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Allocation of Movement Resources – 2018

How many resources does the animal advocacy movement as a whole put towards influencing public opinion, influencing industry, influencing policy and law, building alliances, and capacity building? Here we look at two overlapping segments of the animal advocacy movement: charities comprehensively reviewed by ACE, and the U.S. farmed animal advocacy movement.

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Allocation of Resources in Animal Advocacy

ACE believes that in order to be successful, the animal advocacy movement must employ multiple strategies at once. This will allow us to innovate, will increase our probability of finding at least one successful strategy, will help our programs grow, and will help us build upon each others’ success. Our theories of change identify five main outcomes that animal advocacy tends to produce. In our reviews, we discuss which of these outcomes each charity produces, and the extent to which their work produces each outcome.1 Here, however, we attempt to understand the bigger picture: How many resources does the animal advocacy movement as a whole put towards each of these outcomes?2 By acquiring a more informed perspective on the prevalence of various strategies and interventions within animal advocacy, we hope to better evaluate which organizations and interventions could have the greatest possible impact given increased funding at this particular time. We look at two overlapping segments of the animal advocacy movement: charities comprehensively reviewed by ACE, and the U.S. farmed animal advocacy movement.

Allocation of Resources by Charities Comprehensively Reviewed by ACE

To get a relatively detailed sense of the allocation of resources in a reasonably large segment of the animal advocacy movement (at least in terms of budget), we chose to analyze the allocation of resources by the 20 charities that ACE comprehensively reviewed between 2015 and 2017.3 This is not a natural grouping of charities—there are likely charities very similar to some of those we reviewed during that time that we haven’t reviewed, including some that we wished to review but that declined to participate in the review process or declined to have their review published.4 However, using the information we solicited from charities as part of the review process allows us to form a more detailed understanding of how they use funding to pursue specific interventions and outcomes than we have for other charities. It also allows us to draw some comparisons between the group of charities that we have evaluated comprehensively and the wider movement.

We discuss the results of the analysis first, followed by our methodology.

Results

Our main analysis focused on the five outcomes we identify in our theories of change for charities and interventions:

  • Influencing Public Opinion
  • Capacity Building
  • Influencing Industry
  • Building Alliances
  • Influencing Policy and the Law

Charities we had reviewed spent most of their budget on the outcomes that create change for animals relatively directly: Influencing Public Opinion (41.0%), Influencing Industry (33.0%), and Influencing Policy and the Law (19.4%). Fewer resources were devoted to Building Alliances (4.4%), and still fewer were devoted to Capacity Building (2.2%).5

Figure 1: Allocation of resources for comprehensively reviewed charities, by primary outcome

Individual charities did not generally allocate resources in ways that mirrored the overall allocation of resources by the whole group. Most focused on between one and three specific outcomes, which varied by charity.6 The budgets of the charities we reviewed also varied significantly, from a lower bound of approximately $28,000 (spent by the Modern Agriculture Foundation in 2016) to an upper bound of approximately $10,000,000 (spent by Compassion in World Farming in their 2015–2016 fiscal year).7 To some extent, this discrepancy in funding may reflect funder preferences regarding the outcomes that charities work towards, though there are many other factors—such as the age of the organization and its geographic location—that may also affect their current size and success in fundraising.

Figure 2: Allocation of resources by each comprehensively reviewed charity

We also analyzed the allocation of resources for these charities by the cause areas in which they worked.8 While a large proportion of the charities we reviewed focus on addressing industrial agriculture, several other areas also received a small share of resources.

