We work to understand and improve the lives of wild animals.
Why did Wild Animal Initiative receive our recommendation?1
Wild Animal Initiative’s work to increase knowledge and skills for animal advocacy is highly promising because it focuses on animal groups and interventions that we consider high priority. While we expect all of our evaluated charities to be excellent examples of effective advocacy, Wild Animal Initiative is exceptional even within that group. Giving to Wild Animal Initiative is an excellent opportunity to support initiatives that create the most positive change for animals.
Are Wild Animal Initiative’s programs cost effective?
After analyzing the recent achievements and expenditures of Wild Animal Initiative’s programs, we assess that they utilize their available resources in a cost-effective manner. Of Wild Animal Initiative’s achievements, we think their calls for research proposals and funding of research projects are particularly cost effective because they combine a high-priority intervention with strong implementation. We predict they will use your donations responsibly.
$3.5M
Funding Gap
2024-2025
10–19
Staff Size
2019
Year Founded
How is Wild Animal Initiative’s organizational health?
Organizational factors can influence a charity’s effectiveness and stability. Our assessment showed that Wild Animal Initiative has the key policies and processes in place necessary for healthy workplace conditions, governance, and staff engagement. We also positively noted their commitment to a culture of continuous feedback and growth, including a thoughtful approach to hierarchy that encourages all staff to provide input on strategic and policy decisions.
Why should you support Wild Animal Initiative?
We estimate that Wild Animal Initiative could effectively use $3,500,000 in additional donations (beyond their projected revenue) through 2025. With that funding, they plan to increase their research output and make a more significant impact on the scientific community by showcasing what wild animal welfare research should look like and identifying critical directions for additional study. By supporting Wild Animal Initiative, you play a crucial role in helping them achieve their plans and creating a better world for wild animals.
Read our comprehensive review of Wild Animal Initiative to learn more about their work and our evaluation methods.
For full disclosure, ACE’s Executive Director is a previous employee of Wild Animal Initiative. They were not part of the recommendations decision committee and recused themselves from all discussions about Wild Animal Initiative’s recommendation.
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Make a DonationIntroduction
At Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), we provide comprehensive reviews of all the organizations we recommend after conducting our yearly charity evaluations. During the evaluation period, our researchers thoroughly analyze publicly accessible information about each organization. Additionally, we ask participating organizations for supplemental materials and information to aid our assessments and help us identify the charities to recommend.
This review is based on our assessment of Wild Animal Initiative’s performance on ACE’s four charity evaluation criteria. Each section of the review focuses on a different criterion: (i) Impact Potential, an overview of the charity’s programmatic work and an assessment of its impact potential; (ii) Cost Effectiveness, an analysis of the charity’s recent expenditures and achievements; (iii) Room for More Funding, an overview of the charity’s future plans and an estimate of how much additional funding they can effectively use in 2024 and 2025; and (iv) Organizational Health, an assessment of whether there are any management or governance issues substantial enough to affect the charity’s effectiveness and stability. Each of the four sections is divided into these subsections: Introduction, Our Method, Limitations of Our Method, Our Analysis, and Our Assessment of the charity in that criterion. Finally, we conclude with a summary of why we recommend this charity based on our evaluation.
Impact Potential: How promising are Wild Animal Initiative’s programs?
With this criterion,1 we assess the impact potential (IP) of a charity’s programs without considering their specific program achievements. During our assessment, we analyze the groups of animals the charity’s programs target, the countries where they take place, and the intervention types they use. We also examine how the charity allocates expenditures among different animal groups, countries, and interventions. A charity that performs well on this criterion has programs with great potential to reduce animal suffering or improve animal wellbeing. The key aspects that ACE examines when evaluating a charity’s programmatic work are discussed in detail below.
Our Analysis of Wild Animal Initiative’s Impact Potential
Animal groups
Wild Animal Initiative’s programs focus exclusively on helping wild animals, which we assess as a high-priority cause area.
Fig. 1: Wild Animal Initiative’s spending toward each animal group
In the table below, we report for each animal group our scores (on a 1–7 scale) for Scale, Tractability, and Neglectedness, as well as the general IP score and the uncertainty score. We also provide our overall impression of each animal group based on the latter two scores. For more details on how we scored animal groups, see the section.
