Essere Animali

Criterion 1: Programs

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 following categories: increased availability of animal-free products, decreased consumption of animal products, improvement of welfare standards, increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values, stronger animal advocacy movement, or direct help.

Cause Areas

Essere Animali focuses primarily on reducing the suffering of farmed animals, which we believe is a high-impact cause area. To a lesser extent, they’ve also worked to reduce the suffering of horses being exported alive for slaughter and animals used for fur, which we believe are relatively less impactful cause areas.

Countries of Operation

Essere Animali currently works in Italy.

Interventions and Projected Outcomes

Essere Animali pursues different avenues for creating change for animals: They work to improve welfare standards, decrease the consumption of animal products, and strengthen the animal advocacy movement.

To help 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.

Below, we also describe the work that Essere Animali does.² Unless otherwise specified, we have sourced the information in this criterion from Essere Animali (2020b). For each intervention, we provide an assessment of how effective we think that intervention is at achieving a given outcome (weak/moderate/high).³ These assessments are based on the available evidence and are determined through a vote and discussion among our researchers. We flag assessments in which we have particularly low confidence, i.e., if we know of little or no supporting research or expert opinions.

A note about long-term impact

Each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.⁴ The potential number of individuals affected increases over time due to population growth and an accumulation of generations of animals. Thus, we would expect that the long-term impacts of an action would be more likely to affect more animals than the short-term impacts of the same action. 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) may skew toward overemphasizing short-term effects.

Improvement of welfare standards

Essere Animali works to improve animal welfare standards through undercover investigations, corporate campaigns, legal actions, and media outreach. This work generally seeks to make incremental improvements to the conditions in which animals live, e.g., in factory farms. For farmed animals, welfare reforms generally only result in small improvements to their living conditions. However, this is balanced by the large numbers of animals who can be impacted, and there is some evidence to suggest that farmed animal welfare reforms are likely to be very cost effective in the short term.⁵ Overall, we believe that securing systemic change one corporation at a time is more tractable than lobbying for larger-scale legislative change.

Essere Animali conducts investigations in the animal agriculture, aquaculture, and commercial fishing (including octopus fishing) industries in Italy and other European countries. Investigations can raise public awareness about farming practices, thereby influencing the animal agriculture industry to improve welfare standards. Essere Animali also campaigns directly for corporations to improve their farmed fish welfare standards. We think that improving farmed fish welfare is a particularly promising cause area: It’s neglected, the scale of suffering is likely great, and there is potential for tractable interventions. We believe that both investigations and corporate campaigns to secure farmed fish welfare commitments are highly effective in improving welfare standards.

Essere Animali conducts legislative advocacy and lobbying by prosecuting animal cruelty and filing other legal complaints. While legal change may take longer to achieve than some other forms of change, we expect its effects to be particularly long-lasting. We believe with a low degree of confidence that prosecuting companies for animal cruelty is weakly effective in improving welfare standards.

To build public support for their corporate and legislative campaigns, Essere Animali leverages media coverage. We believe that media outreach can have strategic value, especially when it supports other promising tactics such as corporate and legislative campaigns. Essere Animali also organizes demonstrations. We believe that both media outreach and demonstrations are moderately effective in improving welfare standards.

Essere Animali has also campaigned against fur and foie gras. While these campaigns affect a relatively small number of animals, they may build momentum to implement welfare improvements for other animals. We believe that campaigns against fur and foie gras are moderately effective in improving welfare standards.

Decreased consumption of animal products

Essere Animali influences individuals to decrease their consumption of animal products through veg*n pledge programs, leafleting, social media, and online ads.

