Strategic Evolution in Animal Advocacy: Insights and Future Directions

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Five Years of Animal Advocacy Careers: Our Journey to impact, Lessons Learned, and What's Next, published by lauren mee on September 19, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This post is mostly about our key learnings, impact made and future plans
Thanks to my team for their help in both creating this post and unwavering commitment to driving forward AAC's ambitious plans for animals, in particular Ana Barreiro, Nayan and Engin for their contributions and feedback on this post.
TL;DR:
For five years, Animal Advocacy Careers (AAC) has tried to direct passionate professionals towards high-impact opportunities that have the potential to help animals the most.
We've
filled
105 roles in leading animal advocacy organisations, supported over
150 organisations
with recruitment, and launched 3 core programs our online course, job board, and career advising service. At the same time, we built a
community of
27,500+ supporters across social media, Slack, and email. Our efforts also led to
12 10% Pledges and 11 Trial Pledges at Giving What We Can. We cautiously estimate adding $2.5 million worth of counterfactual impact from these donations and placements at a spend of $950,000
We conducted four talent surveys, which, along with our own independent research, continue to form the foundation of our career advising and strategy.
Addressing the talent bottlenecks in the effective animal advocacy movement has proven to be far more complex than we first expected. Beyond the initial challenges, we've encountered a range of issues that directly impact our theory of change and our ability to drive meaningful impact - such as the scarcity of job postings and difficulties in the hiring process.
In response, we've broadened our focus beyond just non-profit roles to better address these challenges and open up more opportunities for talented individuals to contribute to the movement.
Explore more about how AAC is transforming animal advocacy careers and find out more about our exciting plans for the future.
(Note: If you would like the full details of the programmes we have stopped, started, scaled and pivoted and a full programme evaluation our latest 2023/4
update is here)
Overview
This piece highlights Animal Advocacy Careers' accomplishments, mistakes, and changes since its establishment in 2019. We discuss AAC's future plans as well as potential constraints to our impact. Our vision is to have an animal advocacy movement of international talent density with mission-aligned advocates in critical positions in society, accelerating freedom for animals.
Background
AAC was founded in July 2019 through Charity Entrepreneurship's incubation program. Its goal is to accelerate the impact of existing organisations by solving their major talent bottlenecks, attracting top talent to the movement, matching them to the most impactful opportunities and empowering professionals to make a real impact.
To effectively match top talent with the most impactful opportunities, AAC first had to conduct research to gain a deeper understanding of the movement's challenges and overall talent landscape. We needed to identify the market size, determine which skills and roles were most in demand and hardest to fill, and uncover the root causes behind these talent bottlenecks. This research forms the foundation of our work, allowing us to address the movement's needs in a more informed and strategic way.
In addition to conducting research, AAC launched several experimental programs aimed at addressing talent bottlenecks . These programs included management and leadership training, an online course, a job board, career advising, fundraising work placements, headhunting and recruitment efforts, organisational recruitment training, a candidate database, and effective giving for animals.
Through trialing these programmes...