Note that for animal groups we scored “Scale” on a logarithmic scale, not a linear scale. In a linear scale, each unit on the scale represents an equal and consistent increment, while in a logarithmic scale, each unit on the scale represents a multiplicative factor. Since the values in this category cover a very large range, with wild animals being by far the most numerous group, we decided that the data would be better represented on a logarithmic scale.
Animal group | Scale8 | Tractability | Neglectedness | IP Score | Uncertainty | Overall impression |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wild animals | 7 | 2 | 7 | 5.7 | 7 | High priority, high uncertainty |
Countries
Wild Animal Initiative’s headquarters are currently located in the United States. They do not have any subsidiaries.
Because Wild Animal Initiative’s programs are not directed to farmed animals, we did not include an analysis of Wild Animal Initiative’s countries.
Interventions
Wild Animal Initiative uses three intervention types to increase knowledge and skills for animal advocacy: research, education, and skill and network building.
Wild Animal Initiative notes that their programs are best assessed for their efficacy in academic field-building. They promote academic research on wild animal welfare, educate scientists about wild animal welfare science, and offer skill-building and networking resources to aspiring researchers, contributing to growing the field of study. They contend that the growth of this field—rather than the number of animals directly impacted in the short term— is currently the best indicator of progress toward helping wild animals at scale.
Fig. 2: Wild Animal Initiative’s spending toward each intervention
We use theory of change diagrams to communicate our interpretation of how a charity creates change for animals through interventions and outcomes. 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.
Fig. 3: Wild Animal Initiative’s theory of change diagram
In the table below, we report for each intervention-outcome combination our scores (on a 1–7 scale) for Scale (short term), Scale (long term), Tractability, and Neglectedness, as well as the general IP score and the uncertainty score. We also provide our overall impression of each intervention type based on the latter two scores. For more details on how we scored interventions, see the Prioritizing interventions section.
Intervention | Outcome | Scale (short term) | Scale (long term) | Tractability | Neglectedness | IP Score | Uncertainty | Overall impression |
Research | Increased knowledge/skills for animal advocacy | 5.0 | 5.8 | 4.5 | 6.0 | 5.3 | 4.1 | High priority, moderate uncertainty |
Education | Increased knowledge/skills for animal advocacy | 4.5 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.5 | 4.6 | High priority, high uncertainty |
Skill and Network Building | Increased knowledge/skills for animal advocacy | 4.8 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.8 | 5 | High priority, high uncertainty |
Research on the impact potential of interventions
Below, we summarize the most relevant research on the effectiveness of each of these intervention types.
Research
ACE’s 2021 research brief on conducting animal advocacy research suggests that it is a promising intervention, especially when considering its potential impact in the longer term. However, our confidence in the short-term effects of this intervention is low due to the lack of empirical evidence about the extent to which animal advocates use research results to prioritize and implement their work. Additionally, we note that the impact of research can vary significantly, with some research projects being far more influential than others. Researchers’ rigor seems to be a key factor in projects’ impact.
Education
There is some evidence suggesting that educational interventions can change attitudes and behaviors regarding farmed animals.9 However, we are not aware of any research on the effects of educational interventions in field-building.10
Skill and Network Building
The National Council of Nonprofits argues that capacity building enables organizations to develop the competencies and skills to make their team more effective and sustainable, thus increasing their potential to fulfill their mission and create change.11 They also suggest that networks can be especially effective for capacity building because they catalyze innovation, improve communications, reduce duplication of past mistakes, and spread ideas faster and more efficiently than other capacity-building approaches.12
ACE’s 2018 report on the allocation of movement resources suggests that capacity building is neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry.
A 2012 article argues that investments in capacity building are an effective adaptation response to global change and that strong and well-supported scientific networks are an indispensable component of capacity building, as they are a key source for new knowledge that enables continual and dynamic adaptation practice.13
Synergy impacts
Charities’ programs can be interpreted as different combinations of interventions used, countries where those interventions are conducted, and/or animal groups aimed to be helped. In the table below, we planned to report each IP score (on a 1–7 scale, ranging from lowest to highest IP) that applies to Wild Animal Initiative. Because their work doesn’t apply to specific countries, we did not produce any synergy IP scores for Wild Animal Initiative. For more details on how we scored the synergy impacts for other charities, see the Assessing synergy section.