Generally, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the causal effects of different types of interventions on individual consumer behavior.⁶ Previous studies mostly rely on self-reported consumption data, which can be subject to misreporting and biases. There is a lack of empirical studies that measure the effect of interventions on observable dietary change, such as restaurant orders, food purchasing data, or biomarkers.⁷ Despite the uncertainty surrounding measuring the effectiveness of interventions on individual behavior, we think it is important for the animal advocacy movement to target at least some outreach toward individuals. We think that a shift in public consumer preferences could help drive industry changes and lead to greater support for more animal-friendly policies, and it may even 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.⁸

Essere Animali runs a week-long veg*n pledge program, which includes daily emails, menus, and numerous other resources. Some empirical studies suggest that self-monitoring—which is part of taking a veg*n pledge—reduces meat consumption, at least in the short run.⁹ Other studies that measure the impact of veg*n pledges suggest that some participants adopt a more plant-based diet for several months after engaging with a pledge.¹⁰ Besides influencing dietary change, veg*n pledge programs may help recruit new people to the movement, normalize veg*nism, and raise awareness of veg*nism and animal-related issues. We believe that pledge programs are highly effective in decreasing the consumption of animal products.

Essere Animali uses leaflets as part of their vegan outreach campaigns. Some empirical studies suggest that providing people with written information may increase their intention to consume less meat.¹¹ However, it is uncertain (i) how written information may affect attitudes toward animal products other than meat, (ii) how the format and the specific content of the message may affect the impact on intentions, and (iii) whether changes in intentions translate into changes in consumption behavior. ACE’s 2017 leafleting intervention report failed to find compelling randomized controlled trial evidence for its short-term impact. We believe that leafleting is weakly effective in decreasing the consumption of animal products.

Essere Animali engages in social media and online ads to support their corporate and legislative campaigns, which could also influence individual consumers. There is some evidence of a weak negative correlation between media coverage of farmed animal welfare issues and demand for animal products.¹² However, there is likely to be a large variation in the reach of these interventions, and it is uncertain whether they causally contribute to behavioral change. We are uncertain of the effectiveness of online outreach, in particular, as people may not engage with it as deeply as they engage with other forms of outreach. We believe that online ads and social media outreach are moderately effective in decreasing the consumption of animal products.

Essere Animali also runs a meat reduction program for cafeterias, which consists of engaging companies to implement a reduction of animal products by at least 20% in their meals. We believe that institutional campaigns to reduce meat consumption are moderately effective in decreasing the consumption of animal products.

Stronger animal advocacy movement

Working to strengthen the animal advocacy movement through capacity- and alliance-building projects can have a far-reaching impact. Capacity-building projects can help animals by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations, while building alliances with key influencers, institutions, or social movements can expand the audience and impact of animal advocacy organizations and projects. ACE’s 2018 research on the way that resources are allocated between different animal advocacy interventions suggests that capacity building and building alliances are currently neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry.

Essere Animali uses undercover investigations of animal farms to develop legal actions and corporate campaigns. Investigations can inform the public about farming practices and serve as a key resource for animal advocates. We believe that conducting investigations is highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.

Finally, Essere Animali organizes vegfests as part of their vegan outreach campaigns. We believe that organizing vegfests is moderately effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.

Criterion 2: Room for More Funding

We look to recommend work that is not just high-impact, but also scalable. Since a recommendation from us could 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. To estimate a charity’s room for more funding, we not only consider the charity’s existing programs and potential areas for growth and expansion, but also non-monetary determinants of a charity’s growth, such as time or talent shortages.

Since we can’t predict exactly how an organization will respond upon receiving more funds than they have planned for, our estimate is speculative rather than definitive. This year, our estimates are especially uncertain, as we do not know the consequences of COVID-19 on financials. It’s possible that a charity could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or that they could come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. At midyear, we check in with each recommended charity 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 be able to effectively absorb additional funding at that point.

Financial History and Financial Sustainability

An effective charity should be financially sustainable. Charities should be able to continue raising the funds needed for their basic operations. Ideally, they should receive significant funding from multiple distinct sources, including both individual donations and other types of support. Charities should also hold a sufficient amount of reserves.

The chart below shows Essere Animali’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures.¹³ The financial information for 2019 and the first six months of 2020 was reported by the charities during this year’s evaluation process,¹⁴ the financial information for earlier years was acquired from various sources, and the values for 2020 are estimated based on the first six months of 2020. Essere Animali’s revenue has grown steadily in the past few years. They received large donations (26% of their annual revenue) in 2019 and in 2020, and they expect a donation of similar size in 2021. They also received ACE Movement Grants in 2019 and in 2020 (about 15% and 2% of their annual revenue, respectively). With about 46% of their current expenditures held in net assets, we believe that Essere Animali does not hold a sufficient amount of reserves. We recommend that they use some additional funding to replenish their reserves and add this to their plans for expansion.

