Animal Equality

How Animal Equality Performs on our Criteria

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

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

Cause Area

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

Types of Outcomes Achieved

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

Animal Equality pursues many different avenues for creating change for animals: they work to influence public opinion, build the capacity of the movement, influence industry, build alliances, and influence policy and law. Pursuing multiple avenues for change allows a charity to better learn about which areas are more effective so that they will be in a better position to allocate more resources where they may be most impactful. However, we don’t think that charities that pursue multiple avenues for change are necessarily more impactful than charities that focus on one.

To communicate the process by which we believe a charity creates change for animals, we use theory of change diagrams. It is important to note that these diagrams are not complete representations of real-world mechanisms of change. Rather, they are simplified models that ACE uses to represent our beliefs about mechanisms of change. For the sake of simplicity, some diagrams may not include relatively small and/or uncertain effects.

Influencing Public Opinion

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

We think that Animal Equality engages in some particularly effective means of public outreach, including translating and publishing books related to animal advocacy,³ and contributing material to documentaries.⁴ A survey of current vegetarians, vegans, and meat reducers indicates that books and documentaries are common self-reported catalysts for avoiding animal products. Animal Equality also works to expose the suffering of farmed animals through undercover investigations. They have been doing investigations for more than ten years, conducting nearly 100 total investigations covering over 750 facilities.⁵ So far this year they have presented 11 investigations in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Germany, and the U.K.—these investigations have received widespread media coverage and online viewership.⁶ Their work has been covered in many major media outlets,⁷ and there is some evidence of a weak negative correlation between media coverage of animal welfare and meat demand.⁸

Animal Equality developed a virtual reality (VR) experience called iAnimal which they use to demonstrate what life is like on an industrial farm. Their VR program is used, along with leafleting, to engage students on college campuses and Animal Equality also leases their headsets to other organizations for use in outreach.⁹ While we would still like to see further research on VR’s potential, there are some promising early results from a study of iAnimal. Animal Equality worked with Faunalytics on a study to investigate their virtual reality outreach and while they didn’t find a difference between the virtual reality headset presentation and the same video content shared on a tablet, they did find that both presentations seemed to have a positive short-term impact on pork consumption—the only animal product the study included—and attitudes towards consumption.¹⁰ It is also possible that the novelty of VR technology could attract individuals who wouldn’t otherwise stop to pick up a leaflet or watch a normal video. Outreach on college campuses is promising for its potential to bring more people into the movement. The potential that some of these students may be influenced to advocate for animals in the long term makes outreach on college campuses a potentially high-impact intervention.

Animal Equality also engages the public through online outreach using social media such as Facebook, Youtube, and Love Veg websites in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and India that provide information intended to help a transition to a plant-based diet.¹¹ Comparisons of impact between their different interventions are difficult, because there’s insufficient evidence comparing the marginal impact of different types of interventions aimed at influencing public opinion—and some effects would likely be difficult to detect using quantitative methods. We nevertheless estimate that the marginal impact of these types of online outreach may be lower than that of books or VR based on the intuition that people may typically engage less deeply with online content than with books or VR.

Capacity Building

We see Animal Equality’s activist trainings and animal advocacy research as especially effective forms of capacity building.¹² Working to build the capacity of the animal advocacy movement can have far-reaching impact. While capacity-building projects may not always help animals directly, they can help animals indirectly by increasing the effectiveness of other projects and organizations. Our recent research on the way that resources are allocated between different animal advocacy interventions suggests that capacity building is currently relatively neglected compared to other outcomes, such as influencing public opinion and industry.

Animal Equality works with other organizations by sharing their iAnimal materials and their footage from undercover investigations with other advocates who want to use them.¹³ They also provide workshops, trainings, and support to activists in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.¹⁴ This collaboration and sharing of resources likely strengthens the movement as a whole.

Animal Equality studies public attitudes and the effectiveness of different interventions, sometimes by working with outside Researchers or organizations such as Faunalytics. With Faunalytics, they studied the impact of their iAnimal program,¹⁵ and they also conducted a survey in India on attitudes towards animal welfare and plant-based meat—the results will be used to inform their strategy there.¹⁶ By investigating the effects of different advocacy strategies, Animal Equality may be able to increase their impact.

Influencing Industry

Animal Equality works with corporations to adopt better animal welfare policies and to ban particularly cruel practices in the animal agriculture industry. Though the long-term effects of corporate outreach are yet to be seen, we believe that these interventions have a high potential to be impactful when implemented thoughtfully.¹⁷

This year Animal Equality was part of a coalition of organizations that launched a corporate campaign against McDonald’s, utilizing media outreach, advertisements, and protests aimed at getting them to commit to eliminating some of their most cruel farming practices for chickens raised for meat.¹⁸ This campaign is still ongoing as of this writing. While this was their first such campaign with a company in the U.S., they have previously been engaged in corporate outreach in other countries.¹⁹

In 2018, Animal Equality achieved commitments to eliminate the use of layer hen cages with almost 40 companies in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and India, while also working with the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) to achieve other agreements cooperatively.²⁰ Animal Equality has also started work on welfare campaigns for broiler chickens in Spain, Germany, Italy, and the U.S.²¹

Building Alliances

Animal Equality’s outreach to key influencers provides an avenue for high-impact work, since it can involve convincing a few powerful people to make decisions that may influence the lives of millions of animals.²² Unless these key influencers are significantly more difficult to reach, this seems more efficient than general individual outreach because a great deal more individuals would need to be reached to create an equivalent amount of change.

In 2018, Animal Equality launched its food policy department, which will work in India and Mexico with the aim of convincing companies to reduce their use of animal products and increase plant-based and clean meat options.²³ In Mexico, they are working on developing meat reduction programs with the government and they are also working with companies to reduce their meat options.²⁴ In India, they are working to get large companies to offer more plant-based options.²⁵ Successful change at the scale of a government policy or a large corporate policy could have a large impact.

Animal Equality is also in contact with politicians, journalists, celebrities, and other key influencers. Animal Equality’s work with Mexican Senator Diva Gastélum seems to be a successful example of alliance-building, since it contributed to the introduction of an animal welfare initiative in Mexico.²⁶

Influencing Policy and the Law

Animal Equality works to encode animal welfare protections into law and engages in grassroots political campaigning, which we think may be especially effective at creating change.²⁷ We think that encoding protections for animals into the law is a key component in creating a society that is just and caring towards animals. While legal change may take longer to achieve than some other forms of change, we suspect its effects to be particularly long-lasting.

Animal Equality has previously worked in support of Question 3 in Massachusetts and is currently²⁸ working on Proposition 12 in California, both of which ban certain confinement practices.²⁹ They have also been working on a campaign to ban foie gras imports to Great Britain, to pass a law in Mexico criminalizing the mistreatment of animals, and in Germany, they have been working to oppose ag-gag type legislation.³⁰ Previously, Animal Equality also worked towards legal protections for animals in India.³¹ We think that legislative changes to improve welfare are likely to have an impact on large number of animals, and are more likely to be followed through on than similar corporate campaigns. We are less sure of the impact of “ag-gag” legislation, as it’s impact on animals is less direct. However, it seems valuable for ensuring the continuation of investigation work.

Long-Term Impact

Though there is significant uncertainty regarding the impact of interventions in the long term, each charity’s long-term impact is plausibly what matters most.³² The potential number of individuals affected by a charity increases over time due to both human and animal population growth, as well as an accumulation of generations of animals. The power of animal charities to effect change could be greater in the future if we consider their potential growth as well as potential long-term value shifts—for example, present actions leading to growth in the movement’s resources, to a more receptive public, or to different economic conditions could all potentially lead to a greater magnitude of impact over time than anything that could be accomplished at present.

Predictions of the long-term impact of any intervention are always extremely uncertain, because the effects of an intervention vary with context and are interdependent with concurrent interventions—with neither of these interactions being constant over time.³³ When estimating the long-term impact of a charity’s actions, we consider the context in which they occur and how they fit into the overall movement. Barring any strong evidence to the contrary, we think the long-term impact of most animal advocacy interventions will be net positive. Still, the comparative effects of one intervention versus another are not well understood.³⁴ Because of the difficulties in forecasting long-term impact, we do not put significant weight on our predictions.

Animal Equality is firmly established in eight countries,³⁵ and because the exploitation of nonhuman animals is a global problem, international work seems likely to be an essential part to a global solution. Animal Equality is also highly collaborative and plans to continue working with other organizations.³⁶ Collaboration and sharing resources across the animal advocacy movement may increase its impact overall. Much of Animal Equality’s legal work may also have long-lasting effects where it is successful. The long-term impact of some of their other work, such as getting corporations to commit to welfare reforms in the future, remains to be seen—since we don’t know how well corporations will comply, how much work enforcement will take, or how public opinion will be affected.

