Project summary

The animal advocacy movement’s best efforts to reduce the suffering caused by factory farming are among the most cost-effective ways to improve the world that anyone has identified to date. But this movement struggles to meaningfully grow its impact — scaling proven solutions and testing new ones — because of one key constraint: Funding.

Farmed animal welfare charities receive just $210 million (~0.02%) of the roughly one trillion dollars donated to charity each year. Shifting even a small amount of these resources towards helping farmed animals would be transformational for the movement. That is our mission.

FarmKind is a fundraising organisation that aims to generate new funding for impactful animal charities. Our ambition is that, by the end of our fifth year, $1 invested in our organisation will generate $10 for the movement.

In July 2024 we launched our platform: https://farmkind.giving/

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Our goal is to bring new donors into the farmed animal advocacy movement.

Our messaging:

To do this, we plan to speak to people differently to how other animal organizations or effective giving organizations speak to them: We will meet people where they’re at, speaking to them in terms of what they really care about rather than what we wish they cared about. We do this because we believe it is likely more effective and because it’s a neglected approach (so we expect it to add more value than being yet another similar voice to other organizations).

• Animal organizations: When the average person interacts with animal welfare organizations they hear almost entirely one message: “Go Vegan”. It’s an important call to action, but many people aren’t willing or able to follow it right now, and often these people stop listening. This is a wasted opportunity. We differ from most animal welfare organizations in that we try hard not to alienate anyone by making them feel judged. We aim to empower people by giving them another way they can take action to fix factory farming. 

• Effective giving organizations: Most effective giving organizations focus almost entirely on the effectiveness of different charities in their messaging. But the evidence is clear that this is at best a secondary motivator for people’s donation. We’re different in that we don’t judge people for wanting to donate to ineffective charities that they feel a personal connection with. Instead, we empower them to both satisfy this emotional motivation for giving and the secondary motivation to have a large impact. We do this with our giving construct which is inspired by GivingMultiplier.org and the RCT behind it.

Our outreach strategy:

We are testing a range of outreach approaches:

• Earned media: We’ll use Thom’s PR expertise and attention-grabbing headlines to get featured in news media, getting in front of millions of potential donors at no financial cost. We'll secure guest appearances on podcasts and influencers' channels by positioning ourselves as experts with a unique perspective on how normal people can make a big difference towards fix factory farming.

• Owned media: We’ll drive a steady stream of platform visitors through search engine optimized blogs (targeting searches like “how to stop factory farming”) and viral videos and infographics on social media

• Paid media: We're testing various paid advertising campaigns to determine whether they can be cost-effective 'money printers' for the animal movement.

How will this funding be used?

We would add this funding to our Bonus Fund to incentivise more donors to donate to fix factory farming. This approach is based on RCT evidence.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Our team is made up of our two co-founders:

Aidan Alexander

• Director of Programs at Charity Entrepreneurship: Brings expertise on successfully launching new charities like this one, having run the incubation program and helped launch 10 charities during his tenure.

• Co-author of How to Launch a High-Impact Foundation and co-designed and facilitated AIM’s Impactful Grantmaking Program: He can ensure we recommend effective charities.Aidan Alexander

Thom Norman

• 5 years as public relations consultant for technology start-ups and mid-sized orgs: Can secure earned media coverage and craft compelling marketing messaging.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The most likely reason this project fails is that people have low enough motivation to fix factory farming that the cost to acquire a donor is less than the lifetime value of those donors. One key intermediate outcome that would make this more likely is if we're unable to secure significant 'earned media' coverage (e.g. news media or a podcast appearance). Podcast appearances, in particular, are far more likely through warm introductions, so our ability to secure these introductions will be important for our likelihood of success.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

We have been funded by the Seed Network Funding Circle, Navigation Fund, Food System Innovation and The Pollination Project.