The Good Food Institute

How The Good Food Institute Performs on our Criteria

Criterion 1: The charity has room for more funding and concrete plans for growth.

Before we can recommend a charity, we need to assess the extent to which they will be able to absorb and effectively utilize funding that the recommendation may bring in. Firstly, we look at existing programs that have need for additional funding to fulfill their existing purpose; secondly, we look at potential areas for growth and expansion. It is important to determine whether the barriers limiting progress in these areas are solely monetary, or whether there are other factors such as time or talent shortages. Since we can’t predict exactly how any organization will respond upon receiving more funds than they have planned for, this estimate is speculative, not definitive. It’s possible that a group could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we have suggested. Our estimates are indicators of the point at which we would want to check in with a group to ensure that they have used the funds they’ve received and are still able to absorb additional funding. Mid-year, if one of our Top Charities has raised all or most of the funding that we estimate they can use effectively, we follow up with them to determine whether they are still able to absorb new funds or whether we might want to notify our donors that their need has been filled.

Recent Financial History

Now in their second year of operations, GFI has seen rapid expansion through their brief history. Last year we estimated that they could use $500,000–$1 million more than their 2016 budget of $2.5 million, primarily to be used to establish an operating reserve¹ and to begin some of their additional planned expansion.² This year they are attempting to exceed that additional funding estimate, with a fundraising goal of $4.66 million.³ This includes the second half of their $1 million grant⁴ awarded by The Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) in 2016.⁵

Planned Future Expenses

At the moment, GFI is continuing their rapid growth—they are aiming to staff up to 38 employees by the end of the year, which would nearly quadruple their size since January 2017.⁶ Last year we had some concerns that continued expansion would take longer than anticipated;⁷ while they have dedicated one full-time employee to recruitment to help this problem, they have had several long standing vacancies over the course of 2017, which seems to indicate that this has been a challenge for them.⁸

Following this rapid growth period, we anticipate that GFI will slow their expansion over the next year.⁹ They are planning to increase their fundraising capability primarily through strengthening their relationships with existing donors as well as identifying new potential groups of donors.¹⁰ They hope this will allow them to maintain sustained growth beyond the startup phase.¹¹ Given additional funding, we do think that GFI is structured in such a way that they could continue to expand their organizational capacity across all departments; however, we think that it’s possible they will continue to encounter some hiring issues (although not to the same extent as those seen in 2017). They are also approaching a size where departmental communication and decision-making processes can suffer if not implemented well. As this infrastructure takes time to develop, we feel a slowed rate of staff expansion could be of benefit to them.¹²

Conclusion

We expect that GFI is on track to reach their fundraising goal for this year and think that over the next year they could use an additional $1.5 million–$4 million in funding in order for them to continue their expansion across all of their programs.^{13, 14, 15}

Criterion 2: The charity engages in programs that seem likely to be highly impactful.

Before investigating the way a charity’s programs are implemented or the outcomes they’ve achieved, we consider the charity’s overall approach to animal advocacy. We expect effective charities to pursue approaches that seem likely to produce significant positive change for animals, though we note that there is significant uncertainty regarding the long-term effects of many interventions.

GFI focuses on developing cultured and plant-based alternatives to animal products. Since their goal is to transform the food industry, their work will primarily benefit farmed animals—which we believe is a high-impact cause area.

GFI pursues many different avenues for creating change for animals: They work to build the capacity of the movement, to influence industry, to build alliances, and to influence policy and law. Though not their focus, they also do some work to influence public opinion. Pursuing more than one avenue for change seems to be a good idea because if one proves to be ineffective, GFI still might be impactful. However, we don’t think that charities that pursue multiple avenues for change are necessarily more impactful than charities that focus on one.

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 necessarily 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.

Influencing Public Opinion

GFI works to educate the public, in the hopes of generating support for cultured and plant-based foods. We think that the impact of such work may be relatively limited compared to the impact of efforts to influence key influencers. However, we still think it’s important for the animal movement to target some outreach toward individuals, as a shift in public attitudes could lead to more institutional change. Public outreach might even be a necessary precursor to achieving more institutional change.

GFI engages in outreach both through mainstream media and social media. While their main goal is to inspire “influencers,” this work can also influence public opinion. They work to secure media attention for their own work as well as for plant-based and cultured meat companies, and they have been covered in more than 480 scientific and mainstream media venues.¹⁶ Little is known about the impact of these interventions on public opinion, though it seems that raising public awareness of cultured products may be valuable, especially since the field is so new.

Capacity Building

Working to build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement can have a 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.

GFI builds the capacity of the animal advocacy movement by recruiting scientists and entrepreneurs to work in cellular agriculture and plant-based technology and by doing scientific research. They also contribute to the capacity of the cellular agriculture field by sharing their research with other groups. In addition to sharing white papers, Technological Readiness Assessments (TRAs), and other research related to food technology, they have also conducted a small amount of consumer research.¹⁷ We think that conducting and sharing research can be an effective capacity-building intervention.

We also consider some of GFI’s fundraising activities to be capacity-building. Whereas many animal charities draw funds primarily from within the movement (e.g., from other animal advocates and animal charities), GFI is seeking to reach potential donors whose primary interests are in environmental protection, the sustainability of the global food system, and human health. GFI also works to convince academic institutions,¹⁸ government agencies,¹⁹ and other major funders²⁰ to invest in alternatives to animal products. Since some of these funds would probably not have otherwise been used to help animals, GFI’s fundraising activities might be more effective than other animal charities’ fundraising activities at building the capacity of the movement.

Influencing Industry

Working to influence the food industry may help to create a climate in which it is easier for individuals to reduce their use of animal products. In the long term, successfully increasing the availability and quality of cultured and plant-based foods could weaken the animal agriculture industry through the pressures of the marketplace, perhaps even without the presence of advocacy messages. Weakening the animal agriculture industry may also enable stricter regulation of animal welfare.

We think that developing cultured animal product alternatives is a potentially high-impact way to influence the food system. Plant-based milk is already showing a tendency to take market share from the sales of conventional milk in the U.S., with sales in one category growing as sales in another category decline.²¹ It seems plausible that cultured and plant-based meat will similarly take market share from the sales of conventional meat, especially as it becomes more cost-competitive, widely available, and harder to distinguish from conventional meat in taste and texture. GFI has noted that if plant-based meat captured the same share of the meat market that plant-based milk has captured of the milk market, that would spare almost 1 billion land animals (and even more sea animals) annually in the United States alone.

GFI also influences the food industry through corporate outreach. They work with corporations to increase the availability of animal product alternatives and have developed a “restaurant report card” to score the top 100 chain restaurants according to their plant-based options.²² In general, we think that corporate outreach is a relatively effective animal advocacy intervention, though we are less certain of the effects of promoting plant-based options in restaurants than we are of the effects of working with corporations to implement welfare reforms.

Building Alliances

Reaching out to influencers provides an avenue for high-impact work, since it can involve convincing a few powerful people to make decisions that influence the lives of millions of animals. This seems more efficient than working to reach many individuals in order to create an equivalent amount of change.

GFI works with many key influencers. For instance, GFI’s science team has met with some of the largest venture capital funds in the world, from Andreessen Horowitz to DFJ to Kleiner Perkins, as well as many key innovation-focused investors. GFI’s corporate engagement team has met repeatedly with Tyson Foods, ADM, Cargill, and other global food conglomerates. We think the impact of lobbying influencers can vary.

