Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from April to October 2024

By KarolinaSarek🔸, Neil_Dullaghan🔹 , Ula Zarosa, Zoë Sigle, Ren Ryba @ 2024-11-27T11:43 (+60)

Introduction

This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund's grantmaking from April 1 2024 to October 1 2024 (6 months). It follows the previous May 2022–March 2024 payout report.

As mentioned in the recently published 2024 review, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to increase transparency and prioritize more frequent communications about our work. As part of those efforts, we've resumed regular publication of detailed payout reports after previously reducing our public reporting to focus fund manager capacity on grant evaluations. With additional support now in place, we've streamlined our reporting process to provide comprehensive information about our grants and their intended impact. Given that these are recent grants, outcomes data will not be included in the initial payout reports. We plan to share these reports quarterly to keep the community informed of our grantmaking activities.

• Total funding recommended: $2,438,266
• Total funding paid out: $2,438,266
• Number of grants paid out: 37
• Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 37/119 = 31.1%
• Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 37/206 = 18.0%

Four of our grantees, who received a total of $196,618, requested that we do not include public reports for their grants (you can read our policy on public reporting here). 

Highlighted Grants

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 likely very high.

Sustainable Synergy Initiative ($26,592): Development of guidelines for farmed fish and chickens in Uganda

In June 2024, the Animal Welfare Fund provided a $26,592 grant to Sustainable Synergy Initiative (a new organisation, launched for the purpose of this project) to support the development of species-specific guidelines for farmed animals in Uganda, with a primary focus on fish and chickens. By prioritising these species, which constitute 67% (fish) and 17% (chickens) of Uganda's farmed animal population, the initiative seeks to enhance animal welfare standards and mitigate the negative impacts of industrialised farming practices. Through tailored guidelines addressing the unique needs of fish and chickens, the project aims to promote humane farming practices and reduce the prevalence of factory farming in Uganda.

Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal ($100,000): Project and staff expenses to work on corporate welfare washing in cage-free accountability in Brazil

In September 2024, the Animal Welfare Fund provided a grant of $100,000 to Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal to support accountability work for companies who already have committed to banning cages in their egg supply chains. The project aims to increase transparent reporting from 140 companies who are transitioning or have already transitioned to cage-free egg production. They will then launch a national campaign to publicize companies who are simply “humane washing,” but not actually fulfilling their commitments.

Fórum is a professional and experienced organization with a strong track record of engaging with companies throughout Brazil that have made cage-free commitments. They had strong outcomes using previous funding from the AWF and have increasingly improved their efforts to strongly pressure companies into reporting and improving their progress. The fund managers also believe that cage-free accountability efforts are an especially effective intervention because companies must be engaged frequently in order to fulfill their commitments. Additionally, Brazil has a high population of farmed animals (e.g., 255 million layer hens slaughtered in 2021 per FAOSTAT data) but is somewhat neglected in terms of funding. Fórum’s campaign involving these 140 companies would improve the welfare of 13 million hens.

Animal Friends Jogja (Perkumpulan Sahabat Satwa Jogja) ($10,000): A 12 month stipend and expenses for a staff member to continue government advocacy on cage-free / FA welfare legislative change

In August 2024, the Animal Welfare Fund recommended a grant of $10,000 to Animal Friends Jogja. The grant covers 12 months of funding for a staff member to advocate for cage-free legislation to end caged layer hen and duck farming in Indonesia. Animal Friends Jogja has been engaging stakeholders in local, regional, and national governments and aims to continue consistent meetings and focus group discussions to present recommendations for policy change. They will also advocate for local governments to support farmers transitioning to cage-free farming.

Animal Friends Jogja is one of the three leading organizations working on cage-free advocacy in Indonesia. They have an established track record of positive relations with government officials and contributed to successful regional bans on dog and cat meat trade. According to FAOSTAT data, as of 2017, Indonesia's poultry sector included approximately 205 million layer hens and 50 million ducks in intensive farming systems. Given these numbers, successful welfare reforms in Indonesia's could improve conditions for hundreds of millions of birds annually at a relatively low cost per animal affected. Moreover, the Indonesian government is currently planning policy priorities for the next twenty years, so this is a critical moment for impact organizations like Animal Friends Jogja to consult on cage-free transition efforts.

Other writings

The following articles or writeups published since the last payout report can provide a good overview of the Animal Welfare Fund, or otherwise be very helpful to donors and community members.

• EA Animal Welfare Fund: 2024 Review, Changes, and Plans
  • In 2024, the AWF has made organizational changes, enabling us to expand the scope of our impact on the wellbeing of animals.
  • As of November 11, the AWF has made a total of $3.7M across 51 grants in 2024. The most frequently funded strategic areas were welfare campaigns, policy advocacy, and research. The most frequently targeted species were egg-laying hens followed by multiple farmed animals, wild animals, and shrimps.
  • In the future, the AWF plans to make further organizational changes, increase transparency and communications about the Fund’s activities, improve the grant evaluation process, and increase funding in order to expand annual regranting.
• How much extra funding can EA AWF regrant?
  • The AWF has approximately $6.3M in room for more funding as of November 2024.
  • More funding would allow the AWF to fund more new opportunities that would have otherwise met the bar for funding but were not funded due to financial constraints.
  • Extra funding would also give the AWF the capacity to: make additional grants to previous grantees, conduct outreach to receive more promising applications, support high-impact areas that other grantakers have stopped funding, fund new projects coming from incubators, and engage in active grantmaking.

Other Grants We Made During This Time Period

Below is a list of about 30 other grants, totaling over $2.1 million, that the Animal Welfare Fund made during this period to support work on animal welfare in many countries.