xiaobuVEGAN (Vegans of Shanghai)

Programs

A charity that performs well on this criterion has programs that we expect are highly effective in reducing the suffering of animals. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining a charity’s programs are reviewed in detail below.

Method

In this criterion, we assess the effectiveness of each of the charity’s programs by analyzing (i) the interventions each program uses, (ii) the outcomes those interventions work toward, (iii) the countries in which the program takes place, and (iv) the groups of animals the program affects. We use information supplied by the charity to provide a more detailed analysis of each of these four factors. Our assessment of each intervention is informed by our research briefs and other relevant research.

At the beginning of our evaluation process, we select charities that we believe have the most effective programs. This year, we considered a comprehensive list of animal advocacy charities that focus on improving the lives of farmed or wild animals. We selected farmed animal charities based on the outcomes they work toward, the regions they work in, and the specific animal group(s) their programs target. We don’t currently consider animal group(s) targeted as part of our evaluation for wild animal charities, as the number of charities working on the welfare of wild animals is very small.

Outcomes

We categorize the work of animal advocacy charities by their outcomes, broadly distinguishing whether interventions focus on individual or institutional change. Individual-focused interventions often involve decreasing the consumption of animal products, increasing the prevalence of anti-speciesist values, or providing direct help to animals. Institutional change involves improving animal welfare standards, increasing the availability of animal-free products, or strengthening the animal advocacy movement.

We believe that changing individual habits and beliefs is difficult to achieve through individual outreach. Currently, we find the arguments for an institution-focused approach¹ more compelling than individual-focused approaches. We believe that raising welfare standards increases animal welfare for a large number of animals in the short term² and may contribute to transforming markets in the long run.³ Increasing the availability of animal-free foods, e.g., by bringing new, affordable products to the market or providing more plant-based menu options, can provide a convenient opportunity for people to choose more plant-based options. Moreover, we believe that efforts to strengthen the animal advocacy movement, e.g., by improving organizational effectiveness and building alliances, can support all other outcomes and may be relatively neglected.

Therefore, when considering charities to evaluate, we prioritize those that work to improve welfare standards, increase the availability of animal-free products, or strengthen the animal advocacy movement. We give lower priority to charities that focus on decreasing the consumption of animal products, increasing the prevalence of anti-speciesist values, or providing direct help to animals. Charities selected for evaluation are sent a request for more in-depth information about their programs and the specific interventions they use. We then present and assess each of the charities’ programs. In line with our commitment to following empirical evidence and logical reasoning, we use existing research to inform our assessments and explain our thinking about the effectiveness of different interventions.

Countries

A charity’s countries and regions of operations can affect their work with regard to scale, neglectedness, and tractability. We prioritize charities in countries with relatively large animal agricultural industries, few other charities engaged in similar work, and in which animal advocacy is likely to be feasible and have a lasting impact. In our charity selection process, we used Mercy For Animals’ Farmed Animal Opportunity Index (FAOI), which combines proxies for scale, tractability, and global influence to create country scores.⁴ To assess neglectedness, we used our own data on the number of organizations that we are aware of working in each country. Below we present these measures for the country that xiaobuVEGAN operates in.

A note about long-term impact

Each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.⁵ The potential number of animals affected increases over time due to population growth and an accumulation of generations. Thus, we would expect that the long-term impacts of an action would likely affect more animals than the short-term impacts of the same action. Nevertheless, we are highly uncertain about the particular long-term effects of each intervention. Because of this uncertainty, our reasoning about each charity’s impact (along with our diagrams) may skew toward overemphasizing short-term effects.

Information and Analysis

Cause areas

xiaobuVEGAN’s programs focus exclusively on reducing the suffering of farmed animals, which we think is a high-priority cause area.

Countries

xiaobuVEGAN develops their programs in China and has no subsidiaries in other countries.

We used Mercy For Animals’ Farmed Animal Opportunity Index (FAOI) with the suggested weightings of scale (25%), tractability, (55%) and influence (20%) to determine each country’s total FAOI score. We report this score along with the country’s global ranking from a total of 60 countries in the following format: FAOI score (global ranking). China has the following score and ranking: 55.11(1). According to the comprehensive list of charities we are aware of, there are about 724 farmed animal advocacy organizations, excluding sanctuaries, worldwide. From this list, we found 18 in China. We believe that farmed animal advocacy in China is highly neglected (given the very large scale of the country and small number of charities there), moderately tractable, and moderately influential.

