At Faunalytics, we aim to convey the importance of using data to set strategy, making evidence-based decisions. We do the same ourselves, conducting this annual survey to help us understand how you’re using our resources, which ones are most helpful, and where we have opportunities to grow to better support the movement. 

This blog is a key step in our own annual impact monitoring journey, sharing the findings from our latest Community Survey with you. Below, we explore the quantitative and qualitative results, and give you a sneak preview of how we plan to make use of them this year and beyond.

Survey Overview

The 2024 Faunalytics Community Survey ran for the full month of May, including during our time at the AVA Summit, and received 654 valid responses with 495 complete surveys (76%). This is a substantial increase over last year’s 479 valid responses — thank you all for your valuable feedback! 

Every response is unique and valuable to us — even or especially the critical ones! — but it’s also important to think about how representative the sample is. This isn’t a representative survey of our community because we aren’t able to sample randomly, but if it were, the margin of error would be roughly +/- 3.8%. So it’s best to focus on general trends in the data rather than small yearly differences, and to assume that the extremes are overrepresented: that people with the strongest positive or negative feelings about us are most likely to participate.

Quantitative Results

We’re thrilled to see how happy you are with our work! 97% of respondents agreed that our work is high-quality, which we strive for in everything we do. 83% said our work is either extremely or very valuable to improving animal advocacy, on par with last year’s results. An incredible 96% of you said that you would probably or definitely recommend us to others, which is higher than ever before! We’re grateful for your support in growing our community of informed animal advocates, which is as easy as sharing our sign-up for email alerts.

We’re also pleased to share that our work continues to make an impact for animals and advocates: 79% said that our work has helped guide their advocacy decisions, and 77% that it’s improved their own or their organization’s advocacy efforts. But best of all, 66% of respondents said that Faunalytics’ work has helped them or their organization reduce suffering and save animal lives! This is an incredibly high bar to meet as an organization doing indirect work, so this feedback means the world to us.

The majority of respondents (73%) have used our Original Research studies, 58% use our Research Library summaries, and 48% have used our Fundamentals. Use of our Original Research has spiked compared to the previous two years, and we look forward to adding more topics to the lineup.

Community Characteristics

Supporting animal protection comes in many different forms, and many of you contribute on your own time: 66% of Faunalytics’ audience is made up of volunteers, independent advocates, academics, and students:

Similar to previous years, the vast majority of our audience is primarily focused on animals used for food (64%). In comparison, 10% are focused primarily on companion animals, 7% on wild animals, 7% on animals used in science, 1% on animals used in entertainment, and 1% on animals used for fashion and textiles. The remaining 7% of respondents selected “other,” providing either more general or more specific answers.

Because Faunalytics bridges different types of animal advocacy, we always ask participants about their alignment with the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. As in previous years, our community spans the whole range of perspectives, from 35% who were unfamiliar or not at all aligned with EA, to 14% whose work is completely aligned with EA. In the middle, most of our community (51%) do work that is slightly to very (but not completely) aligned with EA.

Finally, we collect (optional) demographic data about our audience, which helps us support the needs of marginalized and underrepresented advocates. Specifically, respondents shared the following details:

• 66% women, 31% men, 3% non-binary and other genders
• 20% LGBTQ2IA+ (i.e., Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Two-Spirit, Intersex, Asexual, and other identities that fall outside of cisgender and heterosexual paradigms)
• 11% Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (BIPOC)
• 9% people with disabilities

The proportion of people who identified as BIPOC was slightly lower this year than last year’s 16%. This could be the result of random fluctuation or methodological differences, but we’ll keep an eye out for a trend as we work to serve advocates around the world.

Key Performance Indicators

With the exception of first-time website visitors and those who responded “no opinion/don’t know,” respondents provided the following feedback:

VALUE

• 97% of the sample agreed that our work is high-quality.
• 83% thought our work is either extremely or very valuable to improving animal advocacy.
• 96% said that they would probably or definitely recommend Faunalytics to others.
• 49% of people often or always turn to Faunalytics first for help finding or conducting animal advocacy-related research.