We’re generally optimistic that obtaining corporate welfare commitments will lead to improvements in welfare in the long term,³⁷ reduce consumption of animal products via price increases,³⁸ and may raise awareness of the terrible welfare conditions on factory farms.³⁹ However, some evidence suggests that welfare will not be significantly improved in cage-free systems and that in some ways the situation for hens may be worse—particularly in the transition from caged systems to cage-free systems.^{40, 41} Some animal advocates worry that marketing eggs and other animal products as “humane” may obscure the suffering and exploitation these purchases support. For some consumers, this may contribute to a belief that animals aren’t harmed in the production of “humane” products, which, some argue, could make subsequent efforts to reduce consumption of animal products more challenging.^{42, 43}

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

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

Recent Financial History

Last year we estimated that Animal Equality could use $2 million–$5 million⁴⁴ more in 2018 than their estimated 2017 budget of $3.5 million. In 2017, they surpassed their fundraising goal of $5 million and this year they are on track to meet their fundraising goal of $7.5 million, which is about $2 million more than they raised in 2017.^{45, 46}

The chart below shows Animal Equality’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures.⁴⁷

Planned Future Expenses

Animal Equality is considering investing in direct marketing fundraising programs such as mailings to broaden their message and financial support base.⁴⁸ Internally, they would like to hire additional staff in human resources, operations, and the legal department to free up the leadership to be able to focus more on strategic, big picture planning.⁴⁹

Assessing Funding Priority of Future Expenses

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

High Priority Funding Gaps

Our highest priority is funding activities or programs that we think are likely to create longer-term impact in a cost-effective way, as well as programs which we have relatively strong reasons to believe will have a highly positive short- or medium-term direct impact in a cost-effective way.⁵⁰

As described in Criterion 1, Animal Equality has a number of programs that we consider promising, including undercover investigations, corporate welfare campaigns, legal work, campus outreach with VR, activist trainings, research, media outreach, and the translation of books. Of these programs, we estimate they could effectively use the largest increases in funding for undercover investigations⁵¹ and legal work.⁵² In terms of staffing, Animal Equality reported a need for additional lawyers, more people to do human resources and operations work, and a Data Analyst.^{53, 54} They also said their international work in Mexico and India would benefit from additional staffing.⁵⁵ We agree with their assessment that they could benefit from staff increases in these areas and we think they have the potential to build the capacity of the organization and increase the impact of some of their promising programs. We estimate that Animal Equality has a high priority funding gap of $1.6 million–$3.4 million for 2019.^{56, 57, 58}

Moderate Priority Funding Gaps

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

Based on Animal Equality’s spending for the first six months of 2018, we estimate that their expenses for online outreach will have increased about 13% in 2018 over their expenses for 2017. We used this growth rate along with a consideration of possible staffing increases to estimate that Animal Equality has a moderate priority funding gap of $250,000–$650,000 for 2019.⁵⁹

Low Priority Funding Gaps

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

Animal Equality reported a need for additional office space to facilitate growth.⁶⁰ While this may facilitate expansion of their promising programming, we haven’t investigated whether or not additional office space is the most efficient way to do so, considering other possibilities such as using remote workers or contracting some work out. We considered this along with a range of 1%–20% of their projected 2018 expenses to estimate that Animal Equality has a low priority funding gap of $250,000–$1.6 million for 2019.⁶¹

The chart below shows the distribution of Animal Equality’s gaps in funding among the three priorities:⁶²

Animal Equality estimates that they could effectively use an additional $5 million in funding to expand and support promising projects.⁶³ We estimate that next year they have a total funding gap of approximately $900,000–$4.4 million,⁶⁴ and that they could effectively put to use a total revenue of $9.8 million–$12.5 million.⁶⁵

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

Animal Equality runs several programs; we estimate cost effectiveness separately for a number of these programs, and then combine our estimates to give a composite estimate of Animal Equality’s overall cost effectiveness.⁶⁶ We generally present our estimates as 90% subjective confidence intervals. We think that this quantitative perspective is a useful component of our overall evaluation because we find quantitative models of cost effectiveness to be:

• One of the best methods we know for identifying cost-effective interventions⁶⁷
• Useful for making direct comparisons between different charities or different interventions⁶⁸
• Useful for providing a foundation for more informative cost-effectiveness models in the future
• Helpful for increasing our transparency⁶⁹

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

We are concerned that readers may think we have a higher degree of confidence in this cost-effectiveness estimate than we actually do. To be clear, this is a very tentative cost-effectiveness estimate. It plays only a limited role in our overall evaluation of which charities and interventions are most effective.⁷⁰

Corporate Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Animal Equality will spend about 33% of their budget, or $1.24 million, on corporate outreach.⁷¹ This results in some companies adopting new policies, and these policies likely result in reduced suffering for animals. We estimate that Animal Equality’s corporate campaigns will help cause 43–60 policy changes, affecting 84,000–210 million laying hens and broiler chickens each year.⁷²

Online Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Animal Equality will spend about 25% of their budget, or $930,000, on online outreach.⁷³ This will result in 350 million–600 million engagements, 14 million–22 million video views across all platforms, and 350,000–600,000 total LoveVeg subscribers.⁷⁴

Investigations

We estimate that in 2018 Animal Equality will spend about 24% of their budget, or $920,000, on investigations.⁷⁵ We estimate that they will release between 16 and 26 investigations.⁷⁶ The media coverage of these investigations—typically including several stories per investigation through television and print outlets—will have the opportunity to be seen between 800 million and 1.4 billion times, including times when someone has the opportunity to see coverage of one or more investigations from multiple sources.⁷⁷ We estimate that this will result in 5 million–22 million investigation video views. This is the equivalent of 6–24 views per dollar.⁷⁸

Legal Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Animal Equality will spend about 12% of their budget, or $460,000, on legal outreach.⁷⁹

Individual Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Animal Equality will spend about 6% of their budget, or $240,000, on education.⁸⁰ This will include 100,000–180,000 leaflets being distributed, and 2,000–3,200 people viewing tablet videos, and 16,000–25,000 people viewing virtual reality videos.⁸¹

Budget Changes Since 2017

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

All Activities Combined

To combine these estimates into one overall cost-effectiveness estimate, we translate them into comparable units. This introduces several possible sources of error and imprecision. The resulting estimate should not be taken literally—it is a rough estimate, and not a precise calculation of cost effectiveness.⁸² However, it still provides some useful information about whether Animal Equality’s efforts are comparable in cost effectiveness to other charities’.⁸³

We use our leafleting cost-effectiveness estimate and some aggregated staff estimates to estimate that Animal Equality spares between -3 and 0.4 animals from life on a farm per dollar spent on individual outreach,⁸⁴ and -0.2 and 3 animals from life on a farm per dollar spent on investigations.^{85, 86} Even though the range estimated for individual outreach extends further into negative values than positive values, we think that overall the impact of Animal Equality’s individual outreach is more likely net positive for animals.⁸⁷

We consider multiple factors⁸⁸ to estimate that Animal Equality spares an equivalent of between -6 and 42 animals per dollar spent on corporate outreach.^{89, 90}

We exclude online and legal outreach results from our final cost-effectiveness estimates and don’t attempt to convert them into an equivalent animals spared figure; it is too difficult to disentangle the effects of these interventions from the total effects of their other programs.

We weight our estimates by the proportion of funding Animal Equality spends on each activity; overall, we estimate that in the short term—after excluding the effects of some of their programs—Animal Equality spares between -3 and 8 farmed animals per dollar spent.^{91, 92} This equates to between -3 and 11 years of farmed animal life spared⁹³ per dollar spent.^{94, 95, 96} Because of extreme uncertainty about even the strongest parts of our calculations, we feel that there is currently limited value in discussing these estimates further. Instead, we give weight to our other criteria.

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

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

Have programs been well executed?

We believe that the following Animal Equality programs have been well executed in the past year: undercover investigations of factory farms, legislative work in Mexico, India, and the European Union, and corporate outreach. Animal Equality has also successfully expanded upon iAnimal, their virtual reality outreach program, and has grown their social media presence.