Planned Future Expenditures

Below we list Essere Animali’s plans for expansion for 2021.¹⁵ For each plan, we provide an estimate of the expenditure as well as a confidence level, which indicates how confident we are that the plan can be realized in 2021.¹⁶ For staff salaries, we estimated the number of staff Essere Animali could hire by considering the number of existing staff they have and the number of staff they have plans to hire in 2021. For the corresponding costs, we made salary estimates based on information about the job’s seniority, type, and location using data from current and past job postings whenever possible.¹⁷ We also factored in additional costs incurred as part of the hiring process. We estimated non-staff-related costs for each charity’s plans for expansion¹⁸ based on their 2019 program expenditures;¹⁹ in some cases, we also considered Essere Animali’s estimations of their future expenditures²⁰ and/or our impressions of how much the expansions would cost.²¹ Additionally, we accounted for an estimate—based on a percentage of the charity’s current annual budget—of possible unforeseen expenditures.

Estimated Room for More Funding

We estimated Essere Animali’s room for more funding for 2021. For this, we relied on an estimate of their predicted revenue for 2021. We estimate that Essere Animali’s revenue in 2021 will be $0.98 million, or within the 90% prediction interval [$0.77M, $1.2M].²⁵ Essere Animali’s own prediction of their 2021 revenue ($0.91M) lies within the predicted interval.

Using our predictions of future revenue, Essere Animali’s room for more funding was estimated via Guesstimate. Note that when ACE estimates a charity’s room for more funding, we are estimating the amount of funding that the charity could use on top of their predicted, regular funding in the coming year.

The chart shows Essere Animali’s room for more funding in 2021 distributed across our three confidence levels. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to Essere Animali, we estimate that Essere Animali’s room for more funding in 2021 is $0.52M (90% prediction interval: [$0.31M, $0.72M]) with high confidence. Overall, we have some confidence that Essere Animali has room for $0.69 million (90% prediction interval: [$0.4M, $1.0M]) in additional funding in 2021. We believe that Essere Animali’s room for more funding relative to the size of their organization is of larger size compared to the other charities we evaluated this year. We also believe that their absolute room for more funding is of larger size relative to the funding we influence through our recommendations. Given the impact a recommendation may have on a charity’s funding, we base our rating of performance in this criterion on the latter assessment.

Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness

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 in 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 over the past 18 months and compare that to the outcomes they have achieved in each of their main programs during that time. We have used an approach in which we qualitatively analyze a charity’s expenditures and key results and compare them to other charities we are reviewing this year.

We categorized the charity’s programs into different outcomes—improvement of welfare standards, increased availability of animal-free products, decreased consumption of animal products, increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values, and stronger animal advocacy movement. Then, for a given outcome, we compared the charity’s key results and expenditures from January 2019 to June 2020 to other charities we evaluated in 2020 and gave our assessment of how cost effective we think their work toward that outcome has been.

Improvement of Welfare Standards

Essere Animali engages in five programs that we have categorized as contributing to improving welfare standards—legal action, pig welfare, fish welfare, fur farms, and foie gras. As the resource usage and key results of each program are distinct, we have kept them as separate categories in our analysis.

Key results and use of resources

Below is our estimated resource usage for Essere Animali’s programs focused on improving welfare standards, Jan 2019–Jun 2020. In this section, we have only included what we believe are the key results of this program. For a full list of results and resource usage, see Essere Animali (2020a).

Evaluation of cost effectiveness

Essere Animali’s fish welfare campaign focuses on raising awareness and campaigning for better fish welfare. As part of the campaign, Essere Animali documented fish farms in Greece and Italy. As fishes are currently one of the most neglected and largest of the farmed animal groups, it may be that their work in this area is particularly cost effective in comparison to corporate campaigns targeting other animal groups.

