The EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) invites you to Ask Us Anything. You can ask questions from now until next Tuesday morning, December 24. We will stop responding at 2:00 PM CET on Tuesday.
About AWF
The AWF’s mission is to alleviate the suffering of non-human animals globally through effective grantmaking. Since its founding in 2017, AWF has distributed $23.3M across 347 grants. This year, we’ve distributed $3.7M across 51 grants.
You can read about our 2024 year-in-review post and our request for more funding analysis to learn more about our recent work and future goals.
Why Now?
We believe now is an especially good time for an AMA because:
- AWF entered a new stage of growth, with a new full-time chair.
- We recently won the Forum’s 2024 Donation Election (alongside Rethink Priorities and Shrimp Welfare Project).
- We are seeking additional funding during Giving Season to continue funding promising new opportunities in animal welfare.
- We were recommended by Giving What We Can as one of the two best regrantors in the animal welfare space (alongside ACE’s Movement Building Grants), and by Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare as the best donation opportunity for individual donors interested in animal welfare.
- We currently have an open application for AWF fund managers with a deadline of December 29 and an expression of interest form for a potential future role related to fund development.
We are open to questions from interested donors, applicants, past grantees, people interested in jobs at AWF, and others interested in animal welfare.
Our team answering questions is:
- Karolina Sarek, Chair
- Neil Dullaghan, Fund Manager
- Zoë Sigle, Fund Manager
We look forward to hearing your questions!
I wish I had a more quantitative answer at this point. We have begun tracking grant impact, and forecasting its outcomes using a system that categorizes grants into four possibilities: successful as planned, successful pivot, unsuccessful due to theory of change, and unsuccessful due to execution. Once we've collected more data through this system, we'll be able to provide more precise numbers. :)
For now, I can say that modifications to original outcomes happen fairly often - my rough estimate is in about 30% of cases. These modifications can involve either scaling back to more modest goals or, in some cases, expanding to more ambitious ones.
Generally, we view pivots positively when grantees adapt their outcomes based on new information and the modified outcomes have led to (or are likely to lead to) meaningful impact. In these cases, we increase our confidence in the grantee's ability to execute this type of work while decreasing our confidence in the assumptions underlying the original theory of change. When grantees don't deliver their planned outcomes, we look for evidence that they've learned valuable lessons that will help them either develop more realistic expectations and plans, or improve their tactics to better achieve their goals.
While we appreciate all the efforts that advocates undertake to improve the plights of animals, we do take track records into account when evaluating subsequent applications. Our tolerance for "misses" before deciding not to fund a grantee depends on several factors, such as our priors about the effectiveness of their work, or the ambition of their undertaking - two misses from a grantee that has been achieving significant impact for years but is now struggling with an ambitious campaign is different from a grantee who misses twice on their moderate goals and hasn't had any positive track record before.
Ultimately, how we balance accountability versus flexibility is highly case-dependent, taking into account the full context of the grantee's work and circumstances.