Wild Animal Initiative
Recommended Charity| Primary area of work: | |
| Review Published: | November, 2020 |
| Current Version | 2023 |
Archived Version: November, 2020
What does Wild Animal Initiative do?
Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) was founded in 2019. WAI currently operates in the U.S., where they work to strengthen the animal advocacy movement through creating an academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare. They compile literature reviews, write theoretical and opinion articles, and publish research results on their website and/or in peer-reviewed journals. WAI focuses on identifying and sharing possible research avenues and connecting with more established fields. They also work with researchers from various academic and non-academic institutions to identify potential collaborators, and they recently launched a grant assistance program. WAI also co-organizes the annual Wild Animal Welfare Summit and hosts discussions at conferences.
What are their strengths?
WAI focuses exclusively on helping wild animals, which could be a high-impact cause area. They produce research and build alliances to create a new academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare, both of which we believe are highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement. WAI’s outreach program, which consists of engaging academics interested in wild animal welfare research, seems to be particularly cost effective because established academics have more resources to scale up research in this growing field. We think WAI engages in strategic planning regularly, is clear on who makes final decisions, ensures participation and periodic input from all levels of staff, and has a thorough strategic plan and a well-designed goal-setting process. Their staff satisfaction and engagement—as well as their demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion—suggest that WAI has a strong organizational culture.
What are their weaknesses?
WAI was founded in 2019 as a merger of two organizations, Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm. As a newly formed organization, WAI’s track record is relatively short. The recency of their founding and programs, as well as the small size of their team, has reduced our capacity to be confident in our overall assessment of WAI.
We think that WAI could benefit from increasing clarity among staff about the role of the board. We also believe that WAI does not hold a sufficient amount of reserves; we recommend that they use some additional funding to replenish their reserves and add this to their plans for expansion.
Why did WAI receive our top recommendation?
WAI is working in an important and relatively neglected area: conducting and promoting research to help wild animals. We believe that building an academic field is an ambitious but promising avenue for creating change for wild animals in the long term. There are few charities working in this area, and WAI seems to have a responsible and thorough approach to building a collaborative community of researchers and advocates as well as a strong strategy and healthy organizational culture.
We find Wild Animal Initiative to be an excellent giving opportunity because of their strong, cost-effective programs and their thorough strategy.
How much money could they use?
We estimate with high confidence that WAI’s room for more funding in 2021 is $0.49 million. Across all confidence levels, we estimate that WAI’s room for more funding in 2021 is $0.97 million. We expect that they would use additional funds to hire additional staff, launch their summer research fellowship, fund academic researchers directly, expand existing programs, and replenish reserves.
Wild Animal Initiative received one ACE Movement Grant in fall 2019 and one in summer 2020.
How Wild Animal Initiative Performs on our Criteria
Interpreting our “Overall Assessments”
We provide an overall assessment of each charity’s performance on each criterion. These assessments are expressed as two series of circles. The number of teal circles represents our assessment of a charity’s performance on a given criterion relative to the other charities we evaluated this year.
| A single circle indicates that a charity’s performance is weak on a given criterion, relative to the other charities we evaluated: | |
| Two circles indicate that a charity’s performance is average on a given criterion, relative to the other charities we evaluated: | |
| Three circles indicate that a charity’s performance is strong on a given criterion, relative to the other charities we evaluated: |
The number of gray circles indicates the strength of the evidence supporting each performance assessment and, correspondingly, our confidence in each assessment relative to the other charities we evaluated this year:
| Low confidence: Very limited evidence is available pertaining to the charity’s performance on this criterion, relative to the other charities. The evidence that is available may be low quality or difficult to verify. | |
| Moderate confidence: There is evidence supporting our conclusion, and at least some of it is high quality and/or verified with third-party sources. | |
| High confidence: There is substantial high-quality evidence supporting the charity’s performance on this criterion, relative to the other charities. There may be randomized controlled trials supporting the effectiveness of the charity’s programs and/or multiple third-party sources confirming the charity’s accomplishments.1 |
Criterion 1: Programs
When we begin our evaluation process, we consider whether each charity is working in high-impact cause areas and employing effective interventions that are likely to produce positive outcomes for animals. These outcomes tend to fall under at least one of the following categories: increased availability of animal-free products, decreased consumption of animal products, improvement of welfare standards, increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values, stronger animal advocacy movement, or direct help.
