The Humane League

How The Humane League Performs on our Criteria

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

Before investigating the particular implementation of a charity’s programs, we consider their overall approach to animal advocacy in terms of the cause(s) they advance and the types of outcomes they achieve. In particular, we consider whether they’ve chosen to pursue approaches that seem likely to produce significant positive change for animals—both in the near and long term.

Cause Area

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

Types of Outcomes Achieved

To better understand the potential impact of a charity’s programs, we’ve developed a menu of outcomes that describes five avenues for change: influencing public opinion, capacity building, influencing industry, building alliances, and influencing policy and the law.

THL pursues many different avenues for creating change for animals: they work to influence public opinion, build the capacity of the movement, influence industry, and influence policy and the law. Pursuing multiple avenues for change allows a charity to better learn about which areas are more effective so that they will be in a better position to allocate more resources where they may be most 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 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 and/or uncertain effects.

Influencing Public Opinion

THL works to influence individuals to adopt more animal-friendly attitudes and behaviors through media outreach and grassroots legislative advocacy, which we view as especially promising approaches.¹ While it is difficult to measure incremental changes in public opinion—and, consequently, difficult to know when an intervention is more or less successful—we still think it’s important for the animal advocacy movement to target some outreach toward individuals. This is because a shift in public attitudes and consumer preferences could help drive industry changes and lead to greater support for more animal-friendly policies. However, we find that efforts to influence public opinion seem much less neglected than other categories of interventions in the United States.² While we do not have direct evidence for the situation outside the U.S., we would expect it to be broadly similar to the U.S.

A large amount of THL’s work to influence public opinion is through grassroots outreach. They have grassroots staff in 12 cities in the U.S. as well as in Mexico and the U.K.³ They pursue many methods of influencing public opinion, including tabling events with virtual reality (VR) headsets, organizing events with guest speakers and films, organizing food and activity-based meetups, communicating with the press, conducting online outreach through ads, videos, and a new website, which aims to make a transition to a plant-based diet easier,⁴ and distributing leaflets.⁵ We’re unsure about the impact of many of these efforts to influence public opinion (such as leafleting, which we estimate may be less cost effective at creating short-term impact than some other interventions). While our 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report failed to find compelling randomized controlled trial evidence for its short-term impact, leafleting may still serve other, more long-term purposes—such as general awareness raising, contributing to gradual changes in perspective and habits,⁶ and providing an easy way for some people to get involved in animal activism.

Capacity Building

We see THL’s recruitment on college campuses, activist trainings, and animal advocacy research as especially effective forms of capacity building.⁷ Working to build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement can have far-reaching impact. While capacity-building projects may not always help animals directly, they can help animals indirectly by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations. Our recent research on the way that resources are allocated between different animal advocacy interventions suggests that capacity building is currently relatively neglected compared to other outcomes, such as influencing public opinion and industry.

THL works to build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement internationally as well as in the U.S. They share their knowledge and experience with other groups to improve corporate outreach strategy abroad, particularly through the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), which they founded. In addition to sharing strategy and offering training, THL also helps OWA member organizations around the world to grow through a grant program.⁸ In 2018, the OWA held its second annual global summit, with participants from animal advocacy organizations from a reported 43 countries coming together to share training, strategy, and tactics.⁹

Another way in which THL builds the capacity of the movement is by recruiting, mobilizing and training activists.¹⁰ Through outreach events, education, protests, and work parties, THL works to help build effective animal advocacy skills among activists to strengthen the capacity of the movement.¹¹ THL also trains advocates through their National Volunteer Program as well as on college campuses through their Campus Outreach Program. The National Volunteer Program allows them to train and support remote activists, who can then be more effectively mobilized in areas where THL doesn’t have staff. The Campus Outreach Program provides training and leadership development for college students with a goal of helping them create self-sustaining animal advocacy clubs on campus. Since these student activists may develop valuable skills and continue working in the animal advocacy movement in the long term, we believe that campus organizing is a potentially high-impact intervention.

THL has continued to expand their research division, Humane League Labs, which is conducting research on online engagement, diet change, and the economics of animal advocacy; we believe this may help animal advocates increase their impact.¹² Because the field of animal advocacy research is young and could potentially yield strategies that would improve the efficacy of work in these areas, we consider this research to have significant capacity-building potential. Such research can play a pivotal role in how successful a movement can be. A group might expertly carry out a particular intervention, but if that intervention isn’t effective (or if it has negative effects), then the group is not as impactful as they could be. They may even unintentionally cause net harm. By investigating the effectiveness of interventions and publishing their findings, THL may be able to increase the impact of advocacy groups. If THL’s findings inform other groups’ work, they may over time achieve quite a high impact for a low cost.

Influencing Industry

THL works with corporations to adopt better animal welfare policies and to ban particularly cruel practices in the animal agriculture industry. Though the long-term effects of corporate outreach are yet to be seen, we believe that these interventions have a high potential to be impactful when implemented thoughtfully.¹³

THL works to get corporations to implement welfare reforms through large, nationwide pressure campaigns. They have been able to utilize their large grassroots network of volunteers in conjunction with their staff in grassroots offices around the country to apply coordinated pressure through protests, media, and petitions against corporations such as Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr.,¹⁴ and McDonald’s¹⁵ for buying chickens who are bred and killed in particularly cruel conditions. THL also works around the world to achieve cage-free commitments and has been successful with some of the largest food companies in the U.S., the U.K., Japan, and Latin America.¹⁶ Through their support of the OWA and in collaboration with other advocacy groups around the world, they have helped achieve cage-free commitments in more countries than one charity could feasibly operate.¹⁷ THL has also started working on similar campaigns for chickens raised for meat and they have recently secured commitments from some of the largest producers in the U.S. and abroad.¹⁸

Influencing Policy and the Law

THL works to encode animal welfare protections into law through grassroots legislative advocacy, which we think may be especially effective at creating change.¹⁹ We think that encoding protections for animals into the law is a key component in 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.

THL previously worked to support the successful passage of legislation on confinement practices in Massachusetts²⁰ and, at the time of this writing, they are working to support the Prevent Cruelty California initiative by helping collect signatures to get Proposition 12 on the ballot. They are currently planning “get out the vote” activities to support its passage.²¹ We think that legislative changes to improve welfare are likely to have an impact on a large number of animals, and are more likely to be followed through on than similar corporate campaigns.

Long-Term Impact

Though there is significant uncertainty regarding the impact of interventions in the long term, each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.²² The potential number of individuals affected by a charity increases over time due to both human and animal population growth, as well as an accumulation of generations of animals. The power of animal charities to effect change could be greater in the future if we consider their potential growth as well as potential long-term value shifts—for example, present actions leading to growth in the movement’s resources, to a more receptive public, or to different economic conditions could all potentially lead to a greater magnitude of impact over time than anything that could be accomplished at present.

Predictions about the long-term impact of any intervention are always extremely uncertain, because the effects of an intervention vary with context and are interdependent with concurrent interventions—with neither of these interactions being constant over time.²³ When estimating the long-term impact of a charity’s actions, we consider the context in which they occur and how they fit into the overall movement. Barring any strong evidence to the contrary, we think the long-term impact of most animal advocacy interventions will be net positive. Still, the comparative effects of one intervention versus another are not well understood.²⁴ Because of the difficulties in forecasting long-term impact, we do not put significant weight on our predictions.

In the long term, one promising aspect of THL’s work is their emphasis on supporting the animal advocacy movement by cooperating with other charities.²⁵ This year, they introduced a more formal strategic planning process that includes setting goals, metrics, and plans for assessment.²⁶ If this improves the efficiency and success of their operation, it could have important long-term impacts. THL’s National Volunteer program, Campus Outreach program, and their work with the OWA have the potential to grow the animal rights movement by bringing in new people and by helping smaller organizations to grow. The long-term impact of some of this work, such as getting corporations to commit to welfare reforms in the future, remains to be seen —since we don’t know how well corporations will comply, how much work enforcement will take, or how public opinion will be affected.

We’re generally optimistic that obtaining corporate welfare commitments will lead to improvements in welfare in the long term,²⁷ reduce consumption of animal products via price increases,²⁸ and raise awareness of the terrible welfare conditions on factory farms.²⁹ However, some evidence suggests that welfare will not be significantly improved in cage-free systems and that in some ways the situation for hens may be worse, particularly in the transition from caged systems to cage-free systems.^{30, 31} Some animal advocates worry that marketing eggs and other animal products as “humane” may obscure the suffering and exploitation these purchases support. For some consumers, this may contribute to a belief that animals aren’t harmed in the production of “humane” products, which, some argue, could make subsequent efforts to reduce consumption of animal products more challenging.^{32, 33}

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

In order to 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. Specifically, we need to consider whether there may be non-monetary “bottlenecks,” or barriers to the charity’s growth. First, we look at the charity’s recent financial history to see how they have dealt with growth over time and how effectively they have been able to utilize past increases in funding. Next, we evaluate the charity’s room for more funding by considering existing programs that need additional funding in order to fulfill their purpose, as well as potential new programs and areas for growth. It is important to determine whether any barriers limiting progress in these areas are solely monetary, or whether there are other inhibiting 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, our estimate is speculative, not definitive. It’s possible that a charity could run out of room for more funding sooner than we expect, or come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we have suggested. Our estimates are intended to indicate the point at which we would want to check in with a charity to ensure that they have used the funds they have received effectively and are still able to absorb additional funding.

Recent Financial History

Last year, we estimated that THL could use an additional $600,000 to $4 million³⁴ in funding above their estimated 2017 budget of $4.5 million. THL has seen large increases in their revenue over the past couple of years, due in part to several large grants from The Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil)³⁵ alongside some other large donations.³⁶ This has allowed them to expand significantly, both in the U.S. and internationally.

The chart below shows THL’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures.³⁷

Planned Future Expenses

While grassroots work still forms a large part of THL’s strategy, they have been shifting their strategy for expansion from opening local grassroots offices towards increased investment in their National Volunteer Program.³⁸ Similarly, THL is continuing to expand their international work without opening additional offices abroad and instead partnering with other organizations through the OWA.³⁹ With each of these shifts comes a need for more administrative level staff. THL is also planning to hire additional staff, including a second lawyer, a media person, and a few additional Web Developers.⁴⁰ THL’s research division, Humane League Labs, is currently hiring for a Research Associate to expand some work on diet change and the economics of animal advocacy.

