Animal Welfare Fund

Basic Info

The EA Animal Welfare Fund's mission is to alleviate the suffering of non-human animals globally through effective grantmaking.

Our grants portfolio prioritizes interventions that can collectively have the highest impact and help the greatest number of animals.

Donate: By contributing to the Animal Welfare Fund (AWF), you'll support grants focused on:

  • Reducing suffering and improving the lives of animals in factory farms
  • Bringing factory farming to an end
  • Positively affecting other groups of animals on a large scale
  • Supporting these goals by researching and piloting novel approaches and interventions

We have room for more funding in 2024.

We are hiring: EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) is looking for:

  • full-time or part-time Fund Managers. You can find the job description and application details here. Deadline: December 29th.
  • expression of interest for Fund Development Officer/Manager/Director roles. You can find the description here.

Apply for Funding: If you have a project that seems like a good fit for our funds, we encourage you to apply. EA Funds can make grants to individuals, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and other entities. You do not need to be based in the US or the UK to apply for a grant. If you are unsure whether you are eligible for a grant, please simply apply.

Fund Scope

The Fund focuses on projects that primarily address farmed animals, as well as projects that could affect other large populations of nonhuman animals.

Some examples of projects that the Fund could support:

  • Supporting farmed animal advocacy in Asia
  • Advocating against the use of cruel practices within the industrial agriculture system, such as battery cages for egg-laying hens
  • Policy advocacy to increase government research and development (R&D) budget that goes to alternative protein
  • Researching ways to improve the welfare of invertebrates
  • Policy advocacy to increase government R&D budget that goes to alternative protein
  • Movement building in neglected countries and regions with large-scale animal farming
  • Growing the field of welfare biology in order to improve our understanding of different ways to address wild animal suffering

Read more about Fund scope and limitations

About the Animal Welfare Fund

The AWF is dedicated to helping impact-focused donors by identifying and supporting the most effective opportunities to improve animal welfare globally.

We achieve our mission through a comprehensive strategy that includes:

  1. Pooled Resources: We aggregate donations to create a shared fund that significantly exceeds individual donor capacity, enabling support for both smaller- and larger-scale initiatives.
  2. Global Outreach: We actively solicit applications from organizations and individuals worldwide, ensuring a diverse range of high-impact projects for consideration.
  3. Rigorous Evaluation: Our team conducts thorough assessments of project proposals to identify and select the most effective interventions.
  4. Continuous Improvement: We aim to systematically evaluate the impact of our grants and adapt our grantmaking strategies to maximize our positive influence.
  5. Strategic Collaboration: We partner with leading animal welfare organizations, researchers, and advocates to leverage collective expertise.
  6. Transparency and Accountability: We are committed to openness in our resource allocation processes, ensuring responsible stewardship of donor funds in advancing animal welfare.

By combining these elements, the AWF strives to support transformative change in the lives of animals globally.

Grantmaking and Impact

The AWF has recommended over 20 million dollars' worth of grants to a range of high-impact initiatives, including:

Supporting emerging animal welfare groups that grew to become standout charities across a range of countries

The AWF has often identified promising organizations in their early stages in a range of countries and supported them with seed and early-stage funding. Some of them grew into very impactful and recommended organizations. For example, AWF was an early supporter of Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği / Kafessiz Türkiye, which works on cage-free and fish welfare campaigns in Turkey and has become an Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity. We have supported similarly impactful groups in dozens of countries including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, United Kingdom, China, Turkey, Greece, Indonesia, and Nigeria.

Supporting campaigns to improve animal welfare through reforming corporate policies and producer practices

Tens of billions of animals suffer as a result of their use in food production. By tackling this issue at the level of commercial supply chains, corporate campaigns can be high-leverage opportunities and were found to be cost-effective ways to improve the lives of tens of billions of animals. The Fund has granted to a range of organizations with relatively strong track records of securing commitments from large food companies; these organizations include Compassion in World Farming USA and Sinergia Animal.

Supporting research that uncovers new priority areas for animal advocacy

In addition to funding direct work on animal welfare, the Fund also supports research that improves our understanding of how to most effectively help animals, whichhas often led to uncovering new promising focus areas and interventions. For example, we funded Rethink Priorities for research into invertebrate welfare that not only uncovered this high-scale problem, but also led to increased awareness about the issues, providing support for organisations working to alleviate suffering of those animals.

Supporting the most numerous and neglected species

AWF aims to maximize impact for animals. This often leads us to provide funding for projects that could cost-effectively address the plight of the most numerous, yet most neglected, species, such as fish, insects, shrimps, and wild animals. For example, we were an early funder of Shrimp Welfare Project, which has since reduced the suffering of 2.6 billion animals and proven tractability of work addressing neglected species.

Supporting organizations aimed at driving policy change

Policy change can create lasting improvements for billions of animals by setting legally-binding welfare standards and potentially expanding the moral circle of compassion for animals. AWF has supported a range of policy initiatives, such as Crustacean Compassion, which has successfully advocated for legal recognition of decapod crustaceans as sentient, or Animal Policy International, which promotes efforts to ban low-welfare imports.