Description of programs

xiaobuVEGAN pursues different avenues for creating change for animals. Their work focuses on increasing the availability of animal-free products, strengthening the animal advocacy movement, and to a lesser extent, also aims to decrease the consumption of animal products.

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 or uncertain effects.

Below, we describe each of xiaobuVEGAN’s programs, listed in order of the financial resources devoted to them in 2020 (from highest to lowest). We list major accomplishments for each program, if a track record is available.

xiaobuVEGAN’s programs

Research for intervention effectiveness

Institutional outreach

Currently, there is no peer-reviewed research specifically about institutional outreach to influence the availability of animal-free products. However, we could learn from studies that investigate the effectiveness of outreach to hospitals and schools on increasing the availability of “healthy foods” (specifically fruits, vegetables, and whole grains). We believe that reaching out to nonprofit institutions with the effective strategies identified in these studies has the potential to increase the availability of animal-free foods, based on high participation and success rates in health food outreach to schools and hospitals. Some of these strategies included i) working with the local hospital association and hospital workers’ unions to encourage participation, ii) enlisting in-depth assistance from dietitians, and iii) providing advice on how to incorporate new standards into existing operations. However, due to concerns about the generalizability of this intervention to outreach for animal-free foods, we believe that more research is needed.

Movement building

There is currently no empirical evidence that reviews the effectiveness of movement building in animal advocacy. However, we believe that capacity-building projects have the potential to help animals indirectly by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations. Furthermore, building alliances with key influencers, institutions, or social movements could expand the audience and impact of animal advocacy organizations and projects, leading to net positive outcomes for animals. Additionally, ACE’s 2018 research and Harris⁶ suggest that capacity building and building alliances are currently neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry.

Veg*n pledge program

xiaobuVEGAN runs a veg*n pledge program. Some empirical studies suggest that self-monitoring—which is part of taking a veg*n pledge—reduces meat consumption, at least in the short run.⁷ Other studies that measure the impact of veg*n pledges suggest that some participants adopt a more plant-based diet for several months after the pledge.⁸ Besides dietary change, veg*n pledge programs may help recruit new people to the movement, normalize veg*nism, and raise awareness of veg*nism and animal-related issues.

Our Assessment

We think that xiaobuVEGAN’s restaurant outreach program—aimed at increasing the availability of animal-free products—is particularly effective, but there is little evidence supporting this claim.

We consider xiaobuVEGAN’s work in China to be particularly effective based on the very high number of animals in the country and the relatively low number of other organizations working there.

Overall, we think that almost all of xiaobuVEGAN’s spending on programs goes toward outcomes and countries that we think are a high priority.

Room for More Funding

A new recommendation from ACE could lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding. In this criterion, we investigate whether a charity is able to absorb and effectively utilize funding that the recommendation may bring in or, if the charity has a prior recommendation status, whether they will continue to effectively absorb funding that comes from our recommendation.

Method

In the following section, we inspect the charity’s plans for expansion as well as their financials, including revenue and expenditure projections.

The charities we evaluate typically receive revenue from a variety of different sources, such as individual donations or grants from foundations.⁹ In order to guarantee that a charity will raise the funds needed for their operations, they should be able to predict changes in future revenue. To estimate charities’ room for more funding, we request records of their revenue since 2019 and ask what they predict their revenue will be in 2021–2023. A review of the literature on nonprofit finance suggests that revenue diversity may be positively associated with revenue predictability if the sources of income are largely uncorrelated.¹⁰ However, a few sources of large donations—if stable and reliable—may also be associated with high performance and growth. Therefore, in this criterion, we also indicate the charities’ major sources of income.