Influencing Policy and Law

We think that encoding protections for animals into the law is a key component of creating a society that is just and caring towards animals. While legal change may take longer to achieve than some other forms of change, we suspect its effects to be particularly long-lasting.

GFI works to affect legal change through lobbying policy makers, writing op-eds, providing information to congressional offices, and researching potential regulatory pathways for cultured products.²³ GFI also organized an event on Capitol Hill to promote plant-based meat that was co-sponsored by Beyond Meat. Since there are not many groups working towards favorable policies supporting plant-based and cultured food, we are uncertain about the tractability of this work. However, given that GFI is one of only two groups working in this area,²⁴ there is potential for this to be a high-impact strategy.

Criterion 3: The charity operates cost-effectively, according to our best estimates.

We think quantitative cost-effectiveness estimates are often useful as factors in charity evaluations, but we are concerned that assigning specific figures can be misleading and appear to be more important in our evaluation than we intended. For GFI in particular, we believe that our back-of-the-envelope calculation of their cost effectiveness is too speculative to feature in our review or include as a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness. For instance, in thinking about their impact we considered the probability of a single GFI-supported startup launching a commercial product that takes market share from animal agriculture and the share of the market they could be expected to capture. Our estimates for these factors were very speculative; we considered other unknowns as well, and we omitted many possible scenarios for simplicity.

Additionally, GFI is focused on helping animals in the medium and long term, and we have not published estimates of the medium-term or long-term impacts of any other charities, so we worry including this in a cost-effectiveness calculation would be unfair to those other organizations.²⁵ That being said, our lack of a cost-effectiveness estimate doesn’t necessarily indicate that this charity has lower overall cost effectiveness than the charities for which we have completed a cost-effectiveness estimate.

In the future, we hope to have better ways of evaluating medium-term and long-term impacts, which could lead to publishing a cost-effectiveness estimate for GFI. We think cost-effectiveness calculations will still be most useful as one small component in our overall understanding of charity effectiveness.

Criterion 4: The charity possesses a strong track record of success.

Have programs been well executed?

GFI is a relatively young organization; they were founded in October 2015 and officially launched in February 2016. They have made some accomplishments in their first two years, but their track record is understandably shorter than the track records of some more established groups. They have six departments, all of which approach GFI’s goal from different directions: innovation, science & technology, policy, corporate engagement, international engagement, and communications. Their innovation department and their science & technology departments are their two core departments, and represent the largest focus of their work.

GFI’s innovation department has two primary areas of focus—firstly, encouraging scientists and entrepreneurs to join the plant-based and cultured meat industries, and secondly, supporting the ongoing success of existing companies in the industry.²⁶ They have assembled a list of potential companies based on what they believe are promising ideas that have not been capitalized on,²⁷ and they have developed a list of more than 220 entrepreneurs and scientists, many of whom take part in monthly video calls led by GFI.²⁸ In the last year, they have had some success in assisting in the founding of a plant-based meat company in India, Good Dot, and a plant-based fish company in the U.S., SeaCo.²⁹ The companies have both raised millions in venture capital and are making progress towards competition with animal products.³⁰ Although venture capitalist funding is a good indication that the companies themselves will be successful, and while the companies might not exist without GFI, it is unclear what portion of the responsibility for the companies’ outcomes should be attributed to GFI. The companies also have yet to release their products, so we have a great deal of uncertainty as to how well they will perform, and thus how much change they will create for animals.³¹ Two additional companies have also arisen out of talks between entrepreneurs through the communication channels that GFI facilitates, but their information is not public at this stage.³²

GFI’s science and technology department is involved in the development and promotion of the science of plant-based cultured meat, dairy, and egg technologies.³³ They are currently focused on core foundational work—making connections with organizations and writing white papers and “mind maps”—and as such they do not yet have a significant track record.³⁴ They have produced Technological Readiness Assessments—documents detailing the current state of technology, and evaluating where more research is needed.³⁵ All the research GFI does is published, so that the industry as a whole can benefit.³⁶ One of their biggest successes over the last year are the presentations that Senior Scientist Liz Specht gave to various venture capitalist firms. GFI believes these presentations played a key role in the firms investing more than $15 million into cultured meat.³⁷ Another notable accomplishment was the development of plant-based meat and fish courses at UC Berkeley.³⁸ The courses were popular enough that UC Berkeley decided to introduce a permanent “Program for Meat Alternatives” course, co-designed by GFI and which GFI plans to replicate nationally.³⁹

As GFI’s remaining programs were all established in 2017, they are in the process of preparatory work such as making industry connections, and do not yet have any notable accomplishments.

Have programs led to change for animals?

GFI’s theory of change is based on achieving medium-term and long-term change for animals, and many of GFI’s accomplishments have not yet led to changes for animals. It is possible that the media attention that GFI has earned might have had some indirect benefits for animals. GFI has raised concerns in widely-read publications about the impacts of industrialized animal agriculture, including its contributions to climate change and its unsustainability. In addition to promoting awareness of cultured meat, it’s possible that these media stories have inspired some of their audience to reduce their meat consumption. On the other hand, some animal advocates are concerned that the messaging of cultured meat companies could reinforce the notion that we need to eat animal flesh, and this could inhibit the spread of vegetarianism and veganism—especially if cultured meat technologies fail to become cost-competitive.⁴⁰

If successful, the two companies that have launched under GFI’s influence in the past year are expected to produce commercial plant-based products that will compete with existing animal products within one year.⁴¹ If those products reduce the demand for animal products, this could affect a large number of animals. Since GFI works to foster the field of plant-based and cultured animal product development rather than developing individual products themselves, any impact they have will happen through the work of others who they have helped support. The assistance that GFI has provided to these companies has helped them to launch into the plant-based foods market. However, these companies must continue to grow and experience success after receiving outside funding before their products can come to market and potentially reduce the demand for the products of animal agriculture.

If cultured meat becomes cost-competitive with conventional meat, the impact for animals could be enormous. GFI estimates that cultured meat could become cost-competitive with conventional meat in about a decade.⁴² The Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) reports that one of two scientists they spoke with who work on tissue engineering gave a similar estimate—though Open Phil themselves remain much more pessimistic about the timeline for the widespread commercial availability of cultured meat.⁴³ We are not certain whether it is realistic to expect cultured meat to become cost-competitive with conventional meat within a decade. Based on our current knowledge, we suspect that a decade might be somewhat optimistic, and our current estimate is that 10–70 years might be more realistic.⁴⁴ This time horizon may be significantly delayed by the earliest scientific and regulatory hurdles, as research and funding into this area will likely grow as the barriers to eventual success diminish. If GFI were not doing their current work to overcome the scientific and regulatory hurdles, we expect that commercialization might take a lot longer than it would otherwise.

Cost-competitive cultured meat would impact animals by reducing the demand for animal products. Plant-based dairy products such as milk continue to take market share from the sales of conventional milk in the U.S., with sales in the former category growing as sales in the latter category decline.⁴⁵ It seems likely that cultured meat products will have similar effects, sometimes replacing plant-based products, but also replacing products of animal agriculture—particularly because they will likely be harder to distinguish by taste and texture than current substitutes.