Animal Equality has a strong track record of conducting investigations of factory farms.⁹⁷ They report having investigated over 670 facilities since their inception in 2006.^{98, 99} In 2017, their 20 investigations¹⁰⁰ included what they believe to be the first ever probes into hen farms in India and Brazil. They also investigated the dairy industry in Mexico, in addition to hen, pig, chicken, and dairy farms across various countries in western Europe.¹⁰¹ In the first seven months of 2018, they released 11 investigations.¹⁰²

In 2017, Animal Equality made significant progress with their legislative work in Mexico, India, and the European Union. In Mexico, they helped introduce a national initiative that, if passed, will make animal welfare standards mandatory and modify the criminal code to include cruelty to animals.¹⁰³ They were involved in both providing evidence of the inhumane practices in Mexican slaughterhouses and drafting the legal initiative in collaboration with Senator Diva Gastélum.¹⁰⁴ In addition, they have contributed to a local initiative in the state of Jalisco that, if passed, would make cruelty against farmed animals a felony crime.¹⁰⁵ Animal Equality expects this initiative to pass into law after being voted on by parliamentary representatives in the next few months. If passed, Animal Equality expects the law to affect hundreds of millions of animals.¹⁰⁶ In 2017, the Indian government introduced legislation which features several recommendations from Animal Equality that ban cruel practices for cows.¹⁰⁷ They have also made recommendations for two more drafts of bills that would improve hen and broiler chicken welfare. In the E.U., their lobbying work and investigations contributed to a vote in favor of a report which calls for the end of cage use and the introduction of minimum rabbit welfare legislation.¹⁰⁸

After launching their corporate outreach program in November 2016, Animal Equality has contributed to 65 corporate policy changes¹⁰⁹—some of which, if implemented, would reportedly end cage use for hens in the egg industry in Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.¹¹⁰ They have focused on improving the efficiency with which they launch outreach campaigns. For example, they developed a template campaign website that can quickly be tailored to each new campaign. It’s our view that this has likely contributed to their success in corporate outreach. In 2018, Animal Equality switched the focus of their corporate campaigns from layer hens to broiler chickens. They have now started work to improve broiler chicken welfare in Spain, Germany, Italy, the U.S., and the U.K.¹¹¹ Their work in the U.S. has largely focused on a campaign against McDonald’s.¹¹²

Throughout the past year, Animal Equality has continued their work with iAnimal, their virtual reality outreach program. So far, they’ve used the program to engage with journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and college students.¹¹³ They have used iAnimal in at least six different countries, predominantly on college campuses and at veg fairs, with an estimated 16,000–25,000 views in 2018.¹¹⁴ They have made the equipment available to other animal advocacy groups in 12 countries worldwide, further expanding their reach.¹¹⁵ iAnimal has generated substantial media interest; it has been covered by The New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post UK, Vice, and other publications.

Animal Equality continually works to grow their social media presence. They currently have 4.3 million followers on Facebook across seven languages. They also have 831,000 subscribers to their newsletters worldwide, including 329,000 subscribers to their Love Veg newsletter series.¹¹⁶ They have continued to focus on short videos with a positive message, as those tend to achieve wide viewership. For example, they sometimes post videos of happy animals who have been rescued from farms. We think that these short, positive videos are relatively unlikely to convince many viewers to change their diets or lifestyles, but they may help Animal Equality grow their social media following so that more people will be exposed to their likely more effective videos, such as their investigation footage.¹¹⁷

Have programs led to change for animals?

Several of Animal Equality’s programs have the potential to improve animals’ lives but have an impact that is difficult to measure. For instance, we think that undercover investigations, legislative work, and corporate outreach are all potentially highly effective programs, but their impact is difficult to track in the short term. Alternatively, Animal Equality’s iAnimal program has led to measurable change, as research suggests that exposure to iAnimal virtual reality footage leads to a decrease in consumption of pork.¹¹⁸ Despite the difficulty of measuring some of Animal Equality’s main programs’ impact, we are optimistic that they may lead to significant change for animals.

One of Animal Equality’s strengths is that they are very good at getting media coverage of their activities. There is weak evidence that media coverage of the treatment of farmed animals is negatively correlated with meat consumption in the United States;¹¹⁹ if such a correlation exists, it is possible that such coverage nudges people towards reduction in meat consumption. If the correlation between media coverage and meat reduction also exists in Europe and Latin America (and we expect that it does), then Animal Equality’s undercover investigations, particularly of farm conditions, may help animals on a large scale by reducing demand for meat and other animal products. Animal Equality has gathered some evidence of the effects of their operations. For example, footage from their investigations has reportedly been used in recent documentaries,¹²⁰ and documentaries are potentially a quite promising intervention.¹²¹ In addition, they claim responsibility for a surprisingly large reduction in lamb consumption at Easter in Italy in 2014 after they released four investigations revealing the treatment of lambs on farms.¹²² Because of surrounding circumstantial evidence,¹²³ we think it’s likely that their investigation was partly responsible for the large change reported, especially as Animal Equality was the only group working on lamb welfare at that time.¹²⁴ However, we don’t accredit the change solely to Animal Equality’s work, as it is also likely that economic factors contributed to the decline.

The progress of Animal Equality’s legislative work shows promise; however, the majority of legislation that they have contributed to has not yet passed into law. We should have a much clearer understanding of this program’s impact on animals in the future. In general, organizations have not yet seen much success in this area, and so we are uncertain how tractable this work is. However, there is a potential to affect hundreds of millions of animals through legislative changes. For example, although nothing concrete has yet been achieved, banning the use of confinement cages for E.U. rabbits could affect 340 million rabbits annually.¹²⁵

The commitments made due to Animal Equality’s corporate outreach campaigns will likely affect a large number of animals if they are implemented. As these commitments are not legally binding, it will be especially important to follow up with companies to ensure they are adhered to. Since several of the commitments obtained by Animal Equality have deadlines in the early-to-mid 2020s, we may soon have a better understanding of how many companies meet their deadlines. Animal Equality estimates that their corporate policy victories will reduce the suffering of millions of animals per year once they have been implemented.¹²⁶

Animal Equality’s outreach work with iAnimal may create change for animals in several ways: the program generates media coverage,¹²⁷ and the participants’ experience may cause people to make dietary changes. There is some evidence that iAnimal causes reduced animal product consumption: Animal Equality and Faunalytics conducted a field study involving iAnimal that reported statistically significant reductions in pork consumption (only consumption of this animal product was recorded).¹²⁸

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

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

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

Does the charity actively assess areas of success and failure?

As self-described effective altruists,¹²⁹ Animal Equality’s leadership puts a strong emphasis on using evidence to evaluate their work. Animal Equality sets program-level two-year and four-year plans which we believe list relevant, time-bound, fairly specific, measurable, and plausibly achievable goals.^{130, 131} For example, they have a specific metric that they use to estimate the impact that each one of their programs has on animals. According to their calculations, their combined education, corporate outreach, and legislative initiatives have likely helped to reduce the suffering of over 40 million animals in 2017.¹³²

Animal Equality keeps track of dozens of metrics across their programs and locations.¹³³ These key performance indicators (KPIs) give them a broad sense of their work and its public reception in each country, allowing them to note when a country appears to have fallen behind in some aspect of their work. For instance, they said that if two countries both have one leafleter but one country hands out 20,000 leaflets and another only 15,000, they try to find out where this discrepancy stems from.¹³⁴ Animal Equality has continued to collect monthly data on their overall impact through KPIs that the organization reviews yearly.¹³⁵ Such metrics and goal-setting practices allow Animal Equality to evaluate their success and failure by considering the degree to which they have met their goals. Animal Equality endorses a critical and pragmatic approach that is evident in their strategic areas of focus. These areas include a focus on bringing about incremental change for farmed animals¹³⁶ and a focus on research-based interventions.¹³⁷

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

We are aware of several ways in which Animal Equality has changed their programs significantly in response to indicators of success and failure, particularly in recent years. In response to ACE’s concerns (as well as their own internal assessment)¹³⁸ that their growth was outpacing their capacity for project management and communications, they have focused on improving their work in these areas, including by hiring new staff and taking on external advisors.¹³⁹ Their staff has undergone extensive training, and they have developed a project management process that is implemented throughout the organization.¹⁴⁰ This includes using project management tools like breakdown analysis and the critical path method to understand which tasks are necessary and how to prioritize them. They have used the resulting improved understanding of projects to refine their planning, which they believe is responsible for speeding up the progress of many of their programs this year.¹⁴¹ In the past few years, they have instituted policies to improve international communication within the organization, including raising the frequency of their international meetings to two per month. Their Executive Directors and international Directors have also begun traveling to other locations more.¹⁴²

In addition to setting specific and relevant goals, Animal Equality conducts and considers intervention research to inform their organizational priorities. For example, they have studied the effects of leafleting in the U.K. and in Spain.¹⁴³ Partly because of the results of that study,¹⁴⁴ Animal Equality has slowly shifted their resources away from their educational programs to increasingly focus on corporate outreach and legislative change.^{145, 146} This gradual shift was mainly because they expect greater impact with their corporate outreach and investigations work¹⁴⁷ and in part because they have the resources needed to make a greater impact.¹⁴⁸ This programming shift suggests that they also think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of their programs.

Animal Equality has a strong track record of being research-driven and responding appropriately to the results of studies—both in-house studies and third-party studies. They keep track of and internally disseminate the results of relevant studies from other organizations like Faunalytics and Mercy For Animals.¹⁴⁹ When it comes to their in-house studies, though we have in the past been concerned about their delay in publishing their results,¹⁵⁰ we believe that they are attempting to answer key questions that can help the movement as a whole. Specifically, they have carried out research to evaluate their interventions. Recently, they completed a study with Faunalytics that measured the impact of Animal Equality’s experimental virtual reality (VR)-based educational program.¹⁵¹ The study reported that the VR method was just as impactful as the video-based method.¹⁵² Consequently, they decided to curb their VR-based programs. They replaced their two U.S. tours per year with the launch of their campus outreach program, which requires fewer resources to complete.¹⁵³ This recent change suggests that Animal Equality actively refines their programs to remain research-based and cost-effective.