We present the charities’ reported plans for expansion of each program as well as other planned changes for the next two years. We do not make active suggestions for additional plans. However, we ask charities to indicate how they would spend additional funding that we expect would come in as a result of a new recommendation from ACE, considering that a Standout Charity status and a Top Charity status would likely lead to a $100,000 or $1,000,000 increase in funding, respectively. Note that we list the expenditures for planned non-program expenses but do not make any assessment of the charity’s overhead costs in this criterion, given that there is no evidence that the total share of overhead costs is negatively related to overall effectiveness.¹¹ However, we do consider relative overhead costs per program in our Cost-Effectiveness criterion. Here we focus on evaluating whether additional resources are likely to be used for effective programs or other beneficial changes in the organization. The latter may include investments into infrastructure and efforts to retain staff, both of which we think are important for sustainable growth.

It is common practice for charities to hold more funds than needed for their current expenses (i.e., reserves) in order to be able to withstand changes in the business cycle or other external shocks that may affect their incoming revenue. Such additional funds can also serve as investments into future projects in the long run. Thus, it can be effective to provide a charity with additional funds to secure the stability of the organization or provide funding for larger, future projects. We do not prescribe a certain share of reserves, but we suggest that charities hold reserves equal to at least one year of expenditures, and we increase a charity’s room for more funding if their reserves in 2021 are less than 100% of their projected total expenditure.

Finally, we aggregate the financial information and the charity’s plans to form an assessment of their room for more funding. All descriptive data and estimations can be found in this RFMF sheet. Our assessment of a charity’s ability to effectively absorb additional funding helps inform our recommendation decision.

Information and Analysis

The chart below shows xiaobuVEGAN’s revenues, expenditures, and net assets from 2019 to  2020, as well as projections for the years 2021–2023. The information is based on the charity’s past financial data and their own predictions for the years 2021–2023.

xiaobuVEGAN receives the majority of their income from donations and 25% from their own work (earned income).¹² In 2020, they received 80% of their funding from donations larger than 20% of their annual revenue.¹³ They expect their revenue to increase more in 2022 and 2023 than in the previous years.

According to xiaobuVEGAN’s reported projections, their estimated increase in revenue in 2022 will sufficiently cover their plans for expansion.

xiaobuVEGAN outlined that if they were to receive an additional $100,000 per year, it would be focused on additional restaurant outreach, hiring staff, and supporting direct help organizations. xiaobuVEGAN did not provide plans for spending an additional $1,000,000.

With no current assets, as reported by xiaobuVEGAN for 2021—we believe that they could benefit from holding a larger amount of reserves. As such, we add additional funding to replenish their reserves to the charity’s plans for expansion.

xiaobuVEGAN has planned expenditures of $201,900 in 2022, and $271,892 in 2023, and a need to establish their reserves, for which they need donations to cover. If they successfully fundraise their planned expenditures for 2022 and 2023 at a similar level to previous years, we think that they will need a further $97,000  of funding in 2022 and $107,000 in 2023, from new funding sources, in order to cover these expenditures. For our assessment of the effectiveness of the programs, see our Programs criterion.

Below we list xiaobuVEGAN’s plans for expansion for each program as well as other planned expenditures, such as administrative costs, wages, and training. We do not verify the feasibility of the plans or the specifics of how the change in expenditure will cover the planned expansions. Reported change in expenditure is based on the charity’s own estimates of change in expenditures of the program from 2021 to 2022 and from 2022 to 2023.

xiaobuVEGAN plans to expand their restaurant outreach, app, and xiaobuVEGAN challenge programs. In addition, they plan to hire new team members and train existing staff. More details can be found in the supplementary materials.

Our Assessment 

xiaobuVEGAN plans to focus future expansions on their restaurant outreach, app, and xiaobuVEGAN challenge programs. In addition, they plan to hire new team members and train existing staff. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to xiaobuVEGAN, we estimate that the organization can effectively absorb funding that we expect to come with a recommendation status.

xiaobuVEGAN has planned expenditures of $201,900 in 2022, and $271,892 in 2023, and a need to establish their reserves, for which they need donations to cover. If they successfully fundraise their planned expenditures for 2022 and 2023 at a similar level to previous years, we think that they will need a further $97,000 of funding in 2022 and $107,000 in 2023, from new funding sources, in order to cover these expenditures. For our assessment of the effectiveness of the programs, see our Programs criterion.

It is possible that a charity could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or that they could come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. If a charity receives a recommendation as Top Charity, we check in mid-year about the funding they’ve received since the release of our recommendations, and we use the estimates presented above to indicate whether we still expect them to be able to effectively absorb additional funding at that time.

