The Good Food Institute

How The Good Food Institute Performs on our Criteria

Interpreting our “Overall Assessments”

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

The number of gray circles indicates the strength of the evidence supporting each performance assessment and, correspondingly, our confidence in each assessment relative to the other charities we evaluated this year:

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

The Good Food Institute (GFI) focuses exclusively on reducing the suffering of farmed animals, which we believe is a high-impact cause area.

Countries of Operation

GFI currently works in the U.S., Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, and Israel. We believe that animal advocacy in Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Israel is relatively neglected.

Interventions and Projected Outcomes

GFI pursues different avenues for creating change for animals: They work to increase the availability of animal-free 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 GFI does.² Unless otherwise specified, we have sourced the information in this criterion from The Good Food Institute (2020d). 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.

Increased availability of animal-free products

Increasing the quality and availability of alternative proteins may help to create a climate in which it is easier for individuals to reduce their use of animal products. We acknowledge that research is required to optimize cell culture methodology⁵ and that consumer acceptance of cell-cultured products could still increase.⁶ That said, we expect that if they reach price-competitiveness with conventional animal products, cell-cultured products are likely to cause a considerable decrease in demand for animal products, as well as a transformation of the industry in the long term.

GFI conducts legislative advocacy and lobbying with the goal of bringing cell-cultured meat and new plant-based products to market. They lobby governments to allocate research and development resources to alternative proteins, and they work to prevent restrictions on alternative proteins, especially in the U.S. 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 that policy or legislative advocacy that prevents restrictions on alternative proteins is highly effective in increasing the availability of animal-free products.

GFI works with companies to distribute, market, and encourage the development of alternative proteins. They engage large food companies (including meat companies), chain restaurants, grocery stores, and other food businesses to encourage them to increase their plant-based options. GFI also provides strategic support to alternative protein start-ups and established companies. We believe that working with companies in this way is highly effective in increasing the availability of animal-free products. With a lower degree of confidence, we believe that providing strategic support to alternative protein start-ups is highly effective as well.

GFI publishes white papers; industry reports; and guides for alternative protein start-ups, manufacturers, and investors. They also run a Research Grant Program, which provides funding to open-access plant-based and cell-cultured food research, influencing the growth of the field. We believe that conducting research on alternative proteins and building an academic field are highly effective in increasing the availability of animal-free products.

GFI recruits students and scientists to work in the alternative protein industry. They evaluate the state of the industry, identify opportunities for research, and develop campus outreach work to educate and inspire students. We believe with a low degree of confidence that recruiting scientists and students to work in the alternative protein industry is highly effective in increasing the availability of animal-free products.

GFI hosts events to grow and develop the alternative protein industry. They organize conferences to promote connections between companies and support the growth of the industry. We believe that hosting events is moderately effective in increasing the availability of animal-free products.

Finally, GFI works with public and private funding organizations to increase the number of grant opportunities for alternative protein companies. We believe with a low degree of confidence that fundraising for food start-ups is highly effective in increasing the availability of animal-free 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. GFI’s capacity-building work includes engaging in research, grant-making, community organizing, and college campus outreach.

GFI conducts and disseminates research on the alternative protein industry. They maintain open-access databases with resources that may help inform the industry, other nonprofit organizations, animal advocates, the media, and the public. GFI also runs a Research Grant Program, which gives funding to open-access plant-based and cell-cultured food research. We believe that promoting research on alternative proteins is highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.

GFI recruits students at business and science university programs. Their campus outreach work involves giving lectures and hosting events at universities, as well as providing relevant resources to students. They develop on-campus and online courses and workshops to educate students about developing alternative proteins. We believe with a low degree of confidence that advocate recruitment on college campuses and recruiting students and scientists to work in the food industry are moderately effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.

GFI is building a community of students, as well as scientists and entrepreneurs, to work in the alternative protein industry. They facilitate seminars on the business and science of alternative proteins, and they maintain a Slack platform to share thoughts and information. We believe that community organizing is highly 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 GFI’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures.⁷ The financial information for 2019 and the first six months of 2020 was reported by the charities during this year’s evaluation process,⁸ 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. Note that the revenue estimates shown in the graph are based on accrual accounting, accounting for when grants are received rather than when they are disbursed. GFI’s revenue has grown at an increasing rate in the past few years. They received a large donation paid over two years ($4M), as well as total restricted donations of $11.5M in 2019. GFI has received funding influenced by ACE as a result of their prior recommended charity status. From 2016 to 2019, donations reportedly influenced by ACE accounted for 16% of GFI’s total revenue. We estimate that in the first half of 2020, ACE-influenced donations may account for 11% of GFI’s revenue.⁹ With about 94% of their current expenditures held in net assets, we believe that GFI holds a sufficient amount of reserves.