Assessing Funding Priority of Future Expenses

A charity may have room for more funding in many areas, and each area will likely vary in its potential cost effectiveness. In addition to evaluating a charity’s planned future expenses, we consider the potential impact and relative cost effectiveness of filling different funding gaps. This helps us evaluate whether the marginal cost effectiveness of donating to a charity would differ from the charity’s average cost effectiveness from the past year. We break down the total room for more funding into three priority levels, as follows:

High Priority Funding Gaps

Our highest priority is funding activities or programs that we think are likely to create longer-term impact in a cost-effective way, as well as programs which we have relatively strong reasons to believe will have a highly positive short- or medium-term direct impact in a cost-effective way.⁴¹

As described in Criterion 1, THL has a number of programs that we consider promising, including campus outreach, their work with the OWA, research, activist trainings, legislative campaigns, and corporate welfare campaigns. Of these programs, we estimate they could effectively use the largest increases in funding for their work with the OWA.⁴² In terms of staffing, THL reported a need for additional legal, media, web-development, and corporate outreach staff.⁴³ We agree with their assessment that they could benefit from staff increases in these areas and we think they have the potential to build the capacity of the organization and increase the impact of some of their promising programs. Following a market analysis of salaries, THL is planning to increase salaries to be more competitive—if THL is able to increase their salaries, this may help them to compete with the for-profit sector to attract and retain the most highly skilled staff.⁴⁴ We estimate that THL has a high priority funding gap of $1.7 million–$3.6 million for 2019.^{45, 46, 47}

Moderate Priority Funding Gaps

It is of moderate priority for us to fund programs which we believe to be of relatively moderate marginal cost effectiveness.

Based on THL’s spending for the first six months of 2018, we estimate that their expenses for online outreach will have increased about 21% in 2018 over their expenses for 2017. We used this growth rate along with a consideration of possible staffing increases to estimate that THL has a moderate priority funding gap of $170,000–$850,000 for 2019.⁴⁸

Low Priority Funding Gaps

It is of low priority for us to fund programs which we believe to be of relatively lower marginal cost effectiveness, or to replenish cash reserves. Because it is likely that there may be future expenditures we haven’t thought of, we also include in this category an estimate of possible additional expenditures (based on a percentage of the charity’s current yearly budget).

THL did not express any plans to expand leafleting so we don’t anticipate a significant expansion of this program in 2019. We considered this along with a range of 1%–20% of their projected 2018 expenses to estimate that THL has a low priority funding gap of $150,000–$1.7 million for 2019.⁴⁹

The chart below shows the distribution of THL’s gaps in funding among the three priorities:⁵⁰

After years of rapid growth, THL has put into place additional structures—such as an expanded development staff and a financial manager—in order to be able to sustain further growth.⁵¹ While acknowledging a limit to the amount of additional funding they could use within their own organization, THL reports that they could potentially put to effective use a larger sum through their granting program with the OWA.⁵² THL aims to raise around $8 million in 2018⁵³ and $8.9 million in 2019.⁵⁴ We estimate that next year they have a total funding gap of approximately $350,000 to $5.3 million,⁵⁵ and that they could effectively put to use a total revenue of $10.1 million–$13.4 million.⁵⁶

Criterion 3: Does the charity operate cost-effectively, according to our best estimates?

THL runs several programs; we estimate cost effectiveness separately for a number of these programs, and then combine our estimates to give a composite estimate of THL’s overall cost effectiveness.⁵⁷ We generally present our estimates as 90% subjective confidence intervals. We think that this quantitative perspective is a useful component of our overall evaluation because we find quantitative models of cost effectiveness to be:

• One of the best methods we know for identifying cost-effective interventions⁵⁸
• Useful for making direct comparisons between different charities or different interventions⁵⁹
• Useful for providing a foundation for more informative cost-effectiveness models in the future
• Helpful for increasing our transparency⁶⁰

That said, the estimates of equivalent animals spared per dollar should not be taken as our overall opinion of the charity’s effectiveness. We do not account for some programs that have less quantifiable kinds of impact in this section, leaving them for our qualitative evaluation. For programs that we do include in our quantitative models, our cost-effectiveness estimates are highly uncertain approximations of some of their short-term costs and short- to medium-term benefits. As we have excluded more indirect or long-term impacts, we may underestimate the overall impact. There is a very limited amount of evidence pertaining to the effects of many common animal advocacy interventions, which means that in some cases we have mainly used our judgment to assign quantitative values to parameters.

We are concerned that readers may think we have a higher degree of confidence in this cost-effectiveness estimate than we actually do. To be clear, this is a very tentative cost-effectiveness estimate. It plays only a limited role in our overall evaluation of which charities and interventions are most effective.⁶¹

Corporate Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 THL will spend about 43% of their budget, or $2.8 million, on corporate outreach.⁶² This results in some companies adopting new policies, and these likely result in reduced suffering for animals. We estimate that THL’s corporate campaigns will help cause 56–90 policy changes, affecting 10–320 million laying hens and broiler chickens each year.⁶³

Individual Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 THL will spend about 32% of their budget, or $2.1 million, on individual outreach.⁶⁴ This will include 400,000–650,000 leaflets being distributed, and 4,500–7,000 people being given humane education presentations.⁶⁵

Online Ads

We estimate that in 2018 THL will spend about 13% of their budget, or $870,000, on online ads.⁶⁶ The ads are placed on Facebook, and clicks lead viewers to pro-veg and pro-animal content. We estimate that they’ll get 20 million–32 million clicks on their ads in 2018, at a rate of 20–40 clicks per dollar.⁶⁷

Communications

We estimate that in 2018 THL will spend about 10% of their budget, or $680,000, on communications.⁶⁸ We estimate this will result in 45 million–65 million engagements with their social media, and 350–450 features in other forms of media, globally.⁶⁹

Research

We estimate that in 2018 THL will spend about 2% of their budget, or $150,000, on their research program Humane League Labs.⁷⁰

Budget Changes Since 2017

The following chart shows the ways in which THL’s budget size and allocation has changed since 2017.

All Activities Combined

To combine these estimates into one overall cost-effectiveness estimate, we translate them into comparable units. This introduces several possible sources of error and imprecision. The resulting estimate should not be taken literally—it is a rough estimate, and not a precise calculation of cost effectiveness.⁷¹ However, it still provides some useful information about whether THL’s efforts are comparable in cost effectiveness to other charities’.⁷²

We use our leafleting cost-effectiveness estimate and some aggregated staff estimates to estimate that THL spares between -2 and 0.2 animals from life on a farm per dollar spent on individual outreach, and -0.2 and 0.2 animals from life on a farm per dollar spent on online ads.^{73, 74} Even though the range estimated for individual outreach extends further into negative values than positive values, we think that overall the impact of THL’s individual outreach is more likely net positive for animals.⁷⁵

We consider multiple factors⁷⁶ to estimate that THL spares an equivalent of between -10 and 40 animals per dollar spent on corporate outreach.^{77, 78}

We exclude social media and research results from our final cost-effectiveness estimates and don’t attempt to convert them into an equivalent animals spared figure; our estimates for the number of animals this may impact were too speculative to include here.

We weight our estimates by the proportion of funding THL spends on each activity; overall, we estimate that in the short term—after excluding the effects of some of their programs—THL spares between -6 and 13 farmed animals per dollar spent.^{79, 80} This equates to between -2 and 7 years of farmed animal life spared⁸¹ per dollar spent.^{82, 83, 84} Because of extreme uncertainty about even the strongest parts of our calculations, we feel that there is currently limited value in discussing these estimates further. Instead, we give weight to our other criteria.

Criterion 4: Does the charity possess a strong track record of success?

To evaluate a charity’s track record, we consider how well the charity has executed previous programs. We also consider the extent to which these previous programs caused positive changes for animals. Information about a charity’s track record helps us predict the charity’s future activities and accomplishments—information that cannot always be incorporated into the criteria above. An organization’s track record can be a pivotal factor when our analysis otherwise finds limited differences in other important factors.

Have programs been well executed?

THL was founded in 2005 and has engaged in their current programs for several years. They have undergone substantial growth in recent years, and a lot of their major successes have occurred more recently. They have a substantial track record of carrying out their programs, working with OWA partners, and training new staff.

Their most successful campaigns over the last few years have been in corporate outreach, particularly their cage-free campaigns. In 2016, after significantly expanding their campaign staff, THL reported their efforts contributed to over 100 cage-free commitments from dining companies, restaurants, manufacturers, and retailers in the United States.⁸⁵ They also started work on improving broiler welfare in 2017, and now report obtaining at least six commitments in 2016 and 45 commitments in 2017.⁸⁶ They are currently focusing on attempting to get a commitment from McDonald’s.⁸⁷ Their recent expansion into the U.K. and Mexico has also led to several cage-free commitments being made,⁸⁸ and we think it’s likely they’ll achieve the same for Japan over the coming years. THL reports that the’ve made more progress in the U.K. than they expected they would.⁸⁹ They also report that the OWA has had success in terms of convincing 10 of the world’s 15 largest egg-purchasing manufacturers to produce cage-free policies.⁹⁰

THL’s corporate outreach program contributed to a major achievement in 2016: they played a part in United Egg Producers (UEP) pledging to eliminate the practice of culling male chicks.^{91, 92} Note that this welfare reform might have happened without animal advocacy involvement if it had proven to be cost-effective for egg producers. There is room for concern over the pledge’s wording, specifically as it requires implementation “by 2020 or as soon as it is commercially available and technologically feasible.” The language seems open to interpretation and may be easy for UEP to circumvent.⁹³ That said, it’s our view that the threat of a campaign gives THL significant leverage to demand that UEP replace culling with in ovo sexing, even if it proves to be more expensive.

In late 2016, THL launched the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), an international coalition of organizations aiming to end cage confinement practices globally.^{94, 95} THL provides support to members both with training and tactics intended to assist them in launching campaigns in their own countries, and by issuing grants to member organizations.⁹⁶ The OWA enables campaigns that simultaneously target international corporations in many of the countries where they operate. These campaigns have resulted in commitments from tens of corporations, many of which operate in hundreds of countries.⁹⁷ THL is directly responsible for the creation of the OWA, and without their organizational capability and experience in campaigning, the OWA would likely not have seen the success it has.⁹⁸

THL continues to engage in grassroots outreach, particularly on college campuses.⁹⁹ They conduct humane education and recruit and train student interns and campus coordinators. They will be taking on 58 students in 2018 to train at a summer retreat.¹⁰⁰ In 2017, THL reported that their volunteers and staff distributed over a million leaflets or veg starter guides,¹⁰¹ and that they trained over 700 individuals through an effective activism presentation, amongst other activities.¹⁰² They have also increased the numbers of their online volunteers through their Fast Action Network, increasing from about 7,000 members in 2017¹⁰³ to over 11,000 in 2018.¹⁰⁴ Finally, THL reports that tens of millions of people were exposed to factory farm footage as a result of their online outreach.¹⁰⁵

Have programs led to change for animals?