Industrial Agriculture $40,100,190 84.1%
Food Technology $3,967,354 8.3%
Legal and Legislative $2,324,119 4.9%
Capacity Building $1,058,559 2.2%
Entertainment $133,546 0.3%
Fur Industry $68,422 0.1%
Animal Testing $26,700 0.06%
Wild Animal Suffering $19,971 0.04%

Table 1: Allocation of resources for comprehensively reviewed charities, by cause area

Methodology

In the course of conducting our comprehensive charity reviews, we solicited budgets from all charities listed above.9 We specifically asked the charities to break down their budget by the program or activity each item supported, in order to inform our understanding of how they allocate time and resources among their programs and to provide a basis for our cost-effectiveness estimates. For this project we drew upon that information and upon the work we had previously done in compiling cost-effectiveness estimates.

For each charity, we have used the budget submitted at the time of their most recently published review. If we included a cost-effectiveness estimate in that review, we used its division of budget by program area, selecting a primary outcome for each program based on our understanding of its goals, and, for 2017 reviews, informed by our previous work on the organization’s theory of change. If we did not include a cost-effectiveness estimate in our most recent review of the organization, we used the same process that we use when we make our cost-effectiveness estimates: we first adjusted their provided budget to focus on program areas (if necessary) and then completed the above steps. This sometimes involved changes such as grouping together related items and distributing administrative costs across programs areas.

This methodology provides only an approximate sense of how resources are directed towards specific outcomes. We encountered several limitations, including the following:

  • Sometimes a program line in a budget could be interpreted as addressing multiple outcomes. Often it was clear which was the primary outcome, but sometimes it was not. In all cases, we chose only one outcome per program line rather than try to further refine our estimate of how much work in a program area focused on one outcome versus another.
  • As in our charity reviews, when charities reported spending money on administrative and fundraising expenses we absorbed those costs into program area budgets proportionally to the initial division of the program budget. This might mean we overstate the amount of resources directed specifically towards a particular outcome. This is particularly of concern for purposes for which administrative or fundraising activities should not be counted as work towards a charity’s program goals. It is of less concern for us, because we consider administrative and funding work as leading towards the goals accomplished by charities, which we actively measure where possible.
  • We drew from our 2015, 2016, and 2017 charity evaluation processes, meaning charity budgets provided could have covered any year from 2015–2017 (and in fact we did use budgets from each year from 2015–2017). Since charity budgets are generally not stable year-to-year, and many of the charities we evaluated grew throughout this period, our resulting model is a composite (rather than an accurate model of any particular point in time).
  • We initially coded budget items in several additional ways that we have not reported here. These were not included primarily because they either overlapped the information provided by our analyses above or because they were not very useful.

Overall, we believe that the largest source of uncertainty in our process comes from qualitative rather than quantitative sources. That is, while there may be error in the budgets reported to us or in our interpretation of them, we would expect that the largest difference between our analysis and another similar analysis would be in the choice of categories to analyze and in the assignment of specific programs to those categories. For example, some of the specific programs we have identified as “Influencing Industry” could instead be seen as “Building Alliances” with companies and influencers in industry. Alternatively, a different analysis might conceive of the categories of outcomes that advocates work toward in a completely different way.

Allocation of Resources Influenced by ACE

We used the information gathered during the creation of the above model—together with our records of the donations that ACE influenced in 2017—to understand how funding influenced by ACE is being used towards various outcomes.10

We discuss the results of the analysis first, followed by our methodology.

Results

Our analysis focused on the same five outcomes we looked at for considered charities. While the pattern we found was similar to what we saw in the previous analysis, it wasn’t quite the same. Most resources influenced by ACE still went to Influencing Public Opinion (30.1%) and Influencing Industry (46.7%), but while comprehensively reviewed charities overall directed more funding to Influencing Public Opinion, ACE influenced more to Influencing Industry.11 ACE also influenced a larger share of resources to Capacity Building (3.7%) and Building Alliances (10.2%), and a smaller share to Influencing Policy and the Law (9.3%), when compared with our comprehensively reviewed charities.12