IMPACT

• 79% of the sample agreed that Faunalytics’ work has helped guide their advocacy decisions.
• 77% said that Faunalytics’ work has improved their own or their organization’s advocacy efforts.
• 66% agreed that Faunalytics’ work has helped them or their organization reduce suffering and save animal lives, up from 58% last year. 23% said ‘neither agree nor disagree’ and 11% disagreed. 

KPIs OVER TIME

The graph below shows the percentage of positive values (e.g., very/extremely valuable, probably/definitely) for all KPIs from 2020-2024. Most have remained fairly similar over the past few years, but we are very pleased to see 66% of our community say our work has helped them or their organization reduce suffering and save animal lives. This is our most direct measure of impact and the hardest to achieve as a capacity-building organization, so these results are extremely gratifying.

Specific Resources

USE OF RESOURCES

This year, the percentages of people who indicated using each of our main resources are as follows:

• Original research: 73%
• Library summaries:  58%
• Fundamentals: 48%
• Research Advice section of website: 13%
• Video summaries of research: 11%
• Pro bono support: 12%
• Customized Research Ambassador presentations: 5%

The Research Ambassador presentations are our newest offering, and as such not as well-used as the others. It is excluded from the over-time graphs below because this is the first year we asked about it on the Community Survey.

USE OF RESOURCES OVER TIME

Below, you’ll find a year-over-year comparison of the use of our resources. Most results are similar to previous years, though we can see a small increase in the use of our Original Research studies.

AWARENESS OF RESOURCES

This year, the percentages of people who were aware of our main resources are as follows:

• Original Research: 87%
• Library Summaries:  76%
• Fundamentals: 66%
• Research Advice Section Of Website: 40%
• Video Summaries Of Research: 29%
• Pro-Bono Support: 37%
• Customized Research Ambassador presentations: 17%

AWARENESS OF RESOURCES OVER TIME

The figure below reveals how our audience’s awareness of our main resources has changed over the past few years. 

HOW ARE OUR RESOURCES USED?

Since 2021, we’ve asked respondents how they’ve used our resources. Overall, 89% said they’ve put our resources to concrete use.

People said they’ve used our resources in many different ways, including the following:

• To stay up-to-date on the latest relevant research: 72%
• To improve advocacy materials (e.g., by adding facts): 42%
• To improve advocacy techniques (e.g., outreach method): 31%
• To help choose an advocacy strategy: 23%
• To learn about why research and data are important: 23%
• To help progress in an animal advocacy career or volunteerism: 15%
• To help design their own research or impact evaluation: 19%
• To help obtain funding or increase donations: 6%
• Other ways: 5%
• To improve internal practices at their organization: 6%

WAYS OF USING OUR RESOURCES OVER TIME

The figure below provides a year-on-year comparison of how people use our resources. 

First-Time Website Visitors

Visitors who reached the Community Survey via our website were asked whether or not it was their first time visiting the site. 145 first-time visitors responded, well up from 33 last year. 56% of those found us through a Google search, 12% via social media, 4% via word-of-mouth.

• 42% of first-time visitors said Faunalytics is a good fit for their needs (completely or very much), while most of the rest (42%) said it was too soon to say.
• 31% of people were visiting to look for research on a specific issue, 14% to browse the site, 14% to find out what Faunalytics does, and 10% to read a specific article or blog post.
• 92% said they would probably or definitely visit the site again in the future.
• 71% said they easily found everything they were looking for, 14% with difficulty, and 15% did not find what they were looking for.

Qualitative Highlights

We love numbers and statistics, and the ones above help us understand how Faunalytics’ audience uses our work, especially when looking at trends over time. But numbers are limited, so to get the full story we always include qualitative data in our assessment.

At the end of the Community Survey, respondents have the opportunity to share feedback about how they’ve benefitted from our resources and what we can do to make our work more useful. In addition to getting a better understanding of our survey findings, we use these responses to inform our strategy decisions.

