As a charitable organization focused on helping animal advocates be as effective as possible, impact isn’t just a nice-to-have extra — it’s integral to everything we do. All of our work is guided by our Theory of Change, where we design our programs and projects to have maximum impact for animals, advocates, and the animal protection movement. Below, we share a detailed look at our Theory of Change and take you on a tour of Faunalytics’ programs and the impact we’ve made. You can also click any of the quick access links below for an inside look at each of our impact surveys.
Faunalytics’ 2026 Community Survey Results
Tracking Our Direct Impact: A Case Study Using Process Tracing
Faunalytics’ 2025 Year In Review & 2026 Plans
Five Years Of Faunalytics’ Office Hours: Feedback From Advocates
Research Ambassador Project: New Offerings & Our Impact (So Far)
Evaluating Our Effectiveness At Faunalytics
Our Theory Of Change
All of the work we do is in service of one end goal: to create positive change and a better world for animals. By providing access to actionable research, we help advocates improve their activism, advance their skills, connect with other advocates, and expand capacity in the movement. By improving outcomes for advocates, we also help support improved outcomes for the movement writ large: by helping organizations work more effectively and strategically, and helping to create a collaborative and data-driven ecosystem. In turn, more effective advocates and organizations create a thriving movement that creates a positive impact for animals.
Take a walk through our Theory of Change below, where we discuss how we achieve our mission and, and provide evidence and narratives that demonstrate how we have been making a positive impact for the past 25 years.
Faunalytics Programs & Outputs
Access To Research
To be able to use research, advocates first have to be able to find and access research! We hear again and again from advocates that it’s hard to get access to the research and data they need, due to three common barriers: knowledge gaps on critical topics, study findings hidden behind paywalls or academic jargon, and an overload of information that is difficult to synthesize into clear, practical guidance. We offer several different research-based offerings to directly address each of these barriers that animal advocates regularly face.
Original Studies
Our original research studies fill important knowledge gaps in the movement by studying high impact topics, guided by advocate feedback. Each year, we conduct a rigorous, multi-stage Research Prioritization process to determine which studies to conduct. We prioritize topics that we think will be actionable with advocates and impactful for animals. Over the past 25 years we have published over 65 original studies that provide recommendations and insights for animal advocates – and thanks to our supporters, we have many upcoming studies on the way!
Research Library
Our most widely used resource, our library is home to over 6,000 summaries of research on animal advocacy! Our library provides access to a vast array of important research for advocates who may not otherwise be able to access or interpret these findings. Faunalytics’ summaries cover a wide range of research topics relating to animal welfare, and are written in approachable language which highlights actionable takeaways for advocates. Our library is easily searchable by topic, country, or species, allowing advocates to find, organize, and manage the most important research they need to inform their advocacy efforts.
Data Visuals & Resources
Advocates have increasingly expressed a clear need for data summarization and synthesis – resources with takeaways that are quick and easy to digest while also providing a clear summary of research on a given topic. Our visual resource collection (including infographics, factsheets, videos, and Faunalytics Fundamentals) present information and data in visually appealing and easy to understand formats. We also have resources like our Tactics in Practice series, which provides a summary and analysis of existing research on a variety of differing advocacy tactics/interventions, one by one. Resources like these take the burden of research of advocates and instead provide them with the insights they need to shape their strategy. .
Translated Resources Hub
The animal protection movement is a global movement. To ensure research is accessible worldwide, we created a translated resources hub, which offers a selection of our research and study summaries in languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Hindi, and more. We already have almost 200 translated resources available on this hub, and we’ll continue to expand these resources in the years to come.
Capacity Building
In addition to producing and sharing research, we also provide direct support to advocates, helping them to better understand how to use research and data in their own work, how to interpret, vet, and understand research findings, and even how to conduct research of their own. That is, we aim to provide advocates not just with information, but with skills they can use to improve their advocacy and create a data-driven movement.
Office Hours
In our pro bono Office Hours, advocates can meet with members of our research team to get advice, information, and support tailored to their specific needs. We can provide support like helping advocates track down key information, helping them interpret evidence, and providing them with feedback on survey instruments and study design. Since its inception in 2019, we have supported over 600+ advocates via our Office Hours.