Essere Animali’s pig welfare campaign program focuses on running campaigns to pressure companies to raise welfare standards for pigs. They launched their SOSpig campaign, which asks retailers to ban sow stalls, gestation crates, tail docking, and castration of piglets in their supplying farms. This campaign has received media attention and was cited in a legal proposal in Italy asking for a national ban of cages for sows and mutilation of piglets. If successful, we believe that a change in national law would be a very impactful result.

Essere Animali’s legal actions program focuses on filing lawsuits and legal complaints against animal farms. In the past 18 months, they have filed lawsuits against 14 factory farms.

Essere Animali runs two relatively smaller programs, the campaign to ban fur farms and the foie gras corporate campaign. Their campaign to ban fur farms, together with their legal action program, contributed to the closure of three mink fur farms. These results were achieved with a small budget. Within their foie gras corporate campaign, they convinced a large retailer in Italy (Carrefour) to stop selling foie gras. Though it has a small budget, we believe that this campaign is less cost effective than the charity’s other work.

Essere Animali has reported to us that in light of COVID-19, their corporate outreach work has been paused for several months.

Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of Essere Animali’s work toward the improvement of welfare standards seems similar to the average cost effectiveness of other charities’ work toward this outcome we have evaluated this year.

Decreased Consumption of Animal Products

Essere Animali engages in two programs that we have categorized as contributing to decreasing the consumption of animal products—vegan outreach campaigns and MenoPerPiù (a meat reduction program for cafeterias). As the resource usage and key results of each program are distinct, we have kept them as separate categories in our analysis.

Key results and use of resources

Below is our estimated resource usage for Essere Animali’s programs focused on decreasing the consumption of animal products, Jan 2019–Jun 2020. In this section, we have only included what we believe are the key results of each program. For a full list of results and resource usage, see Essere Animali (2020a).

Evaluation of cost effectiveness

Essere Animali’s vegan outreach campaigns program focuses on reducing individual consumption of animal products through running vegan pledges, distributing vegan guides, and hosting festivals. When taking an estimate of pledge days secured per dollar spent on this program, it appears to be much less cost effective than the pledge programs of other charities we evaluated in 2020. That said, this is a somewhat simplistic quantification of cost effectiveness as it doesn’t take into account other factors such as the number of participants who follow through on the pledges or the other interventions Essere Animali works on as part of this program. We think their work distributing vegan starter guides is likely to be less cost effective than their vegan pledges, as it is unlikely that reading a starter guide will lead to the same level of behavior change that a week-long pledge will. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the cost effectiveness of Essere Animali’s work in their vegan outreach campaigns program seems slightly lower than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward decreased consumption of animal products we have evaluated this year.

Essere Animali has reported to us that in light of COVID-19, they have had to stop the distribution of vegan starter guides, and they had to cancel this year’s edition of the Livegreen Festival. As we are uncertain how they have shifted resources in light of this, we are uncertain of the impacts this change will have had on the cost effectiveness of their vegan outreach program.

Essere Animali’s MenoPerPiù program focuses on securing commitments from institutions to reduce animal products from their meals. They have yet to secure any commitments in this campaign, but they have had some related successes in collaboration with other organizations. Essere Animali has reported to us that in light of COVID-19, they have had to halt all work with corporations. It is therefore likely that this program will become more cost effective once the limitations imposed by the pandemic come to an end. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the cost effectiveness of Essere Animali’s work in their MenoPerPiù program seems much lower than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward decreasing consumption of animal products we have evaluated this year.

Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of Essere Animali’s work toward decreasing consumption of animal products seems slightly lower than the average cost effectiveness of other charities’ work toward this outcome we have evaluated this year.

Stronger Animal Advocacy Movement

Essere Animali engages in one program that we have categorized as contributing to strengthening the animal advocacy movement—investigations.

Key results and use of resources

Below is our estimated resource usage for Essere Animali’s program focused on strengthening the animal advocacy movement, Jan 2019–Jun 2020. In this section, we have only included what we believe are the key results of this program. For a full list of results and resource usage, see Essere Animali (2020a).