Criterion 5: The charity identifies areas of success and failure and responds appropriately.

We have overall seen positive indications of GFI’s ability to identify and respond appropriately to indicators of success and failure, but we are still relatively uncertain about how they perform on this criterion. This is in part because the organization is young, and several of their programs (including technology and legal work) are aimed at relatively long-term payoffs. Some of their organizational policies still appear to be in development, making it difficult to assess how they will be enacted. GFI has told us they aim to begin more formally evaluating themselves in early 2018, including by using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).⁴⁶ We believe doing so would help them to set more concrete goals and potentially allow for more transparent self-assessment than their current system. They currently self-evaluate largely based on individual-level quarterly goals, which appear to be generally well designed for indicating success and failure, making it likely that this will be the case for their updated process as well.

GFI has demonstrated some willingness to change behavior in response to evidence of failure, for example by changing how their innovations team seeks to foster “white-space” companies. They have also changed who is involved in their hiring process several times in response to past trouble acquiring talented candidates. They have now found a setup that has successfully brought them significant growth in their staff numbers.

GFI is still developing their formal procedure for setting goals. They plan to establish more structured short-term goal setting with KPIs that tie into their long-term strategic goals in early 2018, once their current round of recruiting nears completion.⁴⁷ We believe that this will meaningfully improve their ability to evaluate their success and failure as an organization. Currently, they evaluate their work mainly based on staff members’ progress on their individual quarterly goals.⁴⁸ These goals appear to be fairly well-designed for guiding GFI’s actions and indicating success and failure at GFI’s broader mission. In addition to being time-bound, they are often specific and measurable, allowing GFI staff to recognize success or failure.⁴⁹ All of these goals are directly associated with the longer-term goals of the organization’s strategic plan, making them generally relevant to GFI’s overall mission; they also appear to be achievable, but not trivially so.⁵⁰

We have seen some examples of GFI identifying past or potential weaknesses and taking steps to improve them. For example, they decided to work with a recruiter to hire new talent in 2016 after being unable to fill some of their open positions for six months.⁵¹ More recently, after having poor results with multiple external recruiters, they temporarily allocated a staff member to work on recruiting full time (with assistance from their Director of operations).⁵² They have hired 16 new staff members so far this year,⁵³ compared to seven in 2016 (and only three between June and December 2016).⁵⁴ They also prioritized hiring leadership personnel, and they believe they can now recruit more quickly by having each Director focus on hiring for their own department.⁵⁵ Overall, it seems that GFI was able to recognize and eventually respond to their hiring program’s challenges, although it will take some time to determine the quality of the hires they made under the new process. GFI has also revised their process for helping start new businesses, in order to avoid the risk of unsuitable leadership; now they not only share and discuss ideas for potential new “white space” companies, but build business plans and recruit founding members for them.⁵⁶

It would be difficult for GFI to quantitatively estimate most of their programs’ cost effectiveness at this point in their development. Still, GFI has told us that they are carefully tracking all of their outcomes, including the amount of money being invested in the cultured and plant-based meat industries as a result of their work.⁵⁷ They have also expressed an interest in evaluating the number of animals helped by their programs.⁵⁸ We believe making these kinds of rough estimates can be a useful way for organizations to self-evaluate.

Criterion 6: The charity has strong leadership and a well-developed strategic vision.

GFI’s mission of developing plant-based and cellular alternatives to animal products has the potential to reduce farmed animal suffering on a large scale. Despite their short track record, we have some evidence that they choose effective opportunities to help animals within this field.⁵⁹ GFI also attempts to support other work on plant-based and cellular alternatives to animal products by guiding startups, analyzing legal challenges, and drawing in bioengineering talent.⁶⁰

GFI’s strategic planning process provides opportunities for their board⁶¹ and non-leadership staff members to give input. GFI’s board includes animal advocates with a variety of experiences, and they also have a number of advisors with relevant backgrounds, including academic fields as well as for-profit marketing. However, we are somewhat concerned that two of their five Board Members are from GFI’s founding organization, Mercy For Animals;⁶² this may indicate that GFI’s strategic planning is still being guided by an outside organization, even two years after the charity’s founding.

The charity’s mission emphasizes effectively reducing suffering/helping animals.

GFI’s mission is to create “a healthy, humane, and sustainable food supply.”⁶³ They have told us that they want to replicate the successes of plant-based milk alternatives with cellular and plant-based alternatives to meat, using the power of markets and food technology to provide alternatives to animal agriculture.⁶⁴ We believe that achieving this aim could lead to immense benefits for animals.

GFI’s past work also provides some evidence that they prioritize effectively helping animals, such as their innovation department’s choice of plant-based food companies to found, as discussed in Criterion 4. Given their mission, we expect that GFI will remain committed to work that has the potential to help animals effectively.⁶⁵

The strategy of the charity supports the growth of the animal advocacy movement as a whole.

Given their focus on plant-based and cellular alternatives to animal products, much of GFI’s work does not have a direct bearing on much of the animal advocacy movement, although they are contributing to a neglected and potentially high-impact area. This work is largely aimed at supporting plant-based foods and commercial cellular agriculture, including by supporting startups, publishing analyses of regulatory challenges, and raising awareness of cellular agriculture among scientists.⁶⁶ We believe that, when done well, such work contributes meaningfully to the growth of a potentially valuable section of the animal advocacy movement.

There is also a portion of their work involving corporate outreach, which does overlap more with other organizations’ efforts. However, GFI has told us that they focus on convincing large food conglomerates to put resources into plant-based and cultured meat, and also on convincing chain restaurants and chain grocery stores to provide non-animal protein. In contrast, other organizations mostly work with these companies to improve farmed animal welfare.⁶⁷ We agree that this work is potentially neglected within the animal advocacy movement, although we do not have a good sense of their degree of success.

The board of the charity includes members with diverse occupational backgrounds and experiences.

GFI’s five-person board includes Bruce Friedrich, GFI’s co-founder and Executive Director, as well as Kathy Freston, an author of vegan books, and Josh Balk, a longtime animal advocate who co-founded the plant-based food company Hampton Creek. The remaining two Board Members are leaders at Mercy For Animals (MFA), which helped found GFI. These are MFA President Nathan Runkle and MFA General Counsel Vandhana Bala.⁶⁸ GFI also has four advisors who have experience in relevant fields, including the psychology of diet change; their advisors with primarily for-profit experience all appear to have backgrounds in marketing.⁶⁹

According to U.S. best practices, nonprofit boards should be comprised of at least five people who have little overlap with an organization’s staff or other related parties.⁷⁰ However, there is only weak evidence that following these best practices is correlated with success, and if they are correlated, that may be because more competent organizations are more likely to both follow best practices and to succeed—rather than because following best practices leads to success. As such, we think the size of GFI’s board, combined with the inclusion of one staff member and two members of a closely related organization, overall provide a small amount of evidence against their effectiveness as an organization.

