its programs in comparison to similar programs conducted by other charities we are reviewing this year. We have categorized the charity’s programs into different intervention types and compared the charity’s outcomes and expenditures from January 2018 to June 2019 to other charities we have reviewed in our 2019 evaluations. To facilitate comparisons, we have also compiled spreadsheets of all reviewed charities’ expenditures and outcomes by intervention type.⁵⁰

Analyzing cost-effectiveness carries some risks by incentivizing behaviors that, on the whole, we do not think are valuable for the movement.⁵¹ Particular to the following analysis, we are somewhat concerned about our inclusion of staff time and volunteer time. Focusing on staff time as an indicator of cost-effectiveness can reward charities that underpay their staff, and discourage organizations from working towards increasing salaries to be more in line with the for-profit sector. As for volunteer time, we think that volunteer programs can increase the cost-effectiveness of a charity’s work, however, overreliance on volunteers can make a charity’s work less sustainable. While we think that these factors are relevant and worth including in our analysis of cost-effectiveness, we encourage readers to bear these concerns in mind while reading this criterion.

Overview of Expenditures

The following chart shows Animals Now’s total expenditures in 2018 and 2019, divided by program.⁵²

We asked Animals Now to provide us with their expenditures for their top 3-5 programs as well as their total expenditures. The estimates provided in the graph were calculated by dividing up their total expenditures proportionately, according to the size of their programs. This allowed us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost-effectiveness.

Individual Outreach

Summary of outcomes: organized the Challenge 22 vegan pledge with 150,000 participants; gave humane education lectures to 31,000 students; gave seminars and trainings to 500 teachers; distributed 1,000 posters to schools; supported 102 schools in recognizing Animal Rights Day; and received ~40,000 visits to a resource website for teachers. For more information, see our spreadsheet comparing 2019 reviewed charities engaged in individual outreach.

Use of resources

Table 1: Estimated resource usage in Animals Now’s individual outreach, Jan ’18–Jun ’19

Animals Now’s expenditures are much less than the average of other charities we reviewed, but their staff time is much higher when accounting for the size of their expenditures. All else equal, this will likely positively contribute to their cost-effectiveness as they have more staff time available per dollar spent.⁵⁷

Evaluation of outcome cost-effectiveness

Individual outreach primarily creates impact by inducing behavior changes in the individuals receiving the intervention. Through their Challenge 22 program, Animals Now has worked to address recidivism by providing a mentor and a dietician who are available to answer participants’ questions. The program is likely to be scalable, and their decision to expand internationally should allow them to increase its cost-effectiveness through economies of scale. However, it seems unlikely that their decision to expand to the U.S.—and in particular the U.K.—will yield the greatest impact given the prevalence of existing pledge campaigns in those locations.

Animals Now’s decision to expand their humane education outreach to teachers in addition to students seems likely to substantially increase the cost-effectiveness of the program as it builds the capacity of teachers to themselves deliver the lectures that Animals Now would otherwise directly deliver themselves.

Of the charities we reviewed in 2019, Animals Now is one of few conducting a vegan pledge and support program and the only one conducting significant humane education, so it is difficult to make an overall comparison. That said, Animals Now appears to have achieved a lot when factoring in their small expenditures, indicating that their individual outreach may be more cost effective than other reviewed charities in 2019.

Legal Advocacy

Summary of outcomes: caused delays for plans to use public funds to build battery cages; made progress towards ending live transport into Israel; and made progress towards amending the Animal Protection Act. For more information, see our spreadsheet comparing 2019 reviewed charities engaged in legal advocacy.

Use of resources

Table 2: Estimated resource usage in Animals Now’s legal advocacy, Jan ’18–Jun ’19

Animals Now’s expenditures are less than the average of other charities we reviewed, but their staff time is higher when accounting for the size of their expenditures. All else equal, this will likely positively contribute to their cost-effectiveness as they have more staff time available per dollar spent.⁶²

Evaluation of outcome cost-effectiveness

Animals Now’s legal advocacy is primarily focused on creating national-level change in Israel by lobbying the government. They appear to have achieved some successes that will directly impact large groups of animals. For instance, they have successfully delayed the Ministry of Agriculture’s planned investment of ~$85 million USD in battery cages for 5,000,000 hens. While still in progress, they also seem very close to securing a ban on the live transport of animals in Israel, but they are currently bottlenecked by the ongoing political uncertainty surrounding the elections. Their other ongoing campaign aims to transfer the responsibility of upholding the Animal Protection Act from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Environment. The impact of this campaign for animals is indirect, but the outcome could be very positive because the Ministry of Environment is likely to have less of a conflict of interest in the matter. We think that Animals Now’s focus on large numbers of animals and the promising progress they’ve made so far indicate that this program may be particularly cost effective relative to other organizations we’ve reviewed.

