What Effective Animal Advocacy Looks Like
The Faunalytics Year in Review – 2017
At Faunalytics, we’ve been at the forefront of effective animal advocacy for nearly two decades. Since 2000, we’ve been a leading voice – and practitioner – of the movement’s use of research and data to maximize impact. And it’s all thanks to you.
This year, we summarized more than 220 studies in our library to keep advocates informed of the latest research. We worked with other nonprofits like Animal Equality and Maddie’s Fund to understand the impact of campus activism, animal sheltering, and other tactics. And we launched new independent studies about “clean meat” and a multi-country comparison of attitudes toward animals.
It’s for these reasons that Faunalytics was recently named a “Standout Charity” by Animal Charity Evaluators. We’re the smallest organization on this year’s recommended charity list and the only one fully dedicated to empowering advocates through information. Showing our commitment to transparency, we’re also a GuideStar “platinum” nonprofit.
Please keep reading to get the exciting details of our work in 2017! As we reflect on the past year, the Faunalytics team is incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished. But we’re even more grateful for your continued support. Whether you’ve volunteered, donated, shared our research, or just been a casual reader, we appreciate you and your work for animals.
After reading about our accomplishments, we hope you’ll be proud too. If you support the essential work that Faunalytics does for animals, please make a year-end, tax-deductible donation of any amount using our secure form.
Collaborative and Independent Studies
Faunalytics’ independent studies have the power to focus advocates on what matters most. From the beginning, we have collaborated with other groups to conduct research and use the result to inform animal advocacy. This past year, Faunalytics launched several new studies and continued our work to compile existing research and track attitudes and behavior.
- Faunalytics is leading a study to test different messages that might address concerns about the perceived unnaturalness of “clean” (cultured) meat.
- We completed the tenth year of the Faunalytics Animal Tracker, which is the only longitudinal survey of animal-related attitudes and behavior.
- Faunalytics is conducting a multi-national study to compare attitudes and behavior regarding farmed animals and veg*ism across five different countries.
- We researched and published a new “fundamental” series of infographics describing the use and abuse of animals in research, including dissection.
- We created bibliographies and discussion groups to help organize research efforts for both plant-based and “clean” animal product alternatives.
Finding, Sharing, and Summarizing Research
The Faunalytics Research Library is the movement’s primary source for new research and insight about animal advocacy. With program expenses of less than 10 cents per reader, it’s also incredibly cost-effective. We aggregate research from academics, governments, businesses, and other advocates and interpret the research results to help people help animals. In 2017:
- Faunalytics identified more than 220 studies, summarized their implications for advocates, and shared them in our research library.
- We had more than 300,000 users visit the Faunalytics research library and website, including animal advocates, students, scholars, and researchers.
- We created three new outline summaries on the social psychology of attitude change, behavior change, and attitude-behavior consistency.
- Thousands of animal advocates received our emails, which summarize the latest and most important research about animal-related attitudes and behavior.
- We provided practical tips for advocates doing their own research through a series of informative blog posts from Faunalytics experts and guests.
Empowering Groups Big and Small
Sometimes, animal groups don’t have the time or expertise to conduct their own research. Faunalytics fills the gap by working directly with these groups. Following are just a few of our partner projects from 2017.
- We just finished an exciting project with Animal Equality: a randomized controlled trial of the impact of their iAnimal 360-degree “virtual reality” videos!
- Faunalytics is working with a group of grantmakers to develop a database and interactive map of animal-related grants to help understand the funding landscape.
- We worked with Alley Cat Allies, Best Friends, the American Anti-Vivisection Society, and EJF Philanthropies to explore custom topics and audiences through our Animal Tracker survey.
- Faunalytics continued our work with Farm Sanctuary to evaluate the impact of their sanctuary tours on visitors’ attitudes and behavior.
- We worked with Maddie’s Fund to combine sheltering and demographic info in a collaborative database for shelters to benchmark their efforts for animals.
- We provided free help to groups including the Palestinian Animal League, the Institute for Humane Education, the Vegan Society, and Farm Forward.
Advocating for Effectiveness
Conducting independent research, aggregating third-party studies in our library, and helping other groups is only part of our work at Faunalytics. Ever since we began, we have also encouraged others to use research to be more effective and strategic in their advocacy. We’re excited to be part of an animal protection movement that is rapidly evolving and increasing its collective impact.
- We presented research insights to hundreds of animal advocates at conferences including Animal Rights 2017 (two sessions) and Animal Care Expo (two sessions).
- Faunalytics was featured in an NPR article about data on the number of U.S. vegetarians and vegans that observed, “There is urgent need for a more thorough polling.”
- Board president Caryn Ginsberg represented the animal protection field and shared findings from our work with Animal Equality at a gathering of behavior change marketers at the World Social Marketing Conference.
- In our annual Faunalytics community survey, 91% of respondents said they think research is important to improving animal advocacy – 66% say it’s “extremely” important.
- Faunalytics also launched a new online shop! You can now support our essential work with your purchase of t-shirts, tape measures, and notebooks.
Informed Action. Greater Reaction.
How did Faunalytics accomplish so much in 2017 with a team of just three paid staff and an annual budget of less than $150,000? By operating efficiently, working with volunteers and minimizing overhead costs. We keep our expenses low and our impact high to do the most with your contributions!
Sadly, not all donors to animal causes understand the leveraged impact of a group like Faunalytics. In fact, less than a quarter of our income this year will come from individual donations. If you’re one of those people who believes in the importance of research to help save more animals, then you’re special and we really need your support!
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