For over two years, our Research Ambassadors have been working with animal advocacy groups to help them understand the importance of data and how to use research in their work. This program has been a great success (take a peek below to see the data), but we are always looking for better ways to serve our changing audiences at Faunalytics.

This year, we are growing the Research Ambassador Project to better reflect our audience and their understanding of research. We made this decision for two reasons: many advocates have indicated that they want more specific and actionable research-based advice. Secondly, we’re rapidly approaching research knowledge saturation: so many advocates have already taken a Research Ambassador presentation on the importance of research that we’re running out of new organizations to pitch to — in our opinion, a movement that’s more research-minded is probably the best problem to have!

So, in accordance with our growing set of practical resources, we are pleased to announce our expansion of the Research Ambassador program to include new “Applying The Findings” modules! These modules have been created to appeal to specific types of advocates to give them specific and actionable pieces of advice. These modules include:

• Social Media Advocacy
• Protest and Demonstration
• Plant-Based Nudges and Defaults
• University Advocates: A Guide for Activism
• Journalists and Writers: Crafting a Convincing Message
• How to Make and Keep a Vegan

Each of these modules will cover the available research in a lay-friendly way and our Ambassadors will be on hand to answer any questions that arise. Before taking an “Apply the Findings” module, we recommend that advocates either take our “Importance of Research” module (our standard Research Ambassador presentation) or take our FAST Academy course to familiarize themselves with how to use research in their work — foundational to understanding the intricacies of certain studies.

To request a module, click here.

While we are excited about the next steps of the Research Ambassador program, we also want to reflect on the many successes we’ve accomplished in the last two years.

What We’ve Accomplished So Far

The success of our Ambassador Project can be measured by its impressive reach: during the first two years of the project, our ambassadors reached over 680 people from 104 different organizations in at least 33 different countries, and many more have seen the presentations via recordings and social media live streams.

We also measured the deeper impact of this project through feedback from the advocates who attended our workshops. We asked audience members to respond to pre- and post-presentation surveys to gauge their understanding of and satisfaction with the content. Their insights helped us continue to improve the quality of our presentations.

One of the goals of the program is to help advocates use Faunalytics more effectively, and that starts with our programs. We’re glad that these presentations have allowed organizations to engage with our Faunalytics resources more effectively, as seen here:

Of course, we’re never interested in pure self-promotion. We want advocates to engage with Faunalytics because we believe that following the data is critical to having an effective movement, thus saving more animal lives. That’s why the following stats are most exciting to us — it shows that these presentations are helping to make the movement more data-driven!

• 84% want to be more up-to-date on the latest relevant studies.
• 76% plan to use Faunalytics to improve their advocacy techniques.
• 76% will use our tools to improve their advocacy materials.

Although we cannot guarantee that every organization will reach their advocacy goals, we know that a data-driven approach to decision-making is certainly better than “going with their gut,” as 48% of our audience claimed to do beforehand.

Besides these impressive data points, we also received encouraging comments from participating advocates like Lisa Apfelberg from Jewish Veg who said: “What a gift to be walked through the many resources that can be valuable to us and useful to us. Your work is a gift to our community and having this handheld private orientation is so smart of you to do and helps us to learn more and be able to quickly use the resources.”

An anonymous participant mentioned that the best thing about their presentation was “This workshop refreshed my mind about approaches to advocacy and sparked great ideas!” While others like Sarah Johnson from Vegan FTA had a more specific plan on how to use the information received: “I think recognizing some key things that could help with decisions in how we create social media content.”

No matter what specific change you’re aiming to make, these presentations have already helped numerous organizations strategize and plan their next steps. The feedback from Azul Cardozo of Animal Save Movement truly sheds light on the importance of this project:

“As global campaigns director for Animal Save Movement, I am always on the lookout for reliable tools and resources to inform and strengthen our Movement’s campaigns and actions. The presentation’s focus on providing accurate and up-to-date data and in-depth research is extremely helpful and inspiring.”

This blog was co-written by Bruno Link. Bruno has been a research ambassador for Faunalytics since 2022. He comes from a family of animal farmers and grew up witnessing the cruelty of animal agriculture first-hand which led him to become vegetarian when he was 19 and vegan four years later. He has a background in finance and international relations and is passionate about animal welfare and social justice.