Vegan Outreach

How Vegan Outreach 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 causes 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

Vegan Outreach focuses primarily on reducing the suffering of farmed animals and increasing animal rights, which we believe are high-impact cause areas.

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.

Vegan Outreach pursues a couple of different avenues for creating change for animals: they work to influence public opinion and build alliances. 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

One way Vegan Outreach works to influence individuals to adopt more animal-friendly attitudes and behaviors is through virtual reality, which we view as an especially promising approach.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.

Vegan Outreach aims to influence public opinion through outreach on college campuses, at community events, and online. Their largest program is their campus outreach program, which they have been engaging in for about 15 years. In addition to its large scope, one thing that may set their campus outreach apart from others’ is that they are aiming not only at short-term diet change, but also at educating college students—who may be a relatively more receptive audience than other age groups and demographics³—about speciesism.⁴ They provide avenues for people to get involved in advocacy and activism with low barriers to entry—such as handing out leaflets and performing online actions. The possibility that some of the people they reach through their outreach may be influenced to advocate for animals in the long term makes this potentially high-impact work.

Some of their outreach specifically aims to involve and reach communities that are targeted less often by vegan advocates. They organize tours of historically black colleges⁵ and they work to conduct outreach outside of schools in remote and lower-income areas.⁶ Vegan Outreach generally hires people from the communities they are trying to reach, rather than entering the community as outsiders with little cultural knowledge. We see this type of work as promising since it may help to increase the diversity of the animal advocacy movement, which we consider an important goal.⁷ This is an area where Vegan Outreach stands out compared to the other charities we reviewed this year.

Their main campus outreach activities include handing out leaflets, tabeling, showing virtual reality (VR) footage, and engaging in humane education. Of these programs, they reach the most people through leafleting.⁸ Vegan Outreach distributes about two million leaflets to students at about 1,500 schools each year.⁹ We’re unsure about the impact of handing out leaflets and estimate that it may be less cost effective at creating short-term impact than some other interventions. While our 2017 investigation of leafleting failed to find compelling randomized controlled trial evidence for its short-term impact, leafleting may still serve other, more long-term purposes such as general awareness raising, contributing to gradual changes in perspective and habits,¹⁰ and providing an easy way for some people to get involved in animal activism.

In addition to leafleting on campuses, Vegan Outreach recently began using VR,¹¹ which may potentially be a more engaging form of outreach and may get some people to participate who otherwise would have walked past a person handing out leaflets. A recent study indicated some promising results for VR outreach, but did not find a difference between the impact of VR footage and videos shown on a two-dimensional tablet. Vegan Outreach also engages in humane education on college campuses. A large part of their work in Mexico and India involves humane education,¹² and they have fiscally sponsored the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition which delivers humane education classroom presentations primarily in the U.S.¹³ Similarly to leafleting, there is a lack of compelling randomized controlled trial evidence demonstrating the short-term impact of humane education. However, it may serve other, more long-term purposes such as raising awareness and contributing to gradual changes in perspective and habits.¹⁴

In addition to their campus outreach programs, Vegan Outreach has a vegan mentor program in English and in Spanish.¹⁵ We consider their Spanish program to be a strength, since it could help support greater diversity and inclusivity in the movement by reaching people who may not otherwise be able to access English forms of vegan outreach. Navigating social relationships is known to be a significant barrier to transitioning to veganism¹⁶—vegan mentor programs may be particularly well suited to address this barrier. A potential limitation of a mentor program is that it may reach a relatively small audience compared to some other forms of public outreach.

Vegan Outreach also engages the public online through their 10 Weeks to Vegan program, their health website, and by sponsoring videos that promote veganism on Facebook and Youtube. They are using sign-ups to the 10 Weeks to Vegan email series as a new way to measure their impact.¹⁷

Vegan Outreach is currently doing public outreach on the ground in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, and India, and they are considering expanding to Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and China.¹⁸ We see work to grow the animal advocacy movement in relatively neglected regions such as Latin America and Asia as especially promising.

Building Alliances

Vegan Outreach’s work with restaurants and food companies 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.¹⁹ 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.

Since 2016, Vegan Outreach has been working to convince restaurants and food companies to offer more vegan products.²⁰ They also recently partnered with Nearly There on campaigns that aim to persuade companies with nearly vegan products to remove only one or two ingredients to make their products vegan.²¹ We think this type of outreach is promising because changes in the supply line have the potential to impact a large number of animals.

Long-Term Impact

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

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

Vegan Outreach presents a long-term vision of large-scale change. They frame their work not simply as creating short-term dietary change and improvements, but also as having society shift towards embracing veganism. While most of their efforts target individuals, their goal is to impact mainstream culture through cumulative incremental shifts in individual perspectives.²⁵ For this reason, their outreach aims not only at dietary change but also at educating people about speciesism. Much of their potential impact may lie in the long term. Their extensive work on college campuses, and their efforts to make the movement more inclusive²⁶ by targeting populations not frequently reached by vegan outreach may help to grow the movement and increase its long-term impact in ways we cannot yet appreciate.