Evaluation of cost effectiveness

Building a stronger animal advocacy movement encompasses a broad category of outcomes for animals that are typically indirect, and as such, it is difficult to make an assessment of their cost effectiveness.

Essere Animali’s investigations program focuses on conducting and releasing investigations in Italy to show the reality of factory farming and the food system. In the past 18 months, they published 10 investigations. Essere Animali’s investigations have targeted minks (in fur farms), monkeys (in research labs), chickens (for eggs and meat), pigs, and fishes. In general, we expect a focus on chickens and fishes to be the most cost effective. As they were only one of two evaluated charities that reported running an investigations program, we are particularly uncertain of the cost effectiveness of the implementation of this program.

Essere Animali reports that this program has been affected by COVID-19. Since all investigation work was halted for three months, their head of investigation has used the lockdown time to work on a report on factory farming in Italy from 2010 to 2019.³⁸

Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of Essere Animali’s work toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement seems similar to the average cost effectiveness of other charities’ work toward this outcome we have evaluated this year.

Criterion 4: Track Record

Information about a charity’s track record can help us predict the charity’s 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 evaluate each charity’s track record of success by considering some of the key results that they have accomplished prior to 2019.³⁹ For charities that operate in more than one country, we consider how they have expanded internationally.

Overview

Essere Animali was founded in 2011. They have been working on their Investigations program since then, building a strong track record of success in conducting and releasing investigations about the animal agriculture industry in Italy. They also have a long track record of success in their Vegan Outreach and Ban Fur Farms campaigns, promoting plant-based diets among the public, and using their investigations to campaign against fur farms. They have also used their investigations to file complaints against farms in their Legal Actions program, which they have been running for five years. They have been working on their foie gras corporate campaign for five years and their fish welfare corporate campaign for two years.

Key Results Prior to 2019⁴⁰

Below is a summary of Essere Animali’s programs’ key results prior to 2019, ordered by program duration (with the longest-running programs listed first). These results were reported to us by Essere Animali, and we were not able to corroborate all their reports.⁴¹ 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 verified independently. Unless indicated otherwise, the following key results are based on information provided by Essere Animali (2020b).

Note that many of these results have been achieved in collaboration with other organizations and individuals.

Criterion 5: Leadership and Culture

Leadership directly affects an organization’s culture, performance, and effectiveness. Strongly-led charities are likely to have a healthy organizational culture that enables their core work. We collect information about each charity’s internal operations in several ways. We ask leadership to describe the culture they try to foster, as well as potential areas of improvement. We review each charity’s human resource policies and check that they include those we believe are important. We also send a culture survey to the staff of each charity.^{46, 47}

Key Leadership

In this section, we describe each charity’s key leadership and assess some of their strengths and weaknesses.

Leadership staff

• President and Co-Founder: Simone Montuschi, involved in the organization for nine years
• Head of Development and Co-Founder: Claudio Pomo, involved in the organization for nine years
• Outreach Manager and Co-Founder: Brenda Ferretti, involved in the organization for nine years
• Head of Investigations and Co-Founder: Francesco Ceccarelli, involved in the organization for nine years
• Communications Manager: Martina Scalini, involved in the organization for two years

All respondents to our culture survey agreed that Essere Animali’s leadership is attentive to the organization’s strategy. Most respondents agreed that their leadership promotes external transparency (93%) and internal transparency (93%).

Recent leadership transition

Essere Animali did not have a transition in leadership since 2019. Most of their leadership team have been involved in the organization since its foundation.

Board of Directors

Essere Animali’s Board of Directors consists of three members, all of whom are also staff, including President Simone Montuschi. We think that including non-staff members in Essere Animali’s governing board would increase the board’s capacity to oversee the organization from a more independent and objective perspective. We consider the board’s lack of independence to be a weakness.

Members of Essere Animali’s Board of Directors

• Simone Montuschi: Co-Founder and President with the role of press officer and corporate outreach supervisor
• Brenda Ferretti: Co-Founder and board member with the role of outreach manager
• Serena Capretti: board member with the role of local activities coordinator in the city of Brescia

All respondents to our culture survey agreed that Essere Animali’s board supports the organization in achieving its strategic vision.