Figure 3: Allocation of resources influenced by ACE, by primary outcome

Some reasons for this variance become clearer when we consider the funding influenced by ACE in 2017 on a per-charity basis. For example, one donor gave a particularly generous gift to The Humane Society of the United States’ Farm Animal Protection Campaign (HSUS FAPC), which was significantly more than any of our other Standout Charities received from donors who were influenced by ACE.13 HSUS FAPC devotes a larger share of resources to Building Alliances than any of the other charities we reviewed.14 The Humane League (THL) and The Good Food Institute (GFI) were the only two charities to be ACE Top Charities in both our December 2016 and December 2017 recommendations, and both devote the largest share of their resources to Influencing Industry, which is a large factor in increasing the amount of resources that ACE has influenced towards that outcome.15

Figure 4: Allocation of resources influenced by ACE, by charity and outcome

Methodology

For the amount of resources that ACE influenced to each charity in 2017, we used our own statistics that document how much money ACE collects in donations for each Top and Standout Charity, including through our Recommended Charity Fund. We also included donations that charities received directly but reported were influenced by ACE (typically because the donor indicates that ACE’s recommendation was a factor either when making the donation or in other communication with the charity or with ACE). The statistics we used in this analysis cover the entirety of 2017 for each charity. In some cases this includes time when a charity was not recommended by ACE, but when we were still accepting donations on their behalf or charities were receiving donations that they reported as being influenced by ACE. For more information about donations influenced by ACE, see our Giving Metrics report.16

We assumed that donations influenced by ACE were used by charities in the same way that they use their resources overall. We therefore used the model of each charity’s spending from the analysis of comprehensively reviewed charities above. It’s possible that this assumption was inaccurate in some cases, particularly for charities that receive many restricted donations. This is especially relevant for HSUS FAPC, because throughout 2017 ACE recommended that donors supporting HSUS FAPC restrict their donations not just to FAPC, but to a specific position or activity.17 Otherwise, ACE has not recommended restricting donations, though organizations sometimes have other restricted funding that supports certain outcomes disproportionately. Because we based this model on the one in the previous section, all of the other limitations of that model also apply here.

Allocation of Resources in the U.S. Farmed Animal Advocacy Movement

Our prior two analyses were highly unrepresentative of the animal advocacy movement as a whole. Because of our choice of samples, they focused more on ACE and the charities that we interact with than on how the movement as a whole allocates resources. We also wanted a more robust understanding of how the movement allocates resources. Of course, there are many possible ways to define the animal advocacy movement: We could have looked at it on a global scale or limited to one country or region; at all animal advocates or only a subset; or even in combination with some other movements or sectors with similar goals. We chose to focus on the farmed animal movement in the U.S. We chose farmed animal advocacy because it is an area within animal advocacy that we see as especially impactful. (This is also the reason why so much of the resources allocated by our reviewed charities go to this area and the overlapping area of food technology; farmed animal advocacy is the area in which we generally find the most organizations that we think are promising enough to comprehensively review.) We chose the U.S. both because there are a large number of charitable organizations focused on animal issues there, and because restricting our search to one country that has public disclosure requirements for nonprofit organizations’ financial information greatly improved our ability to acquire the data needed for our model.

We discuss the results of the analysis first, followed by our methodology.

Results

Within the U.S. farmed animal movement, the outcomes that receive the most resources seem to be Influencing Public Opinion (46.3%), Influencing Industry (23.0%), and Direct Care (18.3%).18 Direct Care is not included in our previous models because ACE does not generally choose to review charities that focus mostly on providing direct care to individual animals. However, when considering how other funders and charities choose to support farmed animals, it seems appropriate to include all known outcomes. Influencing Policy and the Law receives a considerably smaller share of resources (7.0%) than it did in our analysis of charities comprehensively reviewed by ACE. In fact, in that analysis, most of the resources allocated to Influencing Policy and the Law came from organizations outside the scope of this analysis, either because they are based in Europe or because they don’t do work directly related to farmed animals.19

Figure 5: Allocation of resources in the U.S. farmed animal movement, by primary outcome

