Archived Version: 2022
What does Aquatic Life Institute do, and are their programs promising ways to advocate for animals?
Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) works to improve the welfare standards of farmed fishes, aquatic invertebrates (e.g., shrimps and octopus), and wild-caught aquatic animals. They engage global institutions to achieve global reforms and provide guidance to aquaculture certifiers to improve the welfare standards of farmed fishes and shrimps. Additionally, they work to strengthen the animal advocacy movement by running the Aquatic Animal Alliance, a coalition of organizations that aims to improve seafood certification standards. Most of ALI’s work has a global scope, therefore we did not consider information about any specific country. Because most of ALI’s spending on programs goes toward animal groups, outcomes, and interventions that we consider high (or very high) priority, we assessed the overall expected effectiveness of ALI’s programs as very high.
Taking into account their spending, are their programs cost effective?
After analyzing the achievements and costs of ALI’s programs, we assigned each one a cost-effectiveness rating. Of all of ALI’s programs, we believe their seafood certifier program (rated high to very high) and global policy reform (rated high) programs are the most cost effective. In contrast, we believe the Aquatic Animal Alliance is less cost effective (rated moderate to high).
Overall, we assess ALI’s cost effectiveness as high.
How much additional funding could they use?
We estimate that ALI has room for $370,276 in additional funding in 2023 and $150,000 in 2024, beyond their current projected revenues in those years. Therefore, we believe that they could utilize a total revenue of up to $1,165,276 in 2023 and $1,170,000 in 2024.
Do we have concerns about their leadership and culture?
We did not detect any significant concerns with ALI’s leadership and organizational culture, and we expect that reported issues will continue to be handled appropriately until successfully addressed.
Why did they not receive our recommendation?
The main interventions used by ALI (corporate outreach and policy work) are likely to be very effective in improving the welfare of farmed and wild fishes. In addition, their focus on capacity building through the Aquatic Animal Alliance is likely to be effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement. However, the five charities we recommended this year performed better on the Room For More Funding and Leadership and Culture criteria compared to ALI. Their plans for expansion are very ambitious, which affects our confidence that they will be able to effectively absorb an influx of additional funding. While a shift to new leadership makes their prospects look very promising, we are uncertain about their current sustainability. Therefore, based on our assessment of their performance on our four evaluation criteria—Programs, Cost Effectiveness, Room for More Funding, and Leadership and Culture—we recommended other charities ahead of ALI.
Charities that ACE selects for comprehensive review all show evidence of running effective programs and engaging in highly impactful work. While ALI did not receive a recommendation from us this year, we recognize that they are still among the most effective charities in their space, and we are delighted to highlight their work in their comprehensive review (shared with their permission).
Introduction
Each year, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) compiles comprehensive reviews of all organizations that agree to participate in our evaluation process. During our evaluation period, our research team thoroughly examines publicly available information and solicits additional materials and information from participating organizations.
This review is the finished product of our evaluation of Aquatic Life Institute (ALI), and it contains our assessment of their performance on ACE’s four charity evaluation criteria. This review includes four sections that each focus on a separate criterion: (i) an assessment of the effectiveness of a charity’s programs, (ii) a cost-effectiveness analysis of their recent work, (iii) an estimate of their ability to use additional funding effectively, and (iv) an evaluation of their leadership and culture.
Programs
In this criterion, we assess the expected effectiveness of a charity’s programs without considering their particular achievements. (For more information on recent program costs and achievements, see the Cost Effectiveness criterion.) During our assessment, we analyze the groups of animals the charity’s programs affect, the countries in which they take place, the outcomes they work toward, and the interventions they use to achieve those outcomes, as well as how the charity allocates their spending toward different programs. A charity that performs well on this criterion has programs that are expected to be highly effective in reducing the suffering of animals. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining a charity’s programs are reviewed in detail below.
Method
ACE characterizes effective programs as those that (i) target high-priority animal groups, (ii) work in high-priority countries, (iii) work toward high-priority outcomes, and/or (iv) pursue interventions that are expected to be highly effective. This year, we used a scoring framework to assess the effectiveness of charities’ programs on each of these categories: animal groups, countries, outcomes, and interventions.