Cause Areas
Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) focuses exclusively on helping wild animals, which we believe could be a high-impact cause area.
Countries of Operation
WAI currently works in the U.S.
Interventions and Projected Outcomes
WAI pursues one avenue for creating change for animals: They work to strengthen the animal advocacy movement.
To help communicate the process by which we believe a charity creates change for animals, we use theory of change diagrams. It is important to note that these diagrams are not complete representations of real-world mechanisms of change. Rather, they are simplified models that ACE uses to represent our beliefs about mechanisms of change. For the sake of simplicity, some diagrams may not include relatively small or uncertain effects.
Below, we also describe the work that WAI does.2 Unless otherwise specified, we have sourced the information in this criterion from Wild Animal Initiative (2020b). For each intervention, we provide an assessment of how effective we think that intervention is at achieving a given outcome (weak/moderate/high).3 These assessments are based on the available evidence and are determined through a vote and discussion among our researchers. We flag assessments in which we have particularly low confidence, i.e., if we know of little or no supporting research or expert opinions.
A note about long-term impact
Each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.4 The potential number of individuals affected increases over time due to population growth and an accumulation of generations of animals. Thus, we would expect that the long-term impacts of an action would be more likely to affect more animals than the short-term impacts of the same action. Nevertheless, we are highly uncertain about the particular long-term effects of each intervention. Because of this uncertainty, our reasoning about each charity’s impact (along with our diagrams) may skew toward overemphasizing short-term effects.
Although this is also the case for WAI, we note that their strategy explicitly prioritizes long-term impact.5
Stronger animal advocacy movement
Working to strengthen the animal advocacy movement through capacity- and alliance-building projects can have a far-reaching impact. Capacity-building projects can help animals by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations, while building alliances with key influencers, institutions, or social movements can expand the audience and impact of animal advocacy organizations and projects. ACE’s 2018 research on the way that resources are allocated between different animal advocacy interventions suggests that capacity building and building alliances are currently neglected relative to other interventions aimed at influencing public opinion and industry. WAI’s capacity-building work includes (i) conducting research to create a new academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare and (ii) hosting conferences and events.
To date, WAI’s work to create an academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare consists of compiling literature reviews and writing theoretical and opinion articles published on their website and/or in peer-reviewed journals. WAI focuses on identifying and sharing possible research avenues and connecting with more established fields. WAI also works with researchers from various academic and non-academic institutions to identify potential collaborators. They recently launched a new program that helps researchers develop proposals and submit them to funders WAI has identified as promising. We believe that producing research to create a new academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare is highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.
WAI also co-organizes an annual Wild Animal Welfare Summit, hosts discussions at conferences, and directly contacts academics with relevant expertise. We believe that hosting events is highly effective in strengthening the animal advocacy movement.
Criterion 2: Room For More Funding
We look to recommend work that is not just high-impact, but also scalable. Since a recommendation from us could lead to a large increase in a charity’s funding, we look for evidence that the charity will be able to absorb and effectively utilize funding that the recommendation may bring in. To estimate a charity’s room for more funding, we not only consider the charity’s existing programs and potential areas for growth and expansion, but also non-monetary determinants of a charity’s growth, such as time or talent shortages.
Since we can’t predict exactly how an organization will respond upon receiving more funds than they have planned for, our estimate is speculative rather than definitive. This year, our estimates are especially uncertain, as we do not know the consequences of COVID-19 on financials. It’s possible that a charity could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or that they could come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. At midyear, we check in with each recommended charity about the funding they’ve received since the release of our recommendations, and we use the estimates presented below to indicate whether we still expect them to be able to effectively absorb additional funding at that point.
Financial History and Financial Sustainability
An effective charity should be financially sustainable. Charities should be able to continue raising the funds needed for their basic operations. Ideally, they should receive significant funding from multiple distinct sources, including both individual donations and other types of support. Charities should also hold a sufficient amount of reserves.