Investigations

Summary of outcomes: conducted three investigations in Israel and one investigation in India; and achieved legal outcomes for investigations prior to 2018. For more information, see our spreadsheet comparing 2019 reviewed charities engaged in investigations.

Use of resources

Table 3: Estimated resource usage in Animals Now’s investigations, Jan ’18–Jun ’19

Animals Now’s expenditures are much less than the average of other charities we reviewed, but their staff time is much higher when accounting for the size of their expenditures. All else equal, this will likely positively contribute to their cost-effectiveness as they have more staff time available per dollar spent.⁶⁷ Note that we were only able to analyze the investigation campaigns of two of the charities we reviewed in 2019, so comparisons to the average should be given relatively less weight than for other interventions.

Evaluation of outcome cost-effectiveness

When taking an estimate of cost per investigation for this program, Animals Now’s investigations cost less than the average of charities reviewed in 2019. That said, this is a somewhat simplistic quantification of cost-effectiveness as it doesn’t take into account other factors—species of animals investigated, size/number of farms, use of investigation footage, etc. In their four investigations released in this period, they have covered fishes, hens, broiler chickens and the live transport of calves. In general, we expect a focus on chickens and fishes to be the most cost effective.

Additionally, Animals Now seems to sometimes use their investigations to support their other work or the work of other organizations: For example, their live transport investigation was used in their legal campaign. We think that instances like this are likely to make an investigation much more cost effective, all else equal. After accounting for all of their outcomes and expenditures, Animals Now’s investigations seem more cost effective than the average of other reviewed charities in 2019.

Criterion 5: Does the charity identify areas of success and failure and respond appropriately?

By conducting reliable self-assessments, a charity can retain and strengthen successful programs and modify or discontinue less successful programs. When such systems of improvement work well, all stakeholders benefit: Leadership is able to refine their strategy, staff better understand the purpose of their work, and donors can be more confident in the impact of their donations.

In this section, we consider how the charity has assessed its programs in the past. We then examine the extent to which the charity has updated their programs in light of past assessments.

How does the charity identify areas of success and failure?

After major projects, Animals Now conducts retrospective meetings in which they review the outcomes they’ve achieved. After the meetings, they summarize their conclusions and share them with all of the people involved in the project as well as the Executive Director. The meetings allow them to learn from their mistakes and improve future activities.⁶⁸

In the past three years, Animals Now has consulted with external advisors on organizational strategy and branding, political strategy, interviews and social platforms,⁶⁹ as well as social effectiveness.⁷⁰

Does the charity respond appropriately to identified areas of success and failure?

We believe that Animals Now responded appropriately to their self-determined areas of success and failure in at least two ways, listed below.

1. Animals Now has been taking a holistic approach to animal advocacy by working in many areas simultaneously. They have reportedly realized that such an approach has its disadvantages, including the need for high operational support and management.⁷¹ In order to focus on their most cost-effective projects, they decided to shut down one of their more resource-intensive projects which involved rescuing and rehabilitating chickens from battery cages. They also discontinued a project that provided individual nutrition counseling; instead, they now offer people a list of registered dietitians who are experts in plant-based nutrition. These decisions seem to be aligned with Animals Now’s commitment to maximizing the cost-effectiveness of their programs.

2. Animals Now was previously known as “Anonymous for Animal Rights,” often called “Anonymous” for short. This nomenclature proved to be problematic because they were often confused with the hacktivist collective with the same name or with Anonymous for the Voiceless, another animal advocacy organization. In order to avoid this misunderstanding and emphasize their identity, they rebranded the organization, changing their name and logo.⁷² They developed their rebranding and new marketing strategies in consultation with external advisors. We think this was an appropriate decision to clarify their distinction from these other groups and possibly expand their audience.

