TL;DR Key Takeaways

• Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is the only organization focused entirely on wild animal welfare science. We aim to accelerate research that could lead to reducing the suffering of millions to trillions of animals per year.
• We're at a critical juncture: while not facing immediate collapse, we need to raise significantly more funding quickly to maintain our momentum and avoid program cuts.
• Supporting WAI offers a unique opportunity to influence the trajectory of an entire field of science dedicated to improving the lives of trillions of wild animals.
• Our 2025 budget goal is approximately $3.78 million, with a 2024 fundraising target of $2.68 million to maintain our vital work in research, grants, and outreach.
• Your donation affects not just our 2025 budget but also our trajectory for the next 2+ years, helping to bridge the gap as we work to diversify our funding sources beyond the EA community.

Background

Mission and theory of change

Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is dedicated to accelerating science that helps wild animals.

The problem: The vast majority of animals live in the wild, outside of human care. We're talking over ten trillion vertebrates and at least 10^18 (that's a million trillion) arthropods. Despite these staggering numbers, we know astonishingly little about the quality of these animals' lives. There's reason to believe they face significant challenges, including both increasing human-caused harms like climate change and naturally occurring issues such as resource scarcity, conflict with other animals, and disease. Unfortunately, our knowledge about animals' lives and the complex nature of ecosystems is insufficient to responsibly intervene to improve wild animal welfare.

Our vision: A world in which people actively choose to help wild animals — and have the knowledge they need to do so responsibly.

Our mission: To accelerate science that helps wild animals.

We believe the first step to achieving this vision is developing a much greater understanding of wild animals and their welfare. Generating that knowledge requires a sustained academic field of wild animal welfare science. The field will establish essential knowledge of the factors influencing the welfare of wild animals and how their welfare can be responsibly improved.

Our theory of change is based on accelerating the growth of wild animal welfare science. By condensing a process that typically takes 25-50 years into just 10 years, we aim to have an enormous impact on wild animal welfare. Bringing new insights 15-40 years ahead of schedule could reduce the suffering of millions to trillions of sentient individuals much sooner than would otherwise occur.

For a more detailed overview of our strategy and recent accomplishments, we encourage you to visit our website and review our strategic plan.

Track record

Since our founding in 2019, Wild Animal Initiative has made significant strides in establishing and advancing the field of wild animal welfare science through research and trial and error. Our accomplishments demonstrate that our theory of change is not just a nebulous concept but a practical approach that's gaining real momentum.

In 2024, we significantly increased our impact tracking capacity. As a result, we can now say with even more confidence that our theory of change is progressing as planned. Illustrative results under each of our program areas include:

Research

• 74% of our publications have been natural sciences papers, compared to only 31.9% of non-WAI papers about wild animal welfare
• 100% of our staff publications consider natural causes of suffering, compared to only 25% of non-WAI publications on wild animal welfare (and of that 25%, the vast majority consider disease only)
• So far, our publications have been cited 46 times, a strong signal given the fact that most have only been published in the last few years, and it takes time for citations to come in. In science as a whole, only 24% of scientific publications receive ten or more citations

Grants

• We made our first grants in late 2021, and most research projects take 3-6 years from start to publication, so we’re just starting to see the results of those trickle out, with eight papers by our grantees either published or under review
• WAI is currently the largest funder of wild animal welfare science, having distributed $4,552,817 to 68 research projects and four fellowships focusing on high-impact areas
• Our staff and grantees have succeeded in establishing best practices for validating welfare metrics and investigating behavioral and physiological metrics for a range of species. Twenty-one mechanisms are currently under investigation, with publications on these metrics anticipated in the next 1-3 years

Outreach & Services

• Developed a Research Community with 283 academic members, including a healthy percentage of early-career researchers (signaling a sustainable pipeline of talent)
• Attended 54 scientific conferences and 40 other events, spreading awareness about wild animal welfare
• Maintained a high retention rate (90%+) for mailing list sign-ups from events

Impact, Recognition, & Mainstreaming

• Although it is still early days for the field, we are already seeing signs of the use of our research to help animals, such as through the Guarini Center wild animal welfare policy report that we contributed to last year, several interactions we've had with policymakers and activists regarding rodent fertility control, and prospective partnership opportunities that are seeking research with more direct connections to helping animals to take place in the next year (funding allowing)
• Nine books have been published in the past five years that discuss wild animal welfare in depth
• Other grant-makers, such as Morris Animal Foundation, have added welfare terminology to their grant calls, possibly influenced at least in part by our work

Building the Field

These accomplishments demonstrate that our approach is working. We're not just producing research and making grants; we're catalyzing a shift in how scientists approach the study of wild animal welfare. By accelerating the growth of this field, we're bringing crucial insights years ahead of schedule, potentially reducing the suffering of millions to trillions of sentient individuals much sooner than would otherwise occur.

Our track record shows we can effectively use resources to advance wild animal welfare science. With continued support, we're poised to build on these successes and make even greater strides in understanding and improving the lives of wild animals.

Use of marginal funds

What we would do with marginal funds depends on which margin we’re talking about. We’ll try to illustrate the possibilities by discussing three points along the dollars→impact curve, starting with our planned activities for 2025 (the total impact of our target budget), then discussing what we’d do differently if we raised much more than our target (the marginal impact of stepping up to an abundance budget) or much less than that (the marginal impact of stepping down to a survival budget).

