Five Years Of Faunalytics’ Office Hours: Feedback From Advocates
If you’re a fan of Faunalytics, you probably already know about our Original Research, Research Library, and Fundamentals. Another one of our core programs is our Research Support, which includes services like our Ambassador Project and our Office Hours, where we help advocates turn research into action. Through our pro bono Office Hours, we provide free, one-on-one research and strategy support to animal advocates around the world.
At the beginning of 2019, Faunalytics began holding regular Office Hours and making a more systematic effort to connect animal advocates with 1:1 support to help with specific research and data needs they encounter. As the pilot program progressed and gained steam, we began tracking various metrics starting in 2020, and have been regularly soliciting direct feedback on the program from the people who use it. In the five years since we began collecting data on this program, we’ve helped more than 500 advocates find critical data, design their own research, strengthen alliances in the movement, and more!
While the primary goal of our Office Hours program is to help advocates, Office Hours also helps us! Before coming to Faunalytics, I worked as an academic for many years, doing research and teaching undergraduates in psychology. One of my favorite parts of that job was weekly Office Hours because it gave me a chance to get to know my students in a one-on-one setting, to hear about their experiences in my courses, and to find personalized ways to support them in their learning.
The Faunalytics team really enjoys holding Office Hours with advocates for exactly the same reasons! Meeting one-on-one with advocates helps us get a better sense of their important work being done across the globe, understand their current projects and priorities, learn about specific challenges with data or research they may be experiencing, and find creative ways to support them with the resources, data, or research advice they need. Each meeting we have helps us learn how to better help advocates and the movement — that is to say that our Office Hours program helps advocates while also helping us!
Getting feedback from advocates helps us to understand how our Office Hours help address their specific needs and interests, and also provides us with ways that we can improve. Below, we explore how our Office Hours program has been used since its inception, and look at feedback from advocates about their experiences.
Support Provided
We cover research on many different topics in animal advocacy, and we’re proud to support animal advocates who also work in a wide variety of cause areas across the globe. The figures below show the topics and causes covered by our Office Hours over the past five years, as reported by the advocates who attended after each session.
Do note that the percentages may not add up to 100% because sometimes more than one cause area applies for a given advocate. Over the past five years, we have provided Office Hours support to a total of 584 advocates and organizations — and counting! In 2024 alone, 147 advocates attended Office Hours, and so far in 2025, 85 advocates and organizations have received Office Hours support. These advocates came looking for support across a wide range of animal cause areas and topics described below.
The majority of advocates who attend our Office Hours — over 65% each year — seek support on farmed animal related issues, or issues pertaining to veg*nism and/or animal product alternatives.
While we’re available for many different research, strategy, and general support questions, we tend to find that most people who attend our Office Hours need help finding data to inform their projects and campaigns, designing research projects of their own, and scoping problems related to their work. We are proud to be able to help in all of these areas and more.
Survey Responses
After making use of our Office Hours, we ask participants to fill out a voluntary survey about their experience and our performance. Below, you will find responses to our survey for each year we’ve been administering it — the response rate since 2021, when we started tracking invitations sent, is 53%. However, not every advocate who receives a survey completes it — for some, the amount of support they received may be low for a given question, or advocates may have already filled out our survey after a previous session with us.
As you can see, between 93 and 100% of respondents each year indicated that we partially or completely answered their question. Similarly, between 91 and 100% of respondents each year reported being either satisfied or completely satisfied with the support they received, with 100% of the respondents in 2024 reporting being satisfied or completely satisfied with their experience.
We’re pleased to see that the vast majority of respondents are satisfied with our support, but we know there’s always room for improvement. We do note that a larger percentage of folks in 2025 reported that we only partially answered their question or didn’t answer their question (14%) compared to 4% in 2024.
We always make an effort to provide comprehensive and accurate answers to everyone’s questions, but sometimes it’s not possible to answer a question directly — for example, there may not be the exact research available on a particular topic or we may not have the expertise to answer research questions across all cause areas or geographies. In those cases, we do our best to guide the attendee on the right course of action, whether that means providing them with similar data or directing them to other resources or organizations where they may find more helpful information.
We also ask our attendees to weigh in on the usefulness of our support, and how they’ll be using our advice in their work going forward. This helps us understand the impact of our pro bono support program.