We believe that Animals Now failed to respond appropriately to their self-determined areas of success and failure in at least the following way:

Animals Now conducted a study to evaluate their Challenge 22 program which suggested it was a relatively cost-effective program to generate reductions in meat consumption.⁷³ Based on these results and their success in numbers of sign-ups, they decided to develop the Challenge 22 Community project, which consists of assisting local groups in creating their own challenges by providing advice and funding,⁷⁴ as well as a Spanish version of the challenge. We think this was an appropriate way to respond to this self-identified success as it would expand their audience and grow the movement. However, Animals Now also expanded Challenge 22 to the U.S. and the U.K., two countries where similar programs already exist.⁷⁵ We think leadership could be more strategic in their international expansion by selecting more neglected countries.

Criterion 6: Does the charity have strong leadership and a well-developed strategic vision?

Strongly-led charities are likely to be more successful at responding to internal and external challenges and at reaching their goals. In this section, we describe each charity’s key leadership and assess some of their strengths and weaknesses.

Part of a leader’s job is to develop and guide the strategic vision of the organization. Given our commitment to finding the most effective ways to help nonhuman animals, we look for charities whose strategy is aligned with that goal. We also believe that a well-developed strategic vision should include feasible goals. Since a well-developed strategic vision is likely the result of well-run strategic planning, we consider each charity’s planning process in this section.

Key Leadership

Leadership staff

Animals Now is led by Executive Director Reut Horn. Horn has more than twenty years of experience in the animal advocacy movement and has served a number of roles in the organization before stepping in as Executive Director in 2016. Since taking over, she has worked to professionalize the organization, which began as a grassroots initiative. She tells us that she works to remain alert to all important decisions happening within the organization while providing autonomy to team leaders and refraining from micromanagement.⁷⁶

We distributed a culture survey^{77, 78} to the staff of Animals Now and found that respondents agreed that their organization’s leadership is attentive to Animals Now’s overall strategy. Respondents generally agreed that their leadership promotes external transparency, though responses were more mixed when we asked whether their leadership promotes internal transparency.

Board of Directors

Animals Now’s Board of Directors consists of four members, including one former staff member of Animals Now. The board members have a range of experiences in the animal advocacy movement, mostly in Israel.⁷⁹ In the U.S., it’s considered a best practice for nonprofit boards to be comprised of at least five people who have little overlap with an organization’s staff or other related parties. However, there is only weak evidence that following this best practice is correlated with success.

We think that Animals Now might benefit from adding one or two board members, particularly those with more diverse occupational backgrounds. We believe that boards whose members represent occupational and viewpoint diversity are likely most useful to a charity since they can offer a wide range of perspectives and skills. There is some evidence suggesting that nonprofit board diversity is positively associated with better fundraising and social performance,⁸⁰ better internal and external governance practices,⁸¹ as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision making.⁸²

Strategic Vision and Planning

Strategic vision

Animals Now states that its “sole purpose” is to “[create] a better world for animals.” Their two primary goals are to promote plant-based diets and to advocate for animal-friendly legislation.⁸³ In other words, their focus is on farmed animal advocacy, though their strategic vision does not commit them to work for farmed animals exclusively. We support Animals Now’s focus on improving farmed animal welfare and promoting plant-based diets because we consider farmed animal advocacy to be the most promising area for doing the most good for animals, other things being equal.

Strategic planning process

Animals Now begins its strategic planning process with its Executive Director, Public Campaigns Manager, Research Manager, and two advisors, one of whom is a Strategic Planning Specialist. Together, they brainstorm new ideas for the organization, narrow them down, and split them up for further research. After that, they draft a plan and submit it to their Board of Advisors. After finalizing their strategic plan, they develop an action plan or “working plan.” The working plan includes quarterly goals for the team.⁸⁴

Goal setting and monitoring

Animals Now conducts three types of assessments: every month they review whether they met each department’s objectives and set the next month’s objectives; every quarter they conduct evaluations of each department’s outcomes using set quantitative measurements; and every year they conduct an assessment of each department.⁸⁵

Criterion 7: Does the charity have a healthy culture and a sustainable structure?

The most effective charities have healthy cultures and sustainable structures to enable their core work. We collect information about each charity’s internal operations in several ways. We ask leadership about the culture they try to foster and their perceptions of staff morale. We review each charity’s policies related to human resources and check for essential items. We also send each charity a culture survey and request that they distribute it among their team on our behalf.