The evidence for the importance of board diversity is somewhat stronger than the evidence recommending board sizes of five or greater, in large part because there is a significant body of literature indicating that team diversity generally improves performance. However, the evidence we are aware of for the importance of board diversity on organizational performance specifically is less strong.⁷¹ GFI’s board includes members of some relevant occupational backgrounds, but we are concerned that two of its five Board Members are leadership staff at the same external organization. This seems to indicate that MFA has significant influence over GFI even two years after the latter was founded. Further, it indicates a potentially troubling lack of viewpoint diversity, since MFA staff members constitute a significant fraction of the board and are likely to have similar opinions about what decisions GFI should make. However, the large number of animal advocates on their board does provide a positive indication that GFI will stay focused on areas that are most likely to help large numbers of animals.

The board of the charity participates regularly in formal strategic planning on behalf of the charity, and involves other stakeholders in that process.

GFI sends all strategic documents, monthly reports, and quarterly goals and outcomes to all Board Members for feedback. Most of their Board Members also participate in GFI’s biannual strategic meetings, where many of these issues are discussed.⁷² GFI has also told us that they reevaluate their strategic plan twice a year and they do so in a manner that allows for significant input from non-leadership stakeholders. The majority of their strategic planning is done via drafting and editing a strategic plan document on which all staff are invited to comment. While staff members mostly work on the sections of the plan related to their own department, they are welcome to edit other sections as well. The board is also given access to this document.⁷³ Board members are generally encouraged to communicate their thinking and provide feedback to GFI’s staff. However, while the board is expected to participate in GFI’s strategic governance, GFI believes their detailed decision making should be guided mainly by their staff.⁷⁴

Criterion 7: The charity has a healthy culture and a sustainable structure.

GFI is a young, remote organization that is still growing fast and therefore has a developing culture. Currently their culture seems to be marked by high levels of effort put into maintaining connections and accessibility across the organization, including weekly all-staff meetings and weekly internal reports by each staff member.⁷⁵ Staff members we spoke to also mentioned specifically that Bruce Friedrich, GFI’s Executive Director, is particularly open and accessible—both in that he is always willing to make time to talk with staff members, and in that he is particularly proactive with regard to seeking feedback on himself and his management of the organization.^{76, 77, 78} We hope that as the organization grows these values become a part of GFI’s culture overall, rather than merely Friedrich’s personal style.

The charity receives support from multiple and varied funding sources.

GFI is entirely supported by grants and donations.⁷⁹ Their three largest donors provided a total of around 25-40% of their funding in 2016, and we would expect those donors to provide a similar, perhaps slightly larger, amount of funding in 2017—though GFI’s intention is to raise significantly more money overall.^{80, 81} GFI’s fiscal management strategy is to spend each year what it raised the prior year; this enables them to budget on a rolling 12-month timeframe.^{82, 83} Overall, we think that while their funding sources are not especially diverse, they do rely on a relatively broad donor base and take a responsible and sustainable approach to their finances.

The charity provides staff and volunteers with opportunities for training and skill development, helping them grow as advocates.

GFI is a young organization in a new field, and many employees are very recent hires, making it somewhat difficult to obtain information about staff growth and development.⁸⁴ GFI does actively encourage staff to reflect on their work, and emphasizes autonomy for all staff, which should enable staff to grow and develop as they face new choices and situations.^{85, 86} The staff members we spoke with confidentially mentioned that training was most obviously available in the form of conversations with other staff members, but also noted that when they had suggested other professional development opportunities, they were encouraged to pursue them.⁸⁷

The charity has staff from diverse backgrounds and with diverse personal characteristics (e.g., race, gender, age), and views diversity as a resource that can improve its performance.

GFI aims for diversity in their hires primarily through hiring practices that are intended to help them minimize the effects of bias, such as encouraging staff to score applications anonymously, using generalized ability tests, and meeting applicants only late in the process.⁸⁸ While they’ve hired many women, including in seven of nine Director roles, they find that their team is lacking in diversity in other ways, and they’ve met with Encompass to discuss further steps they can take to develop their diversity strategy.⁸⁹ One staff member we spoke to mentioned that they hoped GFI would be able to begin paying interns, which might help diversify their team by broadening the pool of potential interns who could afford to take a position with GFI.^{90, 91}

The charity works to protect employees from harassment and discrimination.

GFI has policies in place to protect staff from harassment and discrimination, which they train all employees on.⁹² We have spoken confidentially with two non-leadership staff members and performed some additional due diligence searches, and are not aware of any reports of harassment or discrimination at GFI.⁹³

Questions for Further Consideration

Some might suggest that technological progress will come eventually, and what matters most in the long run is whether we’ve achieved the social change necessary to use those new technologies to help animals. Why is GFI working to advance technology rather than to shift public attitudes?

Critics of GFI might be concerned that their work does not directly help to change public attitudes towards animals, and changing those attitudes may be essential for ensuring lasting progress. Suppose we develop commercial animal alternatives that are initially competitive with animal products. If animal products somehow become more appealing to consumers, nothing would stop consumers from returning to animal products unless they have changed their attitudes towards animals.

As GFI has pointed out, however, many animal charities are already working to shift public attitudes; some have been working in that area for decades.⁹⁴ In fact, advancing technology elegantly complements all the work that is being done to shift attitudes. It may even catalyze a shift in public opinion. Some have argued that it may be easier for individuals to feel compassion towards animals when that compassion is not at odds with their diet or behavior.⁹⁵ However, critics could argue that the social change resulting from new technologies is also inevitable.

GFI believes that there is a strong argument for charities to focus on areas other than technological development, particularly when for-profit companies seem likely to develop a technology on their own. Still, in the case of plant-based and cultured foods, GFI contends there is a role for charities in encouraging early-stage research, laying the scientific groundwork for the advancement of these technologies, working on government and foundation funding of R&D, helping connect scientists to for-profit funding and business partners, and promoting cultural and institutional acceptance of new food technologies. GFI actively seeks out these opportunities, rather than working primarily on projects which would likely be done by food or technology companies if GFI were not involved. In particular, GFI believes that they can help coordinate companies and take other actions that benefit the industry as a whole, whereas individual companies are sometimes pushed to focus on proprietary gains.

What can GFI do to ensure that consumers will embrace cultured meat?

GFI sees value in market research, and may conduct some themselves; they have already conducted a short survey to identify the most appealing name for cultured meat.⁹⁶ They would also be interested in research done to identify other factors important in promoting plant-based and cultured meat, such as whether consumers are more likely to respond well to promotion related to health benefits or to animal welfare.⁹⁷ They plan to conduct such research and will encourage its use by companies. GFI is also involved in a research project to investigate interventions to help mitigate concerns over naturalness, which act as a barrier to clean meat acceptance in the U.S.

Is GFI concerned about the possibility that cultured meats will not reach cost-competitiveness?

Some reports, such as the Open Philanthropy Project’s Animal Product Alternatives report and Van der Weele & Tramper (2014) suggest it is unlikely that cultured meats will become cost-competitive with conventional meat.^{98, 99} One important contributing factor in this conclusion, which is cited in these reports, is the minimum costs of the growth medium necessary for culturing the desired cells. If cultured meat weren’t able to become cost-competitive with conventional meats, then it may have a very limited impact on the demand for conventional meats and so a very limited impact on decreasing the vast number of animals subject to industrial agriculture.

