The Nonlinear Library EA - Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024 by Linch
Jun 26, 2024
42:12
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: Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024, published by Linch on June 26, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Introduction
This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report.
Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work on high-quality evaluations. However, now that I (Linch) am working for EA Funds full-time, I've attempted to consolidate and streamline the report writing process, so that hopefully regular reports can be written again without unduly using up limited fund manager time.
Total funding recommended: $7,079,301
Total funding paid out: $6,943,301
Number of grants paid out: 109
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 111/409 = 27.1%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 111/685 = 16.2%
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Kieran Greig (fund chair), Karolina Sarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil Dullaghan
16 of our grantees, who received a total of $1,068,540, requested that we do not include public reports for their grants (you can read our policy on public reporting here).
Highlighted Grants
(The following grants writeups were written by me, Linch Zhang. They were reviewed by the primary investigators of each grant).
Highlighted grants correspond to grants that the AWF team rated highly, usually because they thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high.
Planet For All Hong Kong ($63,000): Stipends and professional services to launch Hong Kong's first aquatic animal welfare movement
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $63,000 grant to Planet For All Hong Kong from September 2022 to August 2023. The funding covered stipends, marketing, website, and professional services for one full-time employee and two part-time employees to launch Hong Kong's first aquatic animal welfare movement.
The organization plans to engage with industry stakeholders, government, and policymakers; raise public awareness; and build partnerships with corporations to incorporate animal welfare in their sourcing policies.
The Animal Welfare Fund was excited to fund this project due to the region, focus area, and the organizations' leadership and project plan. Hong Kong is a high-priority region with high fish consumption, and the work is very neglected. The fund believes the small organization has good leadership and a reasonable project plan. However, we did have concerns that the additional focus may distract from their very important work on chicken cage-free reforms.
This concern is partially mitigated by the grant being used to hire an external person for the full-time role, so existing projects are hopefully less likely to be negatively impacted. Overall, the importance and neglectedness of the work are strong arguments in favor of supporting the grant.
Outcomes: During the grant period, the organization identified supportive stakeholders and a local campaign opportunity regarding "Fish Culture Zones," building rapport with local marine conservation organizations and meeting with modern fish farmers to better understand the feasibility and challenges of promoting aquatic animal welfare.
They connected the Fish Culture Zone campaign with the importance of aquatic animal agriculture and met with the Aquaculture Division of the Hong Kong government. The organization successfully launched "Sea Life Matters," the first public education campaign about aquatic life welfare in Hong Kong, engaging with about 1,000 citizens, partnering with more than 30 online influencers, and collaborating with over 10 restaurants and retailers.
Animal Empathy Philip...
Introduction
This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report.
Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work on high-quality evaluations. However, now that I (Linch) am working for EA Funds full-time, I've attempted to consolidate and streamline the report writing process, so that hopefully regular reports can be written again without unduly using up limited fund manager time.
Total funding recommended: $7,079,301
Total funding paid out: $6,943,301
Number of grants paid out: 109
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 111/409 = 27.1%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 111/685 = 16.2%
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Kieran Greig (fund chair), Karolina Sarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil Dullaghan
16 of our grantees, who received a total of $1,068,540, requested that we do not include public reports for their grants (you can read our policy on public reporting here).
Highlighted Grants
(The following grants writeups were written by me, Linch Zhang. They were reviewed by the primary investigators of each grant).
Highlighted grants correspond to grants that the AWF team rated highly, usually because they thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high.
Planet For All Hong Kong ($63,000): Stipends and professional services to launch Hong Kong's first aquatic animal welfare movement
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $63,000 grant to Planet For All Hong Kong from September 2022 to August 2023. The funding covered stipends, marketing, website, and professional services for one full-time employee and two part-time employees to launch Hong Kong's first aquatic animal welfare movement.
The organization plans to engage with industry stakeholders, government, and policymakers; raise public awareness; and build partnerships with corporations to incorporate animal welfare in their sourcing policies.
The Animal Welfare Fund was excited to fund this project due to the region, focus area, and the organizations' leadership and project plan. Hong Kong is a high-priority region with high fish consumption, and the work is very neglected. The fund believes the small organization has good leadership and a reasonable project plan. However, we did have concerns that the additional focus may distract from their very important work on chicken cage-free reforms.
This concern is partially mitigated by the grant being used to hire an external person for the full-time role, so existing projects are hopefully less likely to be negatively impacted. Overall, the importance and neglectedness of the work are strong arguments in favor of supporting the grant.
Outcomes: During the grant period, the organization identified supportive stakeholders and a local campaign opportunity regarding "Fish Culture Zones," building rapport with local marine conservation organizations and meeting with modern fish farmers to better understand the feasibility and challenges of promoting aquatic animal welfare.
They connected the Fish Culture Zone campaign with the importance of aquatic animal agriculture and met with the Aquaculture Division of the Hong Kong government. The organization successfully launched "Sea Life Matters," the first public education campaign about aquatic life welfare in Hong Kong, engaging with about 1,000 citizens, partnering with more than 30 online influencers, and collaborating with over 10 restaurants and retailers.
Animal Empathy Philip...