Human Resources Policies

Here we present a list of policies that we find to be beneficial for fostering healthy cultures. A green mark indicates that Animals Now has such a policy and a red mark indicates that they do not. A yellow mark indicates that the organization has a partial policy, an informal or unwritten policy, or a policy that is not fully or consistently implemented. We do not expect a given charity to have all of the following policies, but we believe that, generally, having more of them is better than having fewer.

Culture and Morale

A charity with a healthy culture acts responsibly towards all stakeholders: staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, and others in the community. According to Animals Now’s leadership, their organization prioritizes inclusivity and encourages all staff to participate in decision-making processes.

Respondents to our culture survey generally agreed that Animals Now has a highly inclusive culture. Asked to describe their organization’s communication style, the most commonly used terms were “friendly,” “kind,” and “sensitive.” The terms “open” and “honest” were also common. Our survey indicates that Animals Now has a high level of employee engagement.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion⁸⁸

One important part of acting responsibly towards stakeholders is providing a diverse,⁸⁹ equitable, and inclusive work environment. Charities with a healthy attitude towards diversity, equity, and inclusion seek and retain staff and volunteers from different backgrounds, which improves their ability to respond to new situations and challenges.⁹⁰ Among other things, inclusive work environments should also provide necessary resources for employees with disabilities, require regular trainings on topics such as diversity, and protect all employees from harassment and discrimination.

Animals Now employees report that they have a diverse team in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and mental health status. Their leadership reports that they have employees of diverse ethnicities and that they translate to Arabic—the native language of a relatively large portion of Israelis—as needed.⁹¹ Two-thirds of their management team are women and nearly the same portion identify as LGBTQ+.⁹²

There was some disagreement among respondents to our culture survey as to whether they had been sufficiently trained on issues related to harassment and discrimination. They generally agreed, however, that their leadership is supportive of employees with marginalized identities and that the organization protects its employees from harassment and discrimination.

Sustainability

An effective charity should be stable under ordinary conditions and should seem likely to survive any transitions in leadership. The charity should not seem likely to split into factions and should seem able to continue raising the funds needed for its basic operations. Ideally, it should receive significant funding from multiple distinct sources, including both individual donations and other types of support.

The majority of Animals Now’s budget comes from donations. In fact, 70% comes from recurring monthly donations.⁹³ This is a clear strength since it allows Animals Now to predict a certain level of income each month. Having a broad base of individual donors is also a strength since the organization need not rely too heavily on a small number of funders. We believe that Animals Now is relatively financially sustainable. We have less information about their ability to survive potential changes in leadership, though they seem to be thriving after the leadership transition that occurred a few years ago.

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1. Note that we are never 100% confident in the effectiveness of a particular charity or intervention, so three gray circles do not necessarily imply that we are as confident as we could possibly be. 

2. For more information on the reliability of self-reported data, see van de Mortel (2008) in the Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing. Also see Peacock (2018) on the use of self-reported dietary data. 

3. Grassian, 2019 

4. R. Horn, personal communication, November 7, 2019 

5. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019  

6. We believe that language can have a powerful impact on worldview, so we avoid terms like “cattle,” “livestock,” and “poultry” whenever possible. These terms are likely to contribute to a lack of awareness about the origins of food and could make it difficult for consumers to understand the effects of their food choices. That being said, Animals Now used the term “cattle” in their communication with ACE to describe this campaign, so we will use the term here for the sake of simplicity.  

7. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019  

8. We found that charities interpreted the question of how many assets they had very differently. Some interpreted assets as financial reserves, some as net assets, and some as material assets. We have interpreted assets as financial reserves, which we calculated by taking the assets from the previous year, adding the (estimated) revenue for the current year, and subtracting the (estimated) expenses for the current year. 

9. Sources:
   2015–2017 revenue and expenses: R. Horn, personal communication, November 7, 2019
   2018 revenue, assets, and expenses: Animals Now, 2019
   2019 first six months of revenue and expenses: Animals Now, 2019 

10. We have included all financial information available from 2014 until mid-2019.  

11. For most other charities, we assume that they receive 40% of their revenue in the last two months of the calendar year. Animals Now noted that this was not the case for them (R. Horn, personal communication, November 7, 2019). This may be due to the fact that our estimate is based on U.S. organizations, and Animals Now operates primarily in Israel. We assume that both revenue and expenses stay constant over the year, so to calculate estimates of total revenue and expenses in 2019, we multiply revenue and expenses from the first six months by 2.  