The chart below shows WAI’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures. The financial information for 2019 and the first six months of 2020 was reported by the charities during this year’s evaluation process,6 the financial information for earlier years was acquired from various sources, and the values for 2020 are estimated based on the first six months of 2020. WAI has only a brief history of financials. They received large donations from two donors (accounting for 37% and 41% of their annual revenue, respectively) in 2019 and expect to receive a large donation (about 23% of their annual revenue) in 2020. They also received ACE Movement Grants in 2019 and in 2020 (accounting for approximately 12% of their annual revenue each year). With about 46% of their current expenditures held in net assets, we believe that WAI does not hold a sufficient amount of reserves. We recommend that they use some additional funding to replenish their reserves and add this to WAI’s plans for expansion.
Planned Future Expenditures
Below we list WAI’s plans for expansion for 2021.7 For each plan, we provide an estimate of the expenditure as well as a confidence level, which indicates how confident we are that the plan can be realized in 2021.8 For staff salaries, we estimated the number of staff WAI could hire by considering the number of existing staff they have and the number of staff they have plans to hire in 2021. For the corresponding costs, we made salary estimates based on information about the job’s seniority, type, and location using data from current and past job postings whenever possible.9 We also factored in additional costs incurred as part of the hiring process. We estimated non-staff-related costs for each charity’s plans for expansion10 based on their 2019 program expenditures;11 in some cases, we also considered WAI’s estimations of their future expenditures12 and/or our impressions of how much the expansions would cost.13 Additionally, we accounted for an estimate—based on a percentage of the charity’s current annual budget—of possible unforeseen expenditures.
| Planned Expansion | Estimate of Expenditure14 | Confidence Level in Realizing Expansion15 |
| Hiring 12 additional staff | $0.16M to $0.73M | High (9.0%), moderate (24%), and low (67%)16 |
| Launching Summer Research Fellowship | $3.2k to $17k | High |
| Funding academic researchers directly | $3.2k to $0.14M | High |
| Expanding existing programs | $2.2k to $22k | High (9.0%), moderate (24%), and low (67%) |
| Replenishing reserves | $0.28M to $0.34M | High |
| Possible additional expenditures17 | $5.8k to $0.12M | Low |
Estimated Room for More Funding
To estimate WAI’s room for more funding, we need their predicted revenue for 2021. We estimate that WAI’s revenue in 2021 will be $0.28 million or within the prediction interval [$0.10M, $0.46M].18 WAI’s own prediction of their 2021 revenue ($0.30M) does lie within the predicted interval. WAI noted that their estimate is intentionally highly pessimistic.
Using our predictions of future revenue, WAI’s room for more funding was estimated via Guesstimate. Note that when ACE estimates a charity’s room for more funding, we are estimating the amount of funding that the charity could use on top of their predicted, regular funding in the coming year.
The chart shows WAI’s room for more funding in 2021 distributed across our three confidence levels. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to WAI, we estimate with high confidence that WAI’s room for more funding in 2021 is $0.49 million (90% prediction interval: [$0.35M, $0.60M]). Overall, we have some confidence that WAI has room for $0.97 million (90% prediction interval: [$0.62M, $1.3M]) in additional funding in 2021. We believe that WAI’s room for more funding relative to the size of their organization is of larger size compared to the other charities we evaluated this year. We also believe that their absolute room for more funding is of larger size relative to the funding we influence through our recommendations. Given the impact a recommendation may have on a charity’s funding, we base our rating of performance in this criterion on the latter assessment.
Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness
A charity’s recent cost effectiveness provides an insight into how well it has made use of its available resources and is a useful component in understanding how cost effective future donations to the charity might be. In this criterion, we take a more in-depth look at the charity’s use of resources over the past 18 months and compare that to the outcomes they have achieved in each of their main programs during that time. We have used an approach in which we qualitatively analyze a charity’s expenditures and key results and compare them to other charities we are reviewing this year.
We categorized the charity’s programs into different outcomes: improvement of welfare standards, increased availability of animal-free products, decreased consumption of animal products, increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values, and stronger animal advocacy movement. Then, for a given outcome, we compared the charity’s key results and expenditures from January 2019 to June 2020 to other charities we evaluated in 2020 and gave our assessment of how cost effective we think their work toward that outcome has been.