We also found that the organizations we identified in this search varied widely in terms of their overall size, as well as in terms of what proportion of their resources went to farmed animal programs. Budgets ranged from under $50,000 for several organizations (the revenue threshold set by the Internal Revenue Service for filing and making public a detailed annual tax return)20 to over $200 million for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).21 We estimated that the ASPCA and The Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association each direct under 1% of their resources to farmed animals, while many other organizations focus exclusively on those programs.22 However, some organizations not focused exclusively on farmed animals—such as HSUS and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)—nevertheless put enough resources into the area to be among the largest players in the field.23

Figure 6: Allocation of resources in the U.S. farmed animal movement, by charity

Overall, a very large share of the funding in the field seems to be allocated through a few organizations; we estimated that over half of the funding directed to farmed animal programs from the 60 organizations on our list came from the five organizations with the largest farmed animal programs: HSUS, Farm Sanctuary, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), PCRM, and Mercy For Animals. Out of a total of nearly $89.5 million that we estimated was directed to farmed animal programs by these organizations, an estimated $49.7 million came from the five organizations listed.24 Because of the structure of our search (see below), we were more likely to omit smaller organizations. Even so, this is a fairly high concentration of resources. We think this primarily represents funder choices to donate mainly to a few well-known organizations. While some organizations on our list are larger and direct only a small portion of their resources to farmed animal programs (such as the ASPCA), the majority of organizations listed either primarily or exclusively serve farmed animals and simply don’t have any more resources.

Methodology

We searched Guidestar for “farmed animals” (no quotes in search) and sorted the 889–892 results returned (at different times) by gross receipts.25 We went through the first three pages, or 75 search results. This included all organizations with gross receipts above roughly $3,200,000.

Because there had been many organizations not focused on animal welfare or farming (e.g. educational institutions with a farm component) in this search, we then narrowed the search by restricting it to NTEE category D (animal related) and again sorted the 414 results returned by gross receipts. We reviewed the first five pages, or 125 search results (including around 30 results that overlapped the previous search). This included all organizations with gross receipts above $230,000.26

We included charities in the analysis only if we found mention of farmed animal programs on either the Guidestar summary, the organization’s 2016 (or 2015 if 2016 was not available) Form 990, or, if those included little description, on a brief review of the organization’s website. Even if they did mention working with farmed animals as a minor program, we did not generally include local or regional animal shelters or humane societies, as these organizations typically direct the vast majority of their budgets toward direct care for companion animals, as well as mainly receiving donations made with that expectation. As a result, it is possible that we undercounted the share of resources going to direct care in our analysis above.

Beyond the systematic Guidestar search, we also included charities mentioned in The Open Philanthropy Project’s summary of large organizations working on behalf of farmed animals, if they were based in or had a significant branch in the U.S. We also included organizations from the list of comprehensively reviewed charities used above, if they were based in or had a significant branch in the U.S. and did significant work specifically related to farmed animals. Lastly, we received (in private communication) a list of organizations that Meghan Lowery from the Greenbaum Foundation was aware of, and we included those for which we could find a budget for 2015 or 2016 and that otherwise seemed to fit the criteria used in reviewing the Guidestar list.27 These sources helped to fill gaps in the data found through the systematic search, which was useful because the Guidestar database doesn’t have consistently reliable tags or sorting properties by area of work.

For all charities, we used a 2016 budget if one was available, or a 2015 budget if no 2016 budget was available. We looked at the activities of the charity as divided into the program and administrative areas listed in that budget. As with comprehensively reviewed charities, we then merged administrative expenses with program expenses following the ratios of expenditures on various program areas. Next, for each program area at each charity, we estimated the percentage of work in that area that we believed to be on behalf of farmed animals, or generally directed to improving farmed animal welfare. Finally, for those programs which we judged to be at least partially on behalf of farmed animals, we noted the primary outcome towards which we believed the program was directed.