Research Advice Hub
To help advocates conduct their own research and increase their data literacy, we curate a Research Advice Hub. Here, advocates can find helpful guides about common research practices such as how to design a study, how to choose survey questions, analyzing results, and much more. We also offer an online research glossary, which provides accessible definitions of commonly used research terms and their specific uses in animal advocacy contexts. We currently offer over a dozen resources and counting on this advice hub, which we provide as a supplement to our Office Hours program.
Fauna Connections
Each year, we host a free, virtual symposium designed to bring the latest research findings directly to animal advocates. This event features flash presentations from academics and researchers sharing their latest original research, along with its direct applications to animal advocacy. This symposium allows advocates to get a clear sense of cutting edge findings and themes in recent research that can inform their work. Since we began hosting this symposium in 2022, over 2,000 people have attended this event, over 90 researchers have given presentations on a wide range of important topics, and the presentations on Youtube have been viewed over 800,000 times.
Ambassador Services
Our Research Ambassadors provide free, customized presentations to animal advocacy organizations, groups, and university clubs around the world. The goal of these presentations is to help people level up their advocacy by promoting and supporting the use of research and data in the animal protection movement. Our talented team of ambassadors have provided over 100 presentations in over 25 countries!
Transforming Information Into Impact
For our resources to help advocates, they first have to reach advocates. Below, we demonstrate the wide range of ways in which we reach advocates across platforms and outreach strategies. As a result we have reached thousands of advocates across the globe!
Impact For Advocates
Accessible & Actionable Research
Once our resources have reached advocates, our goal is to ensure that information is accessible, useful, and relevant for their advocacy.
Skilled & Connected Advocates
Our goal is to provide support with increasing skills, so that advocates can access, engage with, and use generative evidence-based strategies. We also support advocates to become more connected with the research community and others conducting research.
Impact For The Movement
By supporting advocates with the earlier stages of our Theory of Change, we also create downstream impact for the movement more broadly, both for advocates and animals.
More Effective Organization
Our work enables more effective organizations and advocacy efforts. Our research, resources, and support are used to increase legitimacy, improve decision-making, support evidence-based impact evaluation, and enable more efficient use of time and money to apply to advocacy work. Advocacy organizations use our work to inform their strategic decisions and improve the quality and accuracy of their materials and advocacy tactics.
A Coordinated And Data-Driven Eco-System
We are excited to share that we are investing in this area as a key priority. We aim to be collaborative leaders in our movement by bringing together researchers across domains to make our research community more coordinated. We also use our expertise to help animal organizations connect and collaborate effectively with academics, stakeholders, and other NGOs. We are excited to share details about our plans to build this ecosystem, and some early evidence of our impact.
- Each month we host RECAP (Research to End Consumption of Animal Products) meetings where a group of over 150 researchers from the movement as well as academia are invited to come together and share emerging research. Our RECAP Slack channel currently includes over 450 people interested in research on ending animal product consumption.
- Each month we host an Intergroup Research Call, connecting researchers from over a dozen animal advocacy research organizations to share research priorities, recent findings, and upcoming projects across the movement.
- In 2026-2027, we are working to lead the creation of a movement-wide collaborative research agenda to help researchers in our movement better find ways to collaborate, and to help prevent duplication of efforts across organizations.
- And as always, our library summaries help connect advocates to emerging research from academics in accessible and actionable ways.
Impact For Animals
Ultimately, the driving force behind everything we do is to create positive change and a better world for animals. By providing evidence-based research, resources, and support to advocates across the global movement, our work can be used to influence:
- Public opinion and behavior – creating conditions where people engage in more pro-animal attitudes and actions.
- Institutional and corporate practices – creating changes that can lead to better lives for large numbers of animals, especially farmed animals
- Policy and law – creating systemic changes that help animals and improve our food system and environment
Year after year, advocates report that our work helps them decrease animal suffering, demonstrating the most important impact we can have! We will continue to find ways to help advocates to help animals.