We scored the priority levels of different types of animal groups, countries, outcomes, and interventions (i.e., categories) using the Scale, Tractability, and Neglectedness (STN) framework; for countries, we also included an assessment of global influence. Members of ACE’s research team individually scored various types in each category using their own percentage weights for STN. We averaged these scores and percentage weights to calculate an overall priority level score for each type. For ease of interpretation, we categorized these scores into priority levels of very low, low, moderate, high, and very high.
We then used information supplied by the charity to estimate the percentage of program funding spent on different types of animal groups, countries, outcomes, and interventions. Using those estimates and our priority level scores, we arrived at a singular program score for each charity, representing the expected effectiveness of their collective programs.
A note about long-term impact
Each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.11 The potential number of animals affected increases over time due to an accumulation of generations. Thus, we would expect that the long-term impacts of an action would likely affect more animals than the short-term impacts of the same action. This year, we included some considerations of long-term impact in our assessment of each outcome and intervention type. Nevertheless, we are highly uncertain about the particular long-term effects of each intervention. Because of this uncertainty, our reasoning about each charity’s impact (along with our diagrams) will skew toward emphasizing short-term effects.
Information and Analysis
Cause areas and animal groups
ALI’s programs focus on helping farmed animals and wild animals, both of which we think are high-priority cause areas.
In particular, ALI focuses on helping farmed fishes and invertebrates (shrimps and octopus) and wild-caught aquatic animals, which we consider to be high-priority animal groups.
Countries
ALI’s is headquartered in the U.S. (specifically New York City), and they have one subsidiary in France.12
ALI mainly develops their programs at a more global level, therefore, we did not include any information about any specific country or consider country scores.
Description of programs
ALI pursues different outcomes to create change for animals. Their work focuses on improving welfare standards and strengthening the animal advocacy movement.
We use theory of change diagrams to communicate our interpretation of how a charity creates change for animals. 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.
Below, we describe each of ALI’s programs and the main interventions they use, listed in order of financial resources devoted to them in the last 18 months (from highest to lowest). Refer to ALI’s general information request and our Cost Effectiveness criterion for more detailed information.
ALI’s programs
Research for intervention effectiveness
We categorized the work ALI does into four intervention types: legal or policy work, corporate outreach, and capacity building. Below, we summarize the most relevant research on the effectiveness of each of these intervention types, listed in order of financial resources devoted to them in the last 18 months (from highest to lowest).
Legal or policy work
Available evidence suggests that legal work by animal advocacy organizations can contribute to changes and modifications in the law, help ensure law enforcement, and motivate cultural shifts in societal attitudes toward animal welfare. The success of this legal work requires that such laws have a positive impact on the welfare of animals and that the work those organizations do contributes to the introduction of those laws. While legal change may take longer to achieve than some other forms of change, we expect its effects to be particularly long-lasting.
Corporate outreach
There is some evidence that corporate outreach leads food companies to change their practices related to chicken welfare, and there are some cost-effectiveness estimates suggesting corporate outreach improves the welfare standards of farmed chickens.14 For example, research suggests that the follow-through rate of cage-free corporate commitments ranges from 48%–84% and that corporate campaigns affect nine to 120 hen-years per dollar spent. Cost-effectiveness estimates vary widely, and it is unclear which is the most accurate.15 The longer-term effects of improving welfare standards on the production and consumption of animal products are unclear.
We are not aware of any cost-effectiveness estimates on corporate campaigns for farmed fish or wild-caught fish welfare. However, we consider both farmed fishes and wild-caught fishes to be high-priority animal groups because of the likelihood that fish suffering is large in scale and the current neglectedness of the issue.16
Capacity Building
Capacity building enables organizations to develop the competencies and skills to make their team more effective and sustainable, thus increasing their potential to fulfill their mission and create change.17 ACE’s 2018 research on the allocation of movement resources suggests that capacity building is neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry. Others have argued that many effective animal advocacy organizations could benefit from capacity-building services, specifically from career services and greater diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, especially in the longer term.18
The U.S.-based National Council of Nonprofits suggests that networks can be especially effective for capacity building because they catalyze innovation, improve communications, reduce duplication of past mistakes, and spread ideas faster and more efficiently than other capacity-building approaches.
