Animal Welfare Fund

A 12 month stipend and expenses for a staff member to continue government advocacy on cage-free / farm animal welfare legislative change

Purchase 2 stunners for producers committing to stun a minimum. of 1.4k MT (~100 million) of shrimps/annum per stunner

12-month salary for the staff and communications/ads costs to sustain capacity for cage-free campaigns and fish welfare

1-year funding to set up a new fellowship programme for building a talent pipeline for FAW work in Southeast Asia

The Fund focuses on projects that primarily address farmed animals, as well as projects that could affect other large populations of nonhuman animals.

Some examples of projects that the Fund could support:

• Supporting farmed animal advocacy in Asia
• Advocating against the use of cruel practices within the industrial agriculture system, such as battery cages for egg-laying hens
• Policy advocacy to increase government research and development (R&D) budget that goes to alternative protein
• Researching ways to improve the welfare of invertebrates
• Policy advocacy to increase government R&D budget that goes to alternative protein
• Movement building in neglected countries and regions with large-scale animal farming
• Growing the field of welfare biology in order to improve our understanding of different ways to address wild animal suffering

The AWF is dedicated to helping impact-focused donors by identifying and supporting the most effective opportunities to improve animal welfare globally.

We achieve our mission through a comprehensive strategy that includes:

1. Pooled Resources: We aggregate donations to create a shared fund that significantly exceeds individual donor capacity, enabling support for both smaller- and larger-scale initiatives.
2. Global Outreach: We actively solicit applications from organizations and individuals worldwide, ensuring a diverse range of high-impact projects for consideration.
3. Rigorous Evaluation: Our team conducts thorough assessments of project proposals to identify and select the most effective interventions.
4. Continuous Improvement: We aim to systematically evaluate the impact of our grants and adapt our grantmaking strategies to maximize our positive influence.
5. Strategic Collaboration: We partner with leading animal welfare organizations, researchers, and advocates to leverage collective expertise.
6. Transparency and Accountability: We are committed to openness in our resource allocation processes, ensuring responsible stewardship of donor funds in advancing animal welfare.

By combining these elements, the AWF strives to support transformative change in the lives of animals globally.

The AWF has recommended over 20 million dollars' worth of grants to a range of high-impact initiatives, including:

Supporting emerging animal welfare groups that grew to become standout charities across a range of countries

The AWF has often identified promising organizations in their early stages in a range of countries and supported them with seed and early-stage funding. Some of them grew into very impactful and recommended organizations. For example, AWF was an early supporter of Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği / Kafessiz Türkiye, which works on cage-free and fish welfare campaigns in Turkey and has become an Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity. We have supported similarly impactful groups in dozens of countries including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, United Kingdom, China, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, and Nigeria.

Supporting campaigns to improve animal welfare through reforming corporate policies and producer practices

Tens of billions of animals suffer as a result of their use in food production. By tackling this issue at the level of commercial supply chains, corporate campaigns can be high-leverage opportunities and were found to be cost-effective ways to improve the lives of tens of billions of animals. The Fund has granted to a range of organizations with relatively strong track records of securing commitments from large food companies; these organizations include Compassion in World Farming USA and Sinergia Animal.

Supporting research that uncovers new priority areas for animal advocacy

In addition to funding direct work on animal welfare, the Fund also supports research that improves our understanding of how to most effectively help animals, whichhas often led to uncovering new promising focus areas and interventions. For example, we funded Rethink Priorities for research into invertebrate welfare that not only uncovered this high-scale problem, but also led to increased awareness about the issues, providing support for organisations working to alleviate suffering of those animals.

Supporting the most numerous and neglected species

AWF aims to maximize impact for animals. This often leads us to provide funding for projects that could cost-effectively address the plight of the most numerous, yet most neglected, species, such as fish, insects, shrimps, and wild animals. For example, we were an early funder of Shrimp Welfare Project, which has since reduced the suffering of 2.6 billion animals and proven tractability of work addressing neglected species.

Supporting organizations aimed at driving policy change

Policy change can create lasting improvements for billions of animals by setting legally-binding welfare standards and potentially expanding the moral circle of compassion for animals. AWF has supported a range of policy initiatives, such as Crustacean Compassion, which has successfully advocated for legal recognition of decapod crustaceans as sentient, or Animal Policy International, which promotes efforts to ban low-welfare imports.

1. The Scale of Animal Suffering is Immense. Annually, hundreds of billions of vertebrate animals are subject to factory farming. Roughly 83 billion terrestrial farmed animals are raised and slaughtered each year, as well as ~124 billion farmed fish. Farmed invertebrate animals (for example, shrimp and insects) number in the trillions.

Experts now agree that numerous species of animals are conscious and capable of feeling pain. Current practices within animal agriculture are likely to cause extreme suffering over the course of animals’ lives. Furthermore, hundreds of trillions of wild animals exist, many of which likely experience significant suffering that could be reduced through human intervention.

2. Funding to Address This Issue Remains Critically Limited. Despite the magnitude of this problem, the field of animal advocacy receives only a small percent of total charitable donations, with most of that money going to the comparatively few companion animals in shelters. This leads to some groups of animals being highly neglected in relation to their numbers and capacity for suffering.

3. Our Fund Maximizes the Impact of Your Contribution.

The Animal Welfare Fund holds a unique position to identify and support the most effective opportunities to help animals globally. What makes this possible is:

• Finding the Best Opportunities: We actively seek out promising projects across the world, from established organizations to new groups. We are also not restricted to donating only to nonprofits, we can also fund individuals, academic institutions, and other entities. Our strong connections within animal advocacy and effective altruism help us discover high-impact opportunities that others might miss.

• Rigorous Evaluation Process: Every grant application undergoes a systematic review, with the depth of investigation scaling with the grant size and uncertainty. Our evaluation includes assessing Theory of Change, scale of the counterfactual impact, likelihood of success, cost-effectiveness, value of funding, and forecasting. You can read more about our evaluation process in the FAQ section.

• Tracking Impact and Improving Based on Learning from M&E: We systematically track each grant's progress against specific goals, collect progress and learning reports, and compare our predictions against the real outcomes to continuously improve our grantmaking.

• Expert Fund Management: Our fund managers have good judgment and bring diverse expertise in animal advocacy, research, grantmaking, corporate outreach, entrepreneurship, and movement building. This helps us evaluate projects from different angles and guide our grantees effectively.

• Strategic Funding Approach: We build a balanced portfolio of grants that include both proven interventions and those that are more uncertain but have a very high expected value. This means supporting immediate welfare improvements while also investing in projects that could create systemic change.

• Movement Coordination: We work with other funders and organizations to strengthen the whole effective giving ecosystem and help ensure resources are allocated where they can have the highest impact.

By contributing to the Animal Welfare Fund, you can be confident that your donation will always be allocated with impact in mind, aiming to make the greatest possible difference in alleviating animal suffering and promoting their welfare.

1. You don’t support incremental welfare improvements Thus far, much of the Fund’s grant money has gone toward work on reducing farmed animal suffering through positive yet incremental changes. This is not an exclusive focus since we have also supported interventions that aim to be more systemic (like policy advocacy) and that reduce demand for animal products (like advocacy to increase investment in alternative protein). However, if you believe that it is wrong to support incremental welfare improvements, some of the Fund’s grants may not be a good match for your worldview.

2. You have a preference for specific interventions or species The Fund has made a range of grants. If you have a strong preference for supporting a particular intervention type or focusing on a specific animal group (e.g., exclusively supporting corporate outreach for hen welfare or concentrating solely on farmed animals), you may find it more satisfying to donate directly to charities specializing in those areas.