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 performance⁴⁸ and better internal and external governance practices,⁴⁹ as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision-making.⁵⁰ Essere Animali’s board potentially lacks a diversity of occupational backgrounds and experiences. We consider the board’s relative lack of diversity to be a weakness.

Policies and Benefits

Here we present a list of policies that, if properly drafted and enforced, we find to be beneficial for fostering a healthy culture. A green mark indicates that Essere Animali 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 toward all stakeholders: staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, and others in the community. According to Essere Animali’s leadership, their organizational culture is informal, friendly, cooperative, open to discussion and disagreement, fit for everyone, and it provides for a positive environment.

The survey we distributed supports leadership’s claim that Essere Animali’s culture is overall positive. Respondents noted in an open-response box that Essere Animali’s team is positive and friendly. A few common adjectives that respondents used to describe Essere Animali’s communication style were “effective,” “sensitive,” “empathic,” “polite,” or similar.

According to our culture survey, Essere Animali has an overall level of employee engagement higher than the average of charities under review.

Essere Animali does not have a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. However, of the staff that responded to our survey, about 93% agreed with the statement that their compensation is adequate. Essere Animali offers 28 days of paid time off and unlimited sick days as required by law. About 86% of respondents agreed that these paid benefits provided are sufficient. Essere Animali reports that employees have clearly defined essential functions for all positions and regularly evaluate staff performance. However, about 43% of respondents to our culture survey agreed that the system of staff performance evaluation needs to be changed or improved upon.

According to leadership, the following areas of Essere Animali’s organizational culture have room for improvement: (i) communication from leadership to the rest of staff and (ii) professional development. Essere Animali does not distribute surveys to their staff but they have plans to do it. We think distributing regular culture surveys could help Essere Animali to better understand their workplace culture and identify areas for improvement.

Overall, we think that Essere Animali’s staff satisfaction and morale are higher than the average charity we evaluated this year.

Representation/Diversity,⁵⁵ Equity, and Inclusion⁵⁶

One important part of acting responsibly toward stakeholders is providing a representative/diverse,⁵⁷ equitable, and inclusive work environment. Charities that have a healthy attitude toward representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI) seek and retain staff and volunteers from different backgrounds. Among other things, inclusive work environments should also provide necessary resources for employees with disabilities, protect all team members from harassment and discrimination, and require regular trainings on topics such as equity and inclusion, in conjunction with year-round efforts to address R/DEI throughout all areas of the organization.

All staff that participated in our culture survey agreed that Essere Animali has members from diverse backgrounds. Essere Animali made an effort to increase representation/diversity through their recruitment process by having an open and diverse culture, however they do not have formal or written diversity policies to follow.

In our culture survey, some respondents mentioned that leadership does not need to take any action to be more inclusive or to better support staff who are members of marginalized groups.

Essere Animali supports R/DEI through their human resource activities. Essere Animali does not have a workplace code of ethics/conduct, but they have a written statement that they do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other characteristics. Essere Animali has a written procedure for filing complaints and explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment⁵⁸ or discrimination.⁵⁹ In our culture survey, 85% of respondents agreed that Essere Animali protects staff, interns, and volunteers from harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and they all agreed that they have someone to go to in case of harassment or other problems at work. Our culture survey gives no evidence that Essere Animali’s staff experienced or witnessed any harassment or discrimination in the workplace during the past year.

Essere Animali does not offer regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In our culture survey, 64% of staff agree that they and their colleagues have been sufficiently trained in matters of R/DEI. We believe that the opportunities for the team to learn about R/DEI should be increased.

Overall, we believe that Essere Animali is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive than the average charity we evaluated this year.

Criterion 6: Strategy

Charities with a clear and well-developed strategy are more likely to be successful at setting and achieving their goals. In this section, we describe and assess each charity’s strategic vision and mission, plan, and planning process.