GFI is certainly aware of the possibility that cultured meats will not become cost-competitive, but reports that the more their scientists dive in, the more optimistic they become about the potential for clean meat to reach cost-competitiveness.¹⁰⁰ GFI reports that when their scientists started working on this issue in June 2016, they were explicitly told that GFI does not need to promote clean meat; GFI reports that if their scientists thought it cannot become cost-competitive with the products of industrial animal agriculture then they would stop promoting it and would instead focus on plant-based meat.¹⁰¹

GFI reports that as their scientists investigate further, they have become more optimistic—because clean meat is so much more efficient than animal-based meat.¹⁰² One of their senior scientists, Dr. Liz Specht, has met with venture capital firms and other venture investors to present technology plans of specific clean meat companies and their pathways to commercialization.¹⁰³ GFI further reports that, based partly on her analysis, many leading venture capital investors and firms have become much more interested in clean meat companies. GFI believes this has probably been key to their investments in the technology.¹⁰⁴ GFI plans to release a white paper in the next few months that summarizes Specht’s analysis.¹⁰⁵

Does GFI directly support work on developing products other than those that could decrease animal product consumption (e.g., promoting yeast based vanillas or flower fragrances)? Why or why not?

GFI currently focuses primarily on plant-based meat and clean meat because they believe that we can now help animals the most by focusing on farmed animals.¹⁰⁶ For this same reason, they hope to do more work with eggs.¹⁰⁷ They don’t expect to move beyond animal products, since their goal is to help as many animals as possible.¹⁰⁸

It seems that GFI’s room for funding may be limited by its apparent difficulty filling open positions. Is GFI confident that it will be able to expand as quickly as it would like?

Last year ACE had some concerns that GFI’s continued expansion would take longer than anticipated; while GFI has dedicated one full-time employee to recruitment to help resolve this problem, they have had several long-standing open vacancies over the course of 2017, which seems to indicate that this has been a problem for them.^{109, 110}

Still, GFI reports that they are “absolutely confident” that they will be able to expand as quickly as their budget allows—but they also note that their hiring process is rigorous and that they are committed to adding staff in a methodical way.¹¹¹ GFI further reports that they have now put together an exceptional group of professionals.¹¹²

GFI’s 2017 staff growth includes seven Directors over the past nine months, so that now all nine Director roles are filled.¹¹³ GFI’s focus on hiring their leadership team positions means that they predict that the hiring pace will now increase, as all staff will now be hired by their respective supervisors.¹¹⁴

GFI now has 28 staff members, and they have recently hired their 29th staff member (who will start in January 2018).¹¹⁵ That is a growth of more than 18 staff members over the previous 12 months.¹¹⁶ GFI anticipates that if they meet their $4.66 million target for 2017, that will allow them to grow to 47 staff; they are confident that they can hire those additional 18-19 people within about six months.¹¹⁷ GFI believes that the currently open positions that will prove difficult to fill are the major gifts officer position and the foundation relations manager position.¹¹⁸

Why does GFI invest some of its resources in plant-based foods as well as cultured foods when (a) plant-based options already exist, and (b) the development of cultured foods seems like it could relieve the need for better plant-based options?

Some of GFI’s potential donors may be concerned about GFI’s decision to invest resources in the development of plant-based foods in addition to cultured foods. After all, plant-based meat is already commercially available and we have not yet seen evidence that it has taken market shares from conventional meat. Moreover, if and when groups like GFI succeed in putting cultured products on the market, there may be even less consumer interest in plant-based products than there is now.

We think that some of the work GFI has done so far on plant-based meats is promising, and the fact that it had not already been done suggests that there is a role for charities working in this area. In particular, charities may be able to do more to foster and accelerate the introduction of certain technologies than companies could, since companies must protect their commercial interests and intellectual property. However, since there are already companies operating profitably in this area, we do think there is particular need for charities to be aware that some work could be done efficiently without their help. GFI is aware of this and has stated that they do not provide much in the way of communications or graphic design assistance once a company is beyond its seed round of fundraising.

GFI argues that though it is true that plant-based products already exist, there may be significant room for the improvement of plant-based technology, and improving plant-based technology may yield shorter-term traction, i.e., greater market share, than the cultured foods.¹¹⁹ Recently developed plant-based products already seem to seem to represent improvements from past products; for example, the Impossible Burger, released in 2016, has received favorable reviews from vegans and omnivores alike.¹²⁰ GFI’s fostering and promotion of the development of similarly popular plant-based products could cause a significant reduction in the demand for animal products, particularly if they focus on plant-based chicken and fish and if they convince institutions to serve the plant-based products rather than animal products.¹²¹

If and when cultured meat becomes commercially available, it may take market shares from plant-based meat, but that does not necessarily eliminate the value of developing better plant-based meat technology. GFI argues that plant-based meat requires fewer resources and is more sustainable than cultured meat, so we should continue to promote plant-based products.¹²²

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1. GFI’s operating reserve ensures their financial stability and adherence to charitable best practices. 

2. “We think they could use at least $500,000 to $1 million more in 2017, to finish filling their operating reserve and possibly to begin some of their additional planned expansion.” —ACE’s 2016 Review of The Good Food Institute 

3. The Good Food Institute’s Projected Expenses (2017) 

4. “The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $1,000,000 to The Good Food Institute for general support.” —The Open Philanthropy Project. (2016). The Good Food Institute—General Support. The Open Philanthropy Project. 

5. It is possible that additional funding will come from other major donors—we focus on Open Phil in particular because they are one of the most significant grantmakers in effective animal advocacy, they are transparent with their donations, and they have often made recurring donations to organizations. All of these factors give us a better idea of where they may donate money in the future compared to other sources. 

6. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

7. “We also have some concerns that they may not be able to grow quite as quickly as they project, due to difficulties in finding and hiring staff members with the specific skills that they’re looking for in certain roles.” —ACE’s 2016 Review of The Good Food Institute 

8. See repeated entries on GFI’s hiring page on January 3, January 29, June 6, and September 29 of this year, indicating that some vacancies lasted for six or more months. 

9. “After having grown very rapidly during the past 18 months, GFI now plans on a more conservative annual growth in part to ensure they can maintain focus on strengthening relationships with their donors while continuing to identify and inspire/reach new constituencies of supporters.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

10. “After having grown very rapidly during the past 18 months, GFI now plans on a more conservative annual growth in part to ensure they can maintain focus on strengthening relationships with their donors while continuing to identify and inspire/reach new constituencies of supporters.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

11. “They consider taking care of existing donors to be crucial for sustainable growth.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

12. See, for example, Amah, E., Daminabo-Weje, M., & Dosunmu, R. (2013). Size and organizational effectiveness: maintaining a balance. Advances in Management and Applied Economics, 3(5), 115. 

13. This range is a subjective confidence interval (SCI). An SCI is a range of values that communicates a subjective estimate of an unknown quantity at a particular confidence level (expressed as a percentage). We generally use 90% SCIs, which we construct such that we believe the unknown quantity is 90% likely to be within the given interval and equally likely to be above or below the given interval. 

14. This estimate is based on our room for more funding Guesstimate model. 

15. The method we use does calculations using Monte Carlo sampling. This means that results can vary slightly based on the sample drawn. Unless otherwise noted, we have run the calculations five times and rounded to the point needed to provide consistent results. For instance, if sometimes a value appears as 28 and sometimes it appears as 29, our review gives it as 30. 