Planned Future Expenditures

Below we list GFI’s plans for expansion for 2021.¹⁰ 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 2021.¹¹ For staff salaries, we estimated the number of staff GFI 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.¹² 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 expansion¹³ based on their 2019 program expenditures;¹⁴ in some cases, we also considered GFI’s estimations of their future expenditures¹⁵ and/or our impressions of how much the expansions would cost.¹⁶ 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 GFI’s room for more funding for 2021. For this, we relied on an estimate of their predicted revenue for 2021. GFI has received funding influenced by ACE as a result of their prior recommended charity status, which we subtract from past values when estimating the predicted revenue. We estimate that GFI’s revenue in 2021 will be $13 million or within the 90% prediction interval [$7M, $18M].²¹ GFI’s own prediction of their 2021 revenue ($16M) lies within the predicted interval.

Using our predictions of future revenue, GFI’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 GFI’s room for more funding in 2021 distributed across our three confidence levels. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to GFI, we estimate that GFI’s room for more funding in 2021 is $1.8 million (90% prediction interval: [-$0.32M, $3.9M]) with high confidence. Overall, we have some confidence that GFI has room for $5.5 million (90% prediction interval: [-$0.84M, $12M]) in additional funding in 2021. We believe that GFI’s room for more funding relative to the size of their organization is of average 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.

Increased Availability of Animal-Free Products

GFI engages in three programs that we have categorized as contributing to increasing the availability of animal-free products—policy, corporate engagement, and international engagement. 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 GFI’s programs focused on increased availability of animal-free products, January 2019–June 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 The Good Food Institute (2020d).

Evaluation of cost effectiveness

In legal and political advocacy, we think it is likely that the most cost-effective work is focused on system-wide change that, although harder to secure, has the potential to affect a larger number of animals. GFI’s policy program is focused on work of this nature. In the past 18 months, GFI has worked to oppose label restrictions on plant-based companies in 26 states (reporting success in 14 of those), and submitted public comments to block a bill rider that would have given the USDA jurisdiction over cell-cultured products. They also lobbied the U.S. government to include language encouraging research funding for plant proteins in the Senate and House agriculture appropriation reports. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the cost effectiveness of GFI’s work in their policy program seems slightly higher than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward increasing the availability of animal-free foods we have evaluated this year.

Through their corporate engagement program, GFI has produced retail and industry reports, organized a monthly plant-based industry newsletter (with 2,400 subscribers), and reported influencing Morningstar Farms’ commitment to make their product line 100% plant-based. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the cost effectiveness of GFI’s work in their corporate engagement program seems similar to the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward increasing the availability of animal-free foods we have evaluated this year.

Through their international engagement program, GFI’s affiliates work on similar objectives as GFI does in North America, with some adaptation to the opportunities provided by each local context. We think that this program could be more cost effective than their other programs, given the apparent neglectedness of their approach internationally. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the cost effectiveness of GFI’s work in their international engagement program seems much higher than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward increasing the availability of animal-free foods we have evaluated this year.

GFI has reported to us that in light of COVID-19, they have had to make adaptations to their programs, as many are conducted face-to-face. It is therefore likely that these programs will become more cost effective once the limitations imposed by the pandemic come to an end.

Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of GFI’s work toward increasing the availability of animal-free products seems higher than the average cost effectiveness of other charities’ work toward this outcome we have evaluated this year.

Stronger Animal Advocacy Movement

GFI engages in one program that we have categorized as contributing to strengthening the animal advocacy movement—their scitech program.

Key results and use of resources

Below is our estimated resource usage for GFI’s program focused on strengthening the animal advocacy movement, January 2019–June 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 The Good Food Institute (2020d).

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.

GFI’s scitech (science and technology) program focuses on promoting the commercialization of alternatives to animal products. In the past 18 months, GFI has produced analyses of the technical landscape for animal product alternatives as well as market research, and they have provided support to entrepreneurs and investors. They have also engaged students through presentations and local groups at universities and mobilized funding for 35 projects through their research grants program.

Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of GFI’s work toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement seems slightly higher than 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 2019.³¹ For charities that operate in more than one country, we consider how they have expanded internationally.