Our Assessment
We conclude that all of ALI’s spending on programs goes toward very-high priority animal groups (farmed fishes, farmed invertebrates, and wild-caught aquatic animals)19 and high-priority outcomes (improvement of welfare standards and stronger animal advocacy movement). Most of their spending on programs goes toward very high-priority interventions (legal or policy work and corporate outreach).
Overall, we assess the expected effectiveness of ALI’s programs as very high.20
Cost Effectiveness
In this criterion, we assess the effectiveness of a charity’s approaches to implementing interventions, their recent achievements, and the costs associated with those achievements. By conducting this assessment, we seek to gain insight into a charity’s overall impact on animals given the resources they used to achieve their results. A charity that performs well on this criterion likely utilizes their available resources in a cost-effective manner. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining cost effectiveness are reviewed in detail below.
Method
We conducted our analysis by comparing a charity’s reported expenditures over the past 18 months to the reported achievements of their main programs during that time.21 We estimated total program expenditures by taking the charity’s reported expenditures for each program and adding a portion of their nonprogram expenditures weighted by the program’s size. This process allowed us to incorporate general organizational running costs into our consideration of cost effectiveness. During our evaluation, we also verified a subset of the charity’s reported achievements by searching for independent sources to help us verify claims and directing follow-up questions to the charity.
We selected up to five key achievements per program to factor into our cost-effectiveness assessment.22 When selecting achievements, we prioritized those that we thought were most representative of their respective programs and that referred to completed work (rather than work in progress). For each key achievement, we identified the associated intervention type and assigned the respective intervention score. (For more details on how we calculated those scores and prioritized interventions, see the Programs criterion.) Based on the charity’s reported expenditure on each achievement, we computed how many such achievements the charity accomplished per $100,000.23
We used the number of achievements per $100k and other contextual information (e.g., the species affected) to score the cost effectiveness of each key achievement, and then used those scores to modify the average intervention type score. This modified score for each key achievement takes into account how impactful the intervention is on average and how cost-effectively it has been implemented by the charity. The final score for each program is the average of the modified intervention scores, weighted by the relative expenditure on each key achievement.
The final cost-effectiveness score is the average of the program scores, weighted by percentage of total expenditures spent on each program. This score indicates on a 1–5 scale how cost effective we believe this program has been over the last 18 months, with 1 indicating very low cost effectiveness, 2 indicating low cost effectiveness, 3 indicating moderate cost effectiveness, 4 indicating high cost effectiveness, and 5 indicating very high cost effectiveness. Please see the cost-effectiveness assessment spreadsheet for more detailed information.
Below, we report the total program expenditures, key achievements of each program, and estimated cost effectiveness of each program.
Information and Analysis
Overview of expenditures
The following chart shows ALI’s total program expenditures from January 2021 – June 2022.
Overview of programs
The following tables show ALI’s key achievements, achievement expenditures, the number of achievements per $100,000, and a program cost-effectiveness score from January 2021 – June 2022.
Room for More Funding
A recommendation from ACE could lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding. In this criterion, we investigate whether a charity would be able to absorb and effectively utilize funding that a new or renewed recommendation may bring in. Our assessment of this criterion ultimately guides our recommendation decision; charities are ineligible to receive a particular recommendation status if they would be unable to absorb and effectively utilize the subsequent funding. All descriptive data and estimations for this criterion can be found in the RFMF model spreadsheet.
Method
We begin our room for more funding (RFMF) assessment by inspecting the charity’s revenue and plans for expansion through 2024, assuming that their ACE recommendation status and the amount of ACE-influenced funding they receive will stay the same. Then, we outline how the charity would likely expand if they were to receive funds beyond their predicted income and use this information to calculate their RFMF. Finally, we share our thoughts about the charity’s overall financial sustainability and revenue diversity.
Plans for Expansion
To estimate charities’ RFMF, we request their financial records from the past 30 months and ask them to predict what their revenue will be in the next 30 months. We also ask how they plan to allocate funding among their programs. We then assess our level of confidence in their projections based on factors such as past revenue, past expenditures, and nonfinancial barriers to the scalability of their programs (e.g., time or talent shortages).
