TL;DR - AIM’s applicants skew towards global health & development. We’ve recommended four new animal welfare charities, have the capacity to launch all four, but expect to struggle to find the talent to do so. If you’ve considered moving into animal welfare work, applying to Charity Entrepreneurship to launch a new charity in the space could be of huge counterfactual value.

Part 1: Why you should launch an animal welfare charity

Our existing animal charities have had a lot of impact—improving the lives of over 1 billion animals worldwide. - from Shrimp Welfare Project securing corporate commitments globally and featuring on the Daily Show, to FarmKind’s recent success coordinating a $2 million dollar fundraiser for the animal movement on the Dwarkshesh podcast, not to mention the progress of the 29 person army at the Fish Welfare Initiative, Scale Welfare’s direct hand-on work at fish farms, and Animal Policy International’s progress towards policy asks in NZ and the UK. This track record has earned them support from major funders and evaluators, such as Open Philanthropy and Animal Charity Evaluators.

We have four animal welfare ideas available for the February 2026 cohort.  We need a pipeline of new start-ups that will, in time, grow to become the Humane League’s and Shrimp Welfare Project’s of the future. We need more great professionals cutting their teeth and growing this movement. As an animal founder through the Charity Entrepreneurship program, you’d be helping us develop work on brand-new approaches to improving animal welfare. You’d be joining a passionate community of animal advocates while preventing suffering at a level that few other roles can match.

If launching an animal welfare organisation is something you’ve thought about, we strongly encourage you to consider applying for the upcoming February 2026 cohort.  

A few notes on counterfactual founder value

As AIM’s Director of Recruitment, a large part of my job centres around a painful paradox or seeming contradiction: we have an abundance of promising, well-intentioned people who apply to our programs, and yet we struggle at times to find enough applicants who we have real confidence can be fantastic builders of new non-profits. This is particularly the case in our animal welfare work. 

Animal welfare is a smaller space than global health & development, leaving a smaller total pool of potential great applicants. A smaller movement also means fewer organisations at which people can upskill, building the kinds of experience in leadership, stakeholder management, and project design that can separate a great charity from a good one. The animal welfare movement also skews somewhat younger than global health & development on average, meaning our applicants tend to be a bit more junior. In addition, a minority of our applicants are interested in founding animal welfare organisations compared to global health & development charities, further decreasing the pool of animal welfare founder talent.

Often, when I speak to fantastic potential candidates, they are concerned about how replaceable they’d be as a founder through the Charity Entrepreneurship program. “Won’t my place on the program just be taken by someone who would do basically as good a job as me?”. 

This isn’t a perfectly easy or comfortable topic to speak on - sweeping generalisations about ‘talent’ or similar are a recruiter’s worst nightmare. Nevertheless, we have found that founder fit and talent are the single greatest drivers of charity success. Finding people who are exceptionally well-suited to launching an organisation, and the specific organisation they launch, might be the single biggest lever we have for increasing the impact of the Charity Entrepreneurship program. 

We run recruitment for animal welfare organisations once a year. Twelve months ago, we didn’t find enough great animal welfare founders. This meant we had fewer potential animal welfare founders on the program, reducing the range of possible co-founder pairs available to the founders we did accept. This contributed to two animal-focused participants in that cohort not founding organisations. In the end, we launched one animal welfare organisation, where we had hoped to launch three. We’d love to have an abundance of potential founders we’re confident can build organisations that help elevate the animal welfare movement. Sadly, this is not where we’re currently at. If you apply to the program and receive an offer, we wouldn’t just offer your place to someone else if you turned it down. More likely, we’d just have one fewer person in the cohort. 

That isn’t to say that everyone we reject couldn’t have been a great founder, or importantly, cannot be a great founder in the future. I do not doubt that we make mistakes in our selection process, rejecting people who would have been fantastic founders, though I believe this margin of error is fairly small. Every round, we work to close this gap further. 

Selecting for the cohort is a bet we take on imperfect information. With the huge amount of resources we pour into each charity we launch - training, pairing with another incredibly talented person, seed funding, and mentorship through our community - we’re reluctant to give out offers to people who we believe could be able to launch a good charity. We need people who we’re confident can launch a great organisation. If you think that could be you, I’d love to see you apply. If you know someone who you think could be a great animal welfare founder, please share this with them and nudge them to apply!

If you’re unfamiliar with the Charity Entrepreneurship program, or the ideas we’ve recommended for the next cohort, we’ve included a ‘Part 2’ below with more information…

Thanks for your support in helping us grow the animal movement.

Part 2 - The Charity Entrepreneurship Program & Our Latest Animal Welfare Ideas

What is the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program?

The Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program helps driven individuals like you start evidence-based charities through a two-month training program. Before the program begins, our research team identifies the most promising interventions for global challenges such as animal welfare so that participants can turn them into cost-effective, high-impact charities.

Over two months, you’ll receive tailored training, expert mentorship, co-founder matching, and an average of £100k in seed funding. Most of the program is online, with two in-person weeks at our London office. You can read more about the program here.

Our recommended animal welfare ideas for 2026

We’re excited that applications are open for the animal welfare cohort of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. The February–March 2026 round features four promising animal welfare ideas, ready to launch if we find the right animal welfare talent:

1. Driving supermarket commitments to shift diets away from meat 

A new team could help reduce the welfare and climate footprint of our food system by encouraging supermarkets to increase the percentage of protein sales from plant-based sources compared to animal proteins. The non-profit would advocate for protein sales ratio commitments by a target year (e.g., 60:40 plant:animal protein sales by 2040) by conducting corporate campaigns and providing technical assistance to supermarkets to encourage consumer purchasing of plant-based protein. Early progress in the Netherlands shows strong potential, with major supermarkets committing to 60% plant protein to 40% animal protein sales ratios by 2030.

More details and report here.
 

2. Securing scale-up funding for the alternative protein industry 

A policy non-profit would work hand-in-hand with governments to introduce finance tools to help alternative protein producers scale production (e.g., loan guarantees). We think scale-up financing is a barrier to plant-based protein scale and price competition, but it remains neglected in the advocacy ecosystem.  Drawing lessons from industries like clean energy, the non-profit will push for policies that give alternative protein companies access to scale-up funding from governments, which could also reduce investment risk and unlock private capital.

 More details and report here.

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Please note that, in addition to the above ideas, two previously recommended animal welfare ideas will be available to the February 2026 cohort, as these were not successfully launched in 2024:

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3. Cage-free farming in the Middle East 

​This nonprofit would lead corporate campaigns in the Middle East to secure cage-free commitments from major food companies and improve conditions for laying hens. 'Good-cop' corporate campaigning, framing cage-free sourcing as a business opportunity for retailers and food companies, is very neglected in the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt). The charity would build relationships with corporate decision-makers, offer technical assistance, and highlight high-welfare egg products' branding and consumer appeal. Research report available here.

4. Preventing painful injuries in laying hens 

This new organisation would work with farmers to reduce the prevalence of keel bone fractures (KBF), one of the most prevalent and painful conditions that affect cage-free layer hens. The team would work with egg producers and standard-setting bodies to encourage measures that reduce the incidence or severity of keel bone fractures, such as nutritional feed supplements, improved lighting, better perch materials, or selective breeding.  

Research report available here.

Applications close on October 5th: Apply here.