Overview

GFI was founded in October 2015 and officially launched in February 2016. As a relatively young organization, they have a short track record of success overall. They have been working on all of their current programs (Policy, Corporate Engagement, Science and Technology, and International Engagement) for four years. They have a strong track record of success in increasing research for the development of alternatives to animal-based products, especially for the past couple of years since they launched their research granting program. They also have a strong track record of success in legislative and policy advocacy as well as engaging with companies to promote animal product alternatives.

Key Results Prior to 2019³²

Below is a summary of GFI’s programs’ key results prior to 2019. These results were reported to us by GFI, and we were not able to corroborate all their reports.³³ 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 The Good Food Institute (2020d).

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

International Expansion

We think that expanding internationally can be a way for effective charities to increase their impact. By introducing effective programs into countries where similar work is not being done—or where similar work is being implemented relatively ineffectively—those charities can expand their audience and impact. That said, international expansion needs to be handled thoughtfully; in addition to the strategic value of expanding to a new country, charities should consider the linguistic, social, political, economic, and cultural factors that could pose challenges. We think that charities should work carefully with local activists³⁷ during any expansions and that organizations founded in Western countries should consider the historical effects of colonialism in their expansion to non-Western countries.

GFI was founded in the U.S. in 2016. They expanded to Brazil and India in 2017, Asia Pacific (Singapore and Hong Kong) in 2018, and Europe and Israel in 2019. They selected the regions to expand to based on the presence of universities that they believed were the best candidates for pushing forward plant-based and cell-cultured meat research, in addition to having local governments that they believed they could influence to adopt favorable regulations and fund research. They are currently evaluating whether the countries they are focused on are still high impact, and they expect that they may shift more resources into some neighboring countries, such as Canada, Japan, and Korea.

GFI reports that they use an “Objectives and Key Results” goal-setting framework. Within this framework, their subsidiaries, based on the unique opportunities and challenges in their region, independently set key results and actions necessary to meet GFI’s primary objectives.³⁸ The Managing Director of each subsidiary determines the annual strategic plan for their region and collaborates with their team to establish quarterly, annual, and long-term goals and action plans. GFI reports that the Managing Director and nearly all staff members of every subsidiary organization are native to and reside in the country or region. Note that most of GFI’s subsidiaries have independent boards, and in most cases GFI’s CEO and local Managing Director sit on the board of each organization. However, GFI reports that their subsidiaries are not financially self-sufficient; although they conduct fundraising in their own regions, they require funding from the U.S. office.³⁹

Overall, we think that GFI has been strategic in their international expansion, but they might have expanded too quickly to other countries; they expanded internationally in 2017, one year after their foundation. We are concerned that expanding too quickly can spread attention and resources too thin. Also, we are uncertain about the extent to which GFI considers the local context and has supported the local community. However, because of the independent structure of their subsidiaries, overall, we think that GFI has been thoughtful in their approach to international expansion.

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 resources policies and check that they include those we believe are important. We also send a culture survey to the staff of each charity.^{40, 41}

Key Leadership

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

Leadership staff

• Executive Director (ED): Bruce Friedrich, involved in the organization for 5 years
• Chief of Staff & Acting Director of Communications: Sanah Baig, involved in the organization for 2 years
• Director of Policy: Jessica Almy, involved in the organization for 3 years
• Director of Corporate Engagement: Caroline Bushnell, involved in the organization for 2 years
• Director of Science and Technology: David Welch, involved in the organization for 3 years
• General Counsel and Director of Administration: Sarah David, involved in the organization for one year
• Director of Development: Susan Halteman, involved in the organization for one year
• Director of Communications: Shelia Voss, involved in the organization for less than a year

All respondents to our culture survey agreed that GFI’s leadership is attentive to the organization’s strategy. In comments, respondents emphasized that their leadership frequently considers strategy, and there is a large organizational focus on impact. Most respondents agreed that their leadership promotes external transparency (96%) and internal transparency (94%). Some respondents commented that GFI has been improving internal transparency.

Recent leadership transitions

GFI did not have a transition in leadership recently; their current ED, Bruce Friedrich, has been in the position since GFI’s foundation.

Board of Directors

GFI’s Board of Directors consists of five members, including ED Bruce Friedrich. We think that the ED being part of the board can restrict 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 GFI’s Board of Directors

• Stewart David (Board Chair): retired Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Director of GFI’s audit committee
• Vandhana Balasubramanian: attorney and social justice advocate
• Kathy Freston: New York Times best-selling author
• Bruce Friedrich: Co-Founder and ED
• Cameron Icard: B.A. in economics and experience in corporate and nonprofit sectors

About 66% of respondents to our culture survey agreed that GFI’s board supports the organization in achieving its strategic vision. In comments, some respondents emphasized that they do not know. We believe that GFI would benefit from leadership clarifying with staff their governance structure, especially with regard to the role of the board.