Another example of how Animal Equality responds appropriately to their assessments comes from their recent work in India. They recently completed a study there to inform their Indian corporate outreach campaigns. Specifically, they conducted a survey on attitudes towards animal welfare and plant-based products in India.^{154, 155} These results—along with some of their other India-based assessments¹⁵⁶—have reportedly been used to guide their food policy strategy and modify their communication strategy in India.¹⁵⁷

It is our hope that Animal Equality will continue to demonstrate their ability and willingness to recognize their organizational strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities and make changes in response. Last year, they informed us of their plan to hire a Data Analyst in the upcoming year to refine their assessments in the future.¹⁵⁸ They have yet to fulfill that plan, though they did reiterate this year that they intend to do so.¹⁵⁹ We believe this step could substantially improve Animal Equality’s self-assessment, and consequently, their future work.

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

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

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

Animal Equality is priniciply led by President Sharon Núñez. Our impression is that Núñez is a strong and competent, if frequently over-extended, leader.¹⁶⁰ Animal Equality’s board consists of five staff members and one unaffiliated animal advocate. The staff members include their three co-founders and international leaders: Núñez, Executive Vice President Jose Valle, and Executive Director in Spain Javier Moreno. The remaining three Board Members are their Executive Director in Italy Matteo Cupi, Thomas Hecquet, one of their Directors in Germany,¹⁶¹ and an unnamed undercover investigator and activist.¹⁶²

According to U.S. best practices, nonprofit boards should be comprised of at least five people who have little overlap with an organization’s staff or other related parties.¹⁶³ However, there is only weak evidence that following these best practices is correlated with success, and if they are correlated, that may be because more competent organizations are more likely to both follow best practices and to succeed—rather than because following best practices leads to success. In part because Animal Equality was founded in Spain and largely operates outside the U.S.,¹⁶⁴ we think their board composition’s departure from U.S. best practices does not provide significant information about their effectiveness or organizational competence.

Animal Equality’s board is composed almost entirely of members of their leadership staff, which might lead to relatively low viewpoint diversity. We are thus slightly concerned about the lack of diversity among Animal Equality’s Board Members, although they do bring a number of the different national perspectives that Animal Equality likely needs in order to make decisions effectively.

The evidence for the importance of board diversity is somewhat stronger than the evidence recommending board sizes of five or greater, in large part because there is some literature indicating that team diversity generally improves performance.¹⁶⁵ However, to our knowledge, the evidence of the impact of board diversity on organizational performance is less strong than the evidence of the impact of team diversity.¹⁶⁶

Does the charity have a well-developed strategic vision?

Does the charity regularly engage in a strategic planning process?

Animal Equality’s large-scale strategic planning appears to be conducted primarily by their leadership staff, consisting of international Directors as well as local Executive Directors and co-Directors. However, they do involve non-leadership staff and even some volunteers in the process,¹⁶⁷ and involve many stakeholders in their shorter-term local planning process.

Animal Equality revises their strategic plan every six months. To do so, their Directors gather in person twice per year, spending up to a day reviewing and modifying the plan.¹⁶⁸ Our understanding is that most Board Members are involved in these Directors’ meetings by virtue of their positions at Animal Equality.

Animal Equality has told us that most staff members were involved in creating the strategic plan in some capacity. Some volunteers were also consulted during the planning process on specific matters of expertise, including organizational structure and business processes.¹⁶⁹ The current strategic plan, for 2017–2020, was originally written in 2014 and 2015; they have since included all current Directors in a process to reevaluate the plan.¹⁷⁰

In addition to their broader strategic planning, Animal Equality has also developed two-year action plans for India, Brazil, and Mexico, as well as the four European countries in which they operate (Spain, Italy, Germany, and the U.K.), involving both their leadership and key local staff in the process. In each case, the planning process involved Animal Equality local leadership, global leadership, and key non-leadership staff members in the relevant country.¹⁷¹

Overall, Animal Equality’s decision making appears to involve a variety of staff members to some degree—especially their country-level planning, which is more detailed and shorter-term. We think this inclusive decision making process is likely to lead to better country-level planning because more employees can presumably be more responsive to problems, reaching solutions that may not be readily apparent to management alone.

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

Animal Equality describes their mission as “working with society, governments, and companies to end cruelty to farmed animals.” They say their values as an organization are “compassion, determination, and effectiveness.”¹⁷² As discussed in Criterion 5, Animal Equality makes efforts to self-evaluate and respond to evidence, indicating some commitment to effectiveness. Given their mission and their history of conducting evidence-supported interventions, we expect Animal Equality to remain committed to effectively helping animals.

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

Our understanding is that Animal Equality’s work helps the animal advocacy movement grow in several ways. Animal Equality advocates for farmed animals in eight countries, including large countries with relatively small farmed animal advocacy movements—such as India and Brazil—where we believe advocacy work is especially helpful for developing a movement. Animal Equality has conducted studies on animal advocacy methods, though they have sometimes delayed publishing their results.¹⁷³ Still, results that they do publish provide information that can guide other advocates’ work. Insofar as they do not share their results, however, they are passing up an opportunity to help guide the animal advocacy movement towards more effective interventions.

Animal Equality is also involved in several collaborative efforts with other animal advocacy organizations, some of which provide them an opportunity to use their knowledge and experience to guide newer charities toward more effective behaviors. More generally, by pooling their resources with other organizations, they can help achieve better results for particular animal advocacy programs—which, in addition to helping animals, can help direct resources to less-experienced organizations.

Animal Equality is part of the Open Wing Alliance, through which they work with a large number of groups internationally. They have also told us that they are in consistent contact with a number of animal advocacy organizations across Europe.¹⁷⁴ In India, they have established relations with other groups through their corporate outreach initiatives.¹⁷⁵ Because Animal Equality has run campaigns in Latin America for many years, other organizations consider them important players in the region and are eager to share information or learn from them.¹⁷⁶ Some of our other reviewed organizations that work in Latin America have mentioned taking steps to ensure that their work there complements Animal Equality’s.^{177, 178}

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

Effective charities are generally well-managed on an operational level; they should have healthy cultures and sustainable structures. We collect information about each charity’s internal operations in several ways. We ask leadership about their human resources policies and their perceptions of staff morale. We also speak confidentially with non-leadership staff or volunteers at each charity to solicit their perspectives on the charity’s management and culture.¹⁷⁹ We distributed a culture survey to most of the charities we evaluated in 2018, though we give charities the option of sending us the results of a recent internal survey instead of using ours. Animal Equality elected to send us a summary of their most recent staff survey, conducted in December 2017.¹⁸⁰

Does the charity have a healthy culture?

A charity with a healthy culture acts responsibly towards all stakeholders: staff, volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, and others in the community. One important part of acting responsibly towards stakeholders is protecting employees from instances of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Charities that have a healthy attitude towards diversity and inclusion seek and retain staff and volunteers from different backgrounds, since varied points of view improve a charity’s ability to respond to new situations.¹⁸¹ A healthy charity is transparent with donors, staff, and the general public and acts with integrity; in other words, their professed values align with their actions.

Animal Equality appears to provide a healthy work environment for staff, with staff morale included in a yearly anonymous survey and staff development constituting a meaningful part of their performance evaluation system.¹⁸² Animal Equality’s leadership seems to listen to and learn from staff throughout the organization, providing everyone with adequate control over their own work and opportunities to influence the charity as a whole.¹⁸³ Animal Equality has a human resources officer who meets individually with all staff to proactively identify areas for improvement in their work culture.¹⁸⁴

Does the charity communicate transparently and act with integrity?

Animal Equality identified internal transparency as an area for improvement in their 2017 culture survey, and they tell us they are taking steps to improve in this area. In particular, they’re working to improve the ways that they share information across departments and across countries.

We have also noticed in previous evaluation cycles that Animal Equality has also had room to improve their external transparency. For instance, in our previous reviews, we mentioned concerns about the transparency of Animal Equality’s research.^{185, 186} We suspect that Animal Equality’s difficulty maintaining external transparency may be due, in part, to their difficulty maintaining internal transparency. After all, they are a large, internationally distributed organization. It sometimes seems genuinely difficult for them to collect all the information they need from each department and/or country. This raises some concerns about Animal Equality’s operations, but we do not currently have reason to believe that Animal Equality is actively trying to hide information from donors.