For context, our target budget for 2025 is $3.78 million. To fully fund that budget, we would need to raise another $2.68 million by the end of the year. Last year, we raised $434,860 during the same period. If we raise the same amount this year, we will fall short by $2.24 million, landing us in the survival budget scenario. So this year, we think meeting our target will be quite difficult, but still likely enough to be worth striving for.

Target budget: Maintaining Core Activities with Strategic Adjustments

Our target budget of $3.78 million basically represents a continuation of our activities from last year. We probably won’t be making any new hires, except perhaps to replace one of the three people who left this year. The biggest change is that we plan to spend way less on regranting — $670,000 instead of $2,000,000 — because we’re uncertain about our ability to sustain funding for the program given Open Philanthropy’s exit.

In the past year, we have seen a significant increase in inquiries about potential partnerships with other organizations. We are excited about these opportunities; however, current funding constraints pose a challenge in this area. Despite this, the rising interest presents a real opportunity to expand the wild animal welfare (WAW) movement.

Potential partnerships include

• Conservation X Labs
• Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control
• NYU Wild Animal Welfare program
• Royal Veterinary College
• Several confidential insect-focused projects
• UK universities to launch MSc or similar WAW programs

We expect that we will be able to pursue 1-2 of these opportunities based on our current capacity, but we would like to pursue five or more.

While seeking new partnerships and addressing funding challenges, we’ll continue our core activities:

1. Research: Publishing papers to guide scientists towards effective work
2. Grants: Making grants for promising projects and people
3. Outreach & Services: Supporting our growing community of aligned scientists

Planned Activities for 2025:

Research

• House sparrow welfare
• Welfare effects of New World Screwworm eradication
• Review of fish welfare topics
• Wildlife vaccination
• Perspective on potential WAW interventions and barriers
• Indicators of cumulative welfare
• Animal behavior and WAWS
• Density-dependent welfare

Grants

• Supporting MSc project selection with Edinburgh University and Scotland’s Rural College
• Running our 2025 call for proposals, focusing on fellowships and extension grants

Outreach & Services

• Developing a formal mentorship program
• Hosting grantee meetups (in-person and online)
• Surveying academics on WAW-related beliefs and values
• WAW course development
• Running workshops at conferences

Address Funding Challenges

• Actively working to reinforce the importance of our mission within the EA community
• Securing short-term funding from The Navigation Fund, with potential for extended support
• Pursuing funding opportunities beyond the EA community to diversify our financial support and broaden awareness and validation of wild animal welfare science

What would WAI do with marginal funds?

Survival budget

If we miss our fundraising goal, we may need to make difficult decisions about what to cut. While we have some runway that allows us to delay immediate cuts, we would need to spend substantial time evaluating what to wind down and lower our ambitions for future years. This could potentially impact our ability to pursue new partnerships and maintain our current level of grantmaking, which would have a ripple effect that could delay real on-the-ground WAW outcomes.

Abundance budget

In 2023, Animal Charity Evaluators estimated we could productively absorb $3.5 million beyond our projected revenue. Our current room for more funding is even higher because we have a larger funding gap, more staff ready to take on new projects, and more connections in the scientific community who can help us find impactful opportunities.

If we were to surpass our target budget, we could use additional funding to^[1]:

• Increase our annual grantmaking budget back to the previous level of $2 million
• Pursue more partnership opportunities, potentially up to five or more
• Expand our research output and community-building activities

Why donations matter now?

#1: We're not on the brink, but we need to act fast

While we're not facing immediate collapse, we need to raise significantly more funding, and we need to do it quickly. Your support now helps us maintain our momentum and avoid drastic cuts to our programs.

#2: The value of smaller, diversified donations

We're aiming to raise $240,000 by the end of the year from donors giving $10,000 or less. This diversification is crucial for our long-term stability and resilience.

#3: Shaping our future

Your donation affects not just our 2025 budget but also the trajectory we chart for the next 2+ years. By supporting us now, you're helping to ensure the continued growth and impact of wild animal welfare science.

#4: Bridging to broader support

While we're working hard to diversify our funding sources beyond the EA community, we can't get there without continued EA support over the next few years. Your donation helps bridge this gap.

#5: Maximizing impact

Wild animal welfare is a largely neglected cause area within EA (even within Animal Welfare, in general), receiving only a small fraction of overall EA funding. This means your donation to WAI could have an outsized impact compared to donations to more established cause areas.

#6: Enabling crucial partnerships

With adequate funding, we can pursue more partnerships and collaborations, potentially up to five or more, which could significantly accelerate the growth of wild animal welfare science.

Opportunities to support WAI

Your support can significantly shape the future of wild animal welfare science. We're at a critical juncture, and your contribution truly matters. Here's how you can help:

1. Donate directly on our website
2. Vote for us in the EA Forum donation election

For those considering a larger donation or exploring alternative giving methods, please contact Casey Darnley, our Development Director, at [email protected].

We'd love to hear why you believe supporting WAI is important and effective. We welcome any questions or comments below and are eager to engage in discussion.

Thank you for considering Wild Animal Initiative when making your giving decisions. Your support can make a real difference in advancing wild animal welfare science.

1. ^{^}

   These are all high-priority investments we would be making if not for the budgetary uncertainty created by Open Philanthropy’s exit from the WAW space. (It's important to note that this situation affects all OP-supported animal welfare organizations, not just WAI. We're all navigating this new funding landscape together.)