Synergy combination | % Annual Expenditures | IP Score |
Research to help wild animals | 78 | n/a |
Education to help wild animals | 11 | n/a |
Skill and network building to help wild animals | 11 | n/a |
Our Assessment of Wild Animal Initiative’s Impact Potential
We estimate that all of Wild Animal Initiative’s expenditures on programs go toward high-priority animal groups (wild animals) and high-priority interventions (research, education, and skill and network building).
In general, we are highly uncertain about education work and skill and network building relative to other interventions, as well as work aiming to help wild animals relative to work targeting other animal groups. This high uncertainty is due to a high standard deviation in team IP scores, which can be interpreted as a relatively high level of disagreement among our team members regarding the impact potential of targeting this animal group and using these intervention types. The high uncertainty is also due to the low quality of research about the effectiveness of skill and network building and the relatively low quantity and quality of research about the effectiveness of education.
Overall, we assessed the impact potential of Wild Animal Initiative’s programs as relatively high, with an overall IP score of 5.4 (on a 1–7 scale), placing them in the fourth quartile (top 25%) of the charities we evaluated in 2023. Based on the final uncertainty score, we assessed our overall uncertainty in Wild Animal Initiative’s impact potential as high. For more detailed information, see Wild Animal Initiative’s IP Assessment spreadsheet.
Cost Effectiveness: How much has Wild Animal Initiative achieved through their programs?
With this criterion, we assess the effectiveness of a charity’s approach to implementing interventions, their achievements, and the costs associated with those achievements. Charities that perform well on this criterion likely use their available resources in a cost-effective manner. The key aspects that ACE considers when examining cost effectiveness are reviewed in detail below.
Our Analysis of Wild Animal Initiative’s Cost Effectiveness
The following tables show Wild Animal Initiative’s key achievements and achievement expenditures per intervention category from January through December 2022, the quantity of achievements per $1/$100,000, and the achievement cost-effectiveness score. The tables show the five highest-expenditure achievements per intervention category. For a full list of Wild Animal Initiative’s achievements, please see their Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet.
Research
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD)26 | Number of research projects | Number of research projects per $100,00027 | Achievement score (1–7)28 |
Held public call for and funded research proposals on juvenile wild animal welfare | $1,003,931 | 11 | 0.8 | 5.0 |
Held public call for and funded research proposals on key bottlenecks to Wild Animal Initiative’s work | $793,448 | 5 | 0.6 | 5.0 |
Held public call for and funded research proposals to engage researchers in studies to develop methods and proof of concept for wild animal welfare interventions | $785,839 | 27 | 3.3 | 5.7 |
Conducted a desk study on the potential for wildlife contraception | $99,310 | 1 | 0.5 | 4.0 |
Developed a research manuscript on understanding physiological approaches for investigating welfare | $54,522 | 1 | 1.5 | 5.5 |
Skill and network building29
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of individuals or organizations reached30 | Number of individuals or organizations reached per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Maintained an online community for wild animal welfare researchers | $108,332 | 244 individuals | 225 individuals | 3.9 |
Delivered a session on contraception for wild animal welfare | $51,281 | 80 individuals | 156 individuals | 3.0 |
Developed training materials for measuring welfare | $25,730 | 240 individuals | 700 individuals | 3.9 |
Presented wild animal welfare research at a workshop for welfare and conservation scientists | $16,400 | 60 individuals | 348 individuals | 3.9 |
Delivered a presentation and created a poster on animal behavior for the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour | $15,315 | 40 individuals | 261 individuals | 2.7 |
Social media campaigns and online ads
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of individuals reached | Number of individuals reached per $1 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Grew their audience through social media and other outreach | $98,702 | 1,322,946 | 13 | 3.1 |
Education
Key achievements | Achievement expenditures (USD) | Number of individuals reached | Number of individuals reached per $100,000 | Achievement score (1–7) |
Ran a wild animal welfare research workshop at the Ecological Society of America | $25,389 | 18 | 64 | 2.7 |
Prepared a webinar for Wild Animal Initiative Grants Workshop | $9,591 | 41 | 406 | 1.9 |
Ran a seminar on animal behavior and welfare | $4,619 | 224 | 485 | 2.8 |
Our Assessment of Wild Animal Initiative’s Cost Effectiveness
Wild Animal Initiative’s overall cost-effectiveness score is 4.5, placing them in the 3rd quartile (scoring higher than 50% of charities) among all charities evaluated in 2023. This score was reached by averaging the individual scores calculated for each achievement, weighted by the relative expenditures on the achievement.31 This overall score is an estimate of how well Wild Animal Initiative has implemented their interventions from January through December 2022, taking their expenditures into account.