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

Founded in 1993, Vegan Outreach is a well-established charity that seems financially stable. Their revenue has been between $2–$2.5 million for the last two years and is on track to be the same this year.

The chart below shows Vegan Outreach’s recent revenues, assets, and expenditures.²⁷

Planned Future Expenses

Vegan Outreach is planning to continue their international expansion and is currently considering working in China, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.²⁸ They are also planning on expanding their virtual reality program,²⁹ and would like to use additional funding to expand to U.S. cities where there has not yet been much outreach.³⁰

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.³¹

As described in Criterion 1, Vegan Outreach has a number of programs that we consider promising, including their international outreach in Asia and Latin America, their VR outreach, their outreach to communities less often targeted by vegan advocates, and their work with companies to increase the availability of vegan products. Of these programs, we estimate that they could use the largest increases in funding for expansion in Latin America and Asia,³² and for expansion of their outreach to other populations not often reached by vegan advocates.³³ We estimate that Vegan Outreach has a high priority funding gap of $690,000–$1.4 million for 2019.^{34, 35, 36}

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.

Vegan Outreach has significantly expanded their online outreach, mentorship, and community events programs since 2016.³⁷ While their mentorship program is one of their smallest programs accounting for slightly more than 1% of their budget, community events and online outreach are their second and third largest programs respectively.³⁸ We estimate that Vegan Outreach has a moderate priority funding gap of $200,000–$780,000 for 2019.³⁹

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).

We don’t anticipate significant expansion of Vegan Outreach’s leafleting in the U.S. since they are starting to engage in VR outreach and they spent about 4% less on literature in fiscal year 2017–2018 than in fiscal year 2016–2017.⁴⁰ We considered their predicted leafleting expansion along with a range of 1%–20% of their projected 2018 expenses to estimate that Vegan Outreach has a low priority funding gap of $80,000–$630,000 for 2019.⁴¹

The chart below shows the distribution of Vegan Outreach’s gaps in funding among the three priorities:⁴²

This year Vegan Outreach’s fundraising goal is $2.4 million. They estimate they could effectively use an additional $500,000 for their international expansion,⁴³ and that they could use further additional funds to expand to cities in the U.S. that haven’t historically seen much outreach (approximately $75,000 per city).⁴⁴ We estimate that next year they have a total funding gap of approximately $760,000–$2.4 million,⁴⁵ and that they could effectively put to use a total revenue of $3.5–$4.7 million.⁴⁶

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

Vegan Outreach 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 Vegan Outreach’s overall cost effectiveness.⁴⁷ 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 interventions⁴⁸
• Useful for making direct comparisons between different charities or different interventions⁴⁹
• Useful for providing a foundation for more informative cost-effectiveness models in the future
• Helpful for increasing our transparency⁵⁰

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.⁵¹

Individual Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Vegan Outreach will spend about 54% of their budget, or $1.26 million, on individual outreach.⁵² This will include the distribution of 2.4–3.3 million leaflets, 15,000–23,000 views of VR videos, and 4,000–7,000 humane education programs.⁵³

Events

We estimate that in 2018 Vegan Outreach will spend about 26% of their budget, or $600,000, on events.⁵⁴ This will lead to them hosting 240 to 300 community events at a cost of $2,000–$2,500 per event.⁵⁵

Online Outreach

We estimate that in 2018 Vegan Outreach will spend about 20% of their budget, or $450,000, on online outreach.⁵⁶ This includes the addition of 1,000–1,200 new mentees to their mentorship program, 8,000–10,000 new sign-ups for their 10 Weeks to Vegan email series, and 6–12 commitments⁵⁷ by companies to introduce vegan options.⁵⁸

Budget Changes Since 2016

The following chart shows the ways in which Vegan Outreach’s budget size and allocation has changed since 2016.

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.⁵⁹ However, it still provides some useful information about whether Vegan Outreach’s efforts are comparable in cost effectiveness to other charities.⁶⁰

We use our leafleting cost-effectiveness estimate and some subjective staff estimates to estimate that Vegan Outreach spares between -11 and 1.7 animals from life on a farm per dollar spent on individual outreach.^{61, 62} Even though this estimate is more negative than positive, we think that overall the impact of Vegan Outreach’s individual outreach is more likely net positive for animals.⁶³

We exclude events and online advocacy 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 Vegan Outreach spends on each activity; overall, we estimate that in the short term—after excluding the effects of some of their programs—Vegan Outreach spares between -3 and 2 farmed animals per dollar spent.^{64, 65} This equates to between -1 and 1.5 years of farmed animal life spared⁶⁶ per dollar spent.^{67, 68, 69} 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?

Vegan Outreach has a long and solid track record of producing and distributing leaflets that advocate for farmed animals, against industrial agriculture, and for a vegan diet. Statistics on the Adopt a College site report close to 20 million leaflets being distributed since 1995, which is one of the longest track records we’ve seen, particularly when it comes to track records for specific programs.