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 performance⁴² and better internal and external governance practices,⁴³ as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision-making.⁴⁴ GFI’s board is composed of individuals with diverse occupational backgrounds and experiences. We consider the board’s relative occupational diversity to be a strength.

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 GFI 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 GFI’s leadership, their last team engagement survey suggests their organizational culture is supportive, kind, thoughtful, passionate, warm, funny, and optimistic.

The survey we distributed supports leadership’s claim that GFI’s culture is overall positive. Respondents noted in an open-response box that GFI is a great place to work, staff are intelligent and caring, and their work is impactful. A few common adjectives that respondents used to describe GFI’s communication style were “transparent,” “honest,” “supportive,” “kind,” “thorough,” “positive,” “inspirational,” or similar.

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

GFI has a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. Of the staff that responded to our survey, about 58% agreed with the statement that their compensation is adequate. We think GFI could benefit from revisiting their compensation plan to increase staff satisfaction. GFI offers paid time off at an established rate depending on tenure, 10 paid sick days, and paid personal days. About 96% of respondents agree that these paid benefits provided are sufficient. Some respondents mentioned that salaries are comparable to average for nonprofits and that staff could be earning more in the for-profit sector. GFI reports that employees have clearly defined essential functions for all positions and regularly evaluate performance. However, about 21% of respondents to our culture survey agree that the system of staff performance evaluation needs to be changed or improved upon. In comments, respondents mentioned that a new evaluation system has just been introduced.

GFI distributes multiple all-staff surveys annually to assess employee morale and satisfaction. They have identified the following areas for improvement: feedback culture, leadership team communications, professional development, and diversity and inclusion.

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

Representation/Diversity,⁴⁵ Equity, and Inclusion⁴⁶

One important part of acting responsibly toward stakeholders is providing a representative/diverse,⁴⁷ 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.

Among the staff that participated in our culture survey, 46% agree that GFI has members from diverse backgrounds. GFI made an effort to increase representation/diversity through their recruitment process by adopting different practices such as advertising vacancies on job boards targeting underrepresented communities, using explicit messaging to encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply, and determining job-relevant criteria before assessing applicants.

In our culture survey, some respondents mentioned that leadership could hire more diverse staff to be more inclusive or to better support staff who are members of marginalized groups.

GFI supports R/DEI through their human resources activities. GFI has a workplace code of ethics/conduct and a written statement that they do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other characteristics. GFI has a written procedure for filing complaints and explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment⁴⁸ or discrimination.⁴⁹ In our culture survey, 94% of respondents agreed that GFI protects staff, interns, and volunteers from harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and 98% agreed that they have someone to go to in case of harassment or other problems at work. However, our culture survey suggests that GFI’s staff experienced or witnessed some harassment or discrimination in the workplace during the past year, similarly to the average charity under review.⁵⁰ Since GFI’s staff seems to feel overall protected from harrassment and discrimination, and GFI seems to have in place systems to prevent and handle harrassment and discrimination in the workplace, we are not highly concerned about this finding.

GFI offers regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In our culture survey, 85% of staff agree that they and their colleagues have been sufficiently trained in matters of R/DEI. Respondents mentioned there is room for improvement in this area. We believe that the opportunities for the team to learn about R/DEI at GFI could be increased.

Overall, we believe that GFI is as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as 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

Excerpt from GFI’s strategic plan: “[M]ake a sustainable, healthy, and just food system the status quo”

Strategic Position in the Movement

We asked GFl how they see their organization’s work fitting into the overall animal advocacy movement. They report that they see their position as being the only global organization advocating for animals via changes in food technology. They see their work as complementary to organizations that focus more directly on attitude change toward animal agriculture.

Strategic Plan and Planning Process

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

Leadership staff’s role: Directors plan the strategies with their departments.

Board of directors’ role: The board reviews the long-term planning and strategic priorities of the organization.

Non-leadership staff’s role: Non-leadership staff are involved in planning for their departments and can give feedback on a preliminary version of the strategic plan as applied to all departments.

Contents of plan: GFI’s strategic plan includes some 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 theory of change. Additionally, they address their internal structure—e.g., culture—in their plan.

