Updated: August 2022
As an organization that exists to support the work being done to reduce animal suffering, Faunalytics’ Board and Staff believe that the animal protection movement is only as strong as the people who make up our community.
We are committed to shining a brighter spotlight on the variety of human issues that overlap with animal advocacy, such as the experiences of animal advocates from marginalized communities, the dangers of slaughterhouse work, and the privileged image of veganism. By providing resources that recognize the myriad of issues that intersect with animal advocacy, we believe Faunalytics can help our movement be more effective.
We also regularly examine our internal practices, policies, and organizational culture to explore how we can foster a diverse and welcoming workplace. Please read on to learn more about the efforts we’re taking to advance equity and inclusion at Faunalytics.
Original Research: We’ve always prioritized research that will be useful to as many animal advocates as possible. But to move beyond providing equal support into providing equitable support, we will ensure that we include Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority (BIPGM) perspectives in our research prioritization process. This includes soliciting their feedback on individual studies and considering how potential projects could be made useful to BIPGM advocates. When we conduct research that is focused outside of the U.S. and Canada (where our team members are based), we strive to partner with local researchers and advocates to ensure that we are representing our data in the proper context and with the proper nuance. We’re also working to ensure that BIPGM participants’ views are meaningfully represented during data collection (an area we’ve fallen short in the past), and giving participants fair compensation for their participation time.
Research Library: We’ve refined how we select articles for our Research Library, putting more emphasis on finding animal advocacy research that is relevant to the global majority. We are actively seeking out research from the Global South and East, research focused on supporting marginalized communities, and research that speaks to equity issues within animal advocacy. We’re also seeking guest bloggers from the global majority to inform our audience about their animal advocacy efforts and experiences in the movement.
Research Support: As our team grows, we have started offering Office Hours in additional time zones in order to make ourselves available to even more advocates. Additionally, we are in the process of having our research reports and relevant study summaries professionally translated into multiple languages in order to support the global animal advocacy community. Via our new Research Ambassador outreach project, we’ve prioritized recruiting bilingual Ambassadors so that language isn’t a deterrent when connecting with advocates. We also feature BIPGM-led organizations in our communications to help amplify their work; for example, via our quarterly “Advocate Spotlight” feature in our newsletter and on social media.
Community Events: When Faunalytics hosts public events, we will strive to ensure that BIPGM and/or LGBTQ+ advocates makeup at least 50% or more of our guest speakers for the event. Keynote speakers will receive a stipend to acknowledge the value of their time and support their work.
Accessibility: We’re exploring how we can make our resources more accessible to all advocates by providing data and insights in multiple formats, including video, audio, and written versions. We’re also launching future web and digital design features with an eye on greater inclusivity for those with visual and other impairments that affect web surfing or reading, including different forms of color-blindness. Though our website already has coding which helps organize content for visually impaired readers, we will be making enhancements to that code to improve the experience. Additionally, all of our videos now have closed captioning, and all images posted on social media now include alt text.
Volunteer Program: While our volunteer program already includes and welcomes animal advocates from around the world, we’re exploring ways of including diverse advocates more intentionally and thoughtfully. We want to provide volunteer opportunities to advocates because they can be an important stepping stone to paid work, but we also recognize that relying on the unpaid labor of volunteers — especially BIPGM volunteers — could become exploitative. To avoid this, we share relevant job opportunities with volunteers when they come up and have started incorporating compensation for larger volunteer tasks into our fundraising proposals.
Personnel: One key growth area for Faunalytics is welcoming new Board and Staff members to our team. In addition to prioritizing diverse skill sets and backgrounds, we acknowledge that we have an opportunity to improve the diversity of our team. We are actively seeking out new Board members and Advisors, but we also welcome applicant referrals. Additionally, we’re evaluating our hiring strategies, compensation practices, and overall work culture to ensure that our organization attracts, engages, and supports team members from all walks of life. To avoid unintentional bias, we hide job candidates’ names from applications during the initial screening process and are now compensating final stage job applicants for their time during our interview process. We’ve also established ways of providing flexibility and support to better accommodate staff with physical or mental disabilities.
Fundraising: Many funders, the majority of whom are white, have the power to influence decisions among organizations. Faunalytics treats our donors as important contributors to our work, and we greatly value their feedback. However, we place an emphasis on the needs of animal advocates when making programmatic decisions, via our Research Prioritization Process and Community Survey. Faunalytics’ development team has also joined the Community-Centric Fundraising group, which promotes fundraising practices grounded in equity and social justice.
Policies & Practices: We regularly review our policies and internal practices for how well they help us provide an equitable and inclusive environment within our organization. We have recently updated our anti-harassment and non-discrimination policy and are working on identifying other areas where we can continue to improve as an organization.
Professional Development: In a meta-analysis of the effects of diversity training, researchers found the positive effects of diversity training were greater when training was complemented by other diversity initiatives, and conducted over a significant period of time. Our Executive Director and Communications Manager have attended formal Racial Equity Trainings, and our team engages in bi-weekly readings and monthly discussions on DEI topics. These readings have helped us find and pursue many of the opportunities for improvement described above. Moving forward, we will also use Global Diversity and Inclusion benchmarking to guide our work further.
The initiatives outlined above are part of our ongoing commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in our organization, and we look forward to keeping our community updated on this important work. If you believe there’s something we’re missing, or if you think there’s another way we can live up to our mission to empower animal advocates, we would love to hear from you.
Further Reading
Faunalytics’ DEI reading list (mentioned above), an ever-growing collection of research, articles, blogs, and more, has been valuable to our team’s growth and may be of interest to others seeking to inform themselves and their own teams on DEI issues. However, please keep in mind that we are not experts in any of these subject matters, nor do we necessarily endorse the ideas shared in these articles, but have found these readings to be instrumental in creating productive discussions about a variety of important topics.
To learn more about racial equity in animal protection, we also encourage advocates to explore Encompass Essays, a collection of essays by farmed animal advocates who are committed to prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion as we work to create a more just movement. To learn more about how you can advance diversity and inclusion in your organization, visit The Centre for Global Inclusion.