Not all of Vegan Outreach’s programs have been as well executed as their leafleting program. In 2016, Vegan Outreach acknowledged that they were not tech-savvy enough to execute an online ads program sufficiently well and discontinued it.⁷⁰ They’ve since initiated several other programs, such as VR and the 10 Weeks to Vegan email series. As Vegan Outreach begins offering a wider array of programs, we have some uncertainty about whether the skills they’ve developed through the implementation of their leafleting program will be sufficient for success in other areas.

In 2016, Vegan Outreach expanded into India,⁷¹ and they are still scaling up their programs in other countries that they expanded to in recent years, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.⁷² Vegan Outreach has already given out a total of several hundred thousand leaflets in India, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand—there has been at least a 10% increase in the number of leaflets handed out in the 2017–2018 financial year compared to the 2016–2017 financial year.⁷³ They also expressed interest in expanding into Brazil, China, Ecuador, and Peru.⁷⁴ While our impression is that international expansion is generally difficult, we would expect that Vegan Outreach’s strong leafleting track record should be relatively transferable internationally because of their extensive experience with this program. Furthermore, it’s our impression that the leafleting program is relatively easy to implement when compared to other animal advocacy programs.⁷⁵

Vegan Outreach has recently revamped and renamed their 10 Weeks to Vegan program in the United States.⁷⁶ They also recently launched the program in Australia and India, and they are in the process of creating a version of the program for Mexico.⁷⁷ Given the program’s limited track record both in the U.S. and abroad, it is unclear at this time how well they will be able to execute the expansion of the program to these other contexts.⁷⁸  They did, however, report that they will begin tracking the success of their outreach by the number of sign-ups they get, meaning that we will have a better idea of the program’s success in the future.⁷⁹

After a somewhat slow start during 2015 and 2016, Vegan Outreach’s vegan mentorship program seems to have had some success. In the past three and half years, they have matched several thousand participants with mentors. However, there does seem to have been a noticeable decline—greater than 33%—in the number matched in the 2017–2018 financial year compared to the 2016–2017 financial year.^{80, 81} In contrast, they have substantially increased the number of community events/activities over those two years, increasing from 35 in the 2016–2017 financial year to 272 in the 2017–2018 financial year.⁸² Since August 2016, Vegan Outreach has had one staff member focus on campaigns to persuade companies to add vegan options, which seems to have contributed to dozens of restaurant locations adding vegan options.⁸³

Have programs led to change for animals?

Many of Vegan Outreach’s programs attempt to influence individual behavior. The impact of such programs is difficult to measure. Our 2017 Leafleting Intervention Report indicates that leaflets seem relatively ineffective; we estimate that, in the short term, they produce a near-zero expected change in years of farmed animal lives averted per dollar. Therefore the many leaflets Vegan Outreach has handed out could have a quite limited impact on animals. However, such outreach could have helped bring about institutional change in the U.S. and could have been an important part of building the farmed animal advocacy movement to what it is today. Similarly, Vegan Outreach’s international expansion could contribute to institutional change and help shape the movement in the other countries where they operate.

The institutional change that Vegan Outreach has directly worked on could be less promising compared to that of other groups—it seems to have mainly focused on adding vegan cheese options to menus⁸⁴ rather than replacing existing animal products. The impact of mentorship programs and community events on animals seems difficult to assess. One of their main impacts could be in decreasing recidivism—decreases which would likely lead to fewer animals being farmed.

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 its 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?

Vegan Outreach keeps track of their goals through a spreadsheet that tracks all departmental and organizational goals.⁸⁵ They informed us that this spreadsheet contains specific goals—of which there are currently 38—that move Vegan Outreach toward achieving their greater goals, which can be found on their website’s About page.⁸⁶ Along with reporting on their goals in quarterly meetings with the Board of Directors, they tell us that they also discuss goals that were accomplished, those that were not, and those that need more work.⁸⁷ Vegan Outreach previously measured their goals’ success by tracking the number of people they reach through their outreach (e.g. leafleting, VR, etc.), though they have now reportedly narrowed their focus to tracking the number of sign-ups they get for their 10 Weeks to Vegan program.^{88, 89} They said that they also plan to assess some factors that may affect their success at attracting new sign-ups, such as the types of events and audiences that they target.⁹⁰ For instance, they noted that vegans are not the targets of their 10 Weeks to Vegan sign-ups, since vegans represent only a minority of people who already signed up for the program.⁹¹

Vegan Outreach has also demonstrated the use of relevant data to inform goal-setting. For example, after an analysis showed that they were on pace to get around 10,000 organic sign-ups to their 10 Weeks to Vegan program (i.e. without any special promotion), they reportedly set their new goal for 2018 at 50,000 sign-ups—five times their projected sign-up number.⁹² This suggests that Vegan Outreach uses self-assessments to help them set specific, measurable, relevant, and time-bound goals.⁹³ They’ve recently chosen to measure their leafleting impact by using a tracking URL on the back of their booklets. They said that this new tracking measure will help them track the number of people who become interested in their 10 Weeks to Vegan online series after reading their physical leaflets.⁹⁴ Importantly, Vegan Outreach’s leadership reported that they will be assessing the effectiveness of the 10 Weeks to Vegan program in the U.S. to see if it indeed helps people change their diet and their attitudes.⁹⁵ Their hope is that they will learn more about how to refine their strategy—for example, by changing the way their program is promoted.⁹⁶ This goal appears to be fairly relevant, achievable, and specific.