We think that out of all of Wild Animal Initiative’s achievements, their calls for and funding of research proposals are particularly cost effective because they combine a high-priority intervention category with a strong implementation (high research quality and high-priority research topics). In contrast, we think that their achievements in education are less cost effective because we consider education a lower-priority intervention category than Wild Animal Initiative’s other main interventions, and (relative to expenditures) fewer individuals were reached compared to other achievements in this category.
We think our score may overestimate Wild Animal Initiative’s cost effectiveness for the following reason: Wild Animal Initiative reported several achievements that took place outside of the reporting period or that will take place in the future. We allowed this because Wild Animal Initiative has a particularly long-term theory of change, and they could be disadvantaged if we only counted achievements that were completed within 12 months. For these achievements, we discounted the achievement quantity based on the estimated percentage of work done during the achievement period. Achievement scores may be inflated if projects end up taking longer than expected. Note that equally, achievement scores may underestimate cost effectiveness if projects wrap up sooner than expected.
We think our score may underestimate Wild Animal Initiative’s cost effectiveness for the following reasons: We largely focus on the direct and short-term impact of research and skill and network building, but the indirect and long-term impact may be much higher. Additionally, because wild animal welfare is less researched and more neglected than farmed animal welfare, it is possible that research, skill and network building, and education are marginally more impactful in this context than in most other cases where these interventions have been applied and evaluated. Finally, our achievement scores take into account the animal group targeted by an achievement, and wild animals belong to one of the highest-priority animal groups in our prioritization of animal groups. However, our linear 1–7 scales cannot with complete accuracy capture the vast number of wild animals compared to other animal groups; wild vertebrates alone outnumber farmed vertebrates by a factor of at least 100 to 1.32 The achievement quality scores therefore likely underestimate the scale of Wild Animal Initiative’s achievements.33
Our uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness score is moderate (below the median of all charities evaluated in 2023). This is based on a moderate amount of missing information when scoring achievements, a moderate uncertainty score of the relevant intervention categories, and the outcome of our verification process. Of the nine achievements selected for verification, four were verified as true, one was partially verified as true, and four were rated as unverifiable.
Room For More Funding: How much additional money can Wild Animal Initiative effectively use in the next two years?
A recommendation from ACE could lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding. With this criterion, we investigate whether a charity would be able to absorb the funding that a new or renewed recommendation may bring, and the extent to which we believe that their future uses of funding will be as effective as their past work. All descriptive data and estimations for this criterion can be found in the model spreadsheet.
Our Analysis of Wild Animal Initiative’s Room For More Funding
The chart below shows Wild Animal Initiative’s revenues, expenditures, and total staff size from 2020–2022, as well as their own projections for the years 2023–2025.
Fig. 5: Wild Animal Initiative’s financials and staff size (2020–2025)
Assessment of Projected Revenue and Expenditures
Concerns about Alignment with Previous Projections40 | Level of Concern about Charity’s Sustainability (1–7) | Reasoning |
No | 4 | Disregarding the sharp increase in revenue and expenses in 2023 due to a large grant and regranting, projecting relatively consistent year over year increase |
We consider the charity’s projected growth (uncertainty level 4 out of 7) to be supported by contextual information and history. A more detailed summary of their financials, including breakdowns by intervention, animal group, and country, can be found in the “Overall Financials” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Assessment of Hiring Plans
Year | # FTEs | Hiring plans | Uncertainty (1–7) |
2020 | 6.19 | N/A | N/A |
2021 | 5.06 | N/A | N/A |
2022 | 11.35 | N/A | N/A |
Projection for 2023 | 18.46 | Services & Outreach Manager, Research Manager, Scientific Principal Investigator, and five Researchers | 4 |
Projection for 2024 | 24.31 | ||
Projection for 2025 | 30.25 |
Overall, we consider it equally likely and unlikely that the charity will be able to find and train all the FTEs projected.41 A more detailed summary of their hiring plans and our reasoning behind their uncertainty scores can be found in the “Assessment: Hiring Plans” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Plans for expansion
Wild Animal Initiative plans to increase their staff size and increase their research output. They aim to make approximately the same amount of grant awards year over year through 2025, while hiring prioritization researchers to increase the strategic value of the grants they make. They hope to make a more significant impact on the scientific community by increasing research output that showcases what wild animal welfare research should look like, identifying critical directions for additional study, and earning them access to more conferences, workshops, and other discussion forums.