The commitments made due to THL’s corporate outreach campaigns will likely affect a large number of animals if they are implemented. As these commitments are not legally binding, it will be especially important to follow up with companies to ensure they are adhered to. THL has begun following up with companies, and they are working with Mercy For Animals to produce a shared database of commitments.¹⁰⁶ They believe that ensuring corporate pledges are enforced will be a major project for them in coming years, and they plan to carry it out in part by running campaigns against companies that renege on their commitments.¹⁰⁷ Since several of the commitments obtained by THL have deadlines in the early-to-mid 2020s, we may soon have a better understanding of how many companies meet their deadlines. We estimate that their corporate policy victories will reduce the suffering of 10–320 million laying hens and broiler chickens each year once they have been implemented.¹⁰⁸

While THL’s direct impact cannot be tracked in campaigns co-led with other organizations, we think they have had enough successes attributable solely to their own impetus that we are confident their corporate campaign program is operating successfully. They conducted many of their cage-free campaigns either independently or in a leadership role, and United Egg Producers’ pledge to end chick culling was made after “exclusive conversations with The Humane League.”¹⁰⁹ THL’s role as the organizer and leader of the OWA has allowed them to extend their success further by improving the effectiveness of organizations operating in different regions from them, which we consider to be evidence of the significant impact they have had in the movement.¹¹⁰

Many of THL’s programs attempt to influence individual behavior, and the impact of these is difficult to measure. Included in this category are online ads, leafleting and other literature distribution, and humane education. Humane League Labs’ studies may also work to inform the movement as a whole about how effective these interventions are; however, there have been concerns over the quality of their past research,^{111, 112} and thus their effect on improving THL and other organizations’ work is uncertain.

Research so far suggests that some of these non-HLL activities have a positive effect, although we remain uncertain as to the effects of leafleting.¹¹³ Our 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report indicated that leaflets seem relatively ineffective; we estimate that, in the short term, they produce a near-zero expected change in years of farmed animal lives averted per dollar. Therefore, the many leaflets THL has handed out could have quite limited impact on animals. We expect that online ads may be more effective, and we’re uncertain about the effectiveness of humane education relative to leaflets. However, such outreach could have helped bring about institutional change and could have been an important part of building the farmed animal advocacy movement to what it is today.

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

A charity that has systems in place for assessing their programs is better equipped to move towards their goals effectively. By conducting self-assessments, a charity can retain and strengthen successful programs, and modify or end those that are less successful. When such systems of improvement work well, many stakeholders benefit: benefactors are inclined to be more trusting and more generous, leadership is able to refine their strategy for achieving their goals, and nonhuman animals benefit more.

To evaluate how well the charity adapts to successes and failures, we consider: (i) how the charity has assessed their past programs and (ii) the extent to which the charity updates their programs in light of those assessments.

Does the charity actively assess areas of success and failure?

THL appears to have a strong commitment to recognizing and responding to success and failure. They set specific and relevant goals, evaluate their programs based on research, and have made changes based on these assessments.

For each of their campaigns, THL judges success by considering a list of relevant, concrete goals.¹¹⁴ They also appear to have an organizational commitment to SMART goals.¹¹⁵ THL reports that they set time-bound goals for smaller-scale outcomes and individual projects,¹¹⁶ such as their 2018 goal to have 38 new broiler welfare policies secured in the U.S. and U.K.¹¹⁷ In addition to being time-bound, they are relevant to THL’s overall mission, fairly specific and measurable, and appear plausibly achievable based on the success of U.S. cage-free campaigns.¹¹⁸ THL has previously shared some short-term goals for their programs in Mexico,¹¹⁹ which are similarly designed but also include milestones indicating what THL believes to be meaningful increments of success.¹²⁰ These milestones allow THL to better measure partial success at achieving their goals.

THL’s operation of Humane League Labs (HLL) in particular suggests a commitment to evaluating effectiveness. In 2016, HLL released a statement of their commitments, including a commitment to improved research practices and to revising and reanalyzing their research. They recently completed reanalyses of several past studies they conducted in previous years,¹²¹ with a priority on those that have drawn public interest, including criticism.¹²² As the latest iteration of HLL has a short track record, it makes it difficult to predict the extent to which they will provide high-quality, relevant research in the future. Nonetheless, we are encouraged to see HLL commit to strong research principles and revisit past work in light of these principles. In the past, HLL seemed to have difficulty releasing their findings on their planned schedule—findings that also drew some criticism.^{123, 124} THL recently hired an economist to work with HLL,¹²⁵ and they are also in the process of hiring a Research Associate. We hope that these new hiring developments will help them to achieve the high-quality research they have been preparing for.

THL’s recent actions and plans to hire more HLL staff suggest that they are currently more willing to put more resources towards HLL. However, the willingness to do so is only valuable insofar as there is high-quality research to learn from.

Still, we are encouraged to see that HLL recently began setting more specific timelines for their research projects as their plans have become more developed.¹²⁶ HLL appears to have changed considerably in the past couple of years, and their current work includes two highly relevant research projects.¹²⁷ One of these two projects aims to look at consumption changes in response to a combination of individual outreach interventions. Past studies of individual outreach effects have generally relied on self-reported consumption—which is likely to be somewhat inaccurate¹²⁸—and HLL aims to achieve substantially greater statistical power relative to previous studies of individual outreach methods.¹²⁹ This suggests that THL intends to use research from HLL to better understand the effectiveness of some farmed animal advocacy interventions. In fact, THL tells us that they plan to take this study’s results into account when deciding how much to spend on individual outreach.¹³⁰ Overall, we are encouraged that THL makes a concerted effort to assess and understand their impact, and believe that they will be willing to shift their focus appropriately upon learning more about the effectiveness of different types of advocacy techniques.

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

We are aware of several recent cases in which THL has changed their programming in response to indicators of success and failure. Because of a lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of leafleting, THL reports they have focused more of their grassroots efforts on institutional campaigns.¹³¹ On a smaller scale, they have changed their approach to several programs—such as their cage-free corporate campaigns in Mexico—based on evidence that their original approach was not succeeding.¹³² Since movement-building seems to be valuable for whichever other advocacy efforts turn out to be effective, they are also putting more attention towards evaluating and improving their volunteer programs’ effect on getting people engaged in the animal advocacy movement.¹³³ To that end, they tell us that they are working to track their volunteers’ commitment to and level of activity with THL in a more quantitative way.¹³⁴

They tell us that they are flexible and ready to shift strategies if needed. For example, if corporations don’t implement promised reforms and enforcement campaigns aren’t successful, THL may need to shift towards a legal approach to ensure enforcement.¹³⁵

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

A charity is most likely to be effective if it has a well-developed strategic vision and strong leadership who can implement that vision. Given ACE’s commitment to finding the most effective ways to help nonhuman animals, we generally look for charities whose direction and strategic vision are aligned with that goal. A well-developed strategic vision must be realistic to manage and execute. It is likely the result of well-run, formal strategic planning; when a charity’s leaders regularly engage in a reflective strategic planning process, revisions and improvements to the charity’s strategic vision are likely to follow.

Does the charity have strong leadership and a well-composed board?

David Coman-Hidy has been the President of THL since 2013 and has overseen its significant expansion in the U.S. and internationally. Our impression is that Coman-Hidy is a capable leader and that he has surrounded himself with equally capable colleagues, such as Executive Vice President Andrea Gunn.

THL’s board includes Mark Middleton (chair), who works in the technology industry; Denise Tremblay, a retired university financial manager; and Lydia Chaudhry, who served in a volunteer role as THL’s operations support and volunteer coordinator since 2009 but stepped down in early 2016. Recently, THL has brought on a fourth Board Member: Neysa Colizzi, who has a background in training, facilitating, and corporate consulting. THL is currently seeking a fifth Board Member.¹³⁶

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.¹³⁷ 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. We think THL’s four-person board—including one person with a long history at the organization—is a minor cause for concern.

THL’s board does not have term limits. We have at times been concerned that the relatively stable composition of THL’s board could prevent the organization from adapting, or could fail to meet the needs of the organization as it grows.^{138, 139} Moreover, a long-standing board can also have benefits—such as avoiding drifting from the core organizational values.

THL’s board appears to have a reasonable amount of occupational diversity. 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 some literature indicating that team diversity generally improves performance.¹⁴⁰ However, to our knowledge, the evidence of the impact of board diversity on organizational performance is less strong than the evidence of the impact of team diversity.¹⁴¹

The board is most involved in the budget-setting process, although THL’s President also meets with them three times a year to discuss the organization’s current status.¹⁴² In the annual budget-setting process, THL’s board establishes major goals and plans for the next year and allocates resources for accomplishing those goals.¹⁴³

Does the charity have a well-developed strategic vision?

Does the charity regularly engage in a strategic planning process?

In previous years, THL’s strategic planning process was fairly informal. Their leadership team met in person every few months to discuss their progress and their plans for the next few months.¹⁴⁴ This year, however, THL has taken a more formal approach to strategic planning. In addition to their three-year plan, THL’s leadership team worked with consultants to draft a formal strategic document with quarterly goals and subgoals for each department, along with metrics intended to measure progress.¹⁴⁵ They plan to review their progress quarterly and revise their plans semi-annually.¹⁴⁶

Does the charity have a realistic strategic vision that emphasizes effectively reducing suffering?

THL has told us that their mission is to end the abuse of animals raised for food.¹⁴⁷ They have also told us that their “endgame” is to encode animal protections into law.¹⁴⁸ THL’s efforts to self-evaluate and respond to evidence also indicate a commitment to effectiveness.¹⁴⁹ Given their mission and their history of conducting evidence-supported interventions, we expect THL to remain committed to effectively helping animals.

Does the charity’s strategy support the growth of the animal advocacy movement as a whole?

THL aims to bring their resources and expertise to animal advocates in many countries, particularly those where the movement is relatively small. Through the OWA, they have shared tools with and trained advocates at many organizations, and provided grants and support to individual advocates in countries with few animal advocacy organizations.¹⁵⁰ They have developed resources that they share freely with OWA member organizations, including a corporate outreach campaign manual and a guide to pressure campaigns.¹⁵¹

THL also pursues grassroots efforts that build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement. These efforts include their campus leadership program, their volunteer and intern programs in cities with grassroots offices,¹⁵² and their National Volunteer Program.¹⁵³ They see these programs as a way for THL to contribute to the long-term growth of the movement, rather than just a way to grow their own organization.¹⁵⁴ THL has also told us that they aim to have their corporate outreach campaigns complement those of other organizations, and they have worked to coordinate their campaigns with other organizations’ campaigns in the past.¹⁵⁵

Overall, THL carries out a number of programs which seem likely to support the growth of the animal advocacy movement in meaningful ways.

