Faunalytics’ Priorities For 2020

Faunalytics has big plans and new goals for 2020! Read on to learn about the studies and priorities we’ve outlined for the coming year, and how you can support our important work to help animals and advocates around the world.

Empowering Advocates to End Animal Suffering

Last year we accomplished a tremendous amount of research to arm advocates with information and resources to help achieve our collective goal: to eliminate animal suffering. We completed over half a dozen studies and projects, added over 200 articles to our research library, and developed a new addition to our Faunalytics Fundamentals series. 

The Faunalytics team is extremely grateful to our fellow advocates, supporters, volunteers, staff, and partners. We’ve had an incredible year and it’s thanks to your generosity and ongoing support. For a more detailed overview, check out our newly published 2019 year in review.

Looking Forward: High-Impact Research Priorities

Now it’s time to look ahead and the Faunalytics team couldn’t be more excited! With new leadership, a growing research team, and a carefully planned set of priorities, we are excited to support animal advocates with the research and strategies you need to succeed.

The projects we plan to undertake in 2020 and beyond were chosen for their high impact potential on animals and the animal protection movement. We want to get to the bottom of the big questions. Our plans include an emphasis on effective advocacy, cultural barriers to advocacy, small farmed animals, corporate welfare reforms, and developing a common attitude scale to compare the impact of different types of interventions. It’s an ambitious agenda, and we can’t wait to get to work.  

One of the most frequently asked questions in our movement is whether some types of advocacy are better than others. Currently, little research has been done to compare different types of advocacy. We will examine how current attitudes and behavior are predicted by a range of past experiences with advocacy, which will provide an estimate of each strategy’s unique impact over time. 

But when considering animal suffering from a global perspective, it’s clear that current resources are disproportionately allocated to Western countries. In partnership with local animal advocacy groups (likely in China or India), we plan to conduct research to uncover the barriers and supports for specific advocacy methods. By working directly with local advocates, we will ensure that the results of this study can be put to immediate use, slowing the growth of animal abuse in other parts of the world. 

We will also investigate which emotions are most effective in increasing the number and size of donations to animal causes, whether the specific cause (e.g., farmed vs. companion animals) affects donations, and which imagery (happy animal, sad animal, graphic image) works best. Something as simple as switching out an image could have big results for major organizations. 

Corporate welfare reforms produce positive incremental change for farmed animals on a large scale and have been generally well-perceived by the public. We’d like to examine public reaction to existing and possible future reforms, identifying campaigns with the potential to make people more or less likely to buy animal products. This will enable us to increase the impact of corporate campaigns by steering the efforts toward options that will likely produce public support or positive effects on consumer behavior.

In 2020 we’ll also focus on decreasing the suffering of small farmed animals. Larger animals like cows and pigs often get the most attention while others are killed in far greater numbers. We will investigate how specific negative beliefs about chickens and fish predict reaction to an appeal to reduce or eliminate consumption of these species. This will allow us to identify the biggest barriers to reduction. With billions of animals per year affected, even small changes in public perceptions could have a very large impact.

Additionally, with a series of small studies, our research team will create a concise measure of attitudes towards farmed animals that will be validated against important and objective outcomes such as observed diet and behavior. Ideally this scale will be used by organizations to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of their programs. 

To learn more about our planned studies and how we prioritize our research, please click here.

The World’s Largest Online Animal Advocacy Library

Did you know that Faunalytics does more than conduct research? We host the world’s largest online library on animal issues and effective animal advocacy. We arm advocates with free, unlimited access to thousands of articles on topics including animals used for food, animals used in science, companion animals, wildlife, effective advocacy, and much more! We add approximately 200 carefully reviewed articles and study summaries to our library every year to ensure that animal advocates have the best and most up-to-date information. We share study results, library summaries, and other insights with thousands of animal advocates through our email alerts and newsletters. 