A more detailed summary of their future plans can be found in their model spreadsheet.
Unexpected funding
Wild Animal Initiative shared that they could absorb a total of $6,956,000 beyond their most likely scenario projections while still meeting the high standards of their current programs and provided the following plans:
Priority for Funds | Amount of Funds | Type of Work Funded | Uncertainty about Effectiveness of Plans (1–7) |
1 | $1,480,000 | New hires | 4 |
2 | $1,500,000 | Research grants (first tranche) | 2 |
3 | $300,000 | University researcher partnerships (first partner) | 4 |
4 | $200,000 | Conferences | 2 |
5 | $110,000 | Software | 3 |
6 | $300,000 | Staff retreats | 3 |
7 | $836,000 | Professional development | 4 |
8 | $130,000 | Strategy research | 2 |
9 | $1,500,000 | Research grants (second tranche) | 5 |
10 | $600,000 | University researcher partnerships (second and third partners) | 5 |
Based on these plans and Wild Animal Initiative’s ambitious financial projections, we believe that the charity can effectively use less than the above amounts in the next two years in a way that is as effective as their past work. We have some uncertainty about the marginal value of some of their plans. Overall, we consider the expansion of the charity’s core programs to be highly effective, with minor concerns about ambitious growth (a potential indicator that successes may not scale due to limiting factors such as operations and leadership’s ability to manage change).
A more detailed summary of their plans for unexpected funding and the reasoning behind our uncertainty assessments can be found in the “RFMF Estimate” tab of their model spreadsheet.
Reserves
With more than their target amount of 75% of annual expenditures held in reserves (as reported by Wild Animal Initiative for 2023), we believe that they hold a sufficient amount of reserves.
Our Assessment of Wild Animal Initiative’s Room For More Funding
Based on our assessment that they have sufficient reserves and our assessment of their plans to use unexpected funding, we believe that overall, Wild Animal Initiative has room for $1,500,000 of additional funding in 2024 and $2,000,000 in 2025. These two figures represent the amount beyond their projected revenues of $2,958,016 and $3,374,475 in 2024 and 2025, meaning that we believe that they could effectively use a total revenue of up to $4,458,016 and $5,374,475.
Organizational Health: Are there any management issues substantial enough to affect Wild Animal Initiative’s effectiveness and stability?
With this criterion,42 we assess whether any aspects of an organization’s leadership or workplace culture pose a risk to its effectiveness or stability, thereby reducing its potential to help animals. Problems with leadership and workplace culture could also negatively affect the reputation of the broader animal advocacy movement, as well as employees’ wellbeing and their willingness to remain in the movement. For example:
- Schyns & Schilling (2013) report that poor leadership practices result in counterproductive employee behavior, stress, negative attitudes toward the entire company, lower job satisfaction, and higher intention to quit.
- Waldman et al. (2012) report that effective leadership predicts lower turnover and reduced intention to quit.
- Wang (2021) reports that organizational commitment among nonprofit employees is positively related to engaged leadership, community engagement effort, the degree of formalization in daily operations, and perceived intangible support for employees.
- Gorski et al. (2018) report that all of the activists they interviewed attributed their burnout in part to negative organizational and movement cultures, including a culture of martyrdom, exhaustion/overwork, the taboo of discussing burnout, and financial strain.
- A meta-analysis by Harter et al. (2002) indicates that employee satisfaction and engagement are correlated with reduced employee turnover and accidents and increased customer satisfaction, productivity, and profit.
Our Analysis of Wild Animal Initiative’s Organizational Health
People policies and processes
The policies that Wild Animal Initiative reported having in place are listed below. The charity reported that while it does its best to apply all policies equitably to all members of staff, in instances when a country in which they have staff has more stringent or generous laws than the U.S., they defer to the laws of that country.
