Marginal funding for strategic priority research for Animal Advocacy organisations

As part of Marginal funding week, we are releasing our 2025 Evaluation: A retrospective after 5 years and sharing other ongoing projects and those we are currently scoping for the first half of 2026. There is a great deal of overlap between this post and our review, engagement on our evaluation would be most useful on the other post. 

I. Overview

Animal Ask is a research organisation that offers consultation and dedicated research to stakeholders in the animal advocacy movement to help those organisations make strategic decisions to bring about the highest possible impact for animals. Animal Ask also offers other custom research, such as written documents to help animal advocacy organisations communicate as effectively as possible with policymakers.

Since being launched in 2020, Animal Ask has completed 57 major research projects around the world, covering all major exploited animal groups (insects, shrimp, fish, chickens, pigs, and ruminants). Early stage indicators of the impact of these projects' work has shown promising signs, but the data is currently inconclusive. 

Since its launch in 2020, Animal Ask's team of 3–5 staff members has:

• Completed 57 major research projects, with the majority of this research published on the organization's website and/or in academic journals.
• Expended 820,000 USD, equating to approximately 13,000 USD per major research project (this figure is approximate, as some expenditure was allocated to ongoing projects not included in the 57 projects examined here).
• Conducted research across all major exploited animal groups (insects, shrimp, fish, chickens, pigs, and occasionally ruminants).
• Conducted research in dozens of countries.
• Addressed numerous important questions facing the animal advocacy movement and developed significant knowledge, both internally and as a contribution to the broader knowledge base of the animal advocacy movement.
• Collaborated with numerous stakeholders globally, both within and outside of the animal advocacy movement.
• Typically received positive feedback.

II. Animal Ask's theory of change

Animal Ask attempts to deliver impact by following three theories of change. Our direct contribution is up to stage C of each of these theories of change:

1. Strategic priorities and consultation.
   1. Animal Ask finds animal advocacy organisations at the early, decision-making stage of a campaign ￫
   2. Animal Ask performs research to help advise the organisation's decision-making ￫
   3. the organisation selects more impactful asks for their campaigns and/or develop a more evidence-based and nuanced strategy for achieving those asks, than they otherwise would have done ￫
   4. some of those campaigns eventually succeed ￫
   5. the laws or corporate policies that are achieved have a higher impact than they otherwise would ￫
   6. there is a net, counterfactual reduction in animal suffering or the scale of animal exploitation, compared to if Animal Ask had not acted.
2. Information lobbying.
   1. For an upcoming campaign with a given ask, Animal Ask prepares persuasive written documents supporting the value or the feasibility of that ask (e.g. white papers, economic reports, scientific publications) ￫
   2. the campaign has a higher probability of success ￫
   3. over time, more campaigns succeed than would otherwise be the case ￫
   4. more pro-animal laws or corporate policies are achieved ￫
   5. there is a net, counterfactual reduction in animal suffering or the scale of animal exploitation, compared to if Animal Ask had not acted.
3. Foundational research.
   1. Animal Ask identifies key uncertainties facing the movement ￫
   2. Animal Ask performs dedicated research into those foundational questions and publishes recommendations for the movement as a whole ￫
   3. decision-makers inside the animal advocacy movement read that research and keep it in mind while making decisions that involve those key uncertainties ￫
   4. [the same latter steps as in "Strategic priorities and consultation"]

Over the past five years, our division of research effort has been approximately 50% on strategic priorities and consultation, 15% on information lobbying, and 35% on foundational research. However, foundational research has been less common during 2024 and 2025. The need for foundational research was higher as Animal Ask was in its early years and we rapidly identified many key uncertainties that required foundational research. We also spent most of 2023 on foundational research, as we had a specific grant to do so. Currently, our division of research is probably something like 75% on strategic priorities and consultation, 20% on information lobbying, and 5% on foundational research.

III. Summary of our 5 Year Review 

We have tracked the outcomes of 57 of Animal Ask's research projects over the past five years. The collected evidence offers tentative support for Animal Ask's impact but remains ultimately inconclusive. A definitive conclusion is anticipated within the coming years as more ongoing campaigns resolve positively or negatively

As an end-line metric, Animal Ask's projects can be classified into five categories:

• No discernible impact.
• Positive impact. The research was successfully conducted, and its recommendations were adopted by the partner organization. This resulted in demonstrable, real-world impact for animals.
• Campaign ongoing. The research was successfully conducted, and its recommendations were adopted by the partner organization. However, the success of the resulting campaign in achieving a policy objective remains to be determined.
• Not measured and difficult to determine. This category presents a challenge for impact assessment. This does not signify an absence of impact, but rather the inherent difficulty in quantifying the impact for specific projects. While applicable to some past projects, this category is anticipated to be less relevant for future initiatives. Further discussion on this point is provided below.
• Averted a suboptimal decision. The research was successfully conducted, and its recommendations were adopted by the partner organization. However, the recommendation specifically advised against conducting a particular campaign. This indicates a successful prevention of what is considered an inefficient allocation of organizational and movement resources. The ultimate translation of this outcome into measurable impact is currently unclear.