12. Animals Now, 2019 

13. R. Horn noted that: “[t]his is a unique year because of political events (there were two elections – which never happened before) and therefore does not represent the normal financial behavior with expenses. Due to political events, Israel went for elections twice which is unprecedented. We planned to spend money on legislative and lobbying campaigns but we unexpectedly went for elections.” (personal communication, November 7, 2019)  

14. In combination with our estimates of the priority level and costs of each planned expansion, the estimates are based on charities’ own estimates of planned expansion as expressed in our follow-up questions for them (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019). 

15. See ACE’s 2019 cost-effectiveness estimates spreadsheet.  

16. Potential bottlenecks besides a lack of funding include a lack of operational capacity to support new staff members and difficulty to find and hire value-aligned individuals with the right skill sets. We base our estimates of capacity for expanding staff based on the current number of staff employed, as reported in Animals Now (2019). Animals Now employs 10 full-time staff members and 30 part-time staff members. In addition they have 8 national service volunteers who work 30 to 40 hours per week. Based on this, our subjective assessment is that we are highly confident that Animals Now can hire 55% of the new staff they would like to hire before running into non-funding related bottlenecks. For 45% of the hires, we believe the non-funding related bottlenecks play a more significant role and we are only moderately confident that Animals Now can overcome these bottlenecks within the next year. Therefore, we estimate that 55% of new hires are high priority and 45% are moderate priority. Our subjective assessment is that we are highly confident that Animals Now can hire all of the new staff they would like to hire before running into non-funding related bottlenecks.  

17. Animals Now would like to hire five high-priority staff members. Within capacity building, they would hire a Director of Operations and a Resource Development Coordinator. Within campaigns and legislation, they would hire a Campaign Manager for their battery cage campaign, a staff member for their battery cage campaign, and a lawyer. They would also like to hire four staff members for working on Challenge 22, which we estimate to be moderate priority. These include a Content Development Manager, a Marketing Coordinator, an Automatization and Programming Position, and a Frequent Meat-eaters Program Coordinator (Animals Now, 2019). 

18. The median income in Israel ($30,364) is 70% that of the US ($43,585) according to World Population Review (2019). In U.S. organizations with a budget of between $500,000 and $1 million, the CEO, top finance position, and top operations position have median salaries of $59,248, $43,790, and $41,313, respectively. We estimate the lower bound of salaries at Animals Now to be 70% of $41,313 − 20%, and we estimate the upper bound to be 70% of $59,248 + 20%. This gives us the range $23,135–$49,769 (GuideStar, 2018). To estimate the total expenses related to hiring a new staff member, we multiply the salary with a distribution of 1.5 to 2.5 to account for recruiting expenses, employment taxes, benefits, training, equipment, etc. To account for the fact that people will be hired throughout the year and not only at the beginning, we multiply the expenses by a distribution of 0.25 to 1.25. 

19. Animals Now shared the following: “Under capacity building, we would invest 220K USD. This would be split between:
    – “Hiring personnel for operations, and a resource development coordinator that could make the organization management work more efficiently.
    – Increasing the staff’s salaries: While the salaries have been steadily increasing in recent years, the current salaries are still lower than the average wage in Israel. This is also true for the more professional and senior staff members, who have been part of Animals Now for over 10 years. Increasing wages will grant employees financial security, and long-term stability in the organization, which in turn will affect the organization’s stability.
    – Renting extra office space, in order to make sure that our staff are given a proper working environment to work more efficiently.” (Animals Now, 2019)
    We have included hiring personnel for operations in the “hiring new staff” row.  

20. With more funding, Animals now would spend money expanding their Challenge 22 program. Specifically, they would develop local programs in Asia and south America, develop tools to increase the effectiveness of the program among meat-eaters, implement an automated process in the program, and work with influencers outside of Israel (Animals Now, 2019). 

21. This represents the difference between the estimated assets over 2019 and expenses for six months based on the estimates for 2020. 

22. This is an additional estimate to account for expenditures beyond what has been specifically outlined in this model. This parameter reflects our uncertainty as to whether the model is comprehensive, and it constitutes a range from 1%–20% of the charities’ total expected expenses in 2020. 