Although we list the expenditures for planned nonprogram expenses, we do not assess the charity’s overhead costs in this criterion, given that there is no evidence that the total share of overhead costs negatively impacts overall effectiveness.28 However, we do consider relative overhead costs per program in our Cost Effectiveness criterion. Here, we focus on determining whether additional resources are likely to be used for effective programs or other beneficial organizational changes. The latter may include investments into infrastructure and staff retention, both of which we think are important for sustainable growth.
Unexpected Funding
We ask charities to indicate how they would spend additional, unexpected funding that an ACE recommendation may bring in. This amount varies from charity to charity, but on average is roughly $200,000 per year for Standout Charities and $1,000,000 per year for Top Charities. We also ask previously recommended charities to indicate how they would use additional funding because there is some evidence that repeatedly recommended charities are more appealing to donors; therefore, they may get more ACE-influenced funding over time. We then assess our level of confidence in the charity’s ability to carry out their plans in 2023 and 2024—i.e., how much unexpected funding we believe they could utilize for effective programs in that timeframe—to estimate their RFMF for those years. These estimates are then shared with the charity and adjusted as needed based on feedback. Our RFMF estimates are intended to identify the point at which we would want to check in with a charity to ensure that they have used their funds effectively and can still absorb additional funding.
Reserves
We may adjust RFMF based on the status of a charity’s reserves. It is common practice for charities to hold more funds than needed for their current expenses in order to be able to withstand changes in the business cycle or external shocks that may affect their incoming revenue. Such additional funds can also serve as investments in future projects. Thus, it can be effective to provide a charity with additional funding to secure the organization’s stability and/or provide funding for larger, future projects. Therefore, we increase a charity’s RFMF if they are below their targeted amount of reserves. If a target does not exist, we suggest that charities hold reserves equal to at least one year of expenditures.29
Revenue Diversity
The charities we evaluate typically receive revenue from a variety of sources, such as individual donations and grants from foundations.30 A review of the literature on nonprofit finance suggests that revenue diversity may be positively associated with revenue predictability if the sources of income are largely uncorrelated.31 However, there is evidence that revenue diversity may not always be associated with financial stability.32 Therefore, although revenue diversity does not play a direct role in our recommendation decision, we indicate charities’ major sources of income in this criterion for donors interested in financial stability.
Information and Analysis
The chart below shows ALI’s revenues, expenditures, and net assets from 2020–2021, as well as their own projections for the years 2022–2024.
Revenue, Expenditures, and ACE-Influenced Funding Over the Years 2020–2024
Plans for Expansion
ALI plans to expand each of their three programs (1.8x, 1.8x, and 2.6x respectively). This includes recruiting to grow the team of seven staff members up to potentially 15 staff members within a two-year period. We consider this to be ambitious growth relative to other charities we evaluate—a potential indicator that successes may not scale due to limiting factors, such as operations and leadership’s ability to manage change. This is especially true given that ALI has not been in a financial position to build up a dedicated reserves fund to withstand potential future disruptions in revenue. It is also possible that recruiting staff with the right skills and/or experience may be challenging, especially in regions where animal advocacy is particularly neglected.
Below, we share ALI’s plans for each of their programs in more detail. Projected changes in expenditure are the charity’s own estimates from August 2022. We also include a surface-level assessment of the feasibility of their plans. More details can be found in the corresponding estimation sheet and in the supplementary materials.
Based on our assessment of Cost Effectiveness, ALI’s Aquatic Animal Alliance program appears less cost effective than their other programs, as well as some programs at other charities that we consider to be highly impactful. Looking forward to 2023 and 2024, we estimate that about 62% of ALI’s planned expenditure will go toward programs that ACE currently considers to be highly cost effective.
Unexpected Funding
In addition to other sources of funding, ALI has received funding influenced by ACE as a result of their Movement Grant in July 2020.
ALI outlined that if they were to spend an additional $200,000 per year, it would be focused on investing in existing staff members through additional healthcare and equipment benefits and hiring for their coalitions and policy programs, which we believe is an effective and plausible use of funding. Overall, we have moderate confidence that ALI could effectively absorb an additional $200,000 per year beyond their plans for expansion outlined in the previous section.
