Thanks for the great post, Sofia. I would just focus on increasing animal welfare instead of ending factory farming. I think more happiness and less suffering are necessarily good (all else equal), whereas I do not see large scale intensive animal farming as necessarily bad. I estimate slower growth broilers, and hens in cage-free aviaries have negative, but close to neutral lives.
Interesting perspective, although of course there are more reasons to want to end large scale intensive animal farming than just the welfare of animals (I'm thinking of anthropocentric reasons such as improving biosecurity, mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss, improving food security, etc).
Also I guess the main point of the post (you can think of yourself as part of a broad strategic movement as opposed to just a person working in an organisation) can be applied to any movement, e.g. AI safety, biosecurity, existential risk, etc, not just animal welfare / ending factory farming.
Hi Aïda. That makes sense. However, I think the reasons you mentioned sometimes play against increasing animal welfare. Poorer welfare standards tend to have a lower carbon and land footprint.
Yes true. But I guess many people are happy to tolerate that negative externality as a medium-term price to pay for progress towards the longer term goal of no / very little animal consumption which would be better both for animal welfare and anthropocentric reasons such as mitigating climate change/biorisk etc...
Good objection though! 🙂
I am very uncertain about whether decreasing the number of farmed animals increases or decreases animal welfare (in expectation) due to potentially dominant effects on soil invertebrates. In addition, I worry decreasing the number of farmed animals may prevent some from having positive lives.
As someone not in a full-time impact job, I find thinking about Movement Roles is doubly important! By de-coupling from the job market, this is a powerful framing to be more agentic. Strong upvoted this post
Many thanks Lorenzo! Appreciate the read and agreed that it can be useful to separate the movement role from the job market, especially considering how competitive the roles can be!
This is a really inspiring post Sofia, thank you for writing it! I find this concept of a movement role, distinct from one's job role, quite liberating in a way, as it allows us to shape our contribution beyond the constraints of the job market.
Many thanks Dilan! I really appreciate your posts on farmed animal advocacy and I think you are a good example of having a movement role along with your job role!
This is absolutely what we need to hear/read. As a movement, if we stay together, we are stronger than ever to fight for the animals. Always eager to find ways to help others in movement. Thanks for sharing this, Sofia!
TL;DR:
Job titles are temporary. Movements last longer to achieve a common goal. When we anchor our identity in the mission rather than a single organisation, we collaborate more openly, make better decisions, and move faster toward ending factory farming. That’s why I think we should have a movement role in addition to our current organizational role.
Acknowledgements: thanks to Aaron Boddy and Haven King-Nobles for your feedback on this post!
Many people in nonprofits anchor their identity to their job title.
“Comms lead.”
“Policy manager.”
“Executive Director.”
But job titles are temporary.
Movements are not.
A job role is what you are accountable for inside a specific organisation.
A movement role is the kind of value you create for the cause over time, across roles and organisations.
Your movement role should guide your decisions.
Your job role should be one expression of it, for now.
This connects with ideas of ecosystem thinking: the belief that movements strengthen when organisations share insights and support one another.
Thinking in movement terms does not mean doing your job badly, caring less, or being half-committed.
You still owe your organisation competence, follow-through, and integrity. You are accountable to your team, your board, and your funders.
The core point is simpler than that: do not confuse your organisation with the movement itself.
For example, my current job role is Executive Director of Hive. That means my responsibility is clear: help Hive succeed at its mission.
But I have found it useful to regularly zoom out and ask a bigger question: How can I best use my skills to help end factory farming?
That question shifts the centre of gravity. The goal stops being “make my organisation more impactful” and becomes “make the movement stronger so we can end factory farming faster.”
Hive is one approach. It might be a very good one. It might not always be the best one. A movement-first mindset means being able to hold that possibility without panic or defensiveness.[1]
We are lucky that many leaders already think this way.
You can see it in people who quietly steward parts of the movement beyond their own organisation.
For example, Aaron Boddy, co-founder of the Shrimp Welfare Project, has spoken about wanting to steward shrimp welfare as a field, rather than focusing narrowly on a single organisation. The unit of care is the problem area itself. That includes helping other organisations emerge and attract talent, even when the Shrimp Welfare Project does not benefit directly, or when this means encouraging a team member to start their own project.
Haven King-Nobles from the Fish Welfare Initiative has often inspired me by offering his free time to help other organizations, e.g. review hiring rounds and advise on strategy. Together with his co-founder Thomas Billington, they started an informal regular gathering called Revolutionist Night, which allows pro-animal people to discuss strategic topics on animal advocacy. They consider themselves animal activists first, and their current roles is just one way for them to make an impact.