Goal Setting and Monitoring

GFI’s goals are set according to an adapted version of the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) goal management framework. Employees and teams set and document their goals on an annual basis. GFI’s goals are monitored quarterly, with teams grading their progress toward their annual goals on a given scale. GFI holds retrospective meetings—i.e., postmortems—following major projects, for which they use GFI’s Project Evaluation Template. The ED conducts an annual self-assessment. The board conducts a self-assessment every two years and annually conducts an independent review of their ED.

Our Assessment

Although GFI’s mission does not emphasize reducing suffering, it implies a transformation in the food system that will bring large benefits for farmed animals by shifting markets toward plant-based and cell-cultured meat. GFI’s mission also implies achieving benefits for other causes related to the food system, such as human health and environmental degradation, which can support the growth of the farmed animal advocacy movement as a whole. We think that they have a clear notion of how they fit into the wider animal advocacy movement.

We think GFI engages in strategic planning at appropriate intervals and ensures participation and periodic input from all levels of staff. That said, our impression of GFI’s strategic plan is that it serves more as a promotional document for potential donors rather than a basis for the strategy of the organization. While this strategic plan document is lacking in high-level strategy that connects their programs to their strategic vision, GFI includes this strategy in other areas, particularly their goal-setting and monitoring process, which appears to be particularly well designed, with goals being frequently monitored.

We believe that GFI has a strong approach to self-assessment. According to GFI, they work with consultancy Bain & Company on their new 3–5 year strategy and plan to engage in organizational development work in 2021. Overall, we think GFI’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 GFI has adapted to success and failure:

GFI reports that they made a number of changes to their organizational structure in 2019 as a response to having scaled up as an organization in the past years.⁵¹ They mentioned that they would like to improve the coordination of GFI in the U.S. with GFI in other countries, and, therefore, merged their international engagement and executive teams. Further, they mentioned that they eliminated their innovation department and transferred its main responsibilities for investor and start-up engagement, consumer research, and strategic planning to their scitech, corporate engagement, and executive teams.

GFI reports that corporations have benefitted from the results of market research and that such research attracts media attention. Therefore, consumer research at GFI recently shifted focus from original research toward more market research. GFI plans to work with external research companies for this.

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected GFI.⁵² They canceled their Good Food Conference in 2020, as well as other in-person events. GFI reports that they actively supported start-ups in handling the changes that come with the pandemic. They also increased their online presence and adapted their media outreach message to address the potential of alternative proteins to mitigate disease risks and to secure protein supply. Hiring at GFI was frozen for some months, and then both hiring and new staff training shifted from human resources (HR) oversight to department-by-department oversight. This reduced need for HR oversight caused GFI to eliminate four HR-related positions. GFI also reported on how they have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in a piece published on ACE’s blog.

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

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

2. We acknowledge that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted each charity’s programs in various ways. This impact is addressed in Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness. 

3. We consider an intervention to be weakly effective if we believe it is unlikely to have a positive impact on the relevant outcome. We consider an intervention to be moderately effective if we believe it has some positive impact on the relevant outcome, though relatively less than other interventions. We consider an intervention to be highly effective if we believe it has a clear positive impact on the relevant outcome.  

4. For arguments supporting the view that the most important consideration of our present actions should be their impact in the long term, see Greaves & MacAskill (2019) and Beckstead (2019). 

5. Chriki & Hocquette (2020) 

6. Animal Charity Evaluators (2020) 

7. GFI was founded in 2016. We show data for the last five years.  

8. The Good Food Institute (2020b) 

9. For further details, see our 2017 Giving Metrics Report, 2018 Giving Metrics Report, and 2019 Giving Metrics Report. At the time of writing this review, our 2020 Giving Metrics Report is not yet published.  

10. We do not list any expansions beyond what the charity itself plans to implement. We acknowledge that charities may differ in how ambitious their reported plans are independent of what they can realize. Such a difference in reporting could bias our estimates of the room for more funding. To counteract such a bias, we first ask all charities not only for the expansions they already planned for 2021, but also which expansions they would plan if their budget would increase by 50%—they reported these responses in The Good Food Institute (2020b). Second, we indicate our confidence in whether the charities’ expansion plans could actually be realized. We refer to our evaluation of the effectiveness of GFI’s programs for an assessment of the effectiveness of their planned expansions. 

11. For staff expenditure and any non-staff expenditure that is scalable with staff, we estimate confidence levels based on our researchers’ joint assessment of how feasible it is to hire a certain number of staff dependent on the organization’s current size. 

12. For estimating the salary of a given role, we used the following sources of information in order of priority: current and past job postings by that charity, current and past job postings by similar charities, seniority and type of job, average wages in the country of hire. 