The process of determining how much funding each charity allocated to farmed animal programs—and what the primary outcome for each of these programs was—was highly imprecise due to the nature of the data to which we had access. Here are some examples of the types of estimates we made:

  • Some charities (most of those with receipts under $50,000, eligible to file Form 990-N) didn’t have full-year budgets that we could find. In these cases, we looked for what budgetary information we could find, sometimes encountering mentions of specific grants or expenses. However, we generally had to estimate the organization’s yearly budget and then select a single primary outcome for the charity (which may have itself involved compromise or estimation). Because these charities controlled only a small fraction of the resources in our model (estimated at under 0.2% of resources directed to farmed animals), it’s unlikely that this affected the final model appreciably.28
  • Some charities file Form 990 citing a single program area. In this case we did not have to estimate the organization’s budget, but we generally chose a single primary outcome for the charity even if we felt the organization operated multiple programs with different primary outcomes. For example, if a farmed animal sanctuary only listed one program area, we list its primary outcome as Direct Care, even if we believe that the sanctuary also conducts some programming aimed at Influencing Public Opinion. We based such decisions on an estimation of which programs or outcomes seem to receive the majority of the charity’s resources.29
  • Similarly, some charities not focused solely on farmed animal work listed a program such as “Farmed Animals” in their budget. In this case, we generally assumed that most or all of their work related to farmed animals was a part of this program area. If this included multiple types of work, we estimated which outcome the plurality of that work was primarily focused on.30
  • On the other hand, some charities not focused solely on farmed animals listed programs in their budget by type, such as “Communications” or “Lobbying.” In this case we had to estimate, often very imprecisely, how much of the work in each program area related directly to farmed animals. However, it was often relatively easy to select the primary outcome for each program. This issue arose with three of the five organizations we listed above as directing especially large shares of the funding in our model—namely HSUS, PETA, and PCRM.31
  • Some charities worked exclusively on the food system, but not exclusively from the perspective of aiding farmed animals. In this case, we estimated how much funding was “directed towards farmed animals” by considering how similar the organization’s programs were to what we would expect from an organization working on behalf of farmed animals. For example, a program focusing on encouraging people not to eat animal products might be equally as good for animals regardless of the intentions behind the program, but a program focusing on preserving heritage animal breeds might have mixed effects for animals, with some specific campaigns encouraging farmers to use breeds that have higher welfare, while other campaigns are neutral or negative from a farmed-animal welfare perspective.32

Conclusions

Overall, at each level we considered, we found similar patterns in the allocation of resources. Organization sizes vary from very small to very large, with the programming decisions of a few larger organizations having a significant impact on the overall use of funds. In addition, at each level outcomes that relatively directly affect animals received far more resources than Capacity Building or Building Alliances, which are usually seen as more indirect paths to impact.

Figure 7: Allocation of resources by primary outcome for comprehensively reviewed charities, resources influenced by ACE, and the U.S. farmed animal movement

We don’t know exactly how resources would be allocated among these outcomes if they were distributed ideally. However, we do think it is useful to be able to reflect on how they are distributed now, so that we can react to aspects of that allocation that seem concerning. For example, we were surprised by how few resources seemed to be devoted to Capacity Building in each of our models, and we think it’s likely that a movement in which resources are distributed in an ideal manner would devote more resources to that outcome. We may use that information to guide our decisions in the future, either in the charity evaluation process itself or in determining how to allocate grants from the Recommended Charity Fund and Effective Animal Advocacy Fund. We think this is also useful for individual donors, large funders, and advocates to consider.

While these analyses have provided us a starting point for thinking about how resources are used in animal advocacy, there are still many questions unanswered. Some areas for further research include:

  • How is funding allocated within each outcome area? For example, how much work on Influencing Public Opinion is done through grassroots outreach techniques versus through online or mass advertising?
  • How would results differ if we analyzed volunteer work done by individuals or through organizations instead of money spent?
  • Does resource allocation vary significantly by country?
  • What is the ideal way to distribute resources among different types of outcomes, and how will the ideal distribution change over time? For instance, is it best to influence public opinion first and legal change later? Is the reverse the case?