Stronger Animal Advocacy Movement
WAI engages in four programs that we have categorized as contributing to strengthening the animal advocacy movement: community strategy, research, outreach, and grant assistance. As the resource usage and key results of each program are distinct, we have kept them as separate categories in our analysis.
Key results and use of resources
Below is our estimated resource usage for WAI programs focused on strengthening the animal advocacy movement, January 2019–June 2020. In this section, we have only included what we believe are the key results of these programs. For a full list of results and resource usage, see Wild Animal Initiative (2020a).
Evaluation of cost effectiveness
Building a stronger animal advocacy movement encompasses a broad category of outcomes for animals that are typically indirect, and as such, it is difficult to make an assessment of their cost effectiveness.
WAI’s community strategy program focuses on coordinating the actions of other nonprofits and individuals conducting or considering research relevant to wild animal welfare. In the past 18 months, they organized the 2019 Wild Animal Welfare Summit, hosted research meetings, gave presentations, and published several articles. These activities may help the wild animal welfare advocacy movement expand and optimize its strategy, which may increase the effectiveness of others’ work. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the estimated cost effectiveness of WAI’s work in community strategy seems similar to the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement we have evaluated this year.
As WAI was one of only two evaluated charities that reported conducting a research program, we are particularly uncertain of the cost effectiveness of the implementation of this program. WAI’s research program has individual outcomes, so as a measure of cost effectiveness, we can estimate the average cost of each outcome: It costs them ~$27,000 for each research project.24 That said, this is a somewhat simplistic quantification of cost effectiveness, as it doesn’t take into account other factors, e.g., the quality of research, the likelihood that research will be used, the potential focus the research would have if it were used, etc. All their research is focused on wild animal welfare, which we believe to be a high-priority cause area. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the estimated cost effectiveness of WAI’s research work seems much higher than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement we have evaluated this year.
WAI’s outreach program focuses on engaging academics to increase interest in wild animal welfare research. We think that motivating academics to conduct research in this area may be particularly cost effective, as academics have more resources to scale up research in this growing field. After accounting for all of their key results and expenditures, we think the estimated cost effectiveness of WAI’s outreach work seems much higher than the average cost effectiveness of other similar programs working toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement we have evaluated this year.
WAI’s grant assistance program focuses on helping promising researchers secure funding for wild animal welfare research projects, as well as establishing relationships with funders and advising them on funding prioritization. This program was launched in 2020; as the program is so new, we are particularly uncertain about its cost effectiveness and thus have not included any further assessment.
Overall, we think the cost effectiveness of WAI’s work toward strengthening the animal advocacy movement seems slightly higher than the average cost effectiveness of other charities’ work toward this outcome we have evaluated this year.
Criterion 4: Track Record
Information about a charity’s track record can help us predict the charity’s future activities and accomplishments, which is information that cannot always be incorporated into our other criteria. An organization’s track record is sometimes a pivotal factor when our analysis otherwise finds limited differences between two charities.
In this section, we evaluate each charity’s track record of success by considering some of the key results that they have accomplished prior to 2019.25 For charities that operate in more than one country, we consider how they have expanded internationally.
Overview
WAI was founded in 2019 as a merger of two organizations, Wild Animal Welfare Research and Utility Farm. As a newly formed organization, WAI’s track record is relatively short. Since they have no programs commenced before 2019 we do not include any assessment here. The outcomes of their programs in 2019–2020 are included in Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness.
Criterion 5: Leadership and Culture
Leadership directly affects an organization’s culture, performance, and effectiveness. Strongly-led charities are likely to have a healthy organizational culture that enables their core work. We collect information about each charity’s internal operations in several ways. We ask leadership to describe the culture they try to foster, as well as potential areas of improvement. We review each charity’s human resource policies and check that they include those we believe are important. We also send a culture survey to the staff of each charity.26, 27
Key Leadership
In this section, we describe each charity’s key leadership and assess some of their strengths and weaknesses.