Given our commitment to finding the most effective ways to help nonhuman animals, we assess the extent to which the charity’s strategic vision is aligned with this commitment. We believe that their strategic planning should clearly connect the charity’s overall vision to their more immediate goals. Additionally, we assess the extent to which their strategic planning process incorporates the views of all their staff and board members and whether the frequency of this process is adequate, given the nature of their work. There are many different approaches to strategic planning, and often an approach that is well suited for one organization may not work well for others. Thus, in this section, we are not looking for a particular approach to strategy. Instead, we assess how well the organization’s approach to strategy works in their context.

Strategic Vision

Essere Animali’s mission: “to create a world in which animals are protected and free to live life on their own terms”

Strategic Position in the Movement

We asked Essere Animali how they see their organization’s work fitting into the overall animal advocacy movement. They report that they see themselves as an organization with a focus on farmed animal advocacy.

Strategic Planning Process

Type(s) of plan: Three-year strategic plans

Leadership staff’s role: Every year they hold four full-day formal leadership meetings to discuss and outline strategy, goal setting, and future plans.

Board of directors’ role: Essere Animali’s board consists of employees of the organization. The board participates in the leadership meetings, during which the strategic plan is decided.

Non-leadership staff’s role: Non-leadership staff is not directly involved in the creation of the strategic plan.

Contents of plan: Essere Animali’s strategic plan includes high-level strategy to analyze how their program work contributes to achieving their mission/vision. As part of this analysis, their plan features an outline of the problem they are working to address and a discussion of the strategy behind future initiatives. Additionally, they address their internal structure—e.g., culture and fundraising—in their plan.

Goal Setting and Monitoring

Essere Animali’s goals are set annually according to the SMART framework. Goals are set for projects as well as for individual staff, and goals are reviewed on a quarterly basis. Essere Animali holds retrospective meetings—i.e., postmortems—following major projects.

Our Assessment

Essere Animali’s strategic vision does not commit to farmed animals exclusively, although most of their work is directed toward the animals used by the food industry. We support Essere Animali’s choice to focus on farmed animal welfare because we consider animal agriculture to be one of the most promising areas for doing the most good for animals, other things being equal. They don’t seem to have a very detailed understanding of their strategic position in the movement. Essere Animali engages in strategic planning at appropriate intervals. However, we think they could benefit from implementing a mechanism for staff to challenge leadership’s decisions about strategy and direction of programs. Their strategic plan seems thorough, featuring high-level strategy that breaks down their priorities for each animal type and program area as well as considerations about their internal structure. Additionally, their goal-setting process appears to be particularly well designed, and they monitor their goals frequently. We think they have a strong approach to self-assessment. Overall, we think Essere Animali’s approach to strategy is strong compared to other evaluated charities, given the context in which they operate and the type of work they do.

Criterion 7: Adaptability

A charity’s self-assessment should inform their decisions. This will aid them in retaining and strengthening successful programs and modifying or discontinuing less successful programs, and will enable them to see if or when it is necessary to change their organizational structures. 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.

We have identified the following examples of how Essere Animali has adapted to success and failure:

While Essere Animali has been focused on farmed animals since their inception, in the past they took on substantial work in other cause areas.⁶⁰ To increase their impact, they stopped working on zoos and dolphinariums in the past year, and they now engage in only a few campaigns on circus animals, as they expect a change in Italian law on animals in circuses soon. Essere Animali also started moving away from creating and running local groups and coordinating their street activities in the past year. They report that they started these activities a few years ago because they can attract large media attention. Their change in strategy is motivated by their observation that these activities are very time consuming and sometimes expensive, and it is unclear whether they deliver sufficiently positive results.

Essere Animali has recently decided that their leadership is too involved in day-to-day tasks, taking time away from general management and strategic planning.⁶¹ Their plan for addressing this weakness is to promote one person internally to management and to hire additional staff.

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Essere Animali, mainly regarding their corporate outreach, investigations, and events.⁶² Their corporate outreach work has been paused since February 2020 and their investigation work was paused for three months. Essere Animali had to cancel a number of their events, including veg fests, fundraising events, and community events.

Overall, we believe that Essere Animali is just as able as the average charity evaluated this year to adequately respond to success and failure.