Thanks to Lewis Bollard, Jessica Bridgers, Amanda Hungerford, and Meghan Lowery for their assistance with this project.

Check the resources

  1. The five main outcomes we consider in this piece are: Influencing Public Opinion, Influencing Industry, Influencing Policy and the Law, Building Alliances, and Capacity Building. Some examples of interventions leading to each outcome are provided below; for more, see our Menu of Outcomes.
    – Influencing Public Opinion: leafleting, online outreach including social media, documentaries
    – Influencing Industry: convincing corporations to implement humane reforms, supporting innovation in plant-based meat production
    – Influencing Policy and the Law: Educational briefings of legislators, fighting “ag-gag” legislation, prosecuting animal cruelty
    – Building Alliances: cross-sector or multi-issue campaigns, lobbying chefs and other key influencers
    – Capacity Building: activist trainings, effective animal advocacy research, hosting conferences 

  2. In this piece, we consider financial resources only. Animal advocates also use considerable volunteer resources, and the ratio of volunteer time to financial expenses varies considerably between organizations and activities. As a result, an analysis that included volunteer time might have different results. While we would have liked to consider non-financial resources such as volunteer time, we chose to use a more simplified financial analysis due to time constraints and the difficulty of obtaining information about charities’ use of non-financial resources. 

  3. We omitted Compassion in World Farming USA, because we believe that due to their relationship with Compassion in World Farming, including both charities would likely double-count Compassion in World Farming USA’s activities. In 2017, the most recent year in which we reviewed Compassion in World Farming USA, they reported to us a budget of $680,000. Categorized by primary outcome, all of their activities would be reported as Influencing Industry. For more detail about Compassion in World Farming USA, see our review. 

  4. In order to to preserve their privacy, we omitted charities for which we went through the comprehensive review process in that time period but did not publish a comprehensive review.  

  5. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  6. The number of primary outcomes per charity ranged from one to five, with three being both the median and the mode. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  7. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  8. The cause areas assigned to each charity are shown on the charity reviews page. We omitted “General Animal Advocacy” as it is our catch-all term for work in many different areas.
    Some charities work in multiple cause areas, and in these cases specific budget items were often assigned to multiple cause areas as well. For more detail on coding and calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  9. We also solicited such budgets from a few other charities that declined to allow us to publish the resulting reviews. These charities’ data has been removed here for their privacy. Including it does not greatly alter the overall pattern of results that we found. 

  10. While above we used data from the entire period 2015–2017, here we focus on funding influenced by ACE in 2017 to ensure that our results are as current as possible. Additionally, our donation tracking methods have changed significantly over the past few years, and this would make results from 2015 and 2016 difficult to compare to those from 2017, especially for Standout Charities.  

  11. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  12. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  13. We rescinded our Standout recommendation of HSUS FAPC in early 2018, but fundraised for them throughout 2017, the period covered by this analysis. 

  14. HSUS FAPC directed 53.5% of their resources to Building Alliances in the year we analyzed. ProVeg International devoted the next-largest share of resources to Building Alliances, at 17.2%. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  15. THL directed 50.4% of their resources to Influencing Industry and GFI directed 84.3% of their resources to Influencing Industry in the year that we analyzed. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  16. In this report, we discuss all donations influenced by ACE during 2017. The Giving Metrics report discusses only donations made during the part of 2017 in which each charity was recommended by ACE. In some cases, this leads to a difference in donations reported here and in that report. 

  17. For example, following our recommendation to restrict funding, one donor reported restricting 65% of their donation towards HSUS FAPC’s California ballot initiative campaign. 