Leadership staff
- Executive Director (ED): Michelle Graham, involved in the organization for 1 year
- Deputy Director: Cameron Meyer Shorb, involved in the organization for 1 year
All respondents to our culture survey agreed that WAI’s leadership is attentive to the organization’s strategy. In comments, respondents emphasized that all staff set the strategic plan in a planning retreat. Most respondents agreed that their leadership promotes external transparency (75%) and internal transparency (88%). Some respondents commented that leadership does a good job explaining why decisions are made.
Recent leadership transition
WAI had a transition in leadership recently. Michelle Graham took the role of ED in June 2019 after being elected by a hiring panel set by the board. Graham used to provide management assistance to the previous ED, who remained on staff as a special advisor for one month.
Board of Directors
WAI’s Board of Directors consists of four members.
Members of WAI’s Board of Directors28
- Emily Hatch (Board President): has a background in fundraising and corporate outreach at Mercy For Animals
- Flor Serna (Board Treasurer): Director of Operations at 4.0 with a background in audio engineering
- Josh You (Board Secretary): software engineer
- Ignacio Moore: biologist with a Ph.D. in Zoology
About 63% of respondents to our culture survey agreed that WAI’s board supports the organization in achieving its strategic vision. We believe that WAI would benefit from leadership clarifying the role of the board with staff.
We believe that boards whose members represent occupational and viewpoint diversity are likely most useful to a charity since they can offer a wide range of perspectives and skills. There is some evidence suggesting that nonprofit board diversity is positively associated with better fundraising and social performance29 and better internal and external governance practices,30 as well as with the use of inclusive governance practices that allow the board to incorporate community perspectives into their strategic decision making.31 WAI’s board is composed of individuals with diverse occupational backgrounds and experiences. We consider the board’s relative occupational diversity to be a strength.
Policies and Benefits
Here we present a list of policies that, if properly drafted and enforced, we find to be beneficial for fostering a healthy culture. A green mark indicates that WAI has such a policy and a red mark indicates that they do not. A yellow mark indicates that the organization has a partial policy, an informal or unwritten policy, or a policy that is not fully or consistently implemented. We do not expect a given charity to have all of the following policies, but we believe that, generally, having more of them is better than having fewer.
Culture and Morale
A charity with a healthy culture acts responsibly toward all stakeholders: staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, and others in the community. According to WAI’s leadership, their organizational culture “enables mastery, finds the truth, and creates belonging.”32
The survey we distributed supports leadership’s claim that WAI’s culture is overall positive. Respondents noted in an open-response box that WAI is a kind and supportive workplace, open to feedback. A few common adjectives that respondents used to describe WAI’s communication style were “transparent,” “scientific,” “thoughtful,” “compassionate,” or similar.
According to our culture survey, WAI has an overall level of employee engagement higher than the average of charities under review.
WAI does not have a formal compensation plan to determine staff salaries. However, they are currently developing a salary algorithm, and all respondents to our survey agreed with the statement that their compensation is adequate. WAI offers 20 days of paid vacation and 10 days of paid sick/safe leave. All respondents agreed that these paid benefits provided are sufficient. Some respondents mentioned that salaries are high. WAI reports that employees have clearly defined essential functions for all positions and regularly evaluate performance. However, about 38% of respondents to our culture survey agreed that the system of staff performance evaluation needs to be changed or improved upon.
WAI conducted a 2019 staff survey that informed a feedback system through regular meetings and an annual 360 review.
According to leadership, the following areas of WAI’s organizational culture have room for improvement: diversifying staff and board, organizing decision-making, and increasing staff motivation to work remotely.
Overall, we think that WAI’s staff satisfaction and morale are higher than the average charity we evaluated this year.
Representation/Diversity,33 Equity, and Inclusion34
One important part of acting responsibly toward stakeholders is providing a representative/diverse,35 equitable, and inclusive work environment. Charities that have a healthy attitude toward representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI) seek and retain staff and volunteers from different backgrounds. Among other things, inclusive work environments should also provide necessary resources for employees with disabilities, protect all team members from harassment and discrimination, and require regular trainings on topics such as equity and inclusion, in conjunction with year-round efforts to address R/DEI throughout all areas of the organization.