Our Faunalytics’ Fundamentals offer visually-engaging stats and figures on important animal topics. These infographics are fully sourced and provide a great overview of important topics in animal protection. Our series currently includes Farmed Animal Fundamentals, Research Animal Fundamentals, and Companion Animal Fundamentals. In 2020, we plan to unveil our Wildlife Fundamentals, Fundraising for Animals Fundamentals, and Veganism Fundamentals. Check back soon – our newest addition will arrive early next year.  

As part of Faunalytics’ commitment to provide you with the data you need to be effective, and to do it in a way that’s accessible, we’re making videos that summarize the key takeaways from our robust independent studies. Though we’ll always make the full results of our studies available, these summary videos give you quick points to work from, in under five minutes. Additionally, we plan to host free webinars covering our studies in-depth, supporting advocates on a more personalized level. Our goal is to help advocates understand and utilize information gleaned from our studies to increase the impact of their efforts.

We also offer pro-bono research advice during our office hours! Advocates can get one-on-one time with our Research Department or our Content Director. Our team is ready to help you find the information and data you need to be as effective as possible, and we hope to personally help even more advocates and organizations in 2020. Thanks to the support of our generous donors, all of our research and resources are available at no cost to animal advocates and animal protection organizations.

Room for Funding

The studies outlined above were specifically chosen for their high-impact potential, but selecting which studies Faunalytics should undertake in the coming year wasn’t easy! With input from the animal advocacy community and other researchers, we narrowed down our research questions from a huge list of potential topics. If you want to see even more important questions answered through research, we need your support to keep the momentum going! 

With your support (donate today or create a fundraiser!), here are a few ways Faunalytics can achieve even more for animals and advocates: 

Programs

• Research Studies: Design, conduct, analyze, and share results from new, independent studies aimed at helping the animal protection movement achieve greater impact for animals.
• Research Library: Find, summarize, and share academic research to inform animal advocates, plus technical improvements to our website, research library, and newsletter.

Public Relations

• Building Movement Capacity: Attending and/or speaking at conferences and events to share our research findings, engage with advocates, and identify new opportunities for Faunalytics to support the movement.
• Expanding Reach: Marketing efforts to ensure that advocates around the world are aware of our research findings, library, and other resources.

Operations

• Research Scientist(s): As support for Faunalytics grows, we would like to hire more research scientists to increase the capacity of our research program. We have a long list of topics waiting to be tackled, research questions just waiting to be answered. As our research team grows, Faunalytics will be able to help advocates identify the most effective messages and strategies to ending animal suffering, faster.
• Communications and Development: In order to grow as an organization and secure enough support to hire additional researchers, Faunalytics must broaden organizational awareness and support among the animal advocacy community and beyond. To bolster ongoing growth and sustainability, our small team of four will need more hands on deck to take our organization to the next level. Personnel in communications and development will allow us to increase our fundraising efforts and visibility among animal advocates and donors alike, ultimately increasing our impact potential. 

Passing The Torch

Our Founder Che Green started Faunalytics nearly 20 years ago because he believed that research helps level the playing field. Corporations spend billions of dollars on research, while animal advocates have had to rely on our instincts to prioritize strategies and develop campaigns. Faunalytics helped change that. 

After 20 years with Faunalytics, Che will be retiring from the role of executive director (though we’re grateful he will remain on the board of directors). As Faunalytics’ former operations manager and next executive director, I am thrilled to continue our important work alongside our incredibly talented team. I am truly honored to lead this unique organization toward our vision of helping advocates end animal suffering as effectively as possible.

Please click here to read more about the leadership change at Faunalytics.

Thank you for Supporting Effective Animal Advocacy

Thanks to your essential support and our diligent work, the animal advocacy movement is now more thoughtful and effective than ever before. By focusing on research that answers key questions for many animal protection organizations at once, Faunalytics’ independent studies are a smart investment for effective animal advocacy. We hope that Faunalytics stands out as a unique opportunity to support the entire animal protection movement.

Please donate today to help launch Faunalytics into 2020! Right now, you can double your gift! All donations are being MATCHED by a generous supporter through December 31st, up to $25,000. 

Thank you, from the entire team at Faunalytics! We’re looking forward to all we will accomplish together in the coming year.