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Huge impact! ✊
Sinergia Animal’s 2023 Efforts Could Help 100+ Million Animals
4 min read · Dec 4, 2024
54
Huge impact! ✊
Executive summary: Sinergia Animal, a Global South-focused animal welfare organization, impacts 113 million farmed animals annually through corporate campaigns, institutional diet changes, and systemic reform efforts, with each dollar donated helping dozens of animals.
Key points:
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Such a gigantic impact!!! Very very proud of all the work!
I feel like Animal Charity Evaluators' (ACE's) cost-effectiveness analysis overestimates your role in achieving the listed cage-free commitments. Among the 5 very big or giant ones driving their cost-effectiveness, 20 % of the impact is attributed to you in 2 cases, and 50 % in 1 case where you did not run a campaign or pre-campaign, and did not send a campaign notice.
This post was edited on April 24, 2025. For more details, please check the footnotes.
Hi everyone. My name is Caroline Oliveira. I’m the Development Director of Sinergia Animal, and this is my first EA Forum post.
I’m delighted to share that Sinergia Animal has just been recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators for the seventh year in a row.
The latest analysis by Animal Charity Evaluators suggests our work in 2023 alone has the potential to impact over 100 million farmed animals [1] for all years of impact combined [2]. But when we attend conferences, we find that a lot of EAs haven’t heard of us. So we’ve come here to introduce ourselves - and raise awareness of the unique, impactful donation opportunity that we offer.
We’re not eligible for the donation election because we aren’t registered in the UK or the US. However, with the giving season on the Forum well underway, we thought now was a good time to throw our hat in the ring.
Sinergia Animal is an international farmed animal protection organization. We operate exclusively in the Global South - and almost all our team members grew up in the countries where they work.
There are 54 of us. That sounds like a big team, but when they’re spread across 6 countries and operating in 9, it isn’t a lot.
And yet last year, that team won a campaign almost every week.
*source: ACE
Our strategy is dictated by evidence and experience; we will change course, even when it’s difficult, to improve our results.
Examples:
"Sinergia appears to have strategically chosen countries where there are a very high number of farmed animals and where the movement is currently relatively neglected, thereby filling a potentially extremely impactful role in the global animal advocacy movement."
We are proud to run programs exclusively in the Global South - with leaders who are from the Global South.
Our knowledge of the countries we work in contributes to the effectiveness of our programs. For example, in Indonesia, after our Diet Change program was not successful with educational institutions, we started working with community organizations and catering companies and we were able to improve reach and effectiveness significantly.
We are proud to work in coalition with some of the greatest animal protection organizations in the world, such as the Open Wing Alliance and many of its members. Since our creation, our mission has been related to our name: Synergy (Sinergia). This means that Sinergia Animal is focused on developing synergies with other animal protection organizations, as well as other social movements.
“Sinergia’s plans for how they’d spend additional funding across 2025 and 2026 give us confidence that they would use donations in ways that likely create the most positive change for farmed animals.”
Our funding gap for 2025-6 is $800,000, as reported by ACE. With that extra funding, we would:
You can donate to us tax effectively in:
The number of piglets impacted by Sinergia in 2023 was updated from 354 to 285. A full explanation of this change can be found here. Previously, we stated that our work in 2023 impacted 113 million animals. The most precise way to portrait our impact—now accounting for the revised piglet numbers—is that our work in 2023 alone had the potential to help 101,306,537–over 100 million– animals.
This sentence was changed from “The latest analysis suggests our work impacts 113 million farmed animals every year” to “The latest analysis by Animal Charity Evaluators suggests our work in 2023 alone has the potential to impact over 100 million farmed animals for all years of impact combined”
This sentence was changed from “How do we help 113 million animals per year?” to “How do we help over 100 million animals?”. To understand the reasons behind this, please check footnote 1.
Thanks for sharing, Caroline, and welcome to the EA Forum!
Trusting these numbers, your cage-free campaigns are very cost-effective. Each hen lives for "60 to 80 weeks", i.e. 1.34 years (= (60 + 80)/2*7/365.25), so your cage-free campaigns improve 71.0 hen-yeas per $ (= 53*1.34). This is 6.57 (= 71.0/10.8) times the 10.8 hen-years per $ implied by Open Philanthropy's adjustment of Saulius Šimčikas’ estimate, and respects a cost-effectiveness of 24.2 DALY/$ (= 6.57*3.69).
The above implies your cage-free campaigns are hugely more cost-effective than your meal replacement program, as I would have expected. Assuming all replaced meals had 1 portion of chicken meat from broilers in a conventional scenario, which I think overestimates the cost-effectiveness of the program, this would avert 4.18 chicken-days per replaced meal. Consequently, the program would eliminate 0.0343 chicken-years per $ (= 3*4.18/365.25). I estimate eliminating 1 chicken-year of broilers in a conventional scenario is as good as averting 0.754 DALYs. So the cost-effectiveness of the program would be 0.0259 DALY/$ (= 0.0343*0.754), i.e. 0.107 % (= 0.0259/24.2) of that of your cage-free program.
In contrast, it is unclear to me whether your program to help mother pigs is more/less cost-effective than your cage-free campaigns. Mother pigs have a breeding lifetime of about 3 years, so your program to help mother pigs improves 63 pig-years per $ (= 21*3). This is 88.7 % (= 63/71.0) as many animal-year per $ as your cage-program, so there would not a major difference in cost-effectiveness between them assuming the improvement per animal-year is similar.
Have you considered moving funding from your meal replacement program to your cage-free campaigns and program helping mother pigs?