ALI outlined that if they were to spend an additional $1,000,000 per year, about half would be focused on providing comprehensive benefits for staff and the remainder would be divided between existing programs. We believe this is an effective and plausible use of funding in the short term but may be unsustainable in the longer term relative to their current operating budget. Overall, we have low confidence that ALI could effectively absorb an additional $1,000,000 per year beyond their plans for expansion outlined in the previous section.
Reserves
With about 23% of their current annual expenditures held in net assets—as reported by ALI for 2021—we believe that they could benefit from holding a larger amount of reserves. As such, we increased their 2023 RFMF by $220,276 to account for building/replenishing their reserves up to their target level of 25%.
Revenue Diversity
ALI receives 100% of their income from grants/donations. In 2021, they received 27% of their funding from donations larger than 20% of their annual revenue, which is a restricted grant toward the salaries of specific team members.
Our Assessment
Based on (i) our assessment that they can use additional reserves and (ii) our assessment of moderate confidence they could effectively absorb an additional $200,000, we believe that overall, ALI has room for $370,276 of additional funding in 2023 and $150,000 in 2024. These two figures represent the amount we believe they could absorb beyond their projected revenues of $795,000 in 2023 and $1,020,000 in 2024, meaning that that they could utilize a total revenue of up to $1,165,276 in 2023 and $1,170,000 in 2024. Additionally, we believe that 62% of that funding would contribute to programs that ACE considers to be highly cost effective. See our Cost Effectiveness criterion for our assessment of the effectiveness of their programs.
It is possible that a charity could run out of room for more funding more quickly than we expect or that they could come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. If a charity receives a recommendation as Top Charity, we check in mid-year about the funding they’ve received since the release of our recommendations, and we use the estimates presented above to indicate whether we still expect them to be able to effectively absorb additional funding at that time.
Leadership and Culture
The way an organization is led affects its organizational culture, which in turn can impact the organization’s effectiveness and stability.33 In this criterion, our main goal is to assess whether organizations seem to have leadership and culture issues that are substantial enough to affect our confidence in their effectiveness and stability. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining leadership and culture are reviewed in detail below.
Method
We review aspects of organizational leadership and culture by examining information provided by top leadership staff (as defined by each charity) and by capturing staff perspectives via our culture survey. At a charity’s request, we also distribute the survey to volunteers working at least five hours per week.
Assessing leadership
First, we consider key information about the composition of leadership staff and the board of directors. There appears to be no consensus in the literature on the specifics of the relationship between board composition and organizational performance.34 Therefore, we refrain from making judgments on board composition. However, because donors may have preferences on whether the Executive Director (ED) or other top executive staff are board members or not, we note when this is the case. For example, BoardSource recommends that, if the law permits, the ED (or equivalent) should be an “ex officio, non-voting member of the board.”35 In this way, the ED can provide input in board meeting deliberation and decision making, at the same time avoiding perceived conflicts of interest, questions concerning accountability, or blurring the line between oversight and execution.
We also consider leadership’s commitment to transparency36 by looking at available information on the charity’s website, such as key staff members and financial information. We require organizations selected for evaluation to be transparent with ACE throughout the evaluation process. Although we value transparency, we recognize that some organizations may be able to have a greater impact by keeping certain information private. For example, organizations and individuals working in some regions or on particular interventions could be harmed by publicizing certain information about their work.
In addition, our culture survey asks staff to identify the extent to which they feel that leadership competently guides the organization. We also ask leadership what strategies they use to learn about staff morale and work climate.
Organizational policies and workplace culture
We ask organizations undergoing evaluation to provide a list of their human resources policies, and we solicit the views of staff (and volunteers, if applicable) through our culture survey. Administering our culture survey to all staff members is an eligibility requirement to be recommended by ACE as a Top or Standout Charity. However, ACE does not require that all individual staff members at participating charities complete the survey. We recognize that surveying staff and/or volunteers could (i) lead to inaccuracies due to selection bias and (ii) may not reflect employees’ true opinions, as they are aware that their responses could influence ACE’s evaluation of their employer. In our experience, it’s easier to assess issues with an organization’s culture than it is to assess its strength. Therefore, we focus on determining whether there are issues in the organization’s culture that have a negative impact on staff productivity and wellbeing.