Over the four years we’ve been collecting data, between 89 and 100% of respondents indicated that they would probably or definitely use what they learned from us in their work. In 2024, 89% of attendees stated that they will probably or definitely use what they learned in their work, while in 2025, 92% of attendees stated that they will probably or definitely use what they learned.
We note that these percentages are slightly lower than in previous years, and written feedback suggests that in some cases, there simply aren’t enough existing data to fully answer every question we receive. In other cases, bodies of evidence are mixed and sometimes complicated, making it hard for advocates to put a body of findings into direct practice in an evidence-based way. With this said, the vast majority of our Office Hours attendees still report that they will use the information and support we provide in their work, which suggests that our support is making a direct impact in the movement, and is a needed resource.
Interestingly, how advocates plan to apply the information they received has shifted and changed from year to year. For example, in 2023, 52% of advocates planned to use the information to “inform other research that will be useful for advocates,” while in 2024, advocates were most likely to use our support “to inform [their] decisions about advocacy strategies” (46%) and “to inform other research that will be useful to advocates” (39%).
In 2025, advocates reported using our support in a wide variety of ways, including “to inform other research that will be useful to advocates” (36%) and “to improve the measurement of the effectiveness of a program, strategy, etc.” (29%). It’s encouraging to us to see so many advocates use our services for such a wide variety of important outcomes, including conducting their own research and evaluating the effectiveness of their interventions with evidence.
We also ask advocates to indicate whether the help they received will help to reduce animal suffering. For each year that we asked this question, between 69 and 92% of advocates indicated that the help they received will either probably or definitely help to reduce animal suffering. We’re always heartened to learn that the support we provide is being put into direct use for animals, and we will continue to provide Office Hours to help support animal advocates across the globe.
Comments
Finally, while all of these quantitative results are wonderful to see, the numbers only tell part of the story. Below is some selected feedback from 2024 and 2025, shared with permission from the people who provided it. Comments like these let us know that we’re on the right track with serving the animal advocacy community, and we’re incredibly proud to share such positive words about what we do. We also truly appreciate suggestions about how we can improve the support we provide.
- “We were impressed by the willingness to support and the openess with which Liz approached the meeting, not to mention how prepared she was. Can’t thank her enough!” ~ Claudia, Vegan Life
- “Great service! Referred me to existing resources, and detailed feedback for more open ended questions rapidly and effectively.” ~ Justin, Animal Advocacy Careers
- “I’m happy and impressed with the quality of the support received.” ~ Felipe Hickmann, Anima International
- “I really appreciated Andrea taking the time to review my survey!” ~ Rakefet Cohen Ben-Arye, China Vegan Society
- “karol helped me find research to support my capstone project in NYU’s Animal Studies MA program. My research will make a case for how and why more should be invested in strengthening organizational health in the farmed animal protection movement. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise on existing research and making my project stronger and easier!” ~ Kiely Smith, New York University Animal Studies MA Program
- “Both Zach and Björn were wonderful! They were so responsive and helpful in providing me with timely research/data for my book project. What a great group!” ~ Sahar Akhtar, Georgetown University
- “I loved how thorough your insight and feedback were throughout the whole process. The Faunalytics folks were genuinely invested in providing objective and scientific support while understanding the emotional baggage of trying to make social change happen. Thank you so much!” ~ JC Rivas, University of San Diego
- “Andrea was great! I learned so much in today’s session and it’s really given me the knowledge and confidence I needed to move forward with my research project!” ~ Holly Baines, Animal Charity Evaluators
The survey results are clear: our Office Hours program continues to be a valuable resource for animal advocates. If you haven’t already, be sure to learn more about the program and stop by a session that suits your schedule and needs. You can schedule Office Hours appointments with karol orzechowski, our Resource Director, who can provide support in English, Polish, and French. You can also meet with our Research Scientists Andrea Polanco (English and Spanish) and Zach Wulderk (English). More recently, our colleagues from the Good Growth Company, Jah Ying Chung and Ella Wong, have started providing multilingual research support in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.
Thank you to every advocate who has attended our Office Hours in the past five years — we are grateful to be able to connect and to learn more about the incredible work you’re doing! Whether you are a repeat Office Hours attendee or it’s your first time, we look forward to meeting with you and helping you find ways to be even more effective for animals.