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

Animal Equality has worked to ensure that they offer all staff competitive and fair wages, at least in the U.S.¹⁸⁷ According to Animal Equality’s 2017 staff survey (which was distributed to staff in each country in which they operate), the majority of respondents were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their compensation, and an even greater majority was either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their vacation time. Recently, Animal Equality has also introduced “compensatory time” for employees who are working more than full-time hours, as well as paid child care and paid volunteer time.¹⁸⁸ That is, Animal Equality staff can volunteer some of their paid work time to other nonprofits they support. Animal Equality even pays for up to ten sessions of therapy for staff who need it (for instance, as a result of filming or viewing graphic undercover investigation footage).¹⁸⁹

Animal Equality devotes significant resources to training staff and volunteers. Staff in particular are encouraged to pursue learning and professional development through a variety of organizational structures, including trainings conducted at retreats,¹⁹⁰ monthly all-staff “Sharing and Learning” presentations,¹⁹¹ and individualized professional development programs. Animal Equality allots a significant amount of time and resources to staff development. Director-level staff and some creative staff are expected to spend five to ten percent of their time on professional development activities,^{192, 193} and each department has a dedicated budget for development.¹⁹⁴ The staff we’ve spoken to felt that the organization valued their development as advocates and described to us a variety of individually-tailored professional development activities that they or others they knew had participated in.¹⁹⁵

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

Animal Equality’s staff and leadership are relatively diverse in terms of national origin as well as gender, due in part to the international nature of the organization.¹⁹⁶ Leadership staff in many of their country offices are originally from the countries where they work, which provides Animal Equality with an appropriate depth of local knowledge; it also means that there are regular conversations within the organization in which people learn from the experiences of others with different backgrounds.¹⁹⁷

Like many animal charities, Animal Equality sometimes has difficulty hiring and retaining staff members who are diverse in other ways. They are actively looking for ways to address this, and some of Animal Equality’s staff have already participated in diversity trainings.¹⁹⁸

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

Animal Equality has policies in place to protect employees from harassment and discrimination, and employees are trained on these policies.¹⁹⁹ In February 2018, soon after some high-profile cases of harassment in the animal advocacy movement, Animal Equality updated their policies and adapted them to all of the countries in which they work.²⁰⁰ In Spain, Animal Equality has hired a third party to proactively identify ways in which Animal Equality can better promote gender equity.²⁰¹

In our conversations with Animal Equality staff over the years, we have learned of some instances in which Animal Equality employees faced harassment arising from outside of the organization, and Animal Equality seems to have handled the situations efficiently and appropriately. In these cases, they consulted the employees who were the targets of harassment and offered them options for more safely remaining in the situations, directly addressing the situations, or removing themselves from contact with their harassers.²⁰²

Does the charity have a sustainable structure?

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

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

Currently, we think Animal Equality has a fairly wide and stable base of support. Animal Equality is supported primarily through grants and donations; they receive additional revenue from merchandising, but it amounted to only about $2,000 in 2018.²⁰³ Animal Equality receives some restricted donations, including about $543,000 to support investigations in Italy, iAnimal, operations in Brazil and India, and corporate outreach in the E.U.²⁰⁴ In June 2018, Animal Equality was awarded a $2.8 million grant from the Open Philanthropy Project, to be used for cage-free and broiler campaigns over the next three years.

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

In previous reviews we have identified Animal Equality’s organizational stability as a potential weakness, due to an infrastructure that appeared to be lagging behind growth in the rest of the organization.²⁰⁵ In the past two years, Animal Equality has made conscious efforts to improve this situation by hiring additional administrative and support staff and developing processes that allowed the organization to function more smoothly, with less dependence on a few key staff to fill a large number of roles within the organization.^{206, 207} We think that these efforts have paid off, with operations at Animal Equality appearing to be smoother in the past two years particularly.²⁰⁸

Questions for Further Consideration

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

Given that the corporate pledges are not legally binding, how can we be sure that they meaningfully support improvements in farmed animal welfare?

Animal Equality’s Response:

“The policies are made public by the companies and this public statement sends a message to producers about the need to eliminate the production of caged eggs. It also makes the companies accountable by animal welfare organizations and the general public. Consumers could sue a company if it engages in false advertising and possibly consumer fraud by stating that they only use cage-free eggs if they don’t.”

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

Animal Equality’s Response:

“As part of Animal Equality’s strategic plan, Animal Equality focuses primarily on caged hens, broiler chickens, and farmed fish. Animal Equality has already carried out several investigations on the suffering of fish, those investigations can be found here and here. These investigations have gathered media attention in several countries and have been included in major films and documentaries such as Cowspiracy, Dominion and others.

Animal Equality’s corporate outreach efforts are focused where they can have the most impact—specifically, caged hens in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Italy, and India and broiler chickens in Europe and the United States. The organization is fully aligned to what most of the animal protection movement considers should be our priorities and will move to working on farmed fish alongside the rest of the movement when the time is adequate.”

How does the effectiveness of different programs vary in each country in which Animal Equality works? Can you describe your strategy for choosing which countries to work in and which programs to pursue there?

Animal Equality’s Response:

“Animal Equality’s strategy plan defines what countries the organization will focus on as it expands.

(From Animal Equality’s strategy plan: Animal Equality will expand to those countries where the greatest change for farmed animals can be accomplished, taking into account:

1. Number of farmed animals and their degree of suffering
2. Animal welfare standards
3. The scope for meaningful, positive change.)

Though the organization is currently focused on becoming stronger in the countries it is in, it looks at the criteria mentioned above when thinking of expanding to new countries.

Animal Equality’s goals—and, in consequence, its programs—are also defined in its strategy plan but these vary depending on the context (culture and political environment etc.) of the countries it is in. Here is a summary of Animal Equality’s goals and some of the variations depending on the countries:

• Animal Equality’s Love Veg website, which provides information on plant-based eating, has been presented in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Mexico and is adapted to those contexts.
• Animal Equality’s corporate outreach strategy and goals are adapted to each context. In Latin America, Animal Equality is mostly focused on ending cages for hens, combining these corporate outreach efforts with legal initiatives. In Europe, Animal Equality will continue to focus on caged hens in Italy and Spain and move into campaigns to improve the welfare of broiler chickens in the United Kingdom and Germany.”

;Revenue;Assets;Expenses;
2015;$338,188;$142,109;$205,643;
2016;$3,295,382;$859,979;$2,636,658;
2017;$5,515,076;$2,498,358;$3,876,697;
2018 (estimated);$7,394,446;$5,472,458;$4,420,346;
2019 (estimated);$8,500,000;$7,172,458;$6,800,000;

,Lower estimate,Upper estimate
High Priority,1600000,1800000
Moderate Priority,250000,400000
Low Priority,250000,1350000

;2017;2018;
Investigations;$997,989;$919,013;
Individual Outreach;$592,162;$239,119;
Online Outreach;$956,090;$932,765;
Corporate Outreach;$890,515;$1,241,607;
Legal Outreach;$94,740;$284,935;

---

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

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

3. For example, they have translated Nick Cooney’s Change of Heart, Melanie Joy’s Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, JoAnne McArthur’s We Animals, and Tobias Leenaert’s How to Create a Vegan World into Spanish. These books were published in Spanish between 2013 and 2018. While we think it’s promising to generally have more such books available and especially to have them available in multiple languages, we don’t have sales numbers or evidence on the impact of these particular books. 

4. In our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018), they told us that they provide footage to documentaries such as Dominion, Cowspiracy, and Vegan, although it’s unclear to us to what extent each of these films relied on footage provided by Animal Equality.  

5. “We have been doing investigations for over a decade. Since we started we have presented a total of 96 investigations, which means over 750 facilities in total covered.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

6. “In the first half of 2018, Animal Equality continued to make important strides for farmed animals across the globe. We presented 11 hard-hitting investigations in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Germany, and the United Kingdom. […] [A Spanish] investigation was […] viewed by more than 3 million people. We also reached an additional 230 million people through media coverage related to our investigation.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

7. For instance, their work has been covered in The New York Times, BBC, and the Daily Mail. For more examples of Animal Equality’s media coverage, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018). 

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

9. “Animal Equality continued with its iAnimal tour, which brings our virtual reality films to colleges and large events across university campuses. Our iAnimal film was watched by 13,175 students as a direct result of Animal Equality’s work and by 14,514 people thanks to the work of organizations Animal Equality has leased headsets to.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

10. The U.K. iAnimal was also included in a forthcoming PhD research project into the effects of meat reduction and veg interventions by Grassian, T. (2018). 