We assume that staff in the nonprofit sector often have multiple motives or incentives: They receive monetary compensation, experience social benefits from being part of a team, and take pride in their organization’s achievements for a cause.37 Because nonprofit wages are typically lower than for-profit wages, our survey asks all staff about wage satisfaction. In cases where volunteers respond to our culture survey, we typically ask organizations to provide their volunteer hours, because due to the absence of a contract and pay, volunteering may indicate special cases of uncertain work conditions. Additionally, we request the organization’s benefit policies regarding time off, health care, training, and professional development. We also consider how many of our listed policies (13 general policies and eight REI and harassment/discrimination policies) charities have in place.38 While certain policies might be deemed priorities,39 we do not assess which specific policies from our list are most important for charities to have. Additionally, we make exceptions for charities working in regions where these policies are not common practice.
To capture whether the organization also provides non-material incentives, e.g., goal-related intangible rewards, our culture survey includes the 12 questions from the Gallup Q12 employee engagement survey. We consider an average engagement score below the median value of the scale a potential concern.
ACE believes that the animal advocacy movement should be safe and inclusive for everyone. Therefore, we collect information about policies and activities regarding representation, equity, and inclusion (REI). We use the term “representation” broadly in this section to refer to the diversity of certain social identity characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries).40 Additionally, we believe that in most countries, effective charities must have human resources policies against harassment41 and discrimination42 and that cases of harassment and discrimination in the workplace43 should be addressed appropriately.44 When cases of harassment or discrimination from the last 12 months are reported to ACE by current or former staff members or volunteers, we assess whether the charity appropriately addressed those cases. We do this by considering staff perceptions of whether the reported cases were handled appropriately. If confidentiality permits, we also ask leadership how they addressed the situation.
Information and Analysis
Leadership staff
In this section, we list each charity’s Executive Director (or equivalent) and describe the board of directors. We mention this for the purpose of transparency and to identify the relationship between the ED and the board of directors.
- Managing Director: Sophika Kostyniuk, who has been involved in the organization for 10 months.
- Number of board members: Three members
ALI had a transition in their Executive Director position in the last year. Former Executive Director, Becky Jenkins, left the organization in January 2021, and current Managing Director, Sophika Kostyniuk, was hired in October 2021.
Staff perception and feedback
ALI has seven staff members (full-time, part-time, and contractors). Six staff members responded to our survey, yielding a response rate of 86%. ALI has a very small team: two out of six team members were identified as members of leadership, which could have skewed the results of our survey.
All staff respondents to our culture survey agree that ALI’s leadership team guides the organization competently. Additionally, ALI’s leadership conducts anonymous culture surveys, does confidential check-ins with each employee every week, and has other regular meetings with the team to learn about staff morale and work climate.
Transparency
ALI has been transparent with ACE during the evaluation process and during other communications with ACE. In addition, a list of board members, a list of key staff members, and information about accomplishments, are available on the charity’s website. However, because ALI is currently in the process of formally incorporating as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, ALI’s audited financial documents (including the most recently filed IRS form 990 for U.S. organizations) are not publicly available online. Based on the information that they make publicly available, we assess ALI’s transparency toward the public as high.
Staff satisfaction
ALI has a partial or informal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. All the staff that responded to our survey report that they are satisfied with their wage. ALI offers paid time off, sick days, personal leave, and healthcare coverage. All respondents also report that they are satisfied with the benefits provided. This suggests that on average, staff exhibit a very high satisfaction with wages and benefits. Additional policies are listed in the table below.
General policies
Has policy |
Partial / informal policy |
No policy |
| A formal compensation policy to determine staff salaries | |
| Paid time off | |
| Sick days and personal leave | |
| Healthcare coverage | |
| Paid family and medical leave | |
| Clearly defined essential functions for all positions, preferably with written job descriptions | |
| Annual (or more frequent) performance evaluations | |
| Formal onboarding or orientation process | |
| Training and development opportunities for each employee | |
| Simple and transparent written procedure(s) for employees to request further training or support | |
| Flexible work hours | |
| Remote work option | |
| Paid internships (if possible and applicable) | n/a |
Staff engagement
The average score among our engagement questions was 6.5 (on a 1–7 scale), suggesting that on average, staff exhibit a very high engagement score.