About 86% of staff that participated in our culture survey agreed that WAI has members from diverse backgrounds. WAI made an effort to increase representation/diversity through their recruitment process by following several practices for (i) writing the job posts (e.g., listing only strictly necessary requirements and stating salary range upfront), (ii) advertising (e.g., posting ads on well-known job boards and paid ads on job boards tailored to people of color), (iii) reviewing applications (e.g., standardizing interviews and not anonymizing resumes), and (iv) offering the position (e.g., not negotiating salaries).
In our culture survey, some respondents mentioned that leadership could bring in an external consultant to be more inclusive or to better support staff who are members of marginalized groups.
WAI supports R/DEI through their human resource activities. WAI has a workplace code of ethics/conduct and a written statement that they do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other characteristics. WAI has a written procedure for filing complaints and explicit protocols for addressing concerns or allegations of harassment36 or discrimination.37 In our culture survey, all respondents agreed that WAI protects staff, interns, and volunteers from harassment and discrimination in the workplace, and they all agreed that they have someone to go to in case of harassment or other problems at work. Our culture survey gives no evidence that WAI’s staff experienced or witnessed any harassment or discrimination in the workplace during the past year.
WAI offers regular trainings on topics such as harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In our culture survey, 86% of staff agree that they and their colleagues have been sufficiently trained in matters of R/DEI. We believe that the opportunities for the team to learn about R/DEI at WAI are sufficient.
Overall, we believe that WAI is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive than the average charity we evaluated this year.
Criterion 6: Strategy
Charities with a clear and well-developed strategy are more likely to be successful at setting and achieving their goals. In this section, we describe and assess each charity’s strategic vision and mission, plan, and planning process.
Given our commitment to finding the most effective ways to help nonhuman animals, we assess the extent to which the charity’s strategic vision is aligned with this commitment. We believe that their strategic planning should clearly connect the charity’s overall vision to their more immediate goals. Additionally, we assess the extent to which their strategic planning process incorporates the views of all their staff and board members and whether the frequency of this process is adequate, given the nature of their work. There are many different approaches to strategic planning, and often an approach that is well suited for one organization may not work well for others. Thus, in this section, we are not looking for a particular approach to strategy. Instead, we assess how well the organization’s approach to strategy works in their context.
Strategic Vision
WAI’s mission: “To understand and improve the lives of wild animals”
Strategic Position in the Movement
We asked WAI how they see their organization’s work fitting into the overall animal advocacy movement. They report that they see their work on wild animal welfare as a complement to the work on farmed animal welfare as well as a way to extend the principle of effective altruism to the broader animal welfare movement. They note that they see cooperation with other organizations as a central strategy of their organization.
Strategic Planning Process
Type(s) of plan: Two-year strategic plans
Leadership staff’s role: In an annual review at the staff retreat, the Executive Director consults with board members as needed to leverage their specific areas of expertise on the draft created by all staff members. If consensus is not possible, the Executive Director makes the final decision. The Executive Director presents the proposed strategic plan to the full board for discussion and revision.
Board of Directors’ role: The board can suggest revisions and approves the final strategic plan.
Non-leadership staff’s role: Non-leadership staff can give feedback on a preliminary version of the strategic plan.
Contents of plan: WAI’s strategic plan includes high-level strategy to analyze how their program work contributes to achieving their mission/vision. As part of this analysis, their plan features an outline of the problem they are working to address, a theory of change, and a discussion of the strategy behind future initiatives. Additionally, they address their internal structure—e.g., fundraising—in their plan.
Goal Setting and Monitoring
WAI includes specific goals in their strategic planning process. Goals are set according to the SMARTIE framework. WAI’s goals are monitored weekly during one-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports, as well as at the end of projects and in annual performance reviews. WAI also holds retrospective meetings—i.e., postmortems—following individual projects.
Our Assessment
We support WAI’s choice to focus on wild animal welfare because we consider increasing wild animal welfare to be one of the most promising areas for doing the most good for animals, other things being equal. We think that they have a clear notion of how they fit into the wider animal advocacy movement, although this may be of less importance to WAI given the limited overlap between their work and the wider animal advocacy movement. We think WAI engages in strategic planning at appropriate intervals, is clear on who makes final decisions, and ensures participation and periodic input from all levels of staff. Their strategic plan seems thorough, featuring high-level strategy that explains why each program is important and how they all interrelate, as well as future projections for the direction of each program and considerations about their internal structure. Additionally, their goal-setting process appears to be particularly well designed, and they monitor their goals frequently. We think they have a strong approach to self-assessment. Overall, we think WAI’s approach to strategy is strong compared to other evaluated charities, given the context in which they operate and the type of work they do.