11. “Love Veg is an educational website including comprehensive content on how to transition to a plant-based diet and use meat and dairy alternatives, along with recipes and tips.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

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

13. “Animal Equality has shared it’s iAnimal project with over 100 activists and organizations around the world. […] Animal Equality shares all of its footage and investigations with any animal advocate who wants to use them. Animal Equality’s footage has appeared in the recent documentaries Dominion as well as documentaries such as Cowspiracy and others.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

14. “[…] [T]raveling and providing workshops and information to activists and organizations in other countries. Animal Equality’s founders and President and Vice President travelled to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile to support activists in the countries and provided talks and trainings on animal rights, effectiveness, development etc.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

15. Animal Equality worked with Faunalytics on a study of the efficacy of virtual reality as an intervention. 

16. “We worked with a company in India that does studies and surveys, and we asked Indians, what are their opinions on animal welfare? And what are their opinions of the introduction to plant-based meat, we got results. And based on that, we came up with a document that modifies our communication in India on social media, and when we’re reaching out to the media, and then it also has helped guide some of our food policy strategy based on how people were responding to plant-based meats.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

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

18. “Animal Equality launched its first-ever corporate campaign in the U.S. against McDonald’s. This historic campaign, launched as part of a coalition, has the goal of getting McDonald’s to eliminate the cruelest farming practices used by its producers.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

19. “Since establishing our corporate outreach department in November 2016—beginning outreach to companies in January and launching our first campaigns in March—Animal Equality has won 22 corporate policies banning cages for hens used in the egg industry in Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

20. A list of these companies can be found in Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018). 

21. “Animal Equality has started doing work to improve broiler chicken welfare in Spain, Germany, Italy, [the] U.S., and will soon be doing similar work in the U.K.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

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

23. “With food policy[,] we’ve attended several conferences, we’ve had meetings with other organizations, and we’ve decided to hire people in Mexico and India to work in getting supermarkets and other companies to introduce more plant-based options. And this is a program that we want to extend in the future.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

24. Private Communication with Sharon Núñez, 2018 

25. “The Food Policy Manager in India has also conducted a strategic analysis and [is] currently in contact with several companies to get them to include more plant-based options.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

26. “In March, Animal Equality and Mexican Senator Diva Gastélum introduced a historic initiative on a national level, the very first of its kind, calling on the Mexican Senate to modify current federal legislation to make the abuse of farmed animals a crime.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

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

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

29. “Another recent change is doing legal advocacy work in the U.S. We endorsed, promoted, and contributed to the Massachusetts [Question] 3 campaign. We are now an integral part of the Prevent Cruelty California campaign.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

30. “Animal Equality is working with the State of Jalisco officials to pass a vote that would make animal mistreatment a crime punished with up to 2 years in prison. […] In Germany, Animal Equality launched a campaign against the political attempts to criminalize animal right activists who engage in undercover investigations.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018) 

31. “In May, the Government of India introduced the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules 2017, which included Animal Equality’s recommendations to ban the sale of cattle in markets for slaughter and prohibit bodily mutilations such as dehorning, tail docking, nose roping and branding.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

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

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

34. See our 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report for a more detailed consideration of the potential long-term impact of a particular intervention. 

35. “We are present in eight countries […] This year, except for the U.S. and Brazil, we presented investigations in all the countries we’re in, we’ve won 60 policies, we are doing legislative work in Mexico and India, and we have established incredible relationships with governments and journalists in many of the countries we’re in.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

36. “We really want to nurture a movement of collaboration where all of the organizations have as much collaboration as possible, because that’s what makes us effective.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

44. This range is a subjective confidence interval (SCI). An SCI is a range of values that communicates a subjective estimate of an unknown quantity at a particular confidence level (expressed as a percentage). We generally use 90% SCIs, which we construct such that we believe the unknown quantity is 90% likely to be within the given interval and equally likely to be above or below the given interval. 

45. “We have a goal regarding development, which is how to reach the total income of $7.5 million by the end of 2018.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

46. This information can be found in Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018). 

47. The 2015 data is from Animal Equality’s Form 990 on ProPublica; the 2016 revenue and expenses are from Animal Equality’s Expenses (2016–2017) while the assets are from the Form 990. The 2017 revenue and expenses are from Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) while the assets were estimated by adding 2016 assets to difference between income and expenses for 2017. The 2018 revenue and expenses are estimated by multiplying their revenue and expenses from the first six months of 2018, according to Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018), by two. The 2018 assets were estimated by adding the estimated 2017 assets to difference between estimated income and estimated expenses for 2018. The 2019 expenses and revenue are based on their goals as expressed in Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part Two (2018) and the assets are estimated by adding the 2018 asset estimate to the difference between the 2019 revenue and expense goals. 

48. “One of the things that we want to incorporate in the next six months to a year is a direct marketing program, sort of dip our toes into a couple of different campaigns and have some appeals to not only broaden our message, but also broaden our financial support. So that would be something that we could very easily invest.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

49. “Having the funding to be able to hire more people for human resources, more people for operations, and more lawyers is something that is also going to allow us to increase the amount of time we spend on big picture thinking […] we think that, ultimately, is one of our most important tasks as the core leadership of the organization.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

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

51. Animal Equality has a strong track record of successfully carrying out investigations—see Criterion 4 for more information. They spent $1.2 million on investigations in 2017 and are on track to spend over $1 million in 2018 based on spending for the first six months of the year—see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) for more information.  

52. Animal Equality’s expenses for legal outreach during the first half of 2018 were almost 70% more than for all of 2017. See Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) for more information. They are currently engaged in legislative campaigns in Italy, India, Mexico, Brazil, and the U.K. See our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) for more information. 

53. “Having the funding to be able to hire more people for human resources, more people for operations, and more lawyers is something that is also going to allow us to increase the amount of time we spend on big picture thinking […] we think that, ultimately, is one of our most important tasks as the core leadership of the organization.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

54. “One of the goals that we have is to hire a Data Analyst to be able to really analyze all the data that we’re bringing in. We have a monthly metrics program, and to be able to have someone who can really spearhead that part of our work would make us much more effective.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

55. “Some of the golden opportunities that we have to do food policy work are in Mexico and India. So to be able to add some staff there to be able to do much bigger work would be incredibly, incredibly important.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

56. This range is a subjective confidence interval (SCI). An SCI is a range of values that communicates a subjective estimate of an unknown quantity at a particular confidence level (expressed as a percentage). We generally use 90% SCIs, which we construct such that we believe the unknown quantity is 90% likely to be within the given interval and equally likely to be above or below the given interval. 

57. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality.  

58. The method we use does calculations using Monte Carlo sampling. This means that results can vary slightly based on the sample drawn. Unless otherwise noted, we have run the calculations five times and rounded to the point needed to provide consistent results. We did this by first rounding the 5% and 95% estimates given in Guesstimate to the nearest $10,000 and then taking the most extreme of the five estimates (the highest value for an upper bound and the lowest value for a lower bound) and rounding it outwards to the next $100,000 when the numbers are in the millions and to the next $10,000 when the numbers are in the tens or hundreds of thousands. For instance, if sometimes a value appears as $2.7 million and sometimes it appears as $2.8 million, our review gives it as $2.9 million if it were an upper bound and as $2.6 million if it were a lower bound. 

59. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality.  

60. “We need more office space. It’s a necessity of a growing organization.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

61. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality.  

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

63. “In all of this planning, there are things that we want to do that we just don’t have the opportunity to do. But very importantly, we have know-how […] So I think quite easily, in addition to the funding that we currently have, we could add up to $5 million for a number of different programs, a number of different things that we want to add to our current work.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

64. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality.  

65. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality.  

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

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

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

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

70. For more information, see ACE’s page “Our Use of Cost-Effectiveness Estimates.” 

71. Animal Equality provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

72. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

73. Animal Equality provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

74. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

75. Animal Equality provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

76. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

77. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

78. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

79. Animal Equality provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

80. Animal Equality provided budget information for January–June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we multiplied the budget by two to get an estimate for 2018 in total. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018) and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

81. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

91. Guesstimate, the software we use to produce the models, performs calculations using Monte Carlo simulation. Each time the model is opened in Guesstimate, it reruns the calculations. As Monte Carlo simulation relies on a sample of randomized numbers, the results can vary slightly based on the sample drawn. Thus, in order to ensure consistency, we have run the calculations five times and rounded to the point needed to provide consistent results. For instance, if sometimes a value appears as 28 and sometimes it appears as 29, our review gives it as 30. 

92. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -2.9 to 7.9, -2.8 to 7.7, -2.6 to 7.7, -2.7 to 7.9, and -2.7 to 8 farmed animals spared per dollar Animal Equality spent. 

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

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

95. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -3.0 to 10.9, -2.9 to 10.6, -2.8 to 10.2, -3 to 10, and -2.8 to 9.9 farmed animals spared per dollar Animal Equality spent. 

96. See ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. Our estimates in this model were calculated using preliminary budget numbers provided by Animal Equality and Animal Equality’s reported accomplishments. 

97. “We have been doing investigations for over a decade. Since we started we have presented a total of 96 investigations, which means over 750 facilities in total covered. Just last year, 2017, we did 21 investigation that were shown in 63 presentations, meaning that one same presentation was presented in 3 countries at the same time.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

98. “Since its launch in 2006, Animal Equality has filmed in 674 different animal exploitation facilities around the world.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

99. “Since January 2017, Animal Equality has released 13 farmed animal investigations in seven countries.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

100. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018). 