Leadership and Culture

A charity that performs well on this criterion has strong leadership and a healthy organizational culture. The way an organization is led affects its organizational culture, which in turn impacts the organization’s effectiveness and stability.¹⁴ The key aspects that ACE considers when examining leadership and culture are reviewed in detail below.

Method

We review aspects of organizational leadership and culture by capturing staff and volunteer perspectives via our culture survey, in addition to information provided by top leadership staff (as defined by each charity).

Assessing leadership

First, we consider key information about the composition of leadership staff and board of directors. There appears to be no consensus in the literature on the specifics of the relationship between board composition and organizational performance,¹⁵ therefore we refrain from making judgements on board composition. However, because donors may have preferences on whether the Executive Director (ED) or other top executive staff are board members or not, we note when this is the case. According to the Council on Foundations,¹⁶ risks of EDs serving as board members include conflicts of interest when the board sets the ED’s salary, complicated reporting relationships, and blurred lines between governing bodies and staff. On the other hand, an ED that is part of a governing board can provide context about day-to-day operations and ultimately lead to better informed decisions, while also giving the ED more credibility and authority.

We also consider information about leadership’s commitment to transparency by looking at available information on the charity’s website, such as key staff members, financial information, and board meeting notes. We require organizations selected for evaluation to be transparent with ACE throughout the process. Although we value transparency, we do not expect all organizations to be transparent with the public about sensitive information. For example, we recognize that organizations and individuals working in some regions or on some interventions could be harmed by making information about their work public. In these cases, we favor confidentiality over transparency.

In addition, we utilize our culture survey to ask staff to identify the extent to which they feel that leadership is competently guiding the organization.

Organizational policies

We ask organizations undergoing evaluation to provide a list of their human resources policies, and we elicit the views of staff and volunteers through our culture survey. Administering ACE’s culture survey to all staff members, as well as volunteers working at least 20 hours per month, is an eligibility requirement to be recommended as an ACE Top or Standout Charity. However, ACE does not require individual staff members or volunteers at participating charities to complete the survey. We recognize that surveying staff and volunteers could (i) lead to inaccuracies due to selection bias, and (ii) may not reflect employees’ true opinions as they are aware that their responses could influence ACE’s evaluation of their employer. In our experience, it is easier to assess issues with an organization’s culture than it is to assess how strong an organization’s culture is. Therefore, we focus on determining whether there are issues in the organization’s culture that have a negative impact on staff productivity and well-being.

We assume that employees in the nonprofit sector have incentives that are material, purposive, and solidary.¹⁷ Since nonprofit sector wages are typically below for-profit wages, our survey elicits wage satisfaction from all staff. Additionally, we request the organization’s benefit policies regarding time off, health care, and training and professional development. As policies vary across countries and cultures, we do not evaluate charities based on their set of policies and do not expect effective charities to have all policies in place.

To capture whether the organization also provides non-material incentives, e.g., goal-related intangible rewards, we elicit employee engagement using the Gallup Q¹² survey. We consider an average engagement score below the median value (i.e., below four) of the scale a potential concern.

ACE believes that the animal advocacy movement should be safe and inclusive for everyone. Therefore, we also collect information about policies and activities regarding representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI). We use the terms “representation” and “diversity” broadly in this section to refer to the diversity of certain social identity characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries).¹⁸ Additionally, we believe that effective charities must have human resources policies against harassment¹⁹ and discrimination,²⁰ and that cases of harrassment and discrimination in the workplace should be addressed appropriately. If a specific case of harassment or discrimination from the last 12 months is reported to ACE by several current or former staff members or volunteers at a charity, and said case remains unaddressed, the charity in question is ineligible to receive a recommendation from ACE.

Information and Analysis

Leadership staff

In this section, we list each charity’s President (or equivalent) and/or Executive Director (or equivalent), and we describe the board of directors. This is completed for the purpose of transparency and to identify the relationship between the ED and board of directors.

• President: Tomas Joelsson, involved in the organization for 5 years
• Executive Director (ED): Monica Wang, involved in the organization for 2 years
• Number of members on board of directors: 2

xiaobuVEGAN did not have a transition in leadership in the last year.

