Hi! We share the link in our EA Manchester newsletter and whatsapp group. If you'd like to attend please DM me here on the forum and I can send you the link. 

Thanks so much for your offer to support this, Vasco. I'll follow up with you about this on email. 

Approximately $2K would be sufficient to scope out a project like this, provided we have capacity at the time. We're usually able to accommodate some scoping work alongside ongoing projects though. 

Hi Vasco, 

Thanks for your question and for your patience waiting for our response - we've just come back from our end-of-year break. 

We don't currently have anything scheduled on this topic, but we regularly review project ideas and may consider working on something like this a little later in the year. Dedicated funding would certainly make it more likely that we could prioritize this work. If we do decide to explore this further, we'd first need to scope out what a project in this area might look like, but would be happy to discuss different funding levels and what they could enable at that point. 

Thanks!

Hi Vasco, 

Thanks for your question. 

Based on our current funding situation, we expect to spend approximately $915K on invertebrate projects through the end of 2026. This budget is made up of grants and donations specifically designated for invertebrate welfare. Given our very limited pool of unrestricted funding, the need to maintain adequate reserves, and the preferences of several key unrestricted contributors, we do not plan to use unrestricted funds for invertebrate-specific work in 2026. That said, some unrestricted resources will support cross-cutting AW projects that also benefit invertebrates. For instance, work on how transformative AI might affect AW interventions.

We are also actively seeking additional funding to expand our capacity for invertebrate welfare work beyond the $915K baseline. Please let me know if you’d like more detail on our invertebrate welfare projects, and I’d be happy to discuss further.

Many thanks, 

Hannah Tookey 

We're keen to run it regularly if there's enough interest, so hopefully lots more opportunities to get involved in the future. Would be great to see you at one of them! :)  

You're welcome! And thank you for recommending our invertebrate welfare work - it's much appreciated :)

Hi Vasco, 

Thank you for your follow-up questions about our funding allocation.

You noted it's interesting that wild animal welfare isn't supported by unrestricted funds, suggesting this might imply we believe other work is more cost-effective at the margin. In fact, this allocation isn’t a reflection of our views on the comparative cost-effectiveness of wild animal or invertebrate welfare work. Rather, it stems from the practical reality of having a very limited pool of truly unrestricted funding.

Even when donations are technically unrestricted, donors often express strong preferences for the areas they'd like their gifts to support. This means that, in practice, an even smaller percentage of our funds are treated as fully discretionary. Of that small portion, we have to prioritize operational stability - especially core infrastructure such as finance and operations which supports all research areas. This currently accounts for over 90% of this year's unrestricted funds.

The remainder is allocated strategically based on a mix of considerations beyond just cost-effectiveness, including urgent needs, time-sensitive opportunities, fundraising challenges in different departments, and more.

On invertebrate welfare and wild animal welfare specifically: Increasing our capacity in both areas remains a priority. While we’re not currently able to allocate unrestricted funds to them, there are valuable opportunities where targeted donations can still make a marginal difference without displacing existing funds.

Our funding situation evolves year to year though. In stronger years, we've allocated close to $500K in unrestricted funding to animal welfare. For example, the Moral Weight Project was only made possible because of that flexibility.

With greater unrestricted support in future, we could potentially distribute more to historically underfunded areas like invertebrate and wild animal welfare, while still meeting our essential operational needs.

I hope this clarifies our approach. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have further questions.

Hannah Tookey (Development Officer, Rethink Priorities)