Has policy | Partial / informal policy | No policy |
Compensation | |
Paid time off | |
Paid sick days | |
Paid medical leave | |
Permission to use sick days for mental health purposes | |
Healthcare coverage or health insurance | |
Paid family and caregiver leave | |
Paid internships (if relevant) | |
Compensation strategy (i.e., a policy detailing how the charity determines their staff’s pay and benefits in a standardized way) | |
Accountability | |
An anti-retaliation policy protecting whistleblowers and those who report grievances | |
Board meeting minutes | |
Conflict of interest policy | |
Records retention and destruction policy | |
Workplace safety | |
A clearly written workplace code of ethics/conduct | |
A written statement that the charity does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other irrelevant 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 | |
Training on topics of harassment and discrimination in the workplace | |
Organizational design and communication | |
Clearly defined responsibilities for all positions, preferably with written job descriptions | |
Clearly defined objectives and expectations for all roles | |
Documentation of all key knowledge and information necessary to fulfill the needs of the organization | |
Mission and/or vision, defining the purpose and future of the organization | |
Clear organizational goals and/or priorities communicated to all employees | |
Performance and recruitment assessments | |
Annual (or more frequent) performance evaluations for all roles | |
Performance evaluation process based on predefined objectives and expectations | |
Annual (or more frequent) process to measure staff engagement or satisfaction | |
A process in place to support performance improvement in instances of underperformance | |
Learning and development | |
New hire onboarding or orientation process | |
Training and development available to each employee | |
A simple and transparent written procedure for employees to request additional training or support | |
Workplace conditions | |
Flexible work hours | |
Remote work option | |
Representation, equity, and inclusion | |
Process to attract a diverse candidate pool | |
Structured hiring, assessing all candidates using the same process | |
Standardized process for employment termination decisions | |
Two or more decision-makers for all hiring, promotion, and termination decisions |
Transparency
Wild Animal Initiative was transparent with ACE throughout the evaluation process.
All of the public-facing information we requested was available on the charity’s website. This included: a list of board members; a list of key staff members; information about the organization’s key accomplishments; the organization’s mission, vision, and/or theory of change; a privacy policy disclosing how the charity collects, uses, and shares third-party information; an IRS Form 990 or equivalent tax form; and financial statements.
Leadership and governance
Wild Animal Initiative’s Executive Director (ED) is Cameron Meyer Shorb, who has been involved in the charity for four years.
The board of directors has five members. The Executive Director does not sit on the board.
Wild Animal Initiative recently had a transition in their Executive Director. In January 2022, former Executive Director Mal Graham moved from Executive Director to Strategy Director to focus on long-term organizational strategy. Former Deputy Director Cameron Meyer Shorb served as Interim Executive Director until a long-term director could be found. In June 2022, the board chose Cameron to serve as Executive Director for the long term.
We found that the charity’s board of directors aligned with our understanding of best practice. All of their board members are independent from the organization, board meetings take place 6 times per year, and the board has robust term limits and performance evaluation processes in place.
Among Wild Animal Initiative staff who responded to our engagement survey, the average score across questions regarding confidence in leadership and management was 4.7 on a 1–5 scale, indicating very high confidence. 94% of staff agreed with the statement “I have confidence in the leaders at our organization.”
Staff engagement and satisfaction
At the time the survey was administered, Wild Animal Initiative had 19 staff members (including full-time staff, part-time staff, and contractors). Eighteen staff members responded to our engagement survey, yielding a response rate of 95%.
Wild Animal Initiative has a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. Survey respondents’ average score to questions regarding satisfaction with wages and benefits was 4.4 on a 1–5 scale, indicating high satisfaction.
The average score across all questions was 4.7 on a 1–5 scale, suggesting that, on average, staff exhibit very high engagement and satisfaction.
Harassment and discrimination
We did not receive any reports of harassment or discrimination at Wild Animal Initiative.
Our Assessment of Wild Animal Initiative’s Organizational Health
We did not detect any concerns in Wild Animal Initiative’s leadership and organizational culture. Based on our assessment, they appear to have strong policies and processes in place and high levels of staff engagement. We also positively noted their stated commitment to a culture of continuous feedback and growth, including an approach to hierarchy that encourages all staff to provide input on strategic and policy decisions.
Overall Recommendation
Wild Animal Initiative’s work to increase knowledge and skills for animal advocacy is highly promising because it focuses on animal groups and interventions that we consider high priority. We assess Wild Animal Initiative’s recent work as highly cost effective and believe they are in a strong position to use additional funding. These efforts are well-aligned with ACE’s organizational values and theory of change.