Criterion 7: Adaptability
A charity’s self-assessment should inform their decisions. This will aid them in retaining and strengthening successful programs and modifying or discontinuing less successful programs, and will enable them to see if or when it is necessary to change their organizational structures. When such systems of improvement work well, all stakeholders benefit: Leadership is able to refine their strategy, staff better understand the purpose of their work, and donors can be more confident in the impact of their donations.
We have identified the following examples of how WAI has adapted to success and failure:
WAI reports that, previously, they did not prioritize hiring diverse staff. They report that following the merger between Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm that led to the formation of WAI, the organization was in a position of having substantial funding but no full-time staff. As a result, they held a fast hiring round that was focused on hiring staff with strong academic backgrounds and did not consider diversity. Since then they have changed their hiring process and integrated an emphasis on R/DEI in their organization.
In 2019, WAI was working on a report on humane insecticides. Part of the way through this report, they realized another research organization was working on an overlapping project, which led to duplication of research efforts and delays in publication.38 In response to this, WAI now holds monthly meetings with two adjacent research organizations and publishes a quarterly report on their recent updates and next steps.
Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected WAI’s ability to carry out several of their programs.39 In 2020, they were planning to focus on scaling up their organization with additional hires and beginning several years of programmatic growth. Instead, they have decided to hold off on faster growth until the pandemic has stabilized. They have made one part-time hire rather than the three hires they had initially planned. They have also made some adjustments to their programs. They have pivoted their outreach at academic conferences toward direct outreach targeting scientists individually with specific asks—they report that this approach has been more successful than they anticipated. They have postponed their workshop for wild animal welfare research rather than host it online, as they feel that most of the benefits of the event come from the in-person interactions.
Note that we are never 100% confident in the effectiveness of a particular charity or intervention, so three gray circles do not necessarily imply that we are as confident as we could possibly be.
We acknowledge that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted each charity’s programs in various ways. This impact is addressed in Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness.
We consider an intervention to be weakly effective if we believe it is unlikely to have a positive impact on the relevant outcome. We consider an intervention to be moderately effective if we believe it has some positive impact on the relevant outcome, though relatively less than other interventions. We consider an intervention to be highly effective if we believe it has a clear positive impact on the relevant outcome.
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).
See, for instance, their report exploring long-term design considerations for wild animal welfare interventions.
See Wild Animal Initiative (2020a). Note that $293,721 of the reported total revenue in 2019 were transfers from Wild-Animal Suffering Research, one of the organizations that merged to create WAI, rather than funds raised in that year.
We do not list any expansions beyond what the charity itself plans to implement. We acknowledge that charities may differ in how ambitious their reported plans are, independent of what they can realize. Such a difference in reporting could bias our estimates of the room for more funding. To counteract such a bias, we first ask all charities not only for the expansions they already planned for 2021, but also which expansions they would plan if their budget were to increase by 50%—they report these responses in Wild Animal Initiative (2020a). Second, we indicate our level of confidence in whether the charities’ expansion plans could actually be realized. We refer to our evaluation of the effectiveness of WAI’s programs for an assessment of the expected effectiveness of their planned expansions.
For staff expenditure and any non-staff expenditure that is scalable with staff, we estimate confidence levels based on our researchers’ joint assessment of how feasible it is to hire a certain number of staff dependent on the organization’s current size.
For estimating the salary of a given role, we used the following sources of information, listed in order of priority: current and past job postings by that charity, current and past job postings by similar charities, seniority and type of job, and average wages in the country of hire.
Note that our cost estimates for non-staff expansions account for the partial correlation between costs for new staff and non-staff costs that involve staff.
The column shows 90% confidence intervals, assuming normal distributions for all variables, except for potential additional expenditure, for which we assume a log-normal distribution.