Between 2021 and 2025, we have completed 57 major projects. The graph below shows the outcome by category.

For some examples of case-studies for projects in each category outside of “positive impact” which is covered more below.

• Campaign ongoing
  • We worked with Sentience (previously Sentience Politics) in 2021 evaluating potential changes to Swiss legislation. We highlighted a few high impact areas including low welfare imports, cruel product bans as potential initiatives and a selection of motions that looked promising. Including expanded protections for fish and decapods in aquaculture and bans on rat poison. These are now part of their Invisible Animals campaign which they launched in 2024. In 2021 they noted we helped “identifying topics and problem areas we hadn't yet considered”.
  • Animal Welfare Competence Center for Africa (AWeCCA) in 2022 for the Uganda priorities  report. They were initially looking at some form of institutional outreach and have subsequently focused on government outreach to prevent industrialised animal farming. They have also received support from Animal Advocacy Africa without which the collaboration might not have happened.
• Averted a suboptimal decision
  • CCTV research for Equalia in 2022 after they had secured local victories and were considering the value of focusing on this across the EU. While the change was likely to have some positive impact the value of the campaign was less valuable than Equalia's other work so they did not continue with it outside of their context.
  • Review of the value of an Independent Office for Animal Protection in Slovenia for Animal Enterprise Transparency Project. Concluded that there was mixed evidence of regulatory capture and given the difficulty of establishing a full independent office a commission would be an appropriate first step or focus on other campaigns.
• Not measured and difficult to determine
  • Foundation piece on Corporate Campaigns: determining the scale of the ask which was focused on developing a better understanding of the scale of demands that can be made through corporate campaigns to inform the development of future asks.
  • Minor party politics research covering the potential of the approach in several countries. We received some initial interest from a few stakeholders including donors but there were other barriers to political donations. We are unsure if this ultimately resulted in any altered decisions in the movement.
• No Impact
  • Bulgaria prioritisation for Invisible Animals Bulgaria in 2022. While the report was well received due the changing political landscape in Bulgaria and the EU and considerations of longer term organisational strategy they pursued other campaign ideas.
  • Anonymous organisation. We provided a review of some campaign options being considered by their campaigns team. It was received well by this team but was ultimately ignored by leadership due to internal momentum towards an idea. This resulted in increased staff turnover within the team.
  • Anonymous Insect organisation. Examined a variety of campaign ideas within the insect industry in a certain context but found we needed a lot of information on current strategy and interaction between groups that the founders of groups were more up to speed on. This made us unable to make any significant contributions to assist their decision making in the time allocated. 

IV. Upcoming projects and Room for more funding

Animal Asks 2026 budget is $240,000. We have a funding gap for 2026 of approximately $185,000, as we will have a runway of around $45,000 at the start of the year. This will cover numerous projects potentially including:

1. Economics and implementation for corporate Fish Welfare ask in Europe and North America. Working alongside many stakeholders in the region.
2. Strategic priorities for Animal Advocacy in India: prioritisation research for approaches to advocacy and the main issues that could be addressed for animals in India. Working alongside many stakeholders in the country.
3. Strategic priorities for Animal Advocacy in Indonesia: prioritisation research for approaches to advocacy and the main issues that could be addressed for animals in Indonesia. Working alongside many stakeholders in the country.
4. Exploration of EU policy asks to explore pragmatic second tier asks that are politically tractable
5. Boiler Welfare asks in Asia: research into the most tractable high impact aks that can be made for broilers across different contexts in Asia. In partnership with several organisations across Asia. 

The exact projects we execute on may change as we gain more clarity on the relative importance, urgency and probability of providing value for research projects. 

Additional funding outside of this budget would allow us to expand our research and engagement capacity to increase the number of projects we take on each year. On average previous projects have been completed for $13,000. Although we expect this figure will be higher for future projects because of investments in improved vetting and the potential to take on broader multi-stakeholder projects.

Donations to Animal Ask are through our fiscal sponsorship with Players Philanthropy Fund, Inc. Thank you for your consideration! 

For additional questions or comments please refer to our broader 2025 Evaluation: A retrospective after 5 years post or email [email protected]. We would love to speak to anyone who has worked to evaluate research in other spaces and could help us improve our work.