Launching the India Animal Welfare Funding Circle

By Shrilaxmi 🔸 @ 2025-12-26T10:03 (+63)

TL;DR

Launching the India Animal Welfare Funding Circle: a group of donors looking to support high-impact animal welfare work in India. The Jan 2026 RFP is now open, with grants up to INR 75 lakhs or 50% of annual operating expenses, and scope across farmed animals, community and working animals, and animals used in labs. We're inviting Indian nonprofits to apply, interested funders to join us, and everyone to share this with people who could be interested!

👉 Apply here: [link]

Why another funding circle? Why India? Why animal welfare?

• Funding circles reduce coordination failures like duplicated diligence, fragmented giving, and missed opportunities, especially in areas like policy, research, and movement-building, where impact is harder to evaluate but potentially very large.
• India-specific animal welfare work often requires local context and is sometimes a poor fit for global funders, despite strong potential. An India-focused circle helps channel local capital more effectively and frees up global funding for other cause areas/regions.
• Animal welfare remains highly neglected relative to scale. In India, small, well-targeted grants can influence systems affecting very large numbers of animals, particularly through policy, corporate change, and capacity-building.

A note on priorities and evidence

The funding circle is donor-driven in that participating funders ultimately decide what they fund. As a result, priorities in any given round may not perfectly track what a purely research-led process would select.

We think it’s important to be explicit about this tradeoff. Many Indian donors interested in animals are new to EA ideas and unlikely to converge on them without structured exposure to research and evidence. The funding circle is designed as a bridge: mobilising funding that might otherwise be less effective, while gradually improving circle and donor epistemics through repeated, evidence-informed discussions.

We also see this as complementary to global animal funds. By supporting effective, locally grounded work in India, the circle helps reduce pressure on global funding pools and increases overall movement capacity.

Request for Proposals

About this funding opportunity

The India Animal Welfare Funding Circle brings together donors to support strategic, scalable interventions that can reduce animal suffering.

The circle aims to:

• pool diligence and reduce duplicated grantmaking effort,
• surface under-the-radar but high-potential Indian organisations,
• bring donors closer to evidence-informed animal welfare thinking over time, and
• strengthen the overall animal welfare ecosystem in India.

Funding decisions are made by individual donors, supported by shared research, evaluation, and facilitation.

What this RFP is for

We are seeking proposals with strong theories of change and learning orientation, particularly in the following areas (non-exhaustive):

• Policy & legal advocacy
• Research & evidence generation
• Corporate engagement & supply-chain reform
• Dietary change & plant-based nutrition
• Alternative proteins
• Welfare standards, compliance & enforcement
• Movement- and capacity-building, including leadership and talent development

Both one-off and multi-year proposals are welcome.

Who should apply

We welcome applications from Indian non-profit organisations, particularly:

• Organisations with 80G and 12A certificates
• Early- to mid-scale organisations (often with annual budgets under ~₹2 crore), though larger organisations may apply for well-scoped projects
• Teams that are evidence-informed, learning-oriented, and able to execute

We are open to projects without a completed pilot if the underlying logic and execution capacity are strong.

Grant size and timelines

• Grant size: up to ₹75 lakhs or 50% of annual operating expenses (whichever is lower)
• Multi-year support: considered for strong applications
• Applications open: 15 December 2025 – 15 January 2026
• Funding decisions: February 2026
• Grant disbursal: April 2026

Scope: geography and animal groups

Geography

• All funded work must be implemented in India.

Animal groups in scope

• Farmed animals
• Community and working animals
• Animals used in laboratories

Out of scope

• Wildlife-focused projects
• Companion animal rescue, shelters, ABC programmes, or long-term direct care (with very limited exceptions for clearly strategic work)

👉 Apply here: [link]

Help us spread the word!

If you’re a funder, researcher, or connector in the EA or animal welfare ecosystem, we’d appreciate your help sharing this RFP with Indian organisations doing thoughtful, high-impact work—especially groups that may not usually access EA-aligned funding.

For questions, please contact us at awfc@impactfulgiving.in.