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

Effective charities are generally well-managed on an operational level; they should have healthy cultures and sustainable structures. We collect information about each charity’s internal operations in several ways. We ask leadership about their human resources policies and their perceptions of staff morale. We also speak confidentially with non-leadership staff or volunteers at each charity to solicit their perspectives on the charity’s management and culture.¹⁵⁶ Additionally, we distributed a culture survey to most of the charities we evaluated in 2018, though we give charities the option of sending us the results of a recent internal survey instead of using the one we provide. THL elected to send us a summary of the results from the survey they distributed to their staff between late March and early April of 2018.¹⁵⁷

Does the charity have a healthy culture?

A charity with a healthy culture acts responsibly towards all stakeholders: staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, and others in the community. One important part of acting responsibly towards stakeholders is protecting employees from instances of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Charities that have a healthy attitude towards diversity and inclusion seek and retain staff and volunteers from different backgrounds, since varied points of view improve a charity’s ability to respond to new situations.¹⁵⁸ A healthy charity is transparent with donors, staff, and the general public and acts with integrity; in other words, their professed values align with their actions.

THL seems to invest heavily in their culture; they have a culture committee, a staff “Culture and Engagement Specialist,” and they regularly distribute surveys to their employees and make changes based on the feedback they receive. Our impression is that THL’s culture is generally friendly and comfortable.

As we noted in our 2017 review of THL, we think that THL’s culture has changed somewhat over time; while at a smaller size, the organization was tighter-knit and had more of a familial or social feel for staff. Now that it is larger, leadership has implemented a number of formal ways of keeping all staff informed of each others’ activities—previously, information spread more organically.¹⁵⁹ We find this to be an expected and appropriate adaptation to a larger organizational size.

Does the charity communicate transparently and act with integrity?

To our knowledge, THL communicates transparently with their stakeholders. Their internal communication appears to be transparent as well; they solicit regular feedback from their staff in the form of “check in” surveys, and they share the summarized results of those surveys with the whole team. Their spring 2018 survey indicated that their employees generally feel they are valued and treated with respect.

One indication of THL’s integrity is their consistent willingness to collaborate with other groups that share similar goals. THL tells us they want to be the “ultimate team player;”¹⁶⁰ they are willing to be flexible and play whatever role is needed in the movement. In the U.S., they tell us, they often play “bad cop” in corporate campaigns, because other animal charities are available to play “good cop.” Internationally, THL tends to play “good cop” through their Open Wing Alliance.¹⁶¹ We think that their willingness to collaborate with other groups and their flexibility with regard to their tactics demonstrates their genuine commitment to helping animals as effectively as possible. Additionally, the free trainings for other groups that THL provides through the Open Wing Alliance demonstrates THL’s willingness to build capacity within the movement, even at their own expense.¹⁶²

Does the charity provide staff and volunteers with sufficient benefits and opportunities for development?

According to THL’s spring 2018 culture survey, the majority of THL’s employees are satisfied with their benefits, including health insurance and paid time off. In our view, THL has been willing to experiment with many types of benefits that are not traditionally offered by other charities, like internet reimbursement and unlimited paid time off with a mandated minimum. Staff were more split about the adequacy of their salaries—however, we understand that in the past few months THL has been working with a consultant to ensure that their salaries are (i) competitive with other U.S. nonprofits, and (ii) fair and consistent within the organization.

Training staff, interns, and volunteers is a key part of THL’s strategy of helping to grow the animal advocacy movement by increasing the number of committed, trained animal advocates.¹⁶³ THL has large and structured volunteer, intern, and campus outreach programs designed in part to help participants become better advocates ready for positions of greater responsibility.^{164, 165} THL also tries to promote professional development among staff through structured training for managers and opportunities to attend relevant conferences and trainings.¹⁶⁶ THL tells us that they try to promote from within as much as possible, and we have observed this in several cases.¹⁶⁷

THL staff seem to feel that they have opportunities for growth in their current positions and (to a slightly lesser extent) that there is room for career growth and advancement within THL. THL provides opportunities for staff development through providing conferences, webinars, books, articles, and so on. Some staff would like to see further opportunities for development (and in particular, additional funding for attending conferences and training). Still, the majority of respondents to THL’s culture survey indicated that they envision themselves staying at THL in the long term, which we take as a positive sign that they are satisfied with the development opportunities that THL offers.

Does the charity have a healthy attitude towards diversity and inclusion?

THL staff are diverse in terms of national origin, particularly due to THL’s international expansion.¹⁶⁸ THL is taking steps to improve staff diversity in terms of other factors, in part by implementing partially blind job applications and posting job listings in a wide range of places. THL also has a staff committee on diversity and inclusion to help educate the organization and provide suggestions for improving THL’s practices.^{169, 170, 171} THL told us that having diverse voices within the organization helps them respond better to new situations; for example, U.K. team members can provide good suggestions for corporate outreach in Japan because of similarities within corporate culture in those countries that don’t extend to the U.S.^{172, 173}

According to THL’s culture survey, the majority of their staff feels that everyone at THL is treated with respect regardless of race, gender, position, role, department, age, disability, and so on. Most staff also agree that THL has a demonstrated commitment to the value of diversity on its team. Still, several employees noted that while THL has a healthy attitude towards diversity, they would like to further diversify the races and ages of their team.

Does the charity work to protect employees from harassment and discrimination in the workplace?

All THL employees receive harassment training, and all managers receive advanced training..¹⁷⁴ In private communication, THL has informed us that they are committed to providing a safe and inclusive workplace and have robust anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, and anti-retaliation policies in place, as well as a clear complaint procedure.. We have heard anecdotal reports of one instance of sexual harassment at THL. We asked THL about this and they informed us that, while they view their process of handling complaints as 100% transparent, the details of any specific complaint or investigation are confidential in accordance with the law and HR best practices. THL tells us that their commitment to confidentiality is essential to protecting the dignity and privacy of the parties involved, and aids in encouraging people to come forward. THL assures us that any complaints of violations of these policies are thoroughly investigated and, if credible, appropriate disciplinary action is taken, up to and including termination.¹⁷⁵ It is possible that if other instances have occurred, staff members may have used the confidential reporting system and not reported these incidents to ACE or discussed them publicly. The THL staff with whom we spoke may not be aware of claims that do not involve them, due to the confidential nature of complaints and investigations.

Does the charity have a sustainable structure?

An effective charity should be stable under ordinary conditions and should seem likely to survive any transitions in which current leadership might move on to other projects. The charity should seem unlikely to split into factions and should seem able to continue raising the funds needed for its basic operations. Ideally, they should receive significant funding from multiple distinct sources, including both individual donations and other types of support.

Does the charity receive support from multiple and varied funding sources?

THL is fairly heavily reliant on a small number of large funding sources. In particular, they’ve received several large grants from the Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil). In 2016, THL received a $1,000,000 grant from Open Phil to support cage-free campaigns, a $1,000,000 grant to be used for international expansion, and a $1,000,000 grant for general support. In 2017, THL received a $2,000,000 grant from Open Phil for support of the OWA over two years. Additionally, an anonymous foundation granted THL $880,000 in 2016 and a total of $1,183,432 in 2017.  THL is working to improve their fundraising among smaller donors.¹⁷⁶

Does the charity seem likely to survive potential changes in leadership?

THL has strong and effective leadership, a collaborative culture, comprehensive training systems, and a clear strategy. In our view, they have a talented and committed staff with many trained and capable managers. We think they could likely survive a change in leadership.

Questions for Further Consideration

No matter how thoroughly we research a charity, there will always be open questions about some aspects of the charity’s strategy or programming. We’ve asked charities some of those questions, and we present their answers below, without commentary.

Given that the corporate pledges THL campaigns for are non-binding, how can we be sure that they meaningfully support improvements in farmed animal welfare?

THL’s Response:

“When advocacy groups secure policy pledges from corporations, those pledges are not legally binding. As a result, it’s possible that corporations could choose not to honor their pledges. It will likely be the case that animal advocates will need to take some steps to create enforcement mechanisms for these pledges, such as ongoing monitoring with the threat of negative public campaigns if companies don’t comply with their agreements, and ultimately new laws.

We see these pledges as valuable for a few reasons, even though they are not legally binding. The first is that they do appear to drive real change in the standards on farms, as demonstrated by the major shift towards cage-free production following the slew of commitments over the last few years, both in the U.S. and the U.K. (17% and 56% respectively, as of October 2018). This seems to show that egg producers are taking these commitments seriously. We believe that industry publications indicate this too, as they now often discuss how to handle the transition to cage-free. Additionally, we find that these corporate commitments pave the way for the eventual laws that fully ban the production and sale of cage eggs, like the law passed in Massachusetts, the proposition now underway¹⁷⁷ in California, and the forthcoming European Union ballot initiative. Lastly, the media conversation and discussion that these campaigns generate are another benefit beyond the improvements that they encourage. We believe that increasing public awareness about the conditions on factory farms while providing an opportunity to speak out is useful in building a movement of advocates and concerned citizens around the world.

In addition to changes in housing for laying hens, the 2016 UEP chick-sexing pledge came after a series of high-profile cage-free victories. The pledge has resulted in a large number of interested parties investing in this research and working to put the new in-ovo sexing technologies in place. We believe that this pledge has greatly accelerated the timeline for adopting this technology and has created favorable coverage for the movement.”

There are some who think that the scale of suffering in the wild is much greater than the scale of farmed animal suffering. What is THL doing to address wild animal suffering?

THL’s Response:

“The number of animals in the wild means that the scale of potential suffering there is extremely high. For now, however, we believe that the greatest opportunity for animal advocates is to work on factory farming because it is a much more tractable issue. As a result, we focus exclusively on ending the abuse of animals raised for food. We hope that changing views on the treatment of farmed animals will lead to greater compassion for all animals, including wild animals.”

Does THL worry that focusing on some of the most extreme confinement practices could lead to complacency with other forms of suffering farmed animals endure or with meat consumption?

THL’s Response:

“The Humane League’s argument on behalf of welfare campaigns can be found here. We feel strongly that incremental victories on behalf of animals build the strength, status, and momentum of our movement, while also resulting in harm reduction for the animals suffering on factory farms. It is very clear to us that a world free from animal suffering starts with a world with less animal suffering.”