16. “As a result, GFI’s work to date has been covered in more than 480 different newspapers, podcasts, radio shows, news sites, and blogs.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

17. While consumer research has not been their focus thus far, we expect that they will invest further in such research next year. They are currently hiring a research analyst. 

18. “We identified the 13 institutions that seem most promising for housing an academic plant-based meat

    research center.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

19. “We have registered GFI in the federal grant system so that we are eligible to apply for federal funding for the plant-based and clean meat projects we want to work with Researchers to complete.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

20. “GFI senior scientist Dr. Liz Specht met with more than 25 venture capital firms and investors to deliver her presentation about the economic viability of clean meat, in advance of the fundraising round for Memphis Meats. She met with most of the top investors that made up the company’s $19 million fundraising in 2017, including DFJ (the lead investor), the Gates Investment Group, Jack and Suzy Welch, KBW Investments, Kyle Vogt, and many more.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

21. Between 2010 and 2015, plant-based milk sales (particularly almond milk sales) increased, while the total milk market shrunk by over $1 billion in the U.S., according to Nielsen. 

22. “As an initial project, we have secured the relevant domain name and will prepare a ‘Restaurant Report Card’ that ranks the top 100 chain restaurants. We will appeal to top chains to improve their offerings of plant-based options and we will promote the chains that excel in this area.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

23. This information was found in the July version of GFI’s monthly emails to subscribers. 

24. The other group working in this area is the Plant-Based Foods Association. 

25. We have sometimes prepared, but not published, speculative estimates similar to the one we could have prepared for GFI. 

26. “Specifically, our innovation department has two primary focuses, inspiring the next generation of innovators to join and start companies and supporting the most innovative plant-based and clean meat companies; both activities remove animals from industrial animal agriculture.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

27. “To this end, GFI has compiled a list of ‘white space’ companies representing opportunities that have not been capitalized upon and for which we are actively recruiting founding teams.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

28. “Our ‘GFIdeas’ project brings together 205 potential entrepreneurs and scientists, 111 of whom collaborate regularly via a GFI-facilitated Slack team, and many of whom join monthly GFI-led video calls to meet, discuss, brainstorm, and share updates.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

29. “We also partnered with entrepreneurs to launch two food companies from scratch to address the greatest areas of need in animal-product replacement: First, Good Dot launched in the summer of 2017 and is bringing price-competitive plant-based chicken and mutton to India, where demand is skyrocketing; second, debuting in early 2018, SeaCo (aka Good Catch) will introduce delicious plant-based alternatives to fish such as tuna.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

30. “SeaCo and Good Dot have already raised millions of dollars in venture capital; this is money that will go into competing with conventional animal products and that would not have otherwise been put at the service of meat-reduction efforts.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

31. We hope to see products on the Good Dot and SeaCo websites when they are released. 

32. “From this work, at least two companies have launched, one of which is currently below radar, but it was accepted to the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator and has raised over $1 million in capital. The other is focused on the distribution of plant-based entrees to schools.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

33. “The other half of our core mission—our focus on food technology—is represented by GFI’s science & technology department, which develops and promotes the science of plant-based and clean meat, dairy, and egg technologies.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

34. For example, their Technology Readiness Assessments appear to be one of their main projects: “The SciTech department is currently working on industry-level evaluations of technologies and research projects needed to support the clean and plant-based product industries. These Technology Readiness Assessments (TRAs) provide information on the product-level maturity or readiness (i.e., Technology Readiness Levels, or TRLs) to launch a company, as well as industry-level information on new technologies, research, and companies needed to support the market as a whole […] The SciTech team has been working on these documents for more than a year, and we expect to have first versions done by the end of October. The clean meat mindmap and the plant-based meat mindmap were preliminary documents that will be incorporated into these larger analyses.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

35. “The SciTech team has been working on these documents for more than a year, and we expect to have first versions done by the end of October.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

36. “As with all GFI work, they will be posted in the resources section of our website and be heavily promoted.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

37. “One of GFI’s senior scientists, Liz Specht, has given presentations at some of the largest venture capital firms in the world, such as Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, and DFJ. Her speaking engagements also included the first-ever clean meat panel at the Institute of Food Technologists annual conference. Furthermore, she talked about clean meat’s path to commercialization at Y Combinator. Through her speeches, Specht has been able to convince multiple venture capital firms that the clean meat space will enter the commercialization and profit phase within a reasonable timeframe.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

38. “In collaboration with Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, GFI has launched the world’s first course dedicated to plant-based meat research and development.” —Byrd, E. (2017). World’s First Class on Plant-Based Meat. The Good Food Institute. 

39. “These classes were so successful at generating interest in and potential real-world solutions for advancing plant-based foods that in August 2017 UC-B launched an entire, permanent ‘Program for Meat Alternatives’ that will expand their efforts to explore this field, starting with a class entitled ‘Plant-based Meat 2.0.'” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

40. See, for example, this video featuring animal advocate Casey Taft. 

41. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

42. “On the current trajectory, 100% clean meat products will be available in four to five years and cost-competitive in about a decade” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

43. See Open Phil’s write-up of their investigation of animal product alternatives. Note that we do not know the identity of one of the scientists, nor are we fully aware of the considerations that informed the scientists’ estimates. 

44. “[M]ore than half of the main broad types of conventional whole pieces of farmed animal muscle tissue will have at least one cost-competitive cultured alternative in 10–70 years.” —Greig, K. (2017). When Will There Be Cost-Competitive Cultured Animal Products? Animal Charity Evaluators. 

45. Between 2010 and 2015, plant-based milk sales (particularly almond milk sales) increased, while the total milk market shrunk by over $1 billion in the U.S., according to Nielsen. 

46. “Once the hiring process has slowed down, Director of Operations Reannon Branchesi will make sure that both the quarterly goals and the tasks and projects processes are more structured with specific key performance indicators for all.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

47. “Once the hiring process has slowed down, Director of Operations Reannon Branchesi will make sure that both the quarterly goals and the tasks and projects processes are more structured with specific key performance indicators for all.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

48. “Measuring success has been a very iterative process. Since last year, every staff member has had quarterly goals that map to GFI’s mission and strategic plan, and all accomplishments are tracked against these goals.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

49. When considering how well charities assess success and failure, one useful consideration is whether their goals are SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Specific, well-defined goals help guide an organization’s actions, and can help them determine which areas or programs have succeeded and failed. Setting a measurable target allows organizations to determine to what extent they’ve met their goals. It is also important that goals be plausibly achievable; goals that are predictably over- or undershot tell an organization little about how well their programs have done. Goals should be relevant to the organization’s longer-term mission, both to guide their actions and to help them evaluate success. Finally, including time limits is especially important, as it keeps a charity accountable to their expectations of success. 

50. All discussion of these goals is based on a private document shared by GFI describing their quarterly goals for the third and fourth quarters of 2017, as well as their success in achieving the former. 