  18. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  19. The five comprehensively reviewed organizations with the largest expenses in this area were Compassion in World Farming ($4,124,214), L214 ($1,662,954), Mercy For Animals ($975,375), The Nonhuman Rights Project ($890,000), and The Good Food Institute ($730,379). Of these, only Mercy For Animals and The Good Food Institute work primarily on farmed animal issues in the U.S.; in addition, Compassion in World Farming has a U.S. branch, but that branch focuses almost exclusively on influencing industry. For more detail on calculations, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  20. For example, we couldn’t find any published financials for Black Vegans Rock, which we believe to be because their budget is low enough that published financials would not be required; the Afro Vegan Society filed a 990-N tax report, which is only available to organizations with under $50,000 in revenue, and the Reducetarian Foundation reported expenses of $15,761 in the most recent year we had available. For more detail on calculations, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  21. For more detail on calculations, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  22. For organizations such as the ASPCA and The Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, we estimated the proportion of their resources being directed towards farmed animal programs primarily by reading the descriptions of their program areas on their tax returns. It’s possible that our estimates could differ from reality significantly due to the incompleteness of that information, particularly for organizations that have many programs and for organizations that provide little detail on those forms. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  23. For organizations such as HSUS and PCRM, we estimated the proportion of their resources being directed towards farmed animal programs primarily by reading the descriptions of their program areas on their tax returns. It’s possible that our estimates could differ from reality significantly due to the incompleteness of that information, particularly for organizations that have many programs and for organizations that provide little detail on those forms. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  24. We estimated that HSUS spent $11,416,658 on farmed animal programs, Farm Sanctuary spent $10,845,853, PETA spent $10,595,657, PCRM spent $9,593,365.67, and Mercy For Animals spent $7,267,862. For more detail on calculations, see the Methodology section that follows and the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  25. Guidestar’s search function returns the same results for “farm animals” as for “farmed animals.” 

  26. We chose to stop at this point for two reasons: the above-noted concentration of resources, and the fact that we didn’t expect to find many organizations below this size emphasizing areas other than Influencing Public Opinion and Direct Care, which are already well-represented in our sample.
    Of the 125 records we reviewed in the narrower Guidestar search, 43 of them (or approximately one third) fit the conditions for further analysis. The last seven pages of records for this search—over 150 of the remaining records—consisted exclusively of charities reporting no revenue or assets in the IRS Business Master FIle; we will assume these same charities also had no (or minimal) expenditures. Regarding the 139 remaining records we did not review, if we conservatively estimate that one third would have fit the conditions for inclusion in our analysis and their average expenditure on farmed animal programs would have been $100,000, their total expenditures on farmed animal programs would be around $4.7 million. The charities missing from our model would then, had we included them, be responsible for about 5% of the total model resulting from those calculations.
    Including these organizations could make a significant difference to our analysis if the funds we haven’t accounted for were primarily directed to an outcome that receives few funds in our current model, such as Capacity Building, Building Alliances, or even Influencing Policy and the Law. However, from both our experience with the animal advocacy movement and a brief perusal of the search results we did not analyze in full, we do not believe this to be the case. We think that most programs of smaller organizations would fall into Influencing Public Opinion and Direct Care, and an additional 5% to either of these categories—or split between them—would not affect our overall conclusions. 

  27. We considered using the results in the “Farm Animal Welfare” focus area of the Open Philanthropy Project’s grants database as well. However, because of the international focus of many of their granting priorities and the overlap of that list with the list of charities we had already developed, we found that there were very few new charities meeting our criteria for inclusion and we therefore chose not to fully investigate this list. 

  28. For more detail on calculations and budgets of individual charities, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  29. For more detail on budgets of individual charities, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  30. For more detail on budgets of individual charities, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  31. For more detail on budgets of individual charities, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

  32. For more detail on budgets of individual charities, see the Allocation of Resources Spreadsheet. 

Allocation of Movement Resources – 2018