There are many more farmed fish than other species of farmed animals. Has THL considered allocating more of their resources towards farmed fish advocacy?

THL’s Response:

“Each year, an estimated 37 billion–120 billion finned fish are slaughtered in the animal agriculture system, compared to roughly 60 billion–80 billion land animals. For this reason, we agree that helping fish is a valuable area that could use much more work.

We have considered this issue and hope to begin working on fish welfare issues in the future, after winning the broiler reform campaign and doing some work to ensure that cage-free commitments are honored. Seeing these campaigns through to completion is our current priority, and we worry that having a third parallel ask of companies would make all of our projects more difficult to complete.

There are also a number of factors making advocacy on behalf of fish difficult, including limited information about what causes the greatest suffering, the many species of farmed fish, and the potentially lower resonance of the issue with the public.

However, we do see fish slaughter reform as a potential target for corporate outreach to improve fish welfare. Mandating less cruel methods of slaughter has been tractable for other species in the past, and should be possible to apply across the fish farming industry. We are considering this as a potential next step for our corporate outreach.”

;Revenue;Assets;Expenses;
2014;$968,246;$715,762;$562,952;
2015;$1,338,136;$1,131,193;$922,705;
2016;$6,575,410;$5,764,167;$1,974,673;
2017;$6,825,478;$8,689,350;$4,398,676;
2018 (estimated);$8,000,000;$9,289,350;$7,400,000;
2019 (estimated);$8,900,000;$9,297,235;$8,892,115;

,Lower estimate,Upper estimate
High Priority,1700000,1900000
Moderate Priority,170000,680000
Low Priority,150000,1550000

;2017;2018;
Corporate Outreach;$2,187,930;$2,841,190;
Grassroots Outreach;$1,070,690;$2,149,470;
Online Ads;$620,690;$868,014;
Communications;$465,517;$675,385;
Research;$155,172;$150,504;

---

1. In order to best estimate which programs are more or less effective, we collected independent staff judgments of the relative efficacy of every commonly-used intervention and reached a consensus with the following process. Seven research team members rated each type of intervention using a scale from -1 (“relatively ineffective”) to 1 (“relatively effective”), with 0 meaning “not enough information to decide.” The mean score for each intervention was then rounded to the nearest integer to yield a score with which all Researchers were satisfied. As a check, we also calculated the median score and came out with the same results. 

2. See our recent research on the Allocation of Movement Resources. 

3. “The grassroots staff on the ground in 12 U.S. cities (plus Mexico and the U.K.), student organizers on dozens of college campuses, and volunteers in cities and towns across the country are working to inspire long-lasting dietary change.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

4. “Exposing people to the truth about factory farming and inspiring them to make compassionate food choices is a core part of The Humane League’s work. One way we do this is via targeted Facebook ads in 44 countries. To further this effort, we developed a new website (EatingVeg.org) full of resources, tips, and a short documentary, all aimed at making the transition to a plant-based lifestyle easier.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

5. For more information on THL’s grassroots outreach, see our Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018). 

6. Most people go vegan or vegetarian over a long period (Jabs, Devine and Sobal 1998, p. 199; Beardsworth & Keil 1992; Pfeiler and Egloff 2018; Mullee et al, 2017), with an abrupt ‘conversion experience’ (Beardsworth & Keil 1992) being much less common. The adoption of a politicized dietary identity (such as vegetarianism/veganism) has been found to most commonly occur through a series of encounters (Chuck et al. 2016). Thus, when receiving a leaflet, such experiences may contribute to a gradual shift in perspective. NGOs serve as a primary site of awareness-raising, which is key in achieving widespread societal and political change, particularly in the current climate. Researchers into political change have repeatedly argued that awareness raising is key if we want to change policy (e.g. Basiley et al. 2014). Awareness of reduction motivations does appear to be increasing (Siegrist, Visschers and Hartmann 2015) and awareness may be linked to increased reduction (Lee and Simpson 2016). Leafleting may play a role in this. 

7. In order to best estimate which programs are more or less effective, we collected independent staff judgments of the relative efficacy of every commonly-used intervention and reached a consensus with the following process. Seven research team members rated each type of intervention using a scale from -1 (“relatively ineffective”) to 1 (“relatively effective”), with 0 meaning “not enough information to decide.” The mean score for each intervention was then rounded to the nearest integer to yield a score with which all Researchers were satisfied. As a check, we also calculated the median score and came out with the same results. 

8. “In early 2018, The OWA expanded its capacity by adding two staff members and awarding more than $400,000 in grants to 13 member organizations representing 14 countries. These grants will fund Animals International’s expansion into Romania, and Otwarte Klatki’s continued growth in the Ukraine and expansion into Belarus following their tremendous track record in Poland.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

9. “In March, the OWA hosted its second annual Global Summit to End Cages. One hundred and fifteen advocates from 40 organizations in 43 countries convened in Prague for four days of intensive training and strategic planning.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

10. For more information on THL’s work to recruit and train activists, see our Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018). 

11. “We are mobilizing hundreds of local activists and build up their skills at effective animal advocacy; creating a more robust animal advocate community through regular outreach events; educating thousands of people about factory farming; expanding media coverage of farm animal issues; engaging them in campaign actions like protests and work parties; and reaching even more people with a message of compassion for animals.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

12. “Our individualized dietary data procurement project, initiated in 2017, continues and we’ve made plans to hire several research assistants to facilitate this work. […] We have successfully hired an economist who is now working to prioritize research questions to explore the economics of animal advocacy and commenced hiring for an additional Research Associate.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

13. In order to best estimate which programs are more or less effective, we collected independent staff judgments of the relative efficacy of every commonly-used intervention and reached a consensus with the following process. Seven research team members rated each type of intervention using a scale from -1 (“relatively ineffective”) to 1 (“relatively effective”), with 0 meaning “not enough information to decide.” The mean score for each intervention was then rounded to the nearest integer to yield a score with which all Researchers were satisfied. As a check, we also calculated the median score and came out with the same results. 

14. “In 2017 The Humane League staff traveled the U.S. to raise awareness about the cruel treatment of chickens by Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., and invited tens of thousands of people to take action to demand change. Across the country, The Humane League coordinated days of action, empowered hundreds of volunteers to stand up for animals at protests, amplified our message through media, and inspired hundreds of thousands to add their names to petitions calling for change.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

15. “The Humane League launched the I’m Not Lovin’ It campaign in coalition with other animal rights groups. Across the country, activists rallied to raise awareness among consumers and expose the truth about McDonald’s animal welfare policy.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

16. “Humane League campaigners […] secured 13 cage-free commitments in the U.K. to bring the total to 90, including Noble Foods, the U.K.’s largest producer, plus one policy in Ireland. In Latin America, we’ve secured a commitment from Fiesta Foods. And after more than a year of laying groundwork with companies who have never before engaged with an animal protection group, the first Japanese cage-free commitment was released by Seiyo Foods, one of the the country’s largest foodservice companies.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

17. “OWA has secured 13 global cage-free policies. OWA grantees have also secured over 170 regional cage-free policies.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

18. “The Humane League worked alongside Open Wing Alliance member L214 in France and international advocates at Compassion in World Farming to secure commitments for sweeping reforms for chickens raised for meat throughout Europe from two major manufacturers, Danone and Nestle.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

19. In order to best estimate which programs are more or less effective, we collected independent staff judgments of the relative efficacy of every commonly-used intervention and reached a consensus with the following process. Seven research team members rated each type of intervention using a scale from -1 (“relatively ineffective”) to 1 (“relatively effective”), with 0 meaning “not enough information to decide.” The mean score for each intervention was then rounded to the nearest integer to yield a score with which all Researchers were satisfied. As a check, we also calculated the median score and came out with the same results. 

20. THL campaigned at Boston universities, conducted calls, collected signatures, coordinated events, assisted with distribution of campaign signs, and trained volunteers. For more information about the role they played, see our Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018). 

21. “The Humane League is contributing to the Prevent Cruelty California initiative. Our staff and volunteers played a key role in successfully qualifying the initiative for the 2018 California Ballot by collecting over 664,00 signatures from November 2017 to April 2018. We are currently planning Get Out The Vote activities to ensure a Yes vote on Proposition 12 on November 6, 2018.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

22. See Presenting the Long-Term Value Thesis for a more detailed discussion of why long-term impact is what matters most. 

23. “When outcomes of interventions are interdependent, the effectiveness of each is inextricably linked with those of the others. Justifying one as being more effective than another is not quite straightforward—declaring so is often misleading.” —Sethu, H. (2018) How ranking of advocacy strategies can mislead. Humane League Labs. 

24. See our 2018 Leafleting Intervention Report for a more detailed consideration of the potential long-term impact of a particular intervention. 

25. “A big strength is our strategic approach to things. I think we have a history of identifying spaces in the movement where we could fill a niche or add the most value, and we’ve been pretty flexible in going after that thing really aggressively. […] We host summits where we try to get people on the same page strategically. We’ve seen the success that the groups have had working together in the U.S. and we’re trying to bring that ethos to other places by having regional summits where we can be a third party.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

26. “This year is the first year in which we have done something really formal, where our consultants volunteered to come in and work with us in putting together a very formal [strategic] plan. […] Now with the strategic goals that we laid out, we have all the metrics assigned to those, all the sub-goals that fall onto the various departments, and we are going to be assessing the plan quarterly.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

27. Hens in a cage-free environment may have opportunities for behaviors that seem likely to improve their welfare such as dust bathing, perching, foraging, and nesting, which are not available in battery cages. For a description of some of these potential welfare improvements, see the Open Philanthropy Project’s report “How Will Hen Welfare be Impacted by the Transition to Cage-Free Housing?” 

28. Cage-free eggs are currently more expensive than conventional eggs and some research suggests this is attributable to increased labor, feed, and pullet costs.  

29. See, for example:
    Animal Charity Evaluators. (2016). Models of Media Influence on Demand for Animal Products. Animal Charity Evaluators.
    Tiplady, C. M., Walsh, D. B., & Phillips, C. J. C. (2013). Public Response to Media Coverage of Animal Cruelty. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 26(4), 869–885.
    Tonsor, G. T., & Olynk N. J. (2010). Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on Meat Demand. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 62(1), 59–72. 