Wild Animal Initiative performed very strongly compared to other charities we evaluated. During the decision-making phase of our evaluation process, we took into account their performance on our four evaluation criteria—Impact Potential (high), Cost Effectiveness (high), Room for More Funding across 2024 and 2025 ($3,500,000), and Organizational Health (no major concerns)—as well as our level of uncertainty in their scores. In this particular case, our uncertainty in Wild Animal Initiative’s Impact Potential score was higher than our uncertainty in their Cost Effectiveness score, so we put more emphasis on the latter when making recommendation decisions. Overall, we find Wild Animal Initiative to be an excellent giving opportunity for those looking to create the most positive change for animals.
To view all of the sources cited in this review, see the reference list.
This criterion was called Programs from 2020 to 2022. We decided to rename it Impact Potential to better reflect its focus on assessing the effectiveness of charities’ programs without considering their implementation. This name is more specific and less confusing internally, especially since we recently changed the name of our research team to the Programs team.
Rethink Priorities adjusted their welfare range estimates for use in ACE’s evaluations. Because ACE compares animal charities with each other rather than with human charities, Rethink Priorities reindexed the ranges to pigs instead of humans—see this page for more information.
An “egalitarian” score is a score of 1 that we assign to each animal group to represent the view that all animal groups have equal welfare range or probability of sentience.
The framework we used to prioritize countries only applies to farmed animal advocacy. We have not developed a framework to prioritize wild animal welfare work because there are very few organizations that work on wild animal welfare—we are aware of fewer than five worldwide as of this writing—, and those we have considered so far are focused on indirect work such as research and academic development, which is less country-specific.
For example, when scoring the intervention category “apps and other digital resources,” we considered the following tractability proxies: the Global Innovation Index, Education (mean years of schooling), and Internet Penetration rate.
For more information on the limitations of FAOSTAT data, see Šimčikas (2019). For more information on Rethink Priorities welfare ranges project, see Fischer (2020).
For arguments supporting the view that the most important consideration of our present actions should be their long-term impact, see Greaves & MacAskill (2019) and Beckstead (2019).
Note that for animal groups, we scored “Scale” on a logarithmic scale, not a linear scale. We made this decision because the values in this category cover a huge range given that the number of wild animals is many times higher than the rest of animal groups.
Bryant & Dillard (2020); Jalil et al. (2019); Jalil et al. (2023)
It can be argued that educational interventions are as effective or more effective in field-building than in changing food consumption. This is because there are fewer logical steps to connect educational activities to changes in research than there are to connect educational activities to changes in food consumption.
We asked that reported achievements and associated expenditures amount to at least 90% of a charity’s total program expenditures during the reporting period. We also adjusted achievement expenditures by taking the charity’s reported expenditures and adding a portion of their non-programmatic expenditures (i.e., overhead or administration). This process allowed us to incorporate general organizational running costs into our consideration of cost effectiveness.
We selected key claims from the achievements with the highest expenditures, given that those achievements contribute most to the cost-effectiveness score.
For more information about Weighted Factor Models, see Charity Entrepreneurship (2019).
We standardized this unit to achievements per one U.S. dollar or per $100,000, depending on which was easier to interpret, to allow for comparison across achievements. For example, we calculated how many individuals a social media campaign reached per dollar spent or how many legal actions a charity filed per $100,000 spent. For some intervention categories, the number of achievements was too low to normalize the achievement quantity. In these cases, we used the average of two researchers’ subjective assessment of the quantity on a 1–7 scale.
See here for the full rubric. Two researchers scored each achievement on the rubric, and discussed significant disagreements before a second round of revising scores. We averaged the two researchers’ scores for each factor. Where we did not have enough information to score an achievement, we set the corresponding factor weight to zero.
We defaulted to giving achievement quality 75% and achievement quantity 25% weight. In some cases, e.g., if we were particularly uncertain about the achievement quantity, we gave achievement quality a higher weight.
By using a multiplicative method, we avoid giving high scores to achievements that implement promising interventions poorly (i.e., high intervention score but low implementation score). Consider the example where a charity focuses on an intervention like cage-free campaigns, which has the potential to be highly impactful, but fails to achieve any significant commitments. With a weighted average approach, the charity would still receive a relatively high score despite an unsuccessful implementation of their campaigns. However, by using a multiplicative method, the overall score accounts for the interaction between intervention and implementation scores. This means that if the implementation quality is lacking, the overall score will appropriately reflect that.