23. The total revenue is based on the first six months of 2019 with an uncertainty of ± 10%. 

24. The calculations on which this estimate is based exclude revenue influenced by ACE, and have an uncertainty of ± 20%. The calculations are made via a linear projection of the total revenue of previous years. 

25. While we are able to corroborate some types of claims (e.g., those about public events that appear in the news), others are harder to corroborate. For instance, it is often difficult for us to verify whether a charity worked behind the scenes to obtain a corporate commitment, or the extent to which that charity was responsible for obtaining the commitment.  

26. Since we did not ask charities to provide details about accomplishments prior to 2018, key results before 2018 were sourced from publicly available information and may be incomplete. 

27. Challenge 22, n.d. 

28. Animals Now reports that Challenge 22 promoters include James Aspey, Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong, Kinder World and Anonymous for the Voiceless (Animals Now, 2019). 

29. Animals Now, 2018; Animals Now, 2017; Animals Now, 2016; Animals Now, 2015; Animals Now, 2014; Animals Now, 2013; Animals Now, 2012 

30. See Faunalytics’ study on the effectiveness of Challenge 22 (Faunalytics, 2019).  

31. Animals Now reports that the campaign involved a petition with 11,000 signatures, a video featuring actress Orna Banai, lobby efforts, and demonstrations. The campaign had 12 press publications, and according to Animals Now these initiatives led to the plan being removed from the Budget Bill although the Ministry of Agriculture is still trying to move it forward (Animals Now, 2019). 

32. For example, Animals Now reports that their campaign to end live transport of cattle and sheep from Australia to Israel received more than 100 press publications, support from 245 lawyers, 60 rabbis, and the PM, and that their petition had over 40,000 signatures. The campaign also involved a billboard campaign in collaboration with Animals Australia, rallies (the largest including 3,000 people), and intensive lobbying (Animals Now, 2019). The bill for which they were campaigning passed to preliminary reading (Klein, 2018). 

33. BBC, 2003 

34. Animals Now, 2014 

35. Animals Now reports that their 2018 campaign for a change of jurisdiction to enforce the Animal Protection Act included a petition with over 6,300 signatures, social media publications with over 200,000 views, and a video featuring two well-known comedians: Shy Avivi and Keren Mor (Animals Now, 2019). 

36. Animals Now, 2016 

37. Animals Now reports that the vegan lunch at the Parliament that they organized in 2018 had the participation of 20 MK (members of parliament). The celebration had an audience of 300 people, received media coverage, and more than 6 MKs watched virtual reality footage that presented animals used in the food industry (Animals Now, 2019). 

38. Animals Now reports these members of parliament are Lipman Dov, Zandberg Tamar, and Sharen Haskel (R. Horn, personal communication, November 10, 2019).  

39. Animals Now reports the plan was to build battery cages for 5 million hens (Animals Now, 2019). 

40. R. Horn, personal communication, November 11, 2019 

41. At least 9 of 15 videos available on their website in English show investigations into the broiler chicken and egg industries (Animals Now, n.d.). 

42. For example, Animals Now reports that after their investigation into Dabbah slaughterhouse, a class action lawsuit was filed several years ago, and in 2018 the court accepted a settlement: Dabbah will pay 1.2 million shekels to fund non-profit projects that promote the protection of animals in the food industry. Animals Now also reports that in 2018, managers at Tnuva slaughterhouse were charged with animal abuse thanks to their investigation (Animals Now, 2019). 

43. Animals Now reports that their fish investigation was broadcast by a TV news edition, their media campaign reached about 1 million views, and their petition obtained more than 2,000 signatures. Their media campaign included a video clip starring Miki Hiamovich, who is currently a member of Israel’s Parliament (Animals Now, 2019). 

44. Animals Now reports that 4 of 23 investigations conducted since 2012 have been conducted in collaboration with other organizations (R. Horn, personal communication, November 20, 2019).  

45. For example, Animals Now conducted a 2018 investigation of India’s egg industry in cooperation with PETA India and an investigation of caged hens in Israel in collaboration with Sentient (Animals Now, 2019). 

46. Animals Now, 2019 

47. Animals Now, 2019 

48. Animals Now, n.d. 

49. Animals Now, n.d. 

50. Note that some charities’ programs do not fit in well with the rest of the reviewed charities according to our categorization of intervention type.  