Harassment and discrimination reports
ALI has staff policies against harassment and discrimination. (See all other related policies in the table below.) A few staff (1–3 individuals) report via our culture survey that they have experienced harassment or discrimination at their workplace during the last 12 months, and a few staff (1–3 individuals) report to have witnessed harassment or discrimination of others in that period. All of these claimants reported that the situation was handled appropriately.
We feel it’s important to note that a few of ALI’s current or former staff (1–3 individuals) have reached out to us (in the last 12 months) to provide input on our evaluation of ALI. According to these confidential reports, in the last year, there have allegedly been serious cases of harassment or discrimination by former staff members in ALI’s workplace before the transition of leadership occurred.
ALI’s leadership team recognizes reported issues and reports that they are implementing steps to resolve them. In particular, they report they are aware of the allegations and are concerned about the damage those incidents have caused to the organization’s reputation and the staff’s wellbeing. They have taken steps to address these issues, such as requiring all staff to sign a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, harassment and discrimination, and implementing a clear reporting process for such incidents. They also changed their management structure, and all staff completed a six-month Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice course. Based on this limited information, our impression is that leadership is working on addressing these situations.45
Policies related to representation, equity, and inclusion (REI)
| Has policy |
Partial / informal policy |
No policy |
| A clearly written workplace code of ethics/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 | |
| A simple and transparent written procedure for filing complaints | |
| Mandatory reporting of harassment and discrimination through all levels, up to and including the board of directors | |
| Explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment or discrimination | |
| Documentation of all reported instances of harassment or discrimination, along with the outcomes of each case | |
| Regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace | |
| An anti-retaliation policy protecting whistleblowers and those who report grievances | |
Our Assessment
We did not detect any major concerns with ALI’s leadership and organizational culture, and we expect that reported cases of harassment or discrimination will continue to be handled appropriately until successfully addressed. We positively note that ALI is transparent toward external stakeholders, has a large number of staff policies, staff generally agree that leadership guides the organization competently, and staff are engaged and satisfied with their job.
Overall Recommendation
The main interventions used by ALI (corporate outreach and policy work) are likely to be very effective in improving the welfare of farmed and wild fishes. In addition, their focus on capacity building through the Aquatic Animal Alliance is likely to be effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement. However, the five charities we recommended this year performed better on the Room For More Funding and Leadership and Culture criteria compared to ALI. Their plans for expansion are very ambitious, which affects our confidence that they will be able to effectively absorb an influx of additional funding. While a shift to new leadership makes their prospects look very promising, we are uncertain about their current sustainability. Based on our assessment of their performance on our four evaluation criteria—Programs: very highly effective; Cost Effectiveness: high cost effectiveness; Room for More Funding: >$200,000; Leadership and Culture: no major concerns), we recommended other charities ahead of ALI.
Charities that ACE selects for comprehensive review all show evidence of running effective programs and engaging in highly impactful work. While ALI did not receive a recommendation from us this year, we recognize that they are still among the most effective charities in their space, and we are delighted to highlight their work in this comprehensive review (shared with their permission).
We don’t consider the number of individuals as the only relevant characteristic for scale, and we don’t necessarily believe that groups of animals or species should be prioritized solely based on scale. However, the number of animals in a group or species is one characteristic of scale that we use for prioritization.
Of the 191 billion farmed vertebrate animals killed annually for food globally, 101 billion are farmed fishes and 79 billion are farmed chickens, making these impactful groups to focus on.
We estimate there are 10 quintillion, or 1019, wild animals alive at any time, of whom we estimate at least 10 trillion are vertebrates. It’s notable that Rowe (2020) estimates that 100 trillion to 10 quadrillion (or 1014 to 1016) wild invertebrates are killed by agricultural pesticides annually.
Farmed invertebrates include, among other groups, honey bee workers (26.4 trillion used annually), cochineals (9.93 trillion killed annually), caterpillars used for silk (636 billion killed annually), according to Rowe (2020).
For a discussion on invertebrate sentience, see for example Waldhorn et al. (2019).
For information on farmed insect sentience, see our research brief, and for information on sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans, see Birch et al. (2021).