101. More details about Animal Equality’s investigations can be found in Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017). 

102. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018). 

103. For more information, see Animal Equality’s public announcement (March, 2017). 

104. Animal Equality is referenced in the initiative document on pages 10–13 and 23, including photos from their investigation work. 

105. For more information, see Animal Equality’s public announcement (October, 2017).  

106. “Jalisco is Mexico’s leader in meat production and this initiative will affect more than 3.4 million pigs, 836,000 cows, 182,000 sheep and lambs, 76,000 goats, and 183 million birds every year.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

107. For more information, see Animal Equality’s public announcement (May, 2017). 

108. For more information, see Animal Equality’s public announcement (March, 2017). 

109. “So far we have obtained over 65 policies affecting over 40 million animals, based on the number of eggs used by the companies and/or the number of hens they affect.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

110. “Since establishing our corporate outreach department in November 2016—beginning outreach to companies in January and launching our first campaigns in March—Animal Equality has won 22 corporate policies banning cages for hens used in the egg industry in Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

111. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017). 

112. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017).  

113. See Animal Equality’s description of the people they reached through iAnimal within the first year of its development.  

114. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality. 

115. For a list of organizations with whom Animal Equality has shared their equipment, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017). 

116. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017). 

117. MFA’s research suggests that watching a video about farmed animal cruelty can create more of an intention to reduce meat consumption than watching a cute video of a similar length.    

118. Animal Equality and Faunalytics conducted a field study involving iAnimal that reported statistically significant reductions in pork consumption (only consumption of this animal product was recorded). 

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

120. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017). 

121. For instance, in 2014 Humane League Labs found that there is correlational evidence suggesting that a large proportion of people who have become vegetarian or vegan did so after watching a documentary. 

122. “We presented an investigation into the lamb industry in Italy in the years 2013 and 2014. In the presentation in 2013 we reached millions of people. As the investigation was shown in some of the most important Italian media, it led to a 40% lamb meat reduction during Easter 2013. That is a yearly reduction of 10%. Also, 4,430 people signed a pledge to not eat lamb meat in Easter. […] In 2014 we presented an update of the investigation which led to a 48% meat reduction during Easter 2014. That is a yearly reduction of 11–12%.” —Additional Information about Animal Equality (2014)  

123. This includes high levels of media coverage, petition and pledge signatures, and attention from public figures: “In 2014 we presented an update of the investigation which led to a 48% meat reduction during Easter 2014. That is a yearly reduction of 11–12% Also a total of 13,519 people signed a pledge to not eat lamb meat or meat in Easter. Politician Paolo Bernini, of the political party “Movimiento 5 Estrellas (M5S)” talked extensively about the investigation in the Italian Parliament and ended up his speech talking about the necessity of considering a vegetarian diet.” —Additional Information about Animal Equality (2014)  

124. Private conversation with Jose Valle, 2017  

125. Compassion in World Farming estimates that farmed rabbit mortality rates are around 15–30%, so in practice this policy would likely affect over 390 million rabbits. 

126. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

127. See, for example:
     Animal Charity Evaluators. (2016). Models of Media Influence on Demand for Animal Products. Animal Charity Evaluators.Cordts, A., Nitzko, S., & Spiller, A. (2014). Consumer Response to Negative Information on Meat Consumption in Germany. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 17(A), 83–106.
     Tiplady, C. M., Walsh, D. B., & Phillips, C. J. C. (2013). Public Response to Media Coverage of Animal Cruelty. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 26(4), 869–885.
     Tonsor, G. T., & Olynk N. J. (2010). Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on Meat Demand. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 62(1), 59–72.  

128. The study can be found at the Open Science Framework. 

129. “[Animal Equality’s] second strength is the fact that we consider ourselves an effective altruism organization, which means that we’re very flexible: we have the capacity to adapt our strategy to new studies that come out or based on what other organizations have tried and are doing successfully.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

130. When considering how well charities assess success and failure, one useful consideration is whether their goals are SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Specific, well-defined goals help guide an organization’s actions, and can help them determine which areas or programs have succeeded and failed. Setting a measurable target allows organizations to determine the extent to which they’ve met their goals. It is also important that goals be plausibly achievable; goals that are predictably over- or undershot tell an organization little about how well their programs have done. Goals should be relevant to the organization’s longer-term mission, both to guide their actions and to help them evaluate success. Finally, including time limits is especially important, as it keeps a charity accountable to their expectations of success.  

131. This assessment is based on the short-term goals we observed in documents shared with ACE by Animal Equality, detailing their 2016–2020 strategic plan and two-year country-level plans.  

132. For more information, see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

133. “Internally, Animal Equality uses key performance indicators (KPIs), including their “monthly metrics,” consisting of up to 25 different measures. Every country fills out these metrics once per month to gather information on how many people they have reached through media, YouTube, and Facebook—or how many investigations they have conducted.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

134. “The statistics allow them to make comparisons over time and across countries. If, for example, two countries both have one leafleter but one country hands out 20,000 leaflets and another only 15,000, Animal Equality tries to find out where this discrepancy stems from. The monthly metrics are available to everyone in a leadership position in the organization and they constantly provide current information on Animal Equality’s use of resources.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

135. For more information, see Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018). 

136. “Animal Equality’s first priority will be to end the worst forms of animal abuse on factory farms and on encouraging people to reduce their consumption of animal products. Studies and recent victories in the movement indicate that an incremental approach to diet and policy change generally brings about the most significant and sustainable long-term change.” —Animal Equality’s Strategic Plan 

137. “Animal Equality will focus on researching, analyzing, and applying the most effective approaches to its work.” —Animal Equality’s Strategic Plan 

138. “To their credit, Animal Equality independently informed us that project management and internal communication were areas they struggled with this year and have been actively trying to improve.” —ACE Blog: “Our 2016 Recommendation of Animal Equality.” 

139. “In the past year Animal Equality has directly approached ACE’s comments by improving its overall communication with donors, improving its international communication and project management and increasing the amount of external advisors to the organization.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017)   

140. “In last year’s conversation, Núñez mentioned project management as one of Animal Equality’s weaknesses. Since then, they have been focused on improving that area, overseeing extensive training and developing a project management process that is implemented throughout the organization.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

141. “Thus, they are improving critical paths for projects as well as the breakdown structure, which can be seen on how some of their projects are moving forward compared to last year.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

142. “To improve communication, Núñez and another international Director have visited each country where they have offices.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2016)  

143. Animal Equality completed two leafleting studies in Spain and the U.K. in 2014, the results of which were released late last year. “Animal Equality has shared with ACE the findings and raw data of its two studies on leafleting carried out in the United Kingdom and Spain.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017)  

144. “Although they believe [leafleting] to be an effective intervention, it is probably not the most impactful activity they could engage in, given their resources and possibilities.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

145. Based on research that has shown high impact for these campaigns, Animal Equality has also shifted their strategic lines to prioritize legislation and corporate outreach in five of the countries in which they are active. —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

146. For more information, see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

147. “When the Directors met at the beginning of the year to discuss their strategy, they decided to prioritize corporate outreach, investigations, and reaching influencers with their VR project and via social media. This means that they have been significantly cutting down on leafleting. […] Prior to 2016, they had already cut back on a larger number of projects in order to focus on corporate outreach and investigations, so large changes were not necessary in the last two years.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

148. “Although they believe [leafleting] to be an effective intervention, it is probably not the most impactful activity they could engage in, given their resources and possibilities.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

149. “Animal Equality […] always tries to disseminate information among their staff members. This includes the latest studies on the impact of different campaigns—often published by Mercy For Animals, Faunalytics, and other groups.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

150. By publishing results soon after a study ends, Researchers make their results useful to more advocates and avoid publication bias, which occurs when certain studies are less likely to be released than others because of their contents. In the case of these particular studies, there is room for concern that the results would have been released more quickly if they had indicated that the program being studied had larger effects. Such delays would make Animal Equality’s research less valuable as a guide to the animal advocacy movement, as their published findings at any given time would be biased towards positive results. 

151. In this collaborative study with Faunalytics, they measured the impact of Virtual Reality/360° videos relative to conventional video outreach and a control group. For more information see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017). 

152. For more information, see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017). 

153. “The campus outreach program consists of encouraging students in different top universities to conduct VR-based outreach on their own—with the VR headsets sent to them by Animal Equality.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

154. In the interest of transparency, we note that ACE Research Scientist Kathryn Asher advised Animal Equality on the design of their India study.  