For more information, please check the full list of the Animal Welfare Fund’s Payout Reports.

Why donate to this Fund?

1. The Scale of Animal Suffering is Immense. Annually, hundreds of billions of vertebrate animals are subject to factory farming. Roughly 83 billion terrestrial farmed animals are raised and slaughtered each year, as well as ~124 billion farmed fish. Farmed invertebrate animals (for example, shrimp and insects) number in the trillions.

Experts now agree that numerous species of animals are conscious and capable of feeling pain. Current practices within animal agriculture are likely to cause extreme suffering over the course of animals’ lives. Furthermore, hundreds of trillions of wild animals exist, many of which likely experience significant suffering that could be reduced through human intervention.

2. Funding to Address This Issue Remains Critically Limited. Despite the magnitude of this problem, the field of animal advocacy receives only a small percent of total charitable donations, with most of that money going to the comparatively few companion animals in shelters. This leads to some groups of animals being highly neglected in relation to their numbers and capacity for suffering.

3. Our Fund Maximizes the Impact of Your Contribution.

The Animal Welfare Fund holds a unique position to identify and support the most effective opportunities to help animals globally. What makes this possible is:

  • Finding the Best Opportunities: We actively seek out promising projects across the world, from established organizations to new groups. We are also not restricted to donating only to nonprofits, we can also fund individuals, academic institutions, and other entities. Our strong connections within animal advocacy and effective altruism help us discover high-impact opportunities that others might miss.

  • Rigorous Evaluation Process: Every grant application undergoes a systematic review, with the depth of investigation scaling with the grant size and uncertainty. Our evaluation includes assessing Theory of Change, scale of the counterfactual impact, likelihood of success, cost-effectiveness, value of funding, and forecasting. You can read more about our evaluation process in the FAQ section.

  • Tracking Impact and Improving Based on Learning from M&E: We systematically track each grant's progress against specific goals, collect progress and learning reports, and compare our predictions against the real outcomes to continuously improve our grantmaking.

  • Expert Fund Management: Our fund managers have good judgment and bring diverse expertise in animal advocacy, research, grantmaking, corporate outreach, entrepreneurship, and movement building. This helps us evaluate projects from different angles and guide our grantees effectively.

  • Strategic Funding Approach: We build a balanced portfolio of grants that include both proven interventions and those that are more uncertain but have a very high expected value. This means supporting immediate welfare improvements while also investing in projects that could create systemic change.

  • Movement Coordination: We work with other funders and organizations to strengthen the whole effective giving ecosystem and help ensure resources are allocated where they can have the highest impact.

By contributing to the Animal Welfare Fund, you can be confident that your donation will always be allocated with impact in mind, aiming to make the greatest possible difference in alleviating animal suffering and promoting their welfare.

Why you might choose not to donate to this Fund

We think it’s important that donors are well informed when they donate to EA Funds. As such, we think it’s useful to think about the reasons that you might choose to donate elsewhere.

1. You don’t support incremental welfare improvements Thus far, much of the Fund’s grant money has gone toward work on reducing farmed animal suffering through positive yet incremental changes. This is not an exclusive focus since we have also supported interventions that aim to be more systemic (like policy advocacy) and that reduce demand for animal products (like advocacy to increase investment in alternative protein). However, if you believe that it is wrong to support incremental welfare improvements, some of the Fund’s grants may not be a good match for your worldview.

2. You have a preference for specific interventions or species The Fund has made a range of grants. If you have a strong preference for supporting a particular intervention type or focusing on a specific animal group (e.g., exclusively supporting corporate outreach for hen welfare or concentrating solely on farmed animals), you may find it more satisfying to donate directly to charities specializing in those areas.

Payout Reports

Note: Public payout reports are optional for grantees of this fund.

We have discontinued payout reports but you can find our most recent grants here

Animal Welfare Fund FAQ

How do I make a donation an EA Fund?

You can donate through the Giving What We Can website by following this link and clicking the “Make Payment” button on the bottom right.

You can find all information about tax-deductibility in the Payment Details. While we advise donors to give tax-effectively when possible, we believe impact is more important than tax benefits.

What is the risk profile of the Animal Welfare Fund?

The Animal Welfare Fund makes donations to a range of different interventions. Some are more proven interventions, while others are likely to be higher-risk, but potentially higher-return, opportunities. As such, we categorize the Fund’s risk level as “low-medium.”

For more information on how we think about grantmaking risk, please read our Risk Profiles page.

How often does the Animal Welfare Fund make grants?

The Animal Welfare Fund makes grants on a rolling basis. You will usually have to wait 1-3 months after submitting an application until the full process is completed.

How Does the EA Animal Welfare Fund Make Grant Decisions?

Our grantmaking process consists of the following stages:

Stage 1: Application Processing. When we receive an application, it's entered into our project management system along with the complete application details, history of previous applications from the applicant, evaluation rubrics, investigator assignments, and other relevant documentation.