We encouraged charities to give as much information as possible about each achievement. In order to protect their capacity, we also marked some questions as optional. Where we did not have the relevant information to score an achievement on a factor in the scoring rubric, this increased our uncertainty score for that achievement.
We increased the uncertainty score for charities that reported fewer than 10 achievements to account for the fact that measurement errors and uncertainties have a higher impact on the final score when fewer achievements are averaged.
For interested readers, we compiled a list of existing quantified cost-effectiveness estimates for animal advocacy interventions here. You can find our summaries of existing empirical research on the impact potential of interventions here.
For more information about Weighted Factor Models, see Charity Entrepreneurship (2019).
Some factors and factor weights were adjusted slightly after receiving the data from charities.
We adjusted the achievement expenditures charities reported to us by adding a portion of their overhead costs, weighted by the relative achievement expenditures, in order to take general organizational running costs into account in our cost-effectiveness assessment.
Wild Animal Initiative reported some achievements that partly took place outside of the reporting period. For those achievements, we applied a discount to the achievement quantity (based on Wild Animal Initiative’s estimated percentage of the work that was done during the reporting period) when computing the achievement quantity per $100,000.
To calculate the achievement score, we multiplied the intervention score by the implementation score. We then min-max normalized those scores against all other achievement scores across charities and converted the result to a 1–7 scale.
Outcomes of two of Wild Animal Initiative’s achievements in this category have not yet been published, so we were unable to score them, and they did not contribute to the cost-effectiveness score. They are included in Wild Animal Initiative’s Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet.
Wild Animal Initiative notes that because of the highly targeted nature of their mission and the need to recruit specific individuals (highly trained academics) to their cause, the absolute reach of their programs is significantly less important than the quality of the connections they make. Wild Animal Initiative’s programs are focused on reaching smaller numbers of people who are most likely to be instrumental in field building rather than people who might join a seminar or workshop but would not engage in wild animal welfare science. Further, because they target specific groups and not the general public, the pool of people they can engage with is limited.
Please see Wild Animal Initiative’s Cost-Effectiveness Assessment spreadsheet and the Our Method section for more detailed information.
Wild Animal Initiative notes that, based on these considerations, our score is more likely to underestimate Wild Animal Initiative’s cost effectiveness than overestimate it.
Sustainability of growth is based on historical revenue/expenditures and other context-dependent variables, such as nonfinancial barriers to the scalability of their programs (e.g., time).
National Council of Nonprofits; Propel Nonprofits; Boland & Freedman (2021)
To be selected for evaluation, we require that a charity has a budget size of at least about $100,000 and faces no country-specific regulatory barriers to receiving money from ACE.
This assessment is only applicable to charities that projected financial information in a previous ACE evaluation.
Wild Animal Initiative notes that they have invested heavily in their hiring team and other support roles, and they think their track record is a good predictor of the rate at which they can fill these roles. They have hired at least six staff members each year for the past two years (including eight managerial and postdoctoral-level roles).
This criterion was called Leadership and Culture from 2020 to 2022. We found that ‘leadership’ was often misunderstood as referring solely to the qualities of individual leaders and that ‘culture’ was understood in very different ways across countries and demographics. With the new name Organizational Health, we intend to highlight the broad focus of this criterion and to clarify that its goal is to identify any significant risks to the organization’s effectiveness and stability.
For example, in a study by Anderson (2020), 49% of paid animal advocates and 28% of unpaid animal advocates reported having experienced discrimination or harassment. Advocates who were members of a minoritized group (i.e., people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people) were significantly more likely to leave the movement as a result of discrimination than non-minoritized advocates.
Examples of such social characteristics include: 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.
ACE defines “harassment” as bullying, intimidation, and other behavior (whether physical, verbal, or nonverbal) that has the effect of upsetting, demeaning, humiliating, intimidating, or threatening an individual. Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
ACE defines “discrimination” as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain social characteristics.
ACE defines the “workplace” as any place where work-related activities occur, including physical premises, meetings, conferences, training sessions, transit, social functions, and electronic communication (such as email, chat, text, phone calls, and virtual meetings).
Charity Navigator defines transparency as “an obligation or willingness by a charity to publish and make available critical data about the organization.”
BoardSource (2016), p. 4
For example, see Mitchell et al. (2001).
The publicly accessible version of this form can be found via ACE’s Third-Party Whistleblower Policy on our website.