While we are not aware of all their goals and how well-designed they are, we hope that they continue to set goals based on quantitative projections such as the baseline rate of sign-ups, especially for their online outreach programs. We think that Vegan Outreach’s goals might be even more mission-relevant if they were to also take into account their impact on the number of (i) Vegan Outreach supporters, (ii) committed volunteers to their mentorship program, and (iii) long-term vegans.

Given that they haven’t conducted surveys of how people’s opinions have changed over time, they claim that the best measures of long-term dietary change currently in use at Vegan Outreach are variables related to social media and Google analytics.⁹⁷ For this reason, they tell us that they are continuously on the lookout for new research by organizations like Faunalytics, who work on ways to better assess long-term dietary change.⁹⁸ Relatedly, Vegan Outreach has expressed interest in evaluating their leafleting interventions’ success more scientifically.⁹⁹ In 2016, they conducted a pilot study comparing four leaflets’ reported impact on dietary behavior. The 2016 study had its problems¹⁰⁰ but it was a somewhat improved design compared to their 2014 pilot study which had a smaller sample size. According to the 2016 data, Vegan Outreach reported that for every 75 leaflets read, one person becomes a single-week vegan (defined as someone who won’t eat any animal product more than once per week).¹⁰¹ However, they did point out that their pilot studies—along with a larger study launched in the Spring of 2018—seem to have too much “noise” overall.¹⁰² As a result, they plan to discontinue this specific research effort because of its relatively high cost and its failure to produce quality results.¹⁰³ Since our last review, Vegan Outreach has continued to invest in trying to empirically understand their impact, especially that of their leafleting interventions. Though they have clearly shown interest in producing quality evidence about leafleting,¹⁰⁴ they have yet to succeed in producing any substantial results. Nonetheless, their new approach to measuring impact through their 10 Weeks to Vegan sign-ups seems promising. For example, we believe that tracking the amount of people who sign up for the email series after receiving a leaflet may provide Vegan Outreach with useful information about people’s receptivity to their leaflets’ messaging.

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

Vegan Outreach’s strategy has generally been informed by self-assessments of their strengths and by research about relevant opportunities. They have actually already used empirical evidence to inform their goals. For example, after Faunalytics published a study indicating the high prevalence of vegetarian recidivism, Vegan Outreach initiated their vegan mentorship program as a remedy for that problem. In part in an attempt to reduce recidivism, they have also hired a campaigns manager to work with restaurants on improving vegan options.¹⁰⁵

In February of 2018, they ended a program which involved sending out physical copies of their Guide to Animal-Free Eating. Their reasons were (i) to save on funds and (ii) to help transition their supporters towards a recently revamped 10 Weeks to Vegan email series.¹⁰⁶ They report that the number of sign-ups climbed by around 14% between 2016 and 2018.¹⁰⁷ They also tell us that they recently launched their 10 Weeks to Vegan email series in Australia and India, and that they have plans to expand it to Mexico and more countries in the future.¹⁰⁸ Since their revamped 10 Weeks to Vegan email series has a limited track record, we don’t think that Vegan Outreach chose to replicate this particular program internationally on the basis of its success in the U.S. Nonetheless, they did report that they plan to assess the program’s effectiveness soon.¹⁰⁹ To that end, they have hired a research and assessment specialist.¹¹⁰ With a new expert on board, they will likely be better prepared to focus on assessments in general, and also better able to analyze whether the revamped program can be further improved.¹¹¹

It is our hope that Vegan Outreach will continue to conduct scientific assessments to inform their strategies and to refine their long-standing leafleting interventions. We also hope that Vegan Outreach will continue to demonstrate their ability and willingness to recognize their organizational strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities, then make calculated changes in response.

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?

Executive Director Jack Norris was one of the co-founders of Vegan Outreach and he has been involved in leadership roles in the organization since 1993. We have not noticed any significant issues with his leadership, and his background as a registered dietician seems useful for promoting vegan eating.

Vegan Outreach’s Board of Directors includes six individuals, one of whom is Norris. Their board size is in line with U.S. best practices, though best practices also suggest that the board should have little overlap with an organization’s staff.¹¹² 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.

Vegan Outreach’s Board Members seem to have a fair amount of occupational diversity; they have backgrounds in advocacy, medicine, engineering, and computer science. 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.¹¹³ 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.¹¹⁴

Most members of Vegan Outreach’s Board of Directors have worked with Vegan Outreach for many years. While this could raise concerns about organizational flexibility and agility, we think recent changes such as Vegan Outreach’s experimentation with new interventions indicate that they are remaining flexible. A long-standing board can also have benefits, such as avoiding drift from the core organizational values. Vegan Outreach’s board meets quarterly to review their progress and revise the organization’s goals.¹¹⁵

Does the charity have a well-developed strategic vision?

Does the charity regularly engage in a strategic planning process?