13. The Good Food Institute (2020b) 

14. The Good Food Institute (2020d) 

15. The Good Food Institute (2020b) 

16. Note that our cost estimates for non-staff expansions account for the partial correlation between costs for new staff and non-staff costs that involve staff.  

17. The column shows 90% confidence intervals assuming normal distributions for all variables, except for potential additional expenditure, for which we assume a log-normal distribution.  

18. For staff expenditure and any non-staff expenditure that is scalable with staff, we indicate the proportion of the charity’s expansion plans that we are highly confident they’ll be able to achieve, the proportion we are moderately confident they’ll be able to achieve, and the proportion we have low confidence in. We generally have high confidence that reserves can be replenished if funds are available, and low confidence in the amount of unexpected expenditures the charity may have. 

19. Of these, 19 hires are planned in the U.S., three in Belgium, one in India, and 27 for global roles. 

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

21. We assume a linear trend in revenue. The estimates are based on a linear regression using GFI’s revenue data from 2016 to 2020. The revenue time series was smoothed out to account for large grants in the year they are disbursed rather than in the year they are received. In particular, we spread one two-year grant received in 2019 equally over 2019 and 2020. We also removed the large restricted donation of 2019 from the time series when making the forecast. Moreover, this yields a revenue of about $13M in 2020, which we use in the Guesstimate model. 

22. We hold the impression that most of the cell-cultured industry was against this rider. 

23. GFI considers this result part of their corporate engagement program instead of their policy program. 

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

25. Other groups have also reported involvement in this commitment, e.g., Animal Outlook (2019). 

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

27. This claim has been verified. 

28. This claim has been verified. 

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

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

31. For more recent achievements (2019–2020), see Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness. 

32. For more recent achievements (2019–2020), see Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness. 

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

34. See more GFI comments here. 

35. For the list of grant recipients, see The Good Food Institute (n.d.). 

36. For links to GFI publications, see The Good Food Institute (2020d). 

37. We recommend that charities refrain from taking a leading role in the countries they expand to and instead take on a more supportive role of the local community, e.g., by sharing skills and providing funding to local groups. 

38. The Good Food Institute (2020c) 

39. The Good Food Institute (2020c) 

40. We distributed our culture survey to GFI’s 61 team members and 57 responded, yielding a response rate of 93%.  

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

42. Siciliano (1996) 

43. Buse, Bernstein, & Bilimoria (2016) 

44. Brown (2003)  

45. ACE uses the term “representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI)” in place of the more commonly used “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).” While we acknowledge that the terms “diversity” and “DEI” are in the public lexicon, as the concepts have become popularized, “diversity” has lost the impact of its original meaning. The term is often conflated with “cosmetic diversity,” or diversity for the sake of public appearances. We believe that “representation” better expresses the commitment to accurately reflect—or represent—society’s demographics at large.  

46. Our goal in this section is to evaluate whether each charity has a healthy attitude toward representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion. We do not directly evaluate the demographic characteristics of their employees.  

47. We use the terms “representation” and “diversity” broadly in this section to refer to the diversity of certain social identity characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries), such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, or genetic information. 

48. In the culture survey we included the following definition of harassment: “Harassment can be non-sexual or sexual in nature. Non-sexual harassment refers to unwelcome conduct—including physical, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors—that upsets, demeans, humiliates, intimidates, or threatens an individual or group. Harassment may occur in one incident or many. Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual advances; requests for sexual favors; and other physical, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors of a sexual nature when (i) submission to such conduct is made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment; (ii) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting the targeted individual; or (iii) such conduct has the purpose or effect of interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.” 

49. In the culture survey we included the following definition of discrimination: “Discrimination is the differential treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries), such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, age, ability, genetic information, or any other factor that is legislatively protected in the country in which the individual works. ACE extends its definition of discrimination to include the differential treatment of or hostility toward anyone based on any characteristics outside of one’s professional qualifications—such as socioeconomic status, body size, dietary preferences, political views or affiliation, or other belief- or identity-based expression.” 

50. GFI leadership believes the witnessed harassment includes dietary discrimination toward non-vegans. GFI reports that they are working toward solving this issue.  

51. Good Food Institute (2020c) 

52. Good Food Institute (2020d) 

Research Documents

• GFI's Reporting of Programs (2020)
• GFI's Reporting of Financials (2020)
• GFI's Reporting of Leadership, Strategy, and Culture (2020)
• Reference List

• RFMF Model