We acknowledge that using Mercy For Animals’ FAOI scores can bias us toward their own considerations of the most important countries for them to focus on.
On average, our team considers advocating for improvements of welfare standards to be a positive and promising approach. However, there are different viewpoints within ACE’s research team on the effect of advocating for animal welfare standards on the spread of anti-speciesist values. There are concerns that arguing for welfare improvements may lead to complacency related to animal welfare and give the public an inconsistent message—e.g., see Wrenn (2012). In addition, there are concerns with the alliance between nonprofit organizations and the companies that are directly responsible for animal exploitation, as explored in Baur and Schmitz (2012).
For arguments supporting the view that the most important consideration of our present actions should be their long-term impact, see Greaves & MacAskill (2019) and Beckstead (2019).
ALI reports that their subsidiary in France serves as a critical asset to advance their work within the E.U.
We have categorized ALI’s work on engaging certifiers as corporate outreach.
ALI has a specific focus on farmed octopus (seeking a global ban), farmed shrimp (seeking higher species-specific standards), and wild-caught aquatic animals (seeking animal welfare improvements).
For more detailed information, see ALI’s Programs Assessment spreadsheet.
As part of our information request to charities, we ask for a list and description of their main achievements for each of their programs. We also asked charities to report their expenditures for each program, and to estimate the percentage of program expenditures spent on each key achievement.
Assessing cost effectiveness by looking at a charity’s key achievements has limitations. It will likely bias cost-effectiveness estimates upward to some extent, as it does not consider expenditures on less impactful achievements or work that did not result in an achievement. This may affect larger programs more, as their key achievements are more likely to account for a smaller proportion of overall program costs and thus may be less reflective of the program’s overall cost effectiveness.
We standardized to achievements per $100,000 to allow for easier comparisons across achievements.
When leaving feedback on this review, ALI reported that their Aquatic Life Conference should be considered a key achievement in this program. As this information was not included in the key achievement documents provided to us earlier in the process, we could not incorporate it into our decision-making process, but we do note it here for readers to consider.
When leaving feedback on this review, ALI requested we share that they estimate that their certifier campaign has positively impacted two billion fish and shrimp.
We use ratings of low, moderate, and high to help distinguish between the performance of charities that we review, and to make our numerical scores easier to interpret. These qualitative ratings are not reflective of a charity’s performance when compared to other charities that were not selected for review.
Please see our ALI’s Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet for more detailed information.
National Council of Nonprofits (n.d.-c); Propel Nonprofits (2022); Boland (2021)
To be selected for evaluation, we require that a charity has a budget size of at least about $100,000 and faces no country-specific regulatory barriers to receiving money from ACE.
Rousseau (1990), cited in Kartolo et al. (2022)
BoardSource (2016), p. 4
Charity Navigator (n.d.-a) defines transparency as “an obligation or willingness by a charity to publish and make available critical data about the organization.”
Clark and Wilson (1961), as cited in Rollag (n.d.)
Our evaluation process for human resources policies uses an assessment system that we have adapted from Charity Navigator (n.d.-b).
Examples of such social identity characteristics include: race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, and genetic information.
Harassment may occur in one incident or many, and incidents can be nonsexual or sexual in nature. ACE defines nonsexual harassment as unwelcome conduct—including physical, verbal, and nonverbal behavior—that upsets, demeans, humiliates, intimidates, or threatens an individual or group. ACE defines sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances; requests for sexual favors; and other physical, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors of a sexual nature when: (i) submission to such conduct is made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment; (ii) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting the targeted individual; or (iii) such conduct has the purpose or effect of interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.
ACE defines discrimination as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain social identity characteristics.
ACE defines the workplace as any place where work-related activities occur, including physical premises, meetings, conferences, training sessions, transit, social functions, and electronic communication (such as email, chat, text, phone calls, and virtual meetings).
ACE recognizes that a lack of reporting does not necessarily mean that there are no issues at an organization, and it may indicate that staff don’t feel comfortable reporting issues.
ALI’s leadership reports that they are committed to ensuring that his type of behavior not occur again, and they have actively worked to remedy all known incidents of harassment and/or discrimination.
The following materials are supplementary research documents associated with our charity review process and are referenced in the Comprehensive Review.