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This article contains a list of research organizations, newsletters, research libraries, personal blogs, conferences, podcasts, funds, notable written works and other links associated with Effective Animal Advocacy (EAA) movement. The list is biased because I only included resources that I know of. If you think something is missing, please comment.

Introductory materials

Research organizations

Here is a list of organizations and departments that publish animal advocacy strategy research:

  • Animal Advocacy Careers - “researching career trajectories and addressing ​talent constraints in the animal movement”.
  • Animal Ask - founded with the express aim to optimise and prioritise future asks to assist animal advocacy organisations in their efforts to reduce farmed animal suffering. We provide organisations with in-depth research, narrowly targeted at key decisions between different animal asks, supporting organisations, individual activists, policymakers and donors so that they may do more good in the long term.
  • Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) - charity reviews, intervention reviews, general research, advocacy advice, interviews, and more.
  • Animal Ethics - resources on ethics, sentience, animal exploitation and wild animal suffering.
  • Charity Entrepreneurship - a research and training program aimed at creating multiple high-impact charities. A lot of their 2019 research was about what new animal-focused charities would be the most impactful.
  • CIWF research, CIWF USA research
  • Faunalytics - original research focusing on farmed animal and movement-building topics, a library of lay-friendly summaries of academic research, and one-on-one support for advocates who want help finding data or designing or understanding research.
  • fishcount - estimates of wild-caught and farmed fish numbers, discussion of fish welfare issues.
  • Fish Welfare Initiative - will do research about welfare reforms for fish in the next 5 months.
  • MFA research - evaluations to optimize various advocacy strategies.
  • OpenPhil - the largest funder in farm animal advocacy (~$35 million per year), shares some of its internal research.
  • Rethink Priorities - animal-related research so far focused on neglected groups of animals, corporate campaigns, and wild animal welfare.
  • Sentience Institute - meta-level research for the EAA community.
  • THL Labs - “informing advocacy strategies through actionable research on their effectiveness”.
  • Wild Animal Initiative - “working to understand and improve the lives of animals in the wild.” Previously, it was two organizations: Utility Farm and Wild-Animal Suffering Research. Some of the texts are only available on the websites of these defunct organizations. They merged in 2019.

In total, there seem to be about 35 full time researcher equivalents in animal advocacy research space. Note that I excluded organizations like Asia Research and Engagement (ARE), Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR), Centre for Animal Welfare Science Excellence and Animal Welfare Foundation that do or fund animal welfare related research that is not directly about advocacy strategy. I also excluded clean meat research.

For incomplete lists of animal advocacy organizations in general see all ACE’s charity reviews and a list of OWA organizations.

Newsletters

Main newsletters:

Most organizations listed in the section above have newsletters that update about their new research. For example, there is Animal Charity Evaluators newsletter, Animal Advocacy Careers newsletter, Faunalytics newsletter and Rethink Priorities newsletter.

Research repositories/libraries

Websites on law and policy

  • The Coller Animal Law Forum (CALF) " is an interactive database that collates and analyses various laws and policies that impact farmed animals."
  • WAP animal protection index "ranks 50 countries around the world according to their animal welfare policy and legislation."
  • Animal Rights Index "helps identify which countries are the best and worst for animal rights in 2021."
  • Brooks Animal Law digest - weekly updates about animal law
  • Animal Legal and Historical Center: "On this site you will find a comprehensive repository of information about animal law, including: over 1200 full text cases (US, historical, and UK), over 1400 US statutes, over 60 topics and comprehensive explanations, legal articles on a variety of animal topics and an international collection."

Notable personal blogs/websites

  • Counting Animals (Harish Sethu) - quantitative information related to farm animals
  • Essays on Reducing Suffering (Brian Tomasik) - includes writings about suffering of wild animals and invertebrates. Written from a negative utilitarian perspective.
  • The Vegan Strategist (Tobias Leenaert) - “Posts about friendly and pragmatic vegan and animal rights activism.”
  • But Can They Suffer (Jamie Harris) - “Reviews, reflections and recommendations for Effective Animal Advocacy”
  • Jayson Lusk - Food and Agricultural Economist who often writes about issues related to animal advocacy, despite not being an animal advocate himself.
  • Reflective Disequilibrium (Carl Shulman) - the blog covers a variety of topics related to altruism. The link filters for posts that are related to animals.
  • Sentientist.org (Diana Fleischman) - evolution, sentience and human psychology

Conferences

Conferences that are focused on animal advocacy:

The list above excludes:

Podcasts

Funds

  • Funds managed by Animal Charity Evaluators:
    • Animal Advocacy Research Fund - see their completed projects here.
    • EAA Fund - funds non-research organizations, especially newer organizations focused on farmed animals
    • Recommended Charity Fund - simplifies the donation process for people who trust ACE’s charity recommendations. 100% of the Fund supports ACE’s recommended charities, and its disbursement is determined by ACE’s research team
  • Animal Ethics - offers grants for research in the intersection of ecology and wild animal welfare science.
  • Culture & Animals Foundation - funds academic and artistic projects that raise public awareness about concern for animals
  • EA Animal Welfare Fund
  • EAF Funds - animal welfare is not the focus of the grant but they have funded some work in this area
  • OWA Grants - supports institutional cage-free and broiler welfare campaigns
  • The Pollination Project - small grants for activists and advocacy groups “in Brazil, India, Mexico, and possibly Thailand and Vietnam.”
  • Tiny Beam Fund - research grants and fellowships
  • Several groups offer grants or fellowships for research into animal-free food technologies, including New Harvest, Purple Orange Ventures, GFI and the University of Colorado Boulder.
  • VegFund and many other funds support vegan advocacy. There is a list of such funds here.

Also see:

  • Animal Grantmakers - they help to maximize the effectiveness of work undertaken by animal protection funders.
  • Farmed Animal Funders - a group of individuals and foundations giving more than $250,000 per year to end factory farming.

Miscellaneous

Notable written works

This article is a project of Rethink Priorities. It was primarily written by Saulius Šimčikas. Thanks to Jacob Peacock, Jamie Harris, Marianne van der Werf and Peter Hurford for contributing to the post.

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The Brooks Animal Law Digest is a good new resource. (Also, I noticed the version of this article on RP's website suggest leaving a comment, but a comment field is not available there.) Thanks for putting this all together, Saulius!

I added it and corrected the RP website, thanks!

Super helpful, I'm about to cite this in the CE curriculum :)

Thanks Saulius, this is very helpful!

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