51. Private communication with Bruce Friedrich of The Good Food Institute, 2016 

52. “It is GFI’s top priority to recruit the strongest possible candidates for each staff role. It has been difficult to find suitable candidates for some of the open positions. After employing a couple of different recruiters without success, they decided to temporarily dedicate one full-time staffer to this task, in addition to having their Director of operations focusing on it part-time.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

53. “Because we are so methodical, it might be argued that we have hired somewhat slowly. However, note that we had 10 staff at the end of 2016…We have 24 now.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017) 

54. “In June, they expanded from three to eight staff members and two long-term volunteers.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland (2016) 

55. “[N]ote that we had 10 staff at the end of 2016, and only two of them were Directors. We have 24 now, and we have hired 6 more Directors over the past 8 months, so that we now have 8 of our 9 Director roles filled (and our SciTech Director will be serving as acting innovation Director until that role is filled). Because we were so focused on getting the absolute best people into our top positions, we hired a little more slowly than we will be able to hire going forward, now that all additional staff will be hired by their respective supervisors.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017) 

56. “From now on, GFI will choose the three white space companies they are most excited about and look actively for qualified entrepreneurs to start them. To that end, Business Analyst Brianna Cameron will create business plans for these three companies. GFI will then advertise for and hire a CEO and, if necessary, a CTO for the company. In this way, they can ensure that the best possible people are driving the companies forward; not just whoever happens to come to them first.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

57. “The actual metrics we’re interested in fall into three main categories: The highest-level metrics address the outcomes we want to see in the world: amount of farmed animal suffering prevented, plant-based and clean meats’ market shares, number of conventional meat meals offset by plant-based or clean meat, etc. Ultimately, such metrics are all we care about, but it is costly, if not impossible, to determine causality for them. The next set of metrics defines mission-level goals for each of our departments: number of companies started, number of top 100 restaurants carrying plant-based entrees, number of scientific grant dollars moved to plant-based and clean meat research, etc. We believe these metrics are useful because they are linked to our ultimate outcomes via a sound theory of change.” —The Good Food Institute’s Accomplishments (2017) 

58. Private communication with Bruce Friedrich of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

59. See Criterion 4 for more discussion of the effectiveness of GFI’s programs thus far. 

60. See Criterion 2 for more discussion of GFI’s programs. 

61. “GFI’s board focuses on strategic governance. The organization sends all strategic documents, monthly reports, and quarterly goals and outcomes to all Board Members for feedback. Most Board Members also participate in GFI’s quarterly strategic meetings, where many of these issues are discussed.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

62. GFI’s Board Membership is listed in Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017). 

63. “Our mission is to create a healthy, humane, and sustainable food supply.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

64. We [achieve our mission] by harnessing the power of markets and food technology to create alternatives to industrial animal agriculture that are delicious, cost competitive, and convenient […] Fifteen years ago, plant-based milk represented roughly 0% of the milk market; now it is at 10% […] GFI is laser-focused on replicating (and exceeding!) the success of plant-based milks, to achieve radically increased market shares of plant-based meat and clean meat products.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

65. Since GFI’s track record is relatively short, it does not provide us with much information about their commitment to effectively helping animals. 

66. See Criterion 2 for further discussion of GFI’s programs. 

67. “Some overlap with other organizations exists in the area of corporate engagement. However, GFI focuses on chain restaurant and chain grocery stores for protein diversification, while other organizations work with these companies to improve farmed animal welfare.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

68. GFI’s Board Membership is listed in Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017). 

69. GFI’s “Our Team” webpage lists these advisors, including Senior Advisor Dr. Milena Esherick, Director of counseling psychology at the Wright Institute; Senior Advisor Jaime Surenkamp; Communications Advisor Jamie Macfarlane; and Senior Advisor Jacqueline Kravette. The latter three all have experience in the for-profit world, with Fisher and Kravette having worked in foodservice sales and Macfarlane having experience advertising for major consumer brands. 

70. See these three standards for nonprofits in the U.S. suggesting between five and seven Board Members as a minimum. 

71. We’re aware of two studies of nonprofit board diversity that found that diverse boards are associated with better fundraising and social performance, as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision making. 

72. “GFI’s board focuses on strategic governance. The organization sends all strategic documents, monthly reports, and quarterly goals and outcomes to all Board Members for feedback. Most Board Members also participate in GFI’s quarterly strategic meetings, where many of these issues are discussed.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

73. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

74. “Although Board Members can be as involved as they want, GFI’s commitment to autonomy and self-actualization requires that the staff decides for themselves what to work on and how to proceed, while the board focuses on strategic governance instead of being involved in everyday decision making. However, staff and board communicate openly and feedback is encouraged.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

75. “Because they are a remote workforce, GFI takes many steps to ensure organizational cohesion. All staff members file so-called “weekly reports,” which take only five or ten minutes to complete. In them, they list up to three things that happened during the past week that they want their coworkers to know about […] This is in addition to the weekly Monday morning staff meeting, at which the staff discusses overarching topics that impact the whole organization. Each Wednesday the whole team also meets to learn from colleagues about their latest program work. In rotation, each program department presents their latest work followed by discussion.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

76. This year we attempted to speak confidentially with two non-leadership staff members from each comprehensively evaluated charity. To protect their confidentiality, what we learned in these conversations is paraphrased in the review, and references to these conversations are identified only as “Private communication with an employee of [Charity], 2017.” For more information, see our blog post discussing this change. 

77. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

78. Friedrich tells us that he has hired all nine Directors with a focus on ensuring that they share his servant leadership commitment; the new employee training makes clear that the organization strives to ensure transparency, organizational communication, and a commitment to staff self-actualization. 

79. “GFI is 100% supported by philanthropic gifts and grants, so we have no programs (such as earned income, fees for service, merchandise sales, etc.) other than development that generate revenue.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017) 

80. “We raised $2.9 million in 2016, so our planned budget for 2017 is that amount. The Open Philanthropy Project, an initiative of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, was our largest donor, at $500,000 (they are also giving $500,000 this year). Our next two biggest gifts were $300,000 and $125,000, both from anonymous donors, and it went down from there. Almost everyone who gave money by this point in 2016 has given more in 2017. For example, the $125,000 donor gave $300,000 this year and pledged $300,000 for 2018 and 2019.” —The Good Food Institute Jobs: FAQ (2017)

    Information about the grant from the Open Philanthropy Project is also available here. 

81. “Last year, GFI’s goal was to secure 2.5 million U.S. dollars in philanthropic gifts and grants. They surpassed it slightly, raising 2.7 million U.S. dollars last year, and they hope to raise 4.66 million U.S. dollars in 2017, a 56% increase in their budget.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

82. “In a given year, GFI aims to spend the amount it raised during the previous year, which adds more stability and security to the organization.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

83. “Moreover, we adhere to nonprofit budgeting best practice, which is to maintain 8-12 months operating expenses in reserves, which will put us in the upper echelon for nonprofit job security (fewer than 25% have even 6 months in reserve). We currently have about a year’s worth of reserves.” —The Good Food Institute Jobs: FAQ (2017) 

84. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

85. “Organizationally, they are committed to ensuring that all staff members are capable of autonomy and self-actualization. […] Staff are also encouraged to include a “Stepback” reflection about what works, what doesn’t, and what the organization or the respective area is currently concerned with. Occasionally, the reflection component is more directed, concerning issues like work-life balance or tools and practices to increase productivity.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

86. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

87. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

88. “GFI aims to have a recruitment process that is as anonymous as possible, to prevent latent biases from manifesting themselves in the hiring decisions. As described above, personal conversations only take place very late in the hiring process, a decision that was taken in part to reduce the effects of biases. GFI encourages evaluators to score application materials anonymously.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

89. “Innovation Coordinator Cameron Meyer Shorb has met with Encompass founder Aryenish Birdie and Board Member Lisa Feria to discuss diversity strategies for GFI. Encompass is a new group focused on diversity in the animal movement.