Vegan Outreach’s Executive Director and board meet quarterly to review the organization’s strategy and goals. They reportedly have two documents that can be thought of as a strategic plan.¹¹⁶ The first is the About page of their website, and the second is an internal spreadsheet of goals. They report that their spreadsheet breaks the larger goals listed on the About page into smaller, more specific goals. We think Vegan Outreach may benefit from a more formal strategic plan.

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

Vegan Outreach works to “end violence towards animals” and to move towards a “future when sentient animals are no longer exploited as commodities.”¹¹⁷ While they care about all animal exploitation and suffering, they focus on promoting plant-based eating. We support Vegan Outreach’s focus on farmed animal advocacy, which we consider to be the most promising area for doing the most good for animals, all other things being equal. Vegan Outreach also works to make their leaflets and other programs as impactful as possible, a process which we strongly support.

It’s difficult for us to assess whether Vegan Outreach sets achievable goals that are in line with their strategic vision, since they do not list their goals publicly. We don’t think that listing goals publicly is necessary for effective organizations, but doing so would allow Vegan Outreach to solicit more feedback from others in the movement, including from us.

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

Vegan Outreach’s focus is on individual dietary outreach, which we believe is currently over-funded within the movement. Their outreach on college campuses and in communities with relatively small animal advocacy movements (particularly in Mexico and India) could help to draw new advocates to the cause. Their research on the effectiveness of leafleting is also a resource for others in the movement.

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.¹¹⁸ Finally, we send each charity a culture survey and request that they distribute it among their team on our behalf.^{119, 120}

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.¹²¹ 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.

Our sense from speaking with and surveying Vegan Outreach staff is that their work culture is supportive and collaborative. Employees tell us that they have the autonomy to set their own hours and goals and that they have sufficient support and guidance from management when they need it. Many Vegan Outreach staff members independently described their culture to us as “trusting”—they feel empowered to succeed because they have the confidence of their managers.

One factor that seems to negatively impact Vegan Outreach’s culture is its remote work environment. Some staff expressed to us a wish to communicate more easily with colleagues or to see them in person more frequently. Several staff mentioned that they sometimes don’t hear about other departments’ projects until after they launch. Vegan Outreach uses a number of tools for internal communication, including email, a private Facebook group, and Basecamp. We think they may want to consider looking into one multi-purpose tool, like Slack. They may also benefit from planning more in-person trainings or retreats, if possible.

Does the charity communicate transparently and act with integrity?

Several of Vegan Outreach’s staff members have reported to us that—thanks in large part to the positive example set by the Executive Director and board—honesty and transparency are key features of the organization’s culture. Vegan Outreach produces an annual report containing financial and basic organizational information, and will distribute it to anyone who asks. They also work cooperatively with other animal advocacy organizations and share some information about what they find successful and unsuccessful on their website. They are cooperative and prompt in responding to our requests for information.

Internally, Vegan Outreach’s communication style is transparent and respectful, according to multiple members of the organization’s staff. Mistakes are discussed openly among staff and plans are generally put in place to address them. Several staff pointed to Vegan Outreach’s research as an example of the organization’s transparency. They publish all of their findings, even if they are unfavorable.

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

Respondents to our culture survey generally indicated that they were pleased with their compensation and benefits. Several staff noted the organization’s sufficient and flexible vacation time, and one employee mentioned that their full-coverage health insurance through Vegan Outreach gives them peace of mind. However, it seems that Vegan Outreach could improve upon its opportunities for staff development. They have regular staff trainings on topics like personal development, diversity, and self-care, but some staff would like to have more opportunities for professional growth. Executive Director Jack Norris appears to be aware of the need for more formal development opportunities—he tells us that he has been looking into offering online courses to employees as a complement to the human resources trainings they have offered.¹²²

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

Vegan Outreach appears to have an uncommonly diverse staff compared to the other animal charities we have evaluated, as well as a relatively high proportion of women in leadership positions. Many employees noted diversity as one of Vegan Outreach’s main strengths. They tell us that Vegan Outreach’s culture is “positive” and “inclusive,” and that the organization is not simply interested in diversity for the sake of diversity; rather, they understand the value that a diverse team can bring to an organization.

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

We are not aware of any instances of harassment or discrimination at Vegan Outreach, though we recognize that there are numerous reasons why we might not be privy to such information if it does exist, and are therefore cautious not to take this lack of information as evidence that Vegan Outreach is free of any issues with harassment or discrimination.

Vegan Outreach has a clear zero-tolerance harassment and discrimination policy, which has served as a model for other organizations. They offer multiple, regular trainings on harassment and on racial and gender discrimination. A key component of creating a safe workplace is having a system in place for staff to report problems or concerns. Vegan Outreach has multiple designated, trained staff members to whom anyone can report problems.

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?

Vegan Outreach has maintained a stable and growing budget for a few years, indicating sustained fundraising ability. They rely primarily on smaller donations rather than large grants; they report having received no grants that were more than 20% of their budget in the past two years.¹²³

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

Vegan Outreach’s successful leadership transition in 2014 indicates organizational stability. We suspect that the organization is even more stable now, since they have had more time to document their processes and implement new databases and systems.