Another example is Monica Chen, Executive Director of the New Roots Institute, who openly shares what works and what does not inside her organisation, and actively advocates for others, including introducing funders to potential grantees. That kind of generosity helps the whole ecosystem learn faster.
I recently saw the same mindset in a different context. When I told my executive coach, Adam Tury, that I might want to try executive coaching myself in the future, he encouraged me to try it soon and even gave feedback on my offering. From a narrow view, you could call that creating a competitor. From a movement view, he was increasing capacity, trusting that there is more need than any one person can serve.[2] I will still refer people to him because I know how brilliant he is.
This mindset is not always easy to hold, especially when funding is scarce. It can feel risky to help other organizations get funding if you feel like you may not get your minimum budget raised. But most funders are more discerning than we sometimes assume. When organisations are honest about their contribution, where others helped, and what did not work, the funders tend to trust that we prioritize movement impact over the success of our organization.
When your identity is tightly fused to an organisation, it is easy to protect territory, downplay others’ successes, or take disagreement personally. Funding can start to feel zero-sum.
When your identity is anchored in the mission instead, those instincts soften. You can notice when something else might work better. You can collaborate without needing your organisation to be the hero. You can credit others without fearing it erases your own contribution.
Paradoxically, this often makes you a better organisational leader. You are making clearer decisions in the service of the mission, not protecting an identity.
In practice, this tends to look like:
That last one can feel uncomfortable. I did not always think this way myself. But if my life goal is to end factory farming, my responsibility is to help grow leaders in the movement, not to keep people in roles out of loyalty alone.
You do not need anyone’s permission to choose a movement role, as long as it genuinely fits how you contribute. Your role also does not need to be unique. Many people can do similar work at the same time, especially if they collaborate and stay updated about each other’s progress.
For example, Haven told me that the movement role he most identifies with is Founder, meaning that he is good at starting new things and helping new projects. I find myself leaning toward Superconnector or Talent Architect. That reflects where my comparative advantage lies today and where I think my future growth is most likely to come from.
Some people act as Strategists. They help shape the movement’s direction by leading organisations, advising others, or writing publicly. Others are Visionaries, helping people imagine a better future for animals and what it might take to get there.
If your work focuses on reaching large audiences, you might think of yourself as a Movement Popularizer. If you focus on building relationships with people in positions of influence, such as at top universities or institutions, you might be an Elite Connector.
Do you need to work in the movement full-time to have a movement role? No. You can be a Financial Supporter through earning to give/by taking a 10% pledge. You can also be a Cheerleader, someone who encourages, supports, and sustains others in the movement, even if you do not have the capacity to do direct work yourself.
At the end of the day, we are on the same team. We may work for different organisations, have different strategies and different theories of change.
But we have the same goal. That’s why I like calling other advocates “my movement colleagues”.
The movement does not need us to defend our corner at all costs. It needs us to stay oriented toward impact, stay open to other possibilities, and remember what we are ultimately here to do.
If you zoom out from your current job title, what kind of contribution do you want to keep making over the next 5-10 years, regardless of where you work?
That answer does not replace your job.
It helps you do it with clearer judgment and fewer blind spots. And it might help you get clearer on your next opportunity to make an impact.
Because the movement does not need you to be a job title.
It needs you to keep pulling, alongside others, in the same direction.
Comment on your current thoughts on your movement role!
Hi, I’m Sofia Balderson. I lead Hive, a global community for people working to end factory farming. This post is from my Substack, Notes from the Margin, which I've started to share the messier, more personal reflections that don’t fit in formal updates. If you care about leading, belonging, or building something that matters (especially from the edges), you might enjoy sticking around. You can subscribe here.
It also requires thinking in counterfactuals and personal fit. Even if another intervention appears more impactful in the abstract, it does not automatically follow that I should switch to it. Someone still needs to do the work I am currently doing, and in many cases I may be unusually well placed to do it because of accumulated context, relationships, and trust. So the question is not only “What would help animals the most in theory?” but also “Given who I am and where I sit, what is the best use of me right now?”
If you are thinking of launching an organization or providing a new service or unsure what the current supply and demand is in the movement, it’s worth doing an appropriate amount of research to make sure that you are applying your time and skills to the most impactful opportunity for you.
Thanks for writing this Sofia!
This reminds me of a similar substack post on "general managers" of problems, although I think your framing allows everyone to participate in the movement / ecosystem rather than just the people "owning" a problem.
Many thanks Alex, appreciate you reading! Thanks for linking to this, I will have a read, looks very interesting!