Stage 2: Initial Screening. We conduct a quick scope check to ensure applications align with our fund's mission and show potential for high impact. About 30% of applications are filtered out at this stage, typically because they fall outside our scope or don't demonstrate sufficient impact potential.

Stage 3: Selecting Primary Grant Investigator and Depth of the Evaluation. For applications that pass the initial screening, we assign investigators who are most suitable for a given evaluation. Based on various heuristics, such as the size of the grant, uncertainty, and potential risk, the Fund’s Chair also determines the depth of the evaluation.

Stage 4: In-Depth Evaluation. Every grant application undergoes a systematic review. For each level of depth of investigation required, AWF has an evaluation template that fund managers follow. The framework balances ensuring that all key factors have been considered and that evaluations are consistent, while leaving space for additional, grant-specific crucial considerations. For the deep evaluations, (which are the vast majority of all evaluations), the primary investigator typically examines:

  • Theory of Change (ToC) - examining how activities translate into improvements for animals and whether the evidence supports its merits
  • Scale of counterfactual impact - assessing the problem's scale, neglectedness, and strategic importance
  • Likelihood of success - evaluating track record, team competence, and concrete plans
  • Cost-effectiveness and benchmarking- conducting calculations to estimate impact per dollar and compare it to relevant benchmarks
  • Value of funding - analyzing counterfactuals and long-term sustainability
  • Forecasting - forecasting the probability that the project will succeed or fail and due to what reasons (validity of the ToC or performance in achieving planned outcomes )
  • In the case of evaluations that require the maximum level of depth, a secondary investigator critically reviews the completed write-up, raises additional questions and concerns, and provides alternative perspectives or recommendations.

Stage 5: Collective Review and Voting. After the evaluation, each application undergoes a thorough collective assessment. The Fund Chair and at least two Fund Managers review the analysis. All Fund Managers without conflicts of interest can contribute additional insights and discuss key questions through dedicated channels. Finally, each Fund Manager assigns a score, which helps us systematically compare the most promising grants.

Stage 6: Final Recommendation Looking at the average score, the Fund Chair approves grants that are clearly above our funding bar and rejects those clearly below it. For grants near our funding threshold, we conduct another step where all found managers compare those marginal grants against each other to select the strongest proposals.

Once decisions are finalized, approved grants move to our grants team for contracting and reporting setup.

Throughout this process, we maintain detailed documentation and apply consistent standards to ensure we select the most promising opportunities to help animals most effectively.

What other donation opportunities exist in this space? How is the Animal Welfare Fund different from a donation to Animal Charity Evaluators’ Recommended Charities or Movement Building Grants?

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) operates two distinct funding programs that serve different purposes in the animal advocacy space. Understanding these differences can help donors choose the giving opportunity that best matches their priorities.

The first is ACE's Recommended Charity Fund, which supports a select group of evaluated, established organizations. These charities undergo comprehensive evaluation every two years to verify their strong track records of impact. The Animal Welfare Fund takes a different approach, funding both established organizations and promising early-stage projects based on expected cost-effectiveness. Many organizations we supported early, such as the Shrimp Welfare Project, and Kaffesse Turkiye, later became ACE-recommended charities. We make decisions throughout the year to respond quickly to opportunities, and while our evaluations may be less comprehensive than ACE's, this allows us to consider a wider range of projects. Our grants tend to be more hits-based, potentially offering higher marginal cost-effectiveness but with less certainty than ACE's Top Charities. Donors prioritizing proven impact might prefer ACE's Recommended Charity Fund over AWF's more maximizing expected cost-effectiveness, hits-based approach.

ACE's second program, Movement Grants, takes a pluralistic approach to strengthen global advocacy by providing numerous smaller grants to emerging groups, especially in regions where animal advocacy is developing. AWF approaches movement building differently, funding both local and international projects based primarily on their potential impact rather than geographic distribution. While we consider movement growth, our main focus is cost-effectiveness. We provide both small (<$20,000) and large (>$150,000) grants, typically fully funding particularly promising opportunities, even if this means making fewer grants overall. Donors specifically interested in building global advocacy capacity across all regions might prefer ACE's Movement Grants over AWF's more targeted approach to cost-effectiveness.

In 2023, Giving What We Can evaluated and compared AWF and ACE's regranting work. You can see this third-party comparative analysis here. Given the recent changes at AWF and ACE, it is out of date. Still, it is currently the only external evaluation available, and donors may find it informative.

Can I apply for funding to the Animal Welfare Fund?

The Animal Welfare Fund accepts applications on a rolling basis. If your work fits our funding scope, don’t hesitate to apply using the link below.

Apply here

If your project falls outside our scope, but you believe it can create high impact for animals, feel free to apply nonetheless or contact us with any questions at: animalwelfare@effectivealtruismfunds.org

For more information about EA Funds in general, see our FAQ page.

Fund Managers

Fund Advisors