155. For more information, see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

156. “We learned that for some companies it is actually easier to stop using eggs altogether, which also makes the product vegetarian for Indians. Otherwise it will be labeled as non-vegetarian with a red dot. By removing the eggs it can be labeled as vegetarian with a green dot so more people can access it.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

157. For more information, see our Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018). 

158. Private communication with Animal Equality, 2017 

159. “One of the goals that we have is to hire a Data Analyst to be able to really analyze all the data that we’re bringing in.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

160. “At the moment the leadership of the organization doesn’t have enough time to focus as much as we would want to on strategy in the big picture […]. There was a lot of work that Executive Directors were doing in the organization; they were doing some of the contacting the lawyers, Jose Valle and [Sharon Núñez] were doing a lot of even human resources work. So having the funding to be able to hire more people, for human resources, more people for operations, more lawyers is something that is also going to allow us to increase the amount of time we spend on big picture thinking, which we think ultimately is one of our most important tasks as the core leadership of the organization.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

161. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part One (2018) 

162. Private communication with Sharon Núñez, 2018 

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

164. Animal Equality works in seven countries besides the U.S., and our impression is that the vast majority of their work takes place outside [the U.S.]. For example, only a small portion of the achievements listed in Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) were achieved in the U.S.  

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

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

167. “[M]ost of our staff members were involved in the creation of the strategic plan, especially in the area of internal analysis. We also consulted several volunteers for counsel on specific matters including organizational structure, business processes, etc.” —Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality (2017)  

168. “Animal Equality’s leadership meets in person twice a year where the organization not only discusses its strategies and goals but also holds workshops developed by each Director about the overall political and movement changes in their countries.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

169. “[M]ost of our staff members were involved in the creation of the strategic plan, especially in the area of internal analysis. We also consulted several volunteers for counsel on specific matters including organizational structure, business processes, etc.” —Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality (2017) 

170. ”Animal Equality’s leadership is aligned with the mission, vision, values and strategic plan of the organization, having developed the strategic plan in conjunction with eight of the current Directors in 2014 and 2015, and going through a detailed process of reevaluating the strategic plan with all current Directors.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017) 

171. “Animal Equality’s country two-year plans are developed in coordination with the country Executive Director, in-country key staff, program Directors, and President and Vice-President.” —Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality (2017) 

172. Private communication with Animal Equality, 2017 

173. For example: “Animal Equality carried out three studies in 2014, two into vegan guides and one into messaging on Facebook.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez Gough and Thomas Hecquet of Animal Equality (2015) 

174. “They are also in constant exchange with L214 in France, Albert Schweitzer Foundation in Germany, and Lega Anti Vivisezione (LAV)—one of the major animal protection organizations in Italy, with whom they collaborated on an investigation into rabbit meat. In the United Kingdom, they are in close contact with Animal Aid and Viva![.]” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

175. “[I]n India they have established relationships with other groups through their corporate outreach initiatives.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

176. “Because Animal Equality started their activism in Latin America almost immediately after being founded, other organizations consider them one of the key players in the region and are eager to share information and/or learn from them.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

177. The Humane League has told us that they “collaborated closely with campaigners at Mercy For Animals and Animal Equality to campaign against Walmart in the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil.” —The Humane League’s Accomplishments and Budget (2016–2017) 

178. AnimaNaturalis also noted that “[i]n Spain and Latin America the only organizations focused exclusively on promoting veganism are Mercy For Animals in Mexico and Animal Equality,” and that AnimaNaturalis aims to conduct their Latin American outreach in ways that complement these organizations’ methods. —Conversation with Francisco Vásquez Neira, Aïda Gascón, and Cristina Ibáñez of AnimaNaturalis (2017) 

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

180. Animal Equality’s survey had 49 responses; at the time of its distribution, Animal Equality had 65 staff members, yielding a 75% participation rate. 

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

182. “Animal Equality conducts an anonymous survey of all staff members once per year. This survey incorporates questions regarding happiness and morale. During the performance appraisals they spend a significant amount of time talking about motivation, happiness, career growth, professional growth, and morale.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

183. Private communication with an employee of Animal Equality, 2017 

184. “Our human resources person has been meeting with all the staff on a one-to-one basis to be able to see if there are any concerns, or if there is anything that we can improve.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

185. “Animal Equality completed two leafleting studies in Spain and the U.K. in 2014, the results of which they have only recently released. […] By publishing results soon after a study ends, Researchers make their results useful to more advocates and avoid publication bias, which occurs when certain studies are less likely to be released than others because of their contents. In the case of these particular studies, there is room for concern that the results would have been released more quickly if they had indicated that the program being studied had larger effects.” —ACE’s 2017 Review of Animal Equality 

186. “One minor concern we have, as noted in our 2015 review, relates to Animal Equality’s transparency with the studies they conduct on their advocacy programs.” —ACE’s 2016 Review of Animal Equality 

187. “We engaged in a very robust analysis for all roles in the United States to ensure that we were not only paying fairly and consistently, but also competitively so that we could reward our staff with not only a living wage, but one that was better than just the the minimum or the standard.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

188. “Some of the policies that we’ve introduced include compensatory time. As you can imagine, in the kind of movement that we’re in, there’s a whole lot of work that’s happening, there’s always more work than there is time. And so sometimes there will be people who are working beyond the hours that are the sort of normal and so we want to ensure that we maintain work-life balance. So we’ve instituted compensatory time for people where the work demands that they they go above and beyond. Paid child care and paid volunteer time. We offered volunteer time that was unpaid but now staff members can have a volunteer time where they can dedicate their time to another nonprofit or missionary that they find important and it’s part of their benefits.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

189. “We are paying for ten sessions [of] psychological therapy for those staff who require it. For example, not just the animal cruelty investigators but also the video editors.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

190. “We also have staff retreats in all the countries that we’re involved in.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

191. “There are some differences in between all of the countries, but one of the things that we do organizationally is that we have a one hour training program for all staff on a monthly basis that is called “Sharing and Learning.” And we have a topic in which we have someone, either internal or external, that can provide some training to benefit the individual in their work.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

192. “Directors have to spend 5–10% of their time on professional development.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017)  

193. “With the creative staff, like Graphic Designers and video editors, we have already implemented a policy that they can dedicate 10% of their time, which is about four hours a week, to investigate and learn about different things without having to be working on a specific project. That is implemented in Spain, but will be implemented in other countries as well in the next few weeks.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

194. “We have already allocated part of the budget for each department that they can dedicate to training and professional development. So the staff knows, and they can apply for it, or the Directors of that department know, and they have to tell their staff that we’re willing to pay for you to do some courses.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

195. Private communication with an employee of Animal Equality, 2017 

196. “All of their Executive Directors are from the countries they work in, so international conversations (such as between someone from India who is familiar with the situation there and someone from Mexico, Brazil, or the United States) happen naturally. The executive team is 70% female, including Sharon Núñez herself.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

197. “All of their Executive Directors are from the countries they work in, so international conversations (such as between someone from India who is familiar with the situation there and someone from Mexico, Brazil, or the United States) happen naturally.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

198. “Some staff have participated in diversity training, so we have this plan to involve the Directors in that type of training as well, but it’s something that we’re still engaging in.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

199. “Animal Equality has policies in place to address these issues. At the moment, Núñez is working to organize anti-harassment training for the whole organization internationally, which will take place before the end of September.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez of Animal Equality (2017) 

200. “In February, after a lot of conversation, collaboration, investment in time and resources, we rolled out a very well thought-out and detailed harassment and discrimination policy that we adapted to all of the countries that we operate in. All our staff at Animal Equality have been trained in it and are aware of the policy.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018) 

201. “For example, in Spain, we’re currently undergoing an examination by a third party, a gender equity entity from the government, that looks at the organization for things we can improve upon.” —Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018)  

202. Private communication with an employee of Animal Equality, 2017 

203. For more information see Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part One. 

204. For more information, see Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part One. 

205. “We’re concerned that continued rapid expansion requires a great deal of time on the part of senior staff who already have a very complicated job in coordinating Animal Equality’s programs between several international offices. We have seen, and we think that Animal Equality has also seen, some evidence that their growth has slightly outpaced their ability to create structures to facilitate communication and project management throughout the organization.” —ACE’s 2016 Review of Animal Equality  

206. “In 2016–2017, Animal Equality has hired more people to help with operations and communication, including Development Director William Rivas-Rivas. We’ve already observed an improvement in Animal Equality’s communications since the hiring of Rivas-Rivas, and some of the donors with whom we communicate have also noticed an improvement.” —ACE Blog: “Updates on Select Recommended Charities’ Room for More Funding” 

207. “Animal Equality has continued to grow its processes by creating new ones, improved project management by creating a detailed project management process, and hired external contractors to support with IT and design.” —Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2016–2017)  

208. “We’ve already observed an improvement in Animal Equality’s communications since the hiring of Rivas-Rivas, and some of the donors with whom we communicate have also noticed an improvement.” —ACE Blog: “Updates on Select Recommended Charities’ Room for More Funding” 

Research Documents

• Animal Equality’s Accomplishments (2017–2018)
• Animal Equality’s Budget (2017–2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part One (2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for Animal Equality, Part Two (2018)
• Animal Equality’s Strategic Plan

• Conversation with Sharon Núñez, Jose Valle, and William Rivas-Rivas of Animal Equality (2018)
• ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Animal Equality
• ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Animal Equality