    As the team page on their website indicates, they have not included diversity practices to the extent they would like to. On the other hand, GFI has been very successful when it comes to gender equality; seven of the eight Directors recruited to date are women.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

90. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

91. “If you work for an animal charity, your organization may wish to consider the following options [for supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion]: […] Incentivize entry-level positions and internships in your company so that low-income individuals (who may be unable to work for free or near-poverty wages) have an opportunity to enter the movement.” —Adleberg, T. (2017). “How Can We Integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into the Animal Advocacy Movement?” Animal Charity Evaluators. 

92. “GFI’s employee manual includes policies to address harassment and discrimination […]Every new employee receives anti-harassment training as part of the orientation process. Supervisors participate in an additional, separate training that is two hours long.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017) 

93. During our review process we performed Google searches wherein we paired the terms “harassment,” “discrimination,” and “lawsuit” with the names of senior members of each organization’s leadership. 

94. “Animal charities have focused on shifting attitudes for a long time. ACE’s current [T]op [C]harities devote significant resources towards shifting public attitudes and a host of other large animal advocacy groups do as well. Bland and Friedrich are supportive of that work but feel there’s an unfilled niche in work of developing competitive alternatives to conventionally produced animal products.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland (2016) 

95. “I’ve been of the opinion that we should have a very big focus on developing alternatives, because alternatives would make it easier for people—would facilitate—the moral reasoning and the compassion.” —Tobias Leenaert during a panel discussion at EA Global 2016 (at 6:00)  

96. “GFI is part of a newly formed coalition that is researching consumer responses to the terms “clean” and “cultured” meat. GFI’s research indicated that “clean meat” had 20–25 percent higher consumer acceptance than “cultured meat,” and these results were corroborated by ACE’s follow-up study.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2016) 

97. “GFI is interested in future research to identify the most important factors for consumer acceptance of plant-based and clean meat. For instance, this research could help determine whether it’s better to emphasize animal welfare, sustainability, or the health benefits of clean meat (e.g., the lack of antibiotics or bacterial contamination).” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2016) 

98. “We are highly uncertain about the eventual cost per kg of cultured meat, and have not closely examined the above cost estimates. However, none of these estimates suggest a cost competitive with that of conventional meat.” —The Open Philanthropy Project. (2015). Animal Product Alternatives. The Open Philanthropy Project. 

99. “From an economic point of view, however, competition with ‘normal’ meat is a big challenge; production cost emerges as the real problem. For cultured meat to become competitive, the price of conventional meat must increase greatly.” —van der Weele, C., & Tramper, J. (2014). Cultured meat: every village its own factory? Trends in Biotechnology, 32(6), 294-296. 

100. “We are certainly concerned, but I will say that the more our scientists dive in, the more optimistic they become.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

101. “When GFI’s scientists started working on this issue in June 2016, Friedrich told them explicitly that GFI does not need to promote clean meat—if we think it cannot become cost-competitive with the products of industrial animal agriculture then we should stop promoting it and focus on plant-based meat.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

102. “However, the more they dig in, the more optimistic they become. This should not be surprising, since clean meat is so much more efficient when compared to animal-based meat.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

103. “In fact, one of our scientists, Dr. Liz Specht, has been meeting with venture capital firms and other venture investors to encourage them to invest in clean meat.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

104. “In fact, one of our scientists, Dr. Liz Specht, has been meeting with venture capital firms and other venture investors to encourage them to invest in clean meat. Based partly on her analysis of the likelihood that clean meat can reach price parity with industrial animal meat, many leading VCs have made significant investments in clean meat companies.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

105. “In fact, one of our scientists, Dr. Liz Specht, has been meeting with venture capital firms and other venture investors to encourage them to invest in clean meat […] We will be releasing a white paper that synopsizes Liz’s analysis in the next few months.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

106. “We focus primarily on plant-based meat and clean meat at the moment, because that is where the most animals suffer the most.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

107. “We focus primarily on plant-based meat and clean meat at the moment, because that is where the most animals suffer the most. We are hoping to do more work than we have been with eggs, for the same reason.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

108. “We don’t see GFI moving beyond animal products, since our goal is to help animals[.]” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

109. “We have some concerns that GFI’s progress will be impeded by their difficulty in finding and hiring qualified staff.” —ACE’s 2016 Review of The Good Food Institute 

110. See repeated entries on GFI’s hiring page on January 3, January 29, June 6, and September 29 of this year, indicating that some vacancies lasted for six or more months. 

111. “Yes, we are absolutely confident that we will be able to expand as quickly as our budget allows.

     It is certainly true that our hiring process is rigorous and that we hire exclusively extraordinary employees who we feel confident will excel in their roles […] we are also committed to adding staff in a methodical way that ensures organizational cohesion and a culture of cooperation and mutual support.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

112. For more about GFI’s staff, see their team page. 

113. “We have 24 now, and we have hired 6 more Directors over the past 8 months, so that we now have 8 of our 9 Director roles filled (and our SciTech Director will be serving as acting innovation Director until that role is filled).” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

114. “Because we were so focused on getting the absolute best people into our top positions, we hired a little more slowly than we will be able to hire going forward, now that all additional staff will be hired by their respective supervisors.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

115. Private communication with an employee of The Good Food Institute, 2017 

116. “Based on our current pool of applicants, we expect to have 4–5 more staff hired by mid-November, taking us to 28–29 staff, a growth of 18+ staff over 11 months.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

117. “If we can meet our $4.66 million target for 2017, that will allow us to grow to 47 staff, and we are confident that we can hire those additional 18–19 people within about 6 months.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

118. “The only currently open positions that we think will prove difficult are major gifts officer, foundations relations manager, and Director of innovation.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

119. “While it is certainly true that plant-based meat options exist, they are currently too expensive, and only a limited number of them are taste- and price-competitive with meat produced in factory farms.

     We have a long way to go in our quest to create plant-based meat that is both taste- and cost-competitive with animal-based meat, and we believe that resources spent on getting us there are resources very well spent.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017) 

120. “Let me say this right off the bat: These things are a big step up from previous faux-meat burgers, though they still have a way to go before they’re going to fool anyone who eats meat critically on a regular basis. Tasted on their own, they have their problems, but served the right way—cooked and topped—they become more successful.” —López-Alt, J. (2016). Let It Bleed (Humanely). Serious Eats. 

121. The vast majority of animals used and killed for food are chicken and fish, so creating alternatives to chicken and fish would be especially impactful. 

122. “Plant-based meat requires fewer resources and is more sustainable than clean meat.” —Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland (2016) 

Research Documents

• Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part One (2017)
• Follow-Up Questions for The Good Food Institute, Part Two (2017)
• GFI's Organizational Chart
• The Good Food Institute Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
• The Good Food Institute's Projected Expenses (2017)
• The Good Food Institute's Accomplishments (2017)

• Conversation with Bruce Friedrich and Clare Bland of The Good Food Institute (2017)
• Guesstimate Model of RFMF for The Good Food Institute (2017)