;Revenue;Assets;Expenses;
2014;$1,306,001;$962,729;$1,171,134;
2015;$1,922,749;$1,385,466;$1,694,349;
2016;$2,068,818;$1,506,948;$2,308,265;
2017;$2,300,000;$1,519,646;$2,287,302;
2018 (estimated);$2,364,500;$1,486,146;$2,300,000;
2019 (estimated);$2,600,000;;;

,Lower estimate,Upper estimate
High Priority,690000,710000
Moderate Priority,200000,580000
Low Priority,80000,550000

;2016/2017;2017/2018;
Individual Outreach;$1,119,584.90;$1,258,000;
Events;$447,262.43;$595,455;
Online Outreach;$127,501.67;$454,801;

---

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. For more information, see our recent research on the Allocation of Movement Resources.  

3. The Humane League Labs 2014 study on dietary change and demographics reported that the highest percentages of people adopting vegetarian or vegan diets were in their early 20s. A U.K. study reported that close to 50% of all vegans identified in the study were between 15 and 34 years old, while only 14% were over 65 years old. 

4. “Also, because one of Vegan Outreach’s primary goals is to educate this generation of college students about speciesism, we don’t want to abandon leafleting which reaches many more college students than we can through VR.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

5. For one example, see Jamila Alfred’s account of her Vegan Outreach tour of HBCUs. 

6. “We also reach people in remote areas and communities typically not reached by vegan advocacy.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

7. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 blog post titled “How can we integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into the animal advocacy movement?” 

8. In fiscal year 2017–2018, they distributed about 2.7 million leaflets, their virtual reality videos had about 16,000 views, and their humane education presentations reached slightly over 4,000 recipients. This information can be found in Vegan Outreach’s Outcomes (2018). 

9. “Each year we hand out about 2 million booklets to students at about 1,500 schools.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

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

11. “This spring we conducted our first virtual reality (VR) tour where we showed VR to 3,879 students at 45 colleges.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

12. “Vegan Outreach does a significant amount of humane education in Mexico and India.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018) 

13. “Vegan Outreach has been the fiscal sponsor of Factory Farm Awareness Coalition since 2011. They have grown substantially during that time and their fiscal sponsorship ended on June 30, 2018.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

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

15. “Our English vegan mentor program is run by a volunteer. Our Spanish vegan mentor program is run by our Mexico Campaigns and Spanish Media Coordinator.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

16. See, for example: Twine, R. (2014). Vegan Killjoys at the Table—Contesting Happiness and Negotiating Relationships with Food Practices. Societies, 4, 623-639. 

17. “Taking action to sign up for 10 Weeks to Vegan shows a commitment to considering an animal-free diet. We think it makes sense to measure our impact based more—though not solely—on how many commitments we receive rather than how much outreach we do. […] [W]e have a captive audience with the 10 Weeks to Vegan series and we have already started a survey to measure its impact. Funneling people into 10 Weeks to Vegan will give us a level of data about our impact that we haven’t had previously. Of course, it won’t tell the whole story, but it can give us an estimated idea of our impact.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018) 

18. This information can be found in our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

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

20. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

21. One of these campaigns is aimed at getting Morningstar Farms to remove animal products from their veggie burger sold at Burger King. This information can be found in our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

22. See the 80,000 Hour article “Presenting the Long-Term Value Thesis” for a more detailed discussion of why long-term impact is plausibly what matters most. 

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

24. See our report on leafleting for a more detailed consideration of the potential long-term impact of a particular intervention. 

25. “Vegan Outreach has always taken a longer-term vision of what we are trying to accomplish, so we are trying to create constituencies of animal advocates and vegans that public policymakers can use for policy change. To measure long-term change, we will need to see how well veganism is being embraced by society.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

26. “We are always on the lookout for activists of color who we think could be a good fit for Vegan Outreach. We currently have a number of people of color among our U.S. staff and we’re always hoping to hire more.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

27. The data for 2014–2016 is from Vegan Outreach’s IRS Form 990 on ProPublica. Expenses for 2017 were estimated by adding half of Vegan Outreach’s 2016–2017 expenses to half of their 2017–2018 expenses, found in Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2016–2017) and Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018) respectively. Revenue for 2017 was estimated to be similar to expenses since according to our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018), their “fundraising goal is to always match [their] budget.” Their 2017 assets were estimated by adding 2016 assets to the difference between the 2017 estimated revenue and expenses. Revenue for 2018 was estimated based on their current fundraising status expressed in our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) and 2018 expenses were estimated to be similar. Their 2019 expected revenue is based on the current fundraising goal described in our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018). 

28. “This fall we’re doing a tour through Peru and Ecuador, and we’re hoping to find people on the ground there. Those countries aren’t so large, so we may not even need a full-time person year round. […] Vic is looking at Brazil, and possibly China, where he’s in touch with some activists.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

29. “We know about the Faunalytics study that showed that VR had an impact on short-term diet change, so we are moving more of our efforts towards virtual reality outreach—but we can’t do that completely, for logistical reasons.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

30. “There is also a lot of potential in the U.S. to do outreach in cities where there traditionally hasn’t been much veg outreach and roughly every extra $75,000 we raise can be used to hire a community events person and do events and tabling in one of these cities and the surrounding region for a year.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

31. 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. 