30. The results from several studies suggest higher levels of mortality in cage-free systems compared to battery cages and there is reason to believe that higher levels of mortality correspond to lower levels of welfare since the increased mortality may result from disease, feather pecking, and injuries. Among the nine experts interviewed in The Open Philanthropy Project’s report “How Will Hen Welfare be Impacted by the Transition to Cage-Free Housing?” there was unanimous agreement that mortality will likely be significantly higher following the transition to cage-free systems. The authors of the report express optimism that producers will be motivated to and capable of reducing mortality levels to be comparable with battery cages and maintain the view that cage-free systems will have a net positive impact on welfare in the long term. 

31. Some evidence suggests that, in addition to increased mortality, there are other negative impacts on chicken welfare in cage-free systems—such as increased stress and worse air quality—that may outweigh the improvements in behavioral opportunities. See this list and description of evidence suggesting that cage-free systems may not be better for chicken welfare than caged systems. 

32. “‘Happy meat’ discourses […] invite ‘consumers’ to adopt a position of vicarious carer for the ‘farmed’ animals who they eat. […] While ‘animal-centred’ welfare reform and ‘happy meat’ discourses promise a possibility of a somewhat less degraded life for some ‘farmed’ animals, they do so by perpetuating exploitation and oppression and entrenching speciesist privilege by making it less vulnerable to critical scrutiny.” —Cole, M. (2011). From “Animal Machines” to “Happy Meat”? Foucault’s Ideas of Disciplinary and Pastoral Power Applied to ‘Animal-Centred’ Welfare Discourse. Animals, 2011, 1, 83–101. 

33. For more information, see Sentience Institute’s list of arguments for and against the idea that welfare reforms will lead to complacency.  

34. 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. 

35. In 2016, THL received an Open Philanthropy Project grant to support cage-free campaigns for $1,000,000, an Open Philanthropy Project grant for international expansion and support for $1,000,000 over two years, and an Open Philanthropy Project grant for general support of THL for $1,000,000. In 2017, THL received an Open Philanthropy Project grant for support of the OWA for $2,000,000 over two years.  

36. “In 2016 the organization received $880,000 from an anonymous foundation and [they received] a total of $1,183,432 from this foundation in 2017.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part One (2018) 

37. Data from 2014 to 2016 comes from their Form 990s on ProPublica; the 2017 data is from The Humane League’s 2017 Budget; the 2018 data is from our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018); and the 2019 estimates are from Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018). 

38. “Historically we’ve opened up grassroots offices in big cities, but we’re revisiting this strategy now because we’ve had a lot of success in the last year with the National Volunteer Program. In this program, remote volunteers get a lot of one-on-one support virtually from our staff. I think that approach is probably something that we’ll invest in more going forwards. Similarly to with the Open Wing Alliance, this volunteer program allows us to inexpensively try to cover the whole map.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

39. “Thinking globally, the way we see it is that we don’t want to expand into new countries as THL. […] Our preference is really to use the Open Wing Alliance as a way to partner with organizations in other areas. It’s very inexpensive for us to locate people in various regions, offer them training and grants, but mostly bring them into the community.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

40. This information can be found in our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018).  

41. In order to best estimate which programs are more or less effective, we collected independent staff judgments of the relative efficacy of every commonly-used intervention and reached a consensus with the following process. Seven research team members rated each type of intervention using a scale from -1 (“relatively ineffective”) to 1 (“relatively effective”), with 0 meaning “not enough information to decide.” The mean score for each intervention was then rounded to the nearest integer to yield a score with which all Researchers were satisfied. As a check, we also calculated the median score and came out with the same results.  

42. Given the large number of organizations participating in the OWA, we estimate THL has substantial opportunities for regranting and supporting organizations doing work in relatively neglected countries. Their work with the OWA has been supported by a $2 million grant issued over two years by the Open Philanthropy Project in 2017. We don’t anticipate a significantly larger gap in funding now that this grant has finished because they were recently awarded a $10 million grant over three and a half years from the Open Philanthropy Project that will continue to fund their work with the OWA as well as other projects previously supported by other grants.  

43. “There are a number of new staff members that we want to add across departments, so there is somewhat incremental growth needed. There’s also some catch-up needs, such as the need for another lawyer, for example. We could use another media person, and we have needs for a few more Web Developers […] and I believe we could use a few more corporate outreach people.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

44. “We hired a firm to do a market analysis of salaries […] We provided them with all of our job descriptions and information on brackets, and they did the full market research, showing us where we’re at. We’d like to be able to offer very competitive salaries, and historically we have not been able to do this as much as we’d have liked.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

45. 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. 

46. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League.  

47. 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. We did this by first rounding the 5% and 95% estimates given in Guesstimate to the nearest $10,000 and then taking the most extreme of the five estimates (the highest value for an upper bound and the lowest value for a lower bound) and rounding it outwards to the next $100,000 when the numbers are in the millions and to the next $10,000 when the numbers are in the tens or hundreds of thousands. For instance, if sometimes a value appears as $2.7 million and sometimes it appears as $2.8 million, our review gives it as $2.9 million if it were an upper bound and as $2.6 million if it were a lower bound. 

48. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League.  

49. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League.  

50. The percentages used in this chart are based on the mean size of each funding gap. 

51. “We went from two development staff last year to six now. We’ve added a bunch of administrative staff, we have a financial manager, and we now have a lawyer.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

52. “Because of our re-granting program and the number of very qualified and good groups out there around the world who could use the support, I think [the maximum amount of funding we could effectively use has] a very, very high ceiling because we have this high-impact escape valve to release extra money through grants.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

53. “This year our goal is $8 million.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

54. This information can be found in our Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018). 

55. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League.  

56. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League.  

57. Note that all estimates factor in associated supporting costs, including administrative and fundraising costs, sometimes referred to as “overhead.” We assume that these costs are evenly allocated across each intervention. 

58. We consider all seven of our evaluation criteria to be indicators of cost effectiveness. If we were able to model charities’ actual cost effectiveness with very high confidence, we would make our recommendations based heavily on our CEEs. The most cost-effective charities are, after all, the ones that allow donors to have the greatest positive impact with their donations. Even given the risks and uncertainties described above, directly estimating cost effectiveness is one of the best ways we know for identifying highly cost-effective programs. 

59. Cost-effectiveness estimates are sometimes useful for comparing different charities or interventions to one another. We develop CEEs using a consistent methodology and consistent data so that our CEEs for similar charities are meaningfully comparable. Though there are many sources of error that might influence our estimates of the effects of a given charity or intervention, most sources of error would likely apply to all models and thus are unlikely to affect comparisons between models. 

60. We find that, in some ways, the quantitative components of our evaluations are easier for our readers to interpret than the qualitative components. Assigning numbers to uncertain values allows us to be clear about the effects we expect an intervention to have, and it allows our readers to identify specific points on which they may disagree. If our evaluations were entirely qualitative in nature, it might be harder for people who disagree with us about the effectiveness of a program to pinpoint the source of their disagreement—since our qualitative statements are more open to interpretation than our quantitative ones. 

61. For more information, see our writeup “Our Use of Cost-Effectiveness Estimates.” 

62. THL provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see The Humane League’s 2018 Budget and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

63. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

64. THL provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see The Humane League’s 2018 Budget and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

65. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

66. THL provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see The Humane League’s 2018 Budget and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

67. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

68. THL provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see The Humane League’s 2018 Budget and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

69. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

70. THL provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see The Humane League’s 2018 Budget and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

71. In fact, there are already sources of error and imprecision in our estimates at this point, most notably in uncertainties about how much time THL employees spend on each activity we have described and about how administrative and fundraising costs should be assigned to the various areas. However, the amount of error in our following estimates can be expected to be considerably greater. 

72. We use similar assumptions for each of the groups for which we perform such a calculation. Other estimates of the cost-effectiveness of charities may use different assumptions and therefore may not be comparable to ours. 

73. Note that these numbers reflect our estimate of the dietary effects of THL’s in-person individual outreach work, and not the effects of movement building, which were not estimated. 

74. Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers. This does not necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally as likely to harm animals as to help them. It might simply mean that we think—often due to uncertainty around a particular factor—that it’s possible that an intervention could have a negative effect, even if we think that’s very unlikely.  

75. The values are relatively negative because our CEE for leafleting relies on the results of a meta-analysis of several studies that reported slight relative increases in consumption of animal products associated with leafleting. As we mention in our 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report, the 95% confidence interval for all the summary estimates overlaps with a point estimate of an effect size of zero. By following the conventionally applied frequentist framework of statistical inference, we would fail to reject the null hypothesis—that leaflets do not have a short-term impact on consumption of animal products. While the trend of these results was used to inform our estimates in our CEEs, because the results all overlap with zero, we would not use them to conclude that leaflets are more likely to lead to increased consumption of animal products. 

76. These factors include the number of animals affected by corporate policy changes associated with THL, the extent to which THL worked with other groups to achieve those victories, the extent to which these policy changes are accelerated as a result, and the proportion of suffering alleviated by those policy changes.  

77. Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers. This does not necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally as likely to harm animals as to help them. It might simply mean that we think—often due to uncertainty around a particular factor—that it’s possible that an intervention could have a negative effect, even if we think that’s very unlikely.  

78. To equate the proportional welfare improvements created by corporate campaigns to a figure for animals spared, we make the assumption that X% improvement is equal to X% of an animal being spared. For example, 10 hens experiencing a 10% improvement in welfare is equal to 1 hen experiencing a 100% improvement in welfare. 

79. Guesstimate, the software we use to produce the models, performs calculations using Monte Carlo simulation. Each time the model is opened in Guesstimate, it reruns the calculations. As Monte Carlo simulation relies on a sample of randomized numbers, the results can vary slightly based on the sample drawn. Thus, in order to ensure consistency, 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. 

80. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -6 to 13, -6 to 13, -6 to 13, -6 to 13, and -6 to 13 farmed animals spared per dollar THL spent. 

81. Different farmed animals are raised for different lengths of time prior to slaughter, and so only considering the “number of animals spared per dollar” does not always give a complete picture of the total amount of suffering averted. Our unit, “years of farmed animal life spared per dollar,” factors in the average length of life of each species to better quantify the amount of suffering that has been reduced. 

82. Sometimes our estimated cost-effectiveness ranges include negative numbers. This does not necessarily mean we think those interventions are equally as likely to harm animals as to help them. It might simply mean that we think—often due to uncertainty around a particular factor—that it’s possible that an intervention could have a negative effect, even if we think that’s very unlikely.  

83. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -2 to 7, -2 to 7, -2 to 7, -2 to 7, and -2 to 7 farmed animals spared per dollar THL spent. 

84. See ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. Our estimates in this model were calculated using preliminary budget numbers provided by THL and The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018). 