All of the staff respondents to our culture survey agreed that xiaobuVEGAN’s leadership team guides the organization competently.

xiaobuVEGAN has been transparent with ACE during the evaluation process. Their audited financial documents are not available on their website or GuideStar. Lists of board members or key staff members are also not available on their website.

Culture

xiaobuVEGAN has five staff members (including full-time, part-time, and contractors) and four volunteers. Four staff members and three volunteers responded to our survey, yielding response rates of 80% and 75%, respectively. xiaobuVEGAN has a very small team and team members that are also members of leadership could have skewed the results of our survey.

xiaobuVEGAN does not have a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. They offer paid time off, three sick days per month, and social and healthcare coverage. None of the staff that responded to our survey report that they are dissatisfied with their wage or the benefits provided. Additional policies are listed in the table below.

General compensation policies

Has policy

Partial / informal policy

No policy

A formal compensation policy to determine staff salaries
Paid time off
Sick days and personal leave
Healthcare coverage
Paid family and medical leave
Clearly defined essential functions for all positions, preferably with written job descriptions
Annual (or more frequent) performance evaluations
Formal onboarding or orientation process
Funding for training and development, consistently available to each employee
Simple and transparent written procedure for employees to request further training or support
Flexible work hours
Remote work option
Paid internships (if possible and applicable)

The average score in our engagement survey is 6.5 (on a 1–7 scale), suggesting that on average, staff do not exhibit a low engagement score. xiaobuVEGAN does not have staff policies against harassment and discrimination. None of the staff members or volunteers report that they have experienced or witnessed harassment or discrimination at their workplace during the last twelve months. See all other related policies in the table below.

Policies related to representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI)

Has policy

Partial / informal policy

No policy

A clearly written workplace code of ethics/conduct
A written statement that the organization does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other characteristics
A simple and transparent written procedure for filing complaints
Mandatory reporting of harassment and discrimination through all levels, up to and including the board of directors
Explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment or discrimination
Documentation of all reported instances of harassment or discrimination, along with the outcomes of each case
Regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace
An anti-retaliation policy protecting whistleblowers and those who report grievances

Our Assessment

We did not detect any major concerns in xiaobuVEGAN’s leadership and organizational culture. We positively noted that xiaobuVEGAN’s staff generally agree that leadership guides the organization competently, that team members do not experience harrassment or discrimination in the workplace, and that team members are generally engaged and satisfied with their job. We think that xiaobuVEGAN could benefit from creating staff policies against harassment and discrimination.

1. Sentience Institute (2020) 

2. Šimčikas (2019); Bollard (2017) 

3. On average, our team considers advocating for welfare improvements to be a positive and promising approach. However, there are different viewpoints within ACE’s research team on the effect of advocating for animal welfare standards on the spread of anti-speciesist values. There are concerns that arguing for welfare improvements may lead to complacency related to animal welfare and give the public an inconsistent message—e.g., see Wrenn (2012). In addition, there are concerns with the alliance between nonprofit organizations and the companies that are directly responsible for animal exploitation, as explored in Baur and Schmitz (2012).  

4. The weightings used for calculating these country scores are scale (25%), tractability (55%), and regional influence (20%). 

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

6. Harris (2019) 

7. See the review of two such studies in Bianchi et al (2018). 

8. Faunalytics (2019); Grassian (2019); Moleman (2018) 

9. To be selected for evaluation, we require that a charity has a revenue of at least about $50,000 and faces no country-specific regulatory barriers to receiving money from ACE. 

10. Calabrese (2020)  

11. Garven et al. (2016); Mitchell & Calabrese (2018) 

12. Based on the numbers that xiaobuVEGAN provided for 2020. 

13. xiaobuVEGAN received Movement Grants of $50,000 in November, 2019, $35,000 in July, 2020, and $40,000 in June, 2021. 

14. Groysberg et al. (2018) 

15. Du Bois et al. (2007) 

16. Council on Foundations (2010) 

17. Clark and Wilson (1961), as cited in Rollag (n.d.) 

18. Examples of such social identity characteristics are: race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, and genetic information. 

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

20. ACE defines discrimination as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries), such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, or genetic information.