Much of our community appears to see Faunalytics as occupying a unique connecting role in the animal advocacy movement. As Tanwi Wangikar of New Roots Institute said:

“Faunalytics bridges the gap between academia and advocacy by making research accessible to everyone in the movement, and creating opportunities for more important research to happen. The high level of integrity in Faunalytics’ research summaries makes them an invaluable resource especially to young professionals and students in the movement – they’re an excellent jumping off point for further research, and very useful for putting together impactful information.”

As Tanwi noted, other respondents also pointed to the trustworthiness and rigor of Faunalytics’ research as a key benefit, including one who said: 

“As a former academic librarian, I appreciate the rigor and clarity around research methods that Faunalytics provides. I can trust the information that comes from your organization, and in a movement with many competing interests, this is invaluable to me.”

Our community also appreciates that Faunalytics’ library provides access to knowledge “without having to deal with the peer-reviewed literature directly,” as one advocate succinctly put it. Another said:

“I find Faunalytics to be a great go-to place to look into animal advocacy relevant research. The research library is a nice way to stay up-to-date on what I consider otherwise to be a hard-to-track area (academia) and Faunalytics’ original research almost always has extremely relevant and valuable implications for our wider movement. Additionally, I have really enjoyed the office hours and strongly recommend them to anyone in early stages of pursuing their own research!”

Several respondents indicated that Faunalytics’ resources help them establish external legitimacy—one of the key uses of research identified in a recent study. For example, Marietheres Reinke of Expertise for Animals said:

“The study summaries and their context of why this knowledge is important help me make my arguments in position papers, policy work and lobbying. Furthermore Faunalytics articulating why data and facts are important to the animal movement have helped me legitimize my work because I work in the same field.”

The direct support we offer via our free office hours program is another benefit lauded by the community, with several people thanking Faunalytics’ staff by name in the survey comments. Chris Bryant of Bryant Research further noted:

“Faunalytics is an indispensable hub of knowledge in the animal advocacy movement. As well as research on specific advocacy topics, their research resources and infrastructure are a vital part of animal advocacy research. The team at Faunalytics have been exceptionally helpful in supporting my work in animal advocacy.”

Finally, though not descriptive of a common theme, I’d like to share a comment that deeply touched me as a long-time Faunalytics staff member and advocate. Thank  you to the person who wrote it for sharing this:

“I think one of the greatest and least-discussed benefits of Faunalytics is the hope it offers and the understanding it helps me have about the power of the animal advocacy movement. When I first began looking into activism opportunities, it was very easy to feel alone in a splintered advocacy ecosystem, and it was easy to assume that nuanced questions about impactful strategies would be impossible to answer and act upon. I believed I’d need to do so much of the foundational research on my own and didn’t have the resources to do it. The existence of Faunalytics and its polished, thoughtful, and rigorous work and deep connections with other arms of animal advocacy helped me understand how extensive and mature the existing infrastructure really is. This helps me overcome moments of decision paralysis and hopelessness, because I know so many others are and have been doing excellent and impactful work and asking the right questions about how we can help animals.

Faunalytics means we don’t have to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel, but can lean on the work others have already done to begin making meaningful change. The content is broad, deep, and easy to navigate, and I find materials like summaries of the latest research to be very helpful. I believe they understand the audience very well.”

Incorporating Suggestions From 2023

Before we turn to your suggestions from this year’s survey, let’s take a look at what we’ve done with your 2023 feedback!

Last year, some respondents suggested topics to consider for our Original Research program or Research Library, as well as new types of content that could support their work. On the basis of suggestions like these, we’ve recently launched a new Tactics In Practice (“TIPS”!) series to delve into the research behind one popular advocacy intervention at a time. The first one is about the Science of Social Media Advocacy, and more are coming soon!