85. “The Humane League significantly expanded their campaign staff in 2016. This allowed us to take on more outreach and campaign work than ever before. The more than 100 companies to make cage-free commitments, such as Walmart, the largest retailer, and Sysco, the largest foodservice distributor, include [restaurants, manufacturers, retailers, and more].” For a full list, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017). 

86. For a list broiler commitments that THL was involved with in 2016 and 2017, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017). 

87. For more information, see our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018).  

88. See The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) for a list of 2016 and 2017 cage-free commitments in the U.K. and in Mexico. 

89. For more information, see our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018).  

90. Private communication with David Coman-Hidy, 2018 

91. “In what counts as huge news in the animal welfare world, United Egg Producers—the industry group that represents hatcheries that produce 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States—announced Thursday that it would end this “culling” of millions of chicks by 2020, or as soon as it’s “economically feasible” and an alternative is “commercially available,” according to the Humane League, which negotiated the agreement.” —Brulliard, K. (2016). Egg Producers Pledge to Stop Grinding Newborn Male Chickens to Death. Washington Post.  

92. Instead of suffocating or grinding male chicks on the day they are born, UEP will transition to using a new technology to determine the sex of chicken embryos before they hatch.  

93. “The agreement states that the industry will introduce the technology by 2020 “or as soon as it is commercially available and economically feasible“ — in other words, when it wants to.” —Nathan, H. (2017). The Problems with Animal Charity Evaluators, in Brief. Medium. 

94. “THL’s second-biggest achievement in the past year was the successful launch of the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), an international coalition of dozens of groups working on cage-free campaigns around the world.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

95. A tweet from THL about the launch of the OWA helps to establish the date of the launch.  

96. “THL plays a leadership and organizing role in [the] OWA. A few months ago in Poland they held the first multi-day training seminar for the alliance, in which 22 member groups participated. THL also launched a campaign against General Mills which brought about a global cage-free policy. Since then, they have had a number of other global victories, as well as a multitude of victories in individual countries where member organizations have launched campaigns with the help and encouragement of THL. They have also provided grants through [the] OWA.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

97. “By leading an international coalition of organizations, the Open Wing Alliance pressured major international companies to produce cage-free policies affecting their entire global operations.” For a list of victories and additional 2016 global commitments, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017). 

98. The Open Wing Alliance’s website states that it was originated by THL: “Initiated by The Humane League, [the] Open Wing Alliance brings member organizations together to create a united front in our campaign to free egg-laying hens from cages.”  

99. “Each semester, The Humane League partners with students on college and university campuses around the country. From spring 2016 to fall 2017, this program doubled from 30 students to 60 students in 23 states and two Canadian provinces. In order to provide even more in-depth training and capacity building for these students, the program has shifted to a year-long model, and included an intensive leadership retreat.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017)  

100. “The Campus program for the 2018–2019 school year expanded to include 58 students from 28 states plus D.C. In August, these students will attend our annual Campus Outreach Conference to receive training and build connections for the upcoming school year.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

101. For more information, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018).  

102. For more information, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017). 

103. “[A]s of November 2017, THL has about 7,000 members of [the] FAN [Fast Action Network] in total, about 4,000 of whom joined this year.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

104. For more information, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018).  

105. For more information, see The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018). 

106. Private communication with David Coman-Hidy, 2017  

107. “When it comes to gestation crate policies, cage-free policies, and broiler policies in the U.S., enforcement is a looming project. THL needs to make sure that the commitments are carried out. One way to do that is to run enforcement campaigns, which is something they’re likely to do next year. If companies fail to follow through completely on any commitments that are supposed to take place in the next year or two, THL intends to make an example of those companies so no bad precedent is set for future cage-free commitments.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

108. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League. 

109. “Following exclusive conversations with The Humane League, United Egg Producers announced today that it will eliminate the culling of male chicks at egg laying hen hatcheries by 2020.” —Ross, A. (2016). Victory! United Egg Producers Announces Elimination of Chick Culling by 2020. The Humane League Blog.  

110. “OWA member groups receive training in THL’s tactics and support in launching campaigns in their home countries. Since the founding of the Open Wing Alliance last year, there has been transformative progress for egg-laying hens in many key areas around the world.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

111. “So when I saw that a different group, the Humane League Labs, had put out a recent study that similarly concluded that we should be encouraging people to reduce animal consumption rather than completely eliminate it, I was naturally skeptical.” —Taft, C. (2015). Pseudoscience in the Animal Rights Movement. Vegan Publishers. 

112. “And when we see an organization regularly and conveniently finding “data” in support of its own methods and materials, over other organizations’ (see, for example: the Humane League Labs’ recommendations, which hugely favor their own materials, even over seemingly similar materials from rival organizations) […] we should be wary of their conclusions.” —Hsiung, W. (2013). Science or Science-y. Direct Action Everywhere. 

113. For more information see ACE’s 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report. 

114. 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 the extent to which 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.  

115. The Humane League’s Organizational Strategic Priorities (2018) include the following goal: “All employees have SMART goals and 75% of them are achieved or exceeded by the end of 2018[.]” 

116. “[I]ndividual projects, campaigns, or milestones are often time-bound, as are goals for individual staff members.” —Strategic Overview of The Humane League (2017)  

117. For more information, see The Humane League’s Organizational Strategic Priorities (2018). 

118. These 2018 goals include achieving at least 250 regional cage-free commitments, including 15 policies won via campaigns by grant recipients, and achieving at least 15 global cage-free commitments, with three of their current global commitments translated into Japanese. Each of these goals has a fairly specific and measurable condition that defines success or failure. These goals are relevant to THL’s mission of reducing animal suffering, and, given the pace of cage-free campaign victories in the U.S., they seem achievable but not trivial to achieve, making them meaningful indicators of THL’s success or failure at achieving their overall goals with this program. For more information, see The Humane League’s Organizational Strategic Priorities (2018) 

119. See the section “Addendum: Short-Term Goal Setting” in the Strategic Overview of The Humane League (2017) for all short-term Mexico program goals shared with ACE.  

120. For example, in 2017, their end-of-year goal for their Latin American corporate outreach program was to achieve ten cage-free commitments, while milestones for this program include achieving their “[f]irst cage-free commitment,” as well as achieving their third, sixth, eighth, and tenth such commitments. For more information, see the Strategic Overview of The Humane League (2017). 

121. For example:
     – A re-analysis of their leafleting study
     – A re-analysis of their study on which request creates the most diet change
     – A re-analysis of their study about which farm animal photos are most likely to inspire people to eat vegan 

122. When asked about their choices of past studies to reanalyze, HLL replied that they “have chosen studies based primarily on public interest drawn by the results of those studies. […] [T]hree have drawn substantially more interest (including criticism) than any of the other reports, and so it was an easy decision to at least reanalyze these three[.]” —Follow-Up Questions for Humane League Labs (2017)  

123. In March 2014, Coman-Hidy told us that HLL planned “to release the first results on April 1st and have about 25 studies in total, with one expected to come out every two weeks from that point on.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2014) 

124. Some of their past work has drawn criticism for inaccurate analyses and poor research methods, including overemphasizing small differences in outcomes. For more discussion of HLL’s past research quality and the steps they have taken to improve it, see our Questions For Further Consideration below.  

125. “She is now working to prioritize research questions to explore the economics of animal advocacy.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

126. “HLL has four major goals for the next year [including]: (i) Launch of the Multivariate Study of Online Engagement: We expect to begin collecting data for this project in January/February of 2018 in support of an exploratory study. Shortly thereafter, we will be releasing pre-analysis reports with pre-declared hypotheses for a more rigorous confirmatory study of the determinative features of online engagement. (ii) Launch of the Individual Outreach Field Experiment: We expect to release pre-analysis reports at the beginning of 2018, begin intervention in selected treatment areas in March of 2018 and complete the preliminary set of data collection in September of 2018. This will be the first experiment of its kind evaluating the impact of pro-veg outreach to individuals on their actual purchasing habits at their local grocery stores.” —Follow-Up Questions for Humane League Labs (2017) 

127. HLL is working on two research projects related to individual outreach outcomes. One study evaluates engagement with Facebook ads that direct users to documentary clips. The other measures group-level consumption changes in response to a combination of individual outreach interventions. 

128. “[T]he assumption that human memory can provide accurate or precise reproductions of past ingestive behavior is indisputably false. […] M-BMs [memory-based dietary assessment methods] require participants to submit to protocols that mimic procedures known to induce false recall.”
     “The conclusions drawn by our study and the recent British Medical Journal editorial are, in fact, supported by many decades of evidence demonstrating that M-BMs [memory-based dietary assessment methods] have severe, intractable systematic biases that render the data implausible and, therefore, invalid.” —Archer, E., G. Pavela, and C. J. Lavie. (2015). The inadmissibility of what we eat in America and NHANES dietary data in nutrition and obesity research and the scientific formulation of national dietary guidelines. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 90(7), 911-926.  

129. “Our methodology will aim to achieve statistical power adequate to detect effect sizes as low as a 2% change between treatment and control groups.” —Humane League Labs. (2017). Individual Outreach Field Experiment. Humane League Labs. 

130. “Additionally, we hope that the large-scale study being carried about by HLL will help us determine what percentage of our resources generally should be allocated to individual outreach.” —Strategic Overview of The Humane League (2017)  

131. “Due to the uncertainty about the effectiveness of individual outreach and the looming, difficult broiler campaign, THL shifted a lot of grassroots resources to working on institutional campaigns. Coman-Hidy estimates that grassroots staff now spend 40–50% of their time on getting people involved in institutional campaigns and providing brute force for those campaigns.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

132. “In Mexico, THL and other groups have been campaigning against Wal-Mart to go cage-free, but recently they’ve started [allocating] more resources to other, smaller campaigns to rebuild momentum. Their first victory in Mexico was with Grupo Bimbo, a very large company, so they thought that momentum might let them go after a big target like Wal-Mart immediately, but that hasn’t worked out as they hoped, so they’ve adjusted their strategy.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

133. “A goal they’ve started talking about more recently is movement-building. For example, they’ve begun ranking their volunteers in terms of how involved they are and trying to move people up into higher levels of involvement as well as getting more people into low-involvement roles. Now their metrics for the volunteer program aren’t only things like how many leaflets they hand out, but also how many people they get engaged and how much they’re building the movement. This isn’t a good in itself; it’s a resource.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

134. In the past, they used to keep a spreadsheet of how many people are “tier one” volunteers (i.e., that you can count on to do anything), how many people are “tier two” volunteers (i.e., that consistently show up), and how many are “tier three” volunteers (i.e., that are active once a month). Now, they have also begun using EveryAction, which is a database platform that can add so-called “action points” based on what volunteers do. To illustrate, if volunteers go to a protest, or if they go leafleting, or if they do something online with THL, they get a certain number of points based on the assigned value of each of those actions. The more difficult action groups are assigned a higher value. For more information, see our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018).  