51. For a longer discussion of the limitations of modeling cost-effectiveness, see Šimčikas (2019). 

52. To estimate their 2019 expenditures, we doubled the financial data provided from January–June 2019. 

53. This includes all charities reviewed in 2019 that are engaged in a program related to individual outreach. 

54. To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allows us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost-effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures. 

55. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. 

56. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. We think it is unlikely that, in practice, volunteers are working full-time weeks, however we are using this unit in order to maintain a comparison with the amount of staff time used. 

57. This could be a result of a few different factors, such as Israel having lower average wages than other countries, lower overhead than other organizations, etc. We do not have enough information to know conclusively. 

58. This includes all charities reviewed in 2019 that are engaged in a program related to legal advocacy. 

59. To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allows us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost-effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures. 

60. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. 

61. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. We think it is unlikely that, in practice, volunteers are working full-time weeks, however we are using this unit in order to maintain a comparison with the amount of staff time used. 

62. This could be a result of a few different factors, such as Israel having lower average wages than other countries, lower overhead than other organizations, etc. but we do not have enough information to know conclusively. 

63. This includes all charities reviewed in 2019 that are engaged in a program related to investigations. 

64. To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allows us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost-effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures. 

65. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. 

66. They provided this number in hours, and we converted it into weeks for readability. We assume that one week consists of 40 hours of work. We think it is unlikely that, in practice, volunteers are working full-time weeks, however we are using this unit in order to maintain a comparison with the amount of staff time used. 

67. This could be a result of a few different factors, such as Israel having lower average wages than other countries, lower overhead than other organizations, etc. but we do not have enough information to know conclusively. 

68. Animals Now, 2019 

69. Animals Now, 2019 

70. Animals Now, 2019 

71. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

72. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

73. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

74. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

75. For example, see the 30 Day Vegan pledge, the Summer Vegan Pledge, and Veganuary. 

76. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

77. We sent our culture survey to Animals Now’s 40 team members and 15 responded, for a response rate of 37.5%. 

78. We recognize at least two major limitations of our culture survey. First, because participation was not mandatory, the results could be skewed by selection bias. Second, because respondents knew that their answers could influence ACE’s evaluation of their employer, they may have felt an incentive to emphasize their employers’ strengths and minimize their weaknesses. 

79. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

80. Siciliano, 1996 

81. Buse, Bernstein, & Bilimoria, 2014 

82. Brown, 2003 

83. Animals Now, 2019 

84. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

85. Animals Now, 2019 

86. Animals Now does not have interns. 

87. Documents are available through GuideStar but not on the charity’s website. 

88. Our goal in this section is to evaluate whether each charity has a healthy attitude towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. We do not directly evaluate the demographic characteristics of their employees. There are at least two reasons supporting our approach: First, we are not well-positioned to evaluate the demographic characteristics of each charity’s employees. Second, we believe that each charity is fully responsible for their own attitudes towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, but the demographic characteristics of a charity’s staff may be influenced by factors outside of the charity’s control.  

89. We use the term “diversity” broadly in this section to refer to the diversity of any of the following characteristics: racial identification, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, ability levels, educational levels, parental status, immigrant status, age, and/or religious, political, or ideological affiliation. 

90. There is a significant body of evidence suggesting that teams composed of individuals with different roles, tasks, or occupations are likely to be more successful than those which are more homogeneous (Horwitz & Horwitz, 2007). Increased diversity by demographic factors—such as race and gender—has more mixed effects in the literature (Jackson, Joshi, & Erhardt, 2003), but gains through having a diverse team seem to be possible for organizations which view diversity as a resource (using different personal backgrounds and experiences to improve decision making) rather than solely a neutral or justice-oriented practice (Ely & Thomas, 2001).  

91. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

92. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

93. Animal Charity Evaluators, 2019 

Research Documents

• Animals Now Questionnaire, 2019
• Follow-Up Questions for Animals Now, 2019
• Animals Now Project Outcomes, 2018
• Animals Now Strategic Action
• Animals Now Top 3–5 Programs, 2019

• Conversation with Reut Horn of Animals Now, 2019
• Guesstimate Model of RFMF for Animals Now, 2019
• Reference List for ACE’s Review of Animals Now, 2019