32. They plan on following their method for expansion in India and Mexico where they initially did an outreach tour, found one or more local people to hire, and then expanded once they had a foothold. They currently have tours scheduled for Peru and Ecuador for Fall 2018, and they are looking at Brazil and China. They cited a lack of funds as the largest limitation to their expansion and estimate they could confidently use half a million dollars in the next year for international expansion. This seems reasonable given their strong track record for individual outreach and international expansion.  

33. They reported that for approximately each extra $75,000 they raise, they could hire a community events person and do outreach in a city that hasn’t seen much vegan outreach. This information can be found in our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). Community events is currently their second largest program with a budget of around $400,000. This information can be found in Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018). 

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

35. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach. 

36. 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. 

37. This information can be found in Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2016–2017) and Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018). 

38. This information can be found in Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018). 

39. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach.  

40. This information can be found in Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2016–2017) and Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018). 

41. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach.  

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

43. “I think we could easily make use of half a million dollars over the next year to expand into different countries. […] Our budget was $2.4 million and our fundraising goal is to always match our budget.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

44. “There is also a lot of potential in the U.S. to do outreach in cities where there traditionally hasn’t been much veg outreach and roughly every extra $75,000 we raise can be used to hire a community events person and do events and tabling in one of these cities and the surrounding region for a year.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

45. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach.  

46. This estimate is an SCI based on ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach.  

47. 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. 

48. 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. 

49. 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. 

50. 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. 

51. Further information about our use of cost-effectiveness estimates is available here. 

52. Vegan Outreach provided budget information for July 2017 to June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we used this budget as an estimate for 2018. For more information, see Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018), and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

53. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

54. Vegan Outreach provided budget information for July 2017 to June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we used this budget as an estimate for 2018. For more information, see Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018), and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

55. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

56. Vegan Outreach provided budget information for July 2017 to June 2018. After redistributing non-program related costs proportionately across their programs, we used this budget as an estimate for 2018. For more information, see Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018), and ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

57. Vegan Outreach considers their corporate commitments as online outreach spending, since they are mostly secured through petitions. 

58. For more information, see ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. 

59. In fact, there are already sources of error and imprecision in our estimates at this point, most notably in uncertainties about how much time Vegan Outreach 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. 

60. 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. 

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

62. 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.  

63. 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. 

64. 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. 

65. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -2.9 to 1.4, -3.0 to 1.6, -3.0 to 1.4, -2.9 to 1.4, and -2.9 to 1.8 farmed animals spared per dollar Vegan Outreach spent. 

66. 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. 

67. 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.  

68. The ranges from five computations from the Guesstimate model were: -0.9 to 1, -0.8 to 1.1, -1 to 1.1, -0.8 to 1, and -1 to 1.2 farmed animals spared per dollar Vegan Outreach spent. 

69. See ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach. Our estimates in this model were calculated using preliminary budget numbers provided by Vegan Outreach and our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

70. “Vegan Outreach got rid of their Facebook ads program. It took a lot of tech-savviness, and Vegan Outreach feels that other groups are better equipped to do those ads.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2016) 

71. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2016). 

72. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

73. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

74. “This fall we’re doing a tour through Peru and Ecuador, and we’re hoping to find people on the ground there. Those countries aren’t so large, so we may not even need a full-time person year round. […] Vic is looking at Brazil, and possibly China, where he’s in touch with some activists.“ —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018)  

75. “The comparative advantages that leafleting has over a number of other farmed animal advocacy interventions mainly seem to be its (i) ease of scaling, (ii) lower bar for involvement of newer advocates who lack experience and/or training, and (iii) the large number of leaflet recipients exposed to animal advocacy.” —ACE’s Leafleting Intervention Report 

76. “We revamped our 10 Weeks to Vegan series quite substantially because we thought it could be more effective. We previously called it “Vegan Serial” and after a few months we thought the name wasn’t working well so we needed to change it.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

77. “We’ve recently launched our 10 Weeks to Vegan for Australia and India, and plan to soon release a Mexico version, followed by other countries” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

78. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

79. “In the past we’ve measured our success by how much activism we’ve done, but now we have switched to focusing on how many sign-ups we get for our 10 Weeks to Vegan series.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

80. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

81. “In the spring of 2016, we were having a lot of success receiving mentees for our vegan mentor program through Facebook posts and ads. We were able to obtain a new mentee for about $0.30 per piece. We were having a hard time keeping up with the demand and so I decided to pay a Web Developer to automate the program with the intention of putting more substantial funding into obtaining mentees via social media ads. Over the course of the next year, the costs of receiving a new mentee went up to as much as $5.00 per new mentee. Due to this increase, we greatly slowed the progress of the automation and still haven’t finished the application, though we’re fairly close. Our intention is to finish the application which will make it much easier to assess the program to determine how much of a difference it’s making for people and if we should spend further funds on promoting the program.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

82. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

83. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

84. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

85. “We have a spreadsheet of all the different goals we have for different departments and for the organization as a whole.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

86. “We have two documents that when combined, can be thought of as our strategic plan. The first is the “about page” of our website, which we update on a regular basis to make sure it reflects our current goals and strategies. We also have a spreadsheet of more specific goals for our executive committee’s internal use, but that’s personal to our staff. It focuses on the large goals listed on the “about page” of our website with a few dozen more specific goals (currently 38) for the organization and individual staff to move us toward achieving those greater goals. We review and update this sheet of goals every quarter.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

87. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

88. “In the past we have measured our success by how much activism we have done, but now we have switched to focusing on how many sign-ups we get for our 10 Weeks to Vegan series.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

89. “For fiscal year 2018–2019, we’re shifting our focus from how many people we reach through our outreach to how many people we sign up for 10 Weeks to Vegan through our outreach activities.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

90. “Funneling people into 10 Weeks to Vegan will give us a level of data about our impact that we haven’t had previously. […] By tracking this program closely, we’ll be attempting to assess what types of events and audiences lead to more 10 Weeks to Vegan sign-ups, which could impact our outreach in the future.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018) 

91. “[…] [C]urrent vegans are not the targets of our 10 Weeks to Vegan sign-ups, and our research so far indicates that only a very small percentage of our audience is already vegan upon signing up for the email series (13% based on food frequency and 15% based on stated identity, of the 124 participants surveyed to date).” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018) 

92. “Our goal is to reach 50,000 sign-ups this fiscal year. We’ll be supplementing sign-ups by pushing 10 Weeks to Vegan on our social media and anywhere else we find effective.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

93. 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. 

94. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

95. “In June of 2018, we hired Rania Hannan, MSW, to oversee research and assessment for Vegan Outreach. (…) Her next project will be to assess our 10 Weeks to Vegan email series to see if it’s having a measurable impact on subscribers.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

96. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

97. “The ways to measure this progress are crudes—such as mentions in the media or Google analytics—but they’re the best measures we have given that we don’t have surveys of how people’s opinions have changed over time.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018) 

98. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

99. For example, Vegan Outreach recently published an article on their website about leafleting effectiveness. 

100. For a discussion of this study’s quality, see our blog post titled “Some Thoughts About Vegan Outreach’s Leaflet Study.” 

101. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

102. “We’ve completed three pilot studies of leafleting, and this past spring we launched a much larger version. We found that there is either a very strong survey bias (as in giving the survey to people causes them to reduce their animal product intake over the next month) or people are just answering randomly to get the gift certificates we offer for taking the surveys. There was a trend for leafleting to reduce animal product consumption, but the control group also showed enough change that we couldn’t measure a statistically significant difference.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018)  

103. “These studies seem to have too much noise and we’ll probably disband this specific effort because of its relatively high cost and failure to produce quality evidence.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018)  

104. “This time we wanted to test […] using more people in an effort to achieve more statistical certainty.” —Vegan Outreach’s “Booklet Comparison Study Pay Per Read #2” 

105. “In August of 2016, Vegan Outreach hired a campaigns manager, Taylor Radig, and started our first attempt at campaigns to persuade companies to add vegan options or veganize products. To this day, Taylor is still our only campaigns staff and she now runs our U.S. social media, too.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

106. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

107. New sign-up numbers are 7,710 for fiscal year 2016–2017 and 8,811 for fiscal year 2017–2018. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

108. “We’ve recently launched our 10 Weeks to Vegan for Australia and India, and plan to soon release a Mexico version, followed by other countries.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

109. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

110. “In June of 2018, we hired Rania Hannan, MSW, to oversee research and assessment for Vegan Outreach. (…) Her next project will be to assess our 10 Weeks to Vegan email series to see if it’s having a measurable impact on subscribers.” —Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018) 

111. For more information, see our Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018). 

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

113. 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.  

114. 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.  

115. “We have an executive committee of seven or eight people who meet every two weeks. At least once a quarter, we go over and reassess our goals.” —Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018)  

116. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

117. For more information, see Vegan Outreach’s About page.  

118. 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.  

119. Twenty members of Vegan Outreach’s staff participated in our survey. 

120. We recognize some limitations of our culture survey. First, because participation was not mandatory, the results could be skewed by selection bias. Second, because respondents knew that their answers could influence ACE’s evaluation of their employer, they may have felt an incentive to emphasize their employers’ strengths and minimize their weaknesses. 

121. 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.  

122. “We are looking into more official training packages for professional development. They will go hand in hand with our harassment and discrimination trainings.” —Private communication with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach, 2018 

123. For more information, see our Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018). 

Research Documents

• Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2016–2017)
• Vegan Outreach’s Expenses (2017–2018)
• Vegan Outreach’s Outcomes (2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part One (2018)
• Follow-Up Questions for Vegan Outreach, Part Two (2018)

• Conversation with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach (2018)
• ACE’s 2018 CEE Model for Vegan Outreach
• ACE’s 2018 RFMF Model for Vegan Outreach