Dear @Vasco Grilo🔸
Thank you for following up on this. We sincerely appreciate your patience and interest in our work. Rest assured, we are constantly evaluating our impact and how to improve it
At Sinergia Animal, we welcome open discussions and constructive criticism of our work. Our main concern has been ensuring that any critiques avoid assumptions of bad faith or misrepresentation without giving us the opportunity to provide context.
Regarding your question, we want to emphasize that we have reflected extensively on our prioritization of resources, including by considering your own analysis. This is an area of constant strategic consideration for us.
It is important to clarify that our meal replacement (diet-change) program is funded through restricted donations—meaning the funds allocated to this initiative come from donors who would not otherwise contribute to our cage-free or pig welfare campaigns. Additionally, some of our general funding is influenced by the impact and mission of this program. For instance, in 2023, we secured approximately USD 162K in restricted funding specifically for our meal replacement work, and at least USD 100K in donations were influenced by the program’s objectives and results. These amounts combined exceeded the program’s total expenditures for the year.
Furthermore, Sinergia Animal’s mission is to end factory farming and promote a future where animals are no longer exploited for food—or at the very least, significantly reduce the number of animals suffering in industrial farming. The meal replacement program is a key component of this mission and is strongly supported by our community of animal protection activists, who contribute vital mobilization and movement-building support, even if not financially. In short, when it comes to impact, we believe that cost effectiveness estimates per dollar do not tell the full story.
For a more detailed explanation of the program’s strategic importance, you can refer to the ACE review, which outlines our Theory of Change.
We truly appreciate your engagement and your interest in our work.
Thanks for the follow-up, Carolina!
Is there any public write-up of your thinking on prioritisation you could point me to?
Have you considered making the case to such donors that your cage-free work is way more cost-effective? Do you spend any unrestricted funds on the meal replacement program? If yes, the difference in their cost-effectiveness suggests it would be good for your to spend less. If not, I do not understand why Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) assessed its cost-effectiveness, as donations would not fund it by default.
Where did the additional donations go to? If the meal replacement program caused additional donations equal to 61.7 % (= 100*10^3/(162*10^3)) of the spending on it, and they all went to the meal replacement program, it would only become 1.62 (= 1 + 0.617) times as cost-effective, or 0.173 % (= 1.62*1.07*10^-3) as cost-effective as your cage-free campaigns. On the other hand, if they all went to your cage-free campaigns, it would become 578 (= 1 + 0.617/(1.07*10^-3)) times as cost-effective, or 61.8 % (= 578*1.07*10^-3) as cost-effective as your cage-free campaigns. In this latter case, 99.8 % (= 1 - 1/578) of the impact of your meal replacement program would come from increasing the funds supporting your cage-free campaigns.
I think you mean that increases in welfare do not tell the full story. Even if you have other goals, such as ending factory-farming (even if it turns out this is not ideal in terms of decreasing suffering, and increasing happiness), you could estimate the cost-effectiveness in terms of decreases in the number of animals, adjusted for their capacity for welfare, per $.
Hi @Vasco Grilo🔸
It is always a pleasure to share more about our work.
Regarding prioritization: You can find details on how we allocate funding across programmatic areas in our financial statements. Our funding distribution varies from year to year, and different sources of funding also influences how resources are allocated—not just cost-effectiveness.
ACE has evaluated the cost-effectiveness of our three largest programs in terms of expenditures, and they explain their methodology in their review.
The animal protection movement includes many funders with diverse theories of change, and not all are guided solely by cost-effectiveness. We respect and appreciate these differing perspectives, as we believe this diversity encourages reflection and strengthens our movement. Ending factory farming is a highly complex challenge, and we recognize the importance of testing various interventions to drive progress.
As I mentioned earlier, the only portion of our unrestricted funding that supports our diet change work comes from donors who, while choosing to give unrestrictedly, have expressed that this program is their primary motivation for supporting us.
I was looking for your thinking on prioritisation, not just the allocation of funds (this results from your thinking, but is not the prioritisation process itself).
I am not sure I got it. If those donors give unrestrictedly, you could use their donations to support your cage-free work which you also think is more cost-effective than your meal replacement work?
I have checked your financial statements for 2023. It would be great if you added how much restricted and unrestricted funds you spend on each program.
Hi @Vasco Grilo🔸 We spent approximately USD 80,000 in unrestricted funds on this program. However, we received over USD 100,000 in unrestricted donations this year because of this program—these donors likely would not have contributed if we had focused solely on cage-free initiatives. We believe it is fair and aligns well with our mission and theory of change.
Thanks, Carolina! Just one note, you do not have to tag me, as I receive email notifications even if you do not.
If I understand correctly, of your spending of 248 k$ on Nourishing Tomorrow in 2023, 80 k$ was unrestricted, and 168 k$ (= (248 - 80)*10^3) was restricted to that program. I think you are saying the program as a whole caused 100 k$ of additional unrestricted donations that year. If so, the program caused 0.403 $ (= 100*10^3/(248*10^3)) of additional unrestricted donations per $ spent (in reality, it is lower due to overhead[1]). That is less than 1 $, and I think the multiplier for the unrestricted funds is even lower due to diminishing returns[2], so it looks like you should not be spending unrestricted funds on the program. Am I missing something?
I suppose some of the spending on people, operations, finance and management is related to the program.
I guess decreasing the spending on the program by 1 % would decrease the additional donations by less than 1 %.
Hi Vasco,
Thank you for letting me know about the tags. The methodology we use to allocate resources differs to yours. As I mentioned earlier, our mission and theory of change also play a significant role in the decision-making process.