135. “With the corporate campaigns, in a few years if enforcement of eggs is just a nightmare, that would strengthen the need for passing laws rather than doing enforcement campaigns. And doing the campaigns might still have been the right step to get to the legal fight, but what is the best path to enforcement? So that’s a very open strategic question in my mind at the moment. We really want to be as flexible as possible.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

136. The Humane League’s Board Members and their backgrounds were communicated to us in the Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part One (2018).  

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

138. “Lydia, Harish, and Denise have all been on the board of The Humane League for several years. There has been some change in Board Membership over that time, but it has been a fairly stable group of people.” —Smith, A. (2015). The Humane League Site Visit: Leafleting and Meeting with Board Members. Animal Charity Evaluators.  

139. THL believes that they have been able to change their methods and programs in response to new evidence in part because they have Board Members who are willing to learn from evidence and adjust their beliefs: “Currently all their Board Members are very open to changing their views based on new evidence or arguments. […] Especially because they do not have term limits and the board composition doesn’t change a lot, they need to be open to new ideas as individuals, because new ideas won’t come from the Board Members changing. If Board Members were dogmatically attached to particular advocacy methods, it would hamper THL’s ability to change when it needs to change.” —Smith, A. (2015). The Humane League Site Visit: Leafleting and Meeting with Board Members. Animal Charity Evaluators.For examples of changes THL has made to programs, see Criterion 5. 

140. “[T]here is a significant body of evidence suggesting that teams composed of individuals with different roles, tasks, or occupations are likely to be more successful than those which are more homogeneous. Increased diversity by demographic factors such as race and gender has more mixed effects in the literature, but gains through having a diverse team seem to be possible for organizations which view diversity as a resource (using different personal backgrounds and experiences to improve decision making) rather than solely a neutral or justice-oriented practice.” —ACE Blog: “How Should we Evaluate Organizational Factors that Affect Charity Performance?” 

141. Board demographic diversity in for-profit organizations has been found to be positively correlated with better financial performance. Nonprofit board diversity (in terms of occupation and age) has been found to be positively associated with better fundraising and social performance, better internal and external governance practices, as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision making.  

142. “The board is most involved in the budget-setting process, although Coman-Hidy also meets with them three times a year to talk about how things are going.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

143. “There’s the annual budget-setting process, in which THL establishes big goals and plans for the next year and allocates resources for accomplishing those goals.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

144. “Years previous, it was relatively informal where the leadership team, we call it our senior staff, basically get an Airbnb and every few months meet together to talk about how things are going and what we are going to do for the next four months. It was not very formal outside of just a document.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

145. “This year is the first year in which we have done something really formal where our consultants that we’re meeting with now volunteered to come in and work with us in putting together a very formal plan. […] Now with the strategic goals that we laid out, we have all the metrics assigned to those, all the sub-goals that fall onto the various departments for each of them and we are going to be assessing it quarterly.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

146. “So quarterly, the staff will give updates on how things are going and then we will have a staff meeting where it’s presented to everyone. In terms of actually revising the strategic plan, that will be done semi-annually, once in the summer and once in the winter.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

147. This information can be found on THL’s website. 

148. “Another way to enforce commitments is to pass laws, as they’ve done in Massachusetts and California. That’s the endgame. The corporate commitments are a bridge to be able to do that; they want to clear out the moneyed interest, make sure corporations don’t have a reason to fight legislation, and then get the laws on the books.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

149. See Criterion 5 for more discussion of THL’s self-evaluation processes and how they have historically responded to evidence. 

150. “As far as our work globally, we provide a lot of training and host these summits where we try to get people on the same page strategically. We’ve seen the success that the groups have had working together in the U.S. and we’re trying to bring that ethos to other places by having regional summits where we can be a third party.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)  

151. “We developed and shared two comprehensive resource documents for OWA groups:
     – A Corporate Relations Starter Guide consisting of five steps for engaging in research and dialogue with companies, including email templates and answers to FAQs from executives.
     – A 50-page Campaigns Manual that outlines all The Humane League’s strategies and tactics, including launching a corporate pressure campaign from start to finish and examples of campaign leaflets, websites, online ads, email templates, and more.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

152. “The Humane League’s staff works tirelessly to recruit, train, and mobilize our network of volunteers, interns, and campus organizers to create meaningful change for animals. […] Each semester, The Humane League partners with students on college and university campuses around the country. From spring 2016 to fall 2017, this program doubled from 30 students to 60 students in 23 states and two Canadian provinces.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

153. “In 2017, we significantly expanded our local presence in communities around the U.S. with our National Volunteer Program. This allows individuals in locations where we do not have a grassroots presence to be directly involved in our advocacy work.” —Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League (2017) 

154. THL mentioned that their campus outreach program “has implemented strategic outreach and recruitment tactics to ensure applicants from diverse backgrounds have the opportunity to participate, building and strengthening our movement in the long run.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017)  

155. “The fact that we’ve been willing to do a lot of ‘bad cop’ stuff in the U.S. that other groups weren’t willing to has been helpful. On the flip side, with the Open Wing Alliance, we’re often playing good cop and filling roles that we wouldn’t normally fill in the U.S.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

156. We speak with two non-leadership staff or volunteers at each charity, except when doing so would not allow us to preserve the anonymity of our contacts (i.e., when charities have fewer than four staff members). Our selections of contacts are random in all dimensions except the following: we aim to select staff members or volunteers who have been with the organization for at least one year (when possible), and we aim to speak with at least one woman and/or person of color from each organization (when possible). To protect our contacts’ 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], [Year].” For more information, see our blog post discussing this change, which we implemented in 2017. 

157. THL’s survey had 62 responses; at the time of its distribution, THL had 69 staff members. 

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

159. Private communication with an employee of The Humane League, 2017 

160. “With our goal of being the ultimate team player, and being really collaborative, it’s been really helpful for diversity in general to have so many types of people on staff, whether it’s just introverts and extroverts or different races etc.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

161. “Flexibility is also used tactically in our campaigns. The fact that we’ve been willing to do a lot of ‘bad cop’ stuff in the U.S. that other groups weren’t willing to has been helpful. On the flip side, with the Open Wing Alliance, we’re often playing good cop and filling roles that we wouldn’t normally fill in the U.S.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

162. “Another strength is our generosity with other organizations. I think the Open Wing Alliance this year is the area where we are doing the most good, and that’s because we’ve focused on taking everything we’ve learned in the U.S. and giving guidebooks and even free training put on by our staff for other groups.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

163. “They see one of THL’s roles in the movement as training the next generation of activists. Because they have a grassroots approach, they try to empower young activists to get involved in their campaigns and their work. Pumping out a stream of hardcore, trained professional activists is something they really want to do.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

164. “For example, they’ve begun ranking their volunteers in terms of how involved they are and trying to move people up into higher levels of involvement as well as getting more people into low-involvement roles. […] THL has also expanded their campus program and this is the first year of really significant investment; there will be 60 students getting trained at a summer retreat and then acting almost as part-time THL staff on their campuses. THL plans to track those students’ careers and how they contribute to the movement later; they’re looking forward to seeing what becomes of those students. The campus program is loosely modeled from Koch University, and from THL’s own successful intern program.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

165. Private communication with an employee of The Humane League, 2017 

166. “They have a weekly call for anyone who manages staff to talk about management issues, and because many of them are young and inexperienced with management, they’ve sent all managers to a training seminar about working in a nonprofit and managing volunteers and staff. They use the textbook from the course to help give structure to their manager calls and to promote an open dialogue about challenges people were having. THL also has a thorough orientation process for new employees, provides the opportunity to go to professional conferences if it makes sense, and has sent staff to training conferences for movement building and fundraising.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

167. Executive Director David Coman-Hidy and Executive Vice President Andrea Gunn both have served THL as local office Directors. For some other discussion of THL’s promotion of employees to management roles, see our Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2015).  

168. “It’s been very clear to Coman-Hidy that having people from different cultures and countries to help brainstorm about how to solve problems has been very helpful.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

169. “THL’s Operations and HR departments do a lot of specific things in terms of following best practices for diversity in hiring. For example, they have blinded the skill-test phase of their application process, and are considering further adjustments. THL has a diversity committee made of staff from every department that provides education for staff at retreats and in other ways; for example, they recently put together a document about best practices for managers.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017)  

170. Private communication with an employee of The Humane League, 2017  

171. “We have our diversity and inclusion committee that’s training our staff how to be inclusive and how to think from a perspective beyond whiteness to make sure that when we do bring someone on that they don’t just leave because they feel uncomfortable. The committee runs workshops at our retreats. They also do lunch and learns, which are video calls that all staff are invited to go to.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

172. “For example, because corporate culture in the U.K. is a little more conservative than in the U.S., THL’s U.K. staff have been able to work really well with the team in Japan on ways to approach companies there that people in the U.S. might not have thought of.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

173. “Working on global campaigns, working with a million different kinds of groups from a million different countries, the fact that we can pull on our staff who are working in Mexico or working in London, or the southern U.S. or the northeast and connecting with groups in various areas that are facing challenges that any one of those regions may not be able to answer, that is what immediately comes to mind. I’m so grateful to have such a diverse array of strategic perspectives on staff from different cultures.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018) 

174. “THL has a long employee handbook that employees sign. This year, all staff went through sexual harassment training, with additional training for managers. Coman-Hidy thinks it’s clear to everyone on staff that they take these issues very seriously.” —Conversation with David Coman-Hidy of The Humane League (2017) 

175. Other forms of corrective action include reduction in pay, diminution in title, reduction of responsibilities, including the management of staff, reduction of benefits, verbal or written warnings, performance improvement plans, or additional training and coaching. 

176. “Our two largest funders make up more than half of that total, so we have been focusing our development efforts on broadening our base of supporters.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

177. At the time of this writing, Proposition 12 had not yet passed in California. 

Research Documents

• The Humane League’s 2017 Budget
• The Humane League's 2018 Budget
• The Humane League’s Accomplishments (2017–2018)
• The Humane League’s Organizational Strategic Priorities (2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part One (2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for The Humane League, Part Two (2018)

• Conversation with David Coman-Hidy and Andrea Gunn of The Humane League (2018)
• ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for The Humane League
• ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for The Humane League