For staff expenditure and any non-staff expenditure that is scalable with staff, we indicate the proportion of the charity’s expansion plans that we are highly confident they’ll be able to achieve, the proportion we are moderately confident they’ll be able to achieve, and the proportion we have low confidence in. We generally have high confidence that reserves can be replenished if funds are available, and low confidence in the amount of unexpected expenditures the charity may have.
WAI reported to us that they assign higher confidence in their ability to hire additional staff and that WAI started with three staff and filled a total of nine positions in 2019.
This is an estimate to account for additional expenditures beyond what has been specifically outlined in this model. This parameter reflects our uncertainty as to whether the model is comprehensive and constitutes a range from 1%–20% of the charity’s total projected 2020 expenditures.
We assume a linear trend in revenue. The prediction interval allows for a variation of +/-50% around the growth rate we estimated for the change in revenue from 2019 to 2020. The prediction excludes the share of 2019 revenue that is a transfer from the merger.
To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allowed us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures.
To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allowed us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures.
WAI reports that these conversations happened primarily through interactions at conferences, email exchanges, and video calls. Of these 63 contacts, they report having established working relationships with 57.
To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allowed us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures.
To estimate their expenditures, we took their reported expenditures for this program and added a portion of their general non-program expenditures weighted by the size of this program compared to their other programs. This allowed us to incorporate their general organizational running costs into our consideration of their cost effectiveness. All estimates are rounded to two significant figures.
Each research project includes journal articles, white papers, and blog posts.
For more recent achievements (2019–2020), see Criterion 3: Cost Effectiveness.
We distributed our culture survey to WAI’s eight team members and we received seven complete responses, yielding a response rate of 87.5%. WAI has a very small team—two out of six employees were identified as members of leadership—which could have affected the results of our survey.
We recognize at least two major limitations of our culture survey. First, because participation was not mandatory, the results could be affected by selection bias. Second, because respondents knew that their answers could influence ACE’s evaluation of their employer, they may have felt an incentive to emphasize their employers’ strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
WAI informed us that Flor Serna stepped down on October 31, 2020. They also informed us that they are in the process of adding two new members to the board: Christine Perry, who has a background in nonprofit finance, operations management, governance, and animal welfare legislation, as well as Dr. Nikolai Vetr, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology, population biology, data science, and informatics.
ACE uses the term “representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion (R/DEI)” in place of the more commonly used “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).” While we acknowledge that the terms “diversity” and “DEI” are in the public lexicon, as the concepts have become popularized, “diversity” has lost the impact of its original meaning. The term is often conflated with “cosmetic diversity,” or diversity for the sake of public appearances. We believe that “representation” better expresses the commitment to accurately reflect—or represent—society’s demographics at large.
Our goal in this section is to evaluate whether each charity has a healthy attitude toward representation/diversity, equity, and inclusion. We do not directly evaluate the demographic characteristics of their employees.
We use the terms “representation” and “diversity” broadly in this section to refer to the diversity of certain social identity characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries), such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, political beliefs, age, ability, or genetic information.
In the culture survey we included the following definition of harassment: “Harassment can be non-sexual or sexual in nature. Non-sexual harassment refers to unwelcome conduct—including physical, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors—that upsets, demeans, humiliates, intimidates, or threatens an individual or group. Harassment may occur in one incident or many. Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual advances; requests for sexual favors; and other physical, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors of a sexual nature when (i) submission to such conduct is made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment; (ii) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting the targeted individual; or (iii) such conduct has the purpose or effect of interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.”
In the culture survey we included the following definition of discrimination: “Discrimination is the differential treatment of or hostility toward an individual on the basis of certain characteristics (called “protected classes” in some countries), such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender or gender expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy or parental status, marital status, national origin, citizenship, amnesty, veteran status, age, ability, genetic information, or any other factor that is legislatively protected in the country in which the individual works. ACE extends its definition of discrimination to include the differential treatment of or hostility toward anyone based on any characteristics outside of one’s professional qualifications—such as socioeconomic status, body size, dietary preferences, political views or affiliation, or other belief- or identity-based expression.”
The following materials are supplementary research documents associated with our charity review process and are referenced in the Comprehensive Review.
Research Documents