Several respondents asked for more global and multilingual resources, as well as more work in low- and middle-income countries. To better serve our global community, we now compile all of our translated resources in one place! This hub links to our most useful content for readers of Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. We are also continuing to partner with the Good Growth Co. to conduct impactful research in Asia, and have multiple studies coming in 2024 and 2025 that focus on China, Southeast Asia, and other low- and middle-income countries. Further, we aim to continue expanding our global support through our multilingual office hours, Research Ambassador project, and conference presentations in multiple countries. Finally, we are currently in the process of developing language-specific micro-versions of the Faunalytics website in Spanish and Simplified Chinese.

In previous years, advocates have made suggestions about how the accessibility and usability of our website could be improved — and as we hope you’ve noticed, many of them were implemented with our relaunch earlier this year! Key features include a clearer structure and more immediate navigation, improved search functionality, and a more user-friendly design.

As we’ve grown, our reach has expanded to more and more advocates, but we appreciate that our community continues to call for increased visibility and awareness of our work. In 2023, we emphasized the importance of working directly with advocates by creating a new Research Liaison position, connecting academics and advocates through our annual Fauna Connections conference (applications open now), and growing our presence significantly at global conferences: Keep an eye out for Faunalysts in Brazil, Vietnam, and Poland this year! At the same time, we are reaching new advocates online through Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn—and subscriptions to our YouTube videos have more than quadrupled since 2022.

Following the publication of our report Research And Data As Tools In Advocates’ Decision-Making, we are additionally pursuing several new initiatives (described in detail in the report) to increase and improve the resources we offer.

Constructive Feedback & Next Steps

Each year, we carefully review respondents’ suggestions for improvement. We aim to pull out recurring themes as well as helpful ideas. Specific ideas require additional thought, but key themes include the following:

• More global content: Our community loves the research from countries in the Global South that we share and conduct, and want to see more! The most common suggestion we received on the Community Survey was for more research focused on the Global South—Asia and Latin America in particular. For a number of years now, we’ve been emphasizing global research in our original research and library summaries, and now have a sizable collection of translated content on our website. Going forward, we’re continuing to strategize new ways to expand internationally and involve advocates from traditionally underrepresented regions. We’ll also continue to translate useful resources, reach advocates around the world via our multilingual office hours, offer customized Research Ambassador presentations, and attend global conferences to get to know our community. 
• Bring in more graphics and concise, shareable findings. This suggestion is one that we’ve been working on over the past few years. It takes time —  especially when we need to find a balance with scientific rigor — but we’re gradually increasing the accessibility and usability of our work with simpler writing and more visual elements. We share detailed infographics on our website; many more simple, visually appealing stats on our Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn; and increasingly include figures and infographics in our our study summaries and Original Research reports, like this one from our report Research and Data as Tools in Advocates’ Decision-Making.
• Feature stories of how Faunalytics’ research and resources are used. Several advocates suggested we increase this type of promotion via case studies, “local stories,” and examples of how our resources can be leveraged for animals. We love this suggestion, which expands on our testimonials and some of the examples from the Community Survey above in a really helpful, vivid way.

Over the coming weeks we’ll dig into these suggestions and others to identify how we can put them into action. As always, we’ll update you on any changes and improvements we make. 

Thank You!

Whether or not you completed our Community Survey, please know that we value your input. If you have feedback on our work, we encourage you to reach out to us year-round and let us know what you think. You can do this by:

• Sending us a message on Instagram, X, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
• Leaving a comment on a blog post or study summary in our Research Library.
• Contacting us privately through our website.
• Dropping into our office hours (this is especially helpful if you have questions about what we do or how we do it).

We do our best to respond to every comment and email, but we request your patience, as thoughtful responses take time.

On behalf of all of us at Faunalytics, thank you for completing our Community Survey and helping us improve our work. In the fight to end animal suffering, we’re all in it together.

This year, 271 people entered our Community Survey prize drawing, so we drew three winners. All of the winners kindly preferred to donate their prizes to animal protection organizations, so we are happy to announce donations on their behalf to APEX Advocacy, the Nonhuman Rights Project and Catskill Animal Sanctuary (split), and SAFE Sanctuary. Thank you for your participation and generosity.