Pathways To Impact: An International Study Of Advocates’ Strategies And Needs
Background
Animal advocacy organizations employ diverse strategies to support farmed animals that range from individual action all the way up to large-scale national interventions. Advocates may choose to promote vegan foods to their community, found an animal sanctuary, lobby their governments for strong welfare laws, or petition meat companies to give more space to animals in confinement.
This diversity in tactics creates a need for impact evaluation—while much of the advocacy research measures the effectiveness of various approaches or develops related theories of change, less attention has been paid to understanding why organizations prefer certain strategies, decide to adopt new ones, or stick to what they know.
Using a survey of over 190 animal advocacy organizations in 84 countries and six small focus-group discussions, this study aims to understand the diverse approaches taken by farmed animal protection groups globally, focusing on how and why organizations choose to pursue these advocacy strategies.
Key Findings
- Animal advocacy organizations pursue strategies across five major categories, each focusing on a different type of stakeholder. These are large-scale institutions (governments, large-scale food producers, retailers, etc.), local institutions (schools, restaurants, food producers, hospitals, etc.), individuals (through diet outreach or education), animals themselves (through direct work, such as sanctuaries), and other members of the advocacy movement (through movement support). Figure 2 in the full report provides more detail.
- Most organizations (55%) pursue more than one approach, and most advocates (63%) are interested in exploring at least one approach that they’re not currently pursuing. Notably, most organizations conducting direct work with animals (66%) or individual advocacy (91%) would consider trying out at least one type of institutional approach.
- Advocates are more open to considering policy advocacy than corporate advocacy, because it has fewer barriers to entry and less stigma. Some advocates have negative associations with corporate advocacy, as it may involve engaging with organizations strongly misaligned with their values. Corporate advocacy may also require a degree of professionalism and industry expertise that some forms of policy advocacy (e.g., petitions) do not.
- Organizations that conduct corporate and policy work tend to be larger organizations that conduct multiple forms of advocacy. Organizations that focus on corporate and policy approaches are typically larger than those that focus on direct work and individual advocacy, which are sometimes volunteer-led. Larger organizations are also more likely to pursue multiple approaches simultaneously.
- Working with local institutions provides advocacy organizations with a stepping stone from individual to institutional approaches. Local institutional approaches are often seen as a “sweet spot” for small advocacy organizations, offering a balance between scalability and tractability. These approaches are perceived as less resource-intensive than large-scale institutional approaches, and potentially offer an intermediate step for growing advocacy organizations who want to expand individual diet approaches to higher-leverage policy or corporate approaches, and are also compatible with more bottom-up theories of change.
- Deciding on organizational approaches is not just an internal process. While an organization’s mission and available resources are key considerations, external influences, ranging from large international partners and funders to other grassroots community members, also play a key role in advocates’ decision-making process. Formal or informal research, including desk-based secondary research and primary/user research methods like message testing and stakeholder interviews, often informs this decision-making process.
- Diverse global contexts restrict the viability of existing advocacy approaches in ways that foreign funders may not understand or anticipate. Local advocacy organizations may avoid certain advocacy approaches due to local political and cultural obstacles: for example, avoiding meat elimination messaging in favor of meat reduction or corporate advocacy in favor of political lobbying. Balancing the needs of the local context with the expectations of funders and parent organizations often limits the strategic choices of local advocates.
- Advocacy organizations may be more willing and able to expand on their existing approaches rather than branching into entirely new approaches. Many advocates would prefer to scale up existing campaigns to cover additional geographies and species or adopt new media strategies to expand their existing individual messaging rather than adopt entirely new approaches.
- Funding is always front of mind for advocates. Advocates indicate that funding is the most useful type of support, the most common barrier preventing organizations from expanding to more ambitious approaches, and the greatest challenge for current advocacy work. Complex, competitive grantmaking procedures can also be a hindrance that limits the ability of an organization to focus on its work, and concerns about the sustainability of funding may prevent organizations from expanding and diversifying their approaches.
Recommendations
For Funders
- Create opportunities for knowledge exchange among grantees. Advocates specifically wanted to learn from others working on similar approaches. Funders may be able to take advantage of having a diverse grantee portfolio to support mutual learning between these organizations, with the aim of improving and sharing current strategies, and transitioning to alternatives. As some advocates needed support adapting global approaches to local contexts, intra-regional or “South-South” cooperation between advocates in non-Western or lower-income countries may be particularly valuable.
- Simplify funding applications and remove unnecessary steps. Organizations are stressed by the time and effort required to complete complex grantmaking procedures for certain funders. Solutions include universal grant applications that can be used to apply to multiple funders at once (e.g., Granti), as well as providing multi-year funding commitments so that grantees don’t have to spend extra time and resources to re-apply for funding each year. Resources exist to help funders simplify and streamline the process for applicants, which may help to reduce the administrative burden on animal advocates.
- When suggesting new strategies to grantees or potential grantees, work with them to navigate the constraints and considerations they face. Many advocates are interested in alternative approaches, but multiple factors beyond resource availability and impact influence decision-making. These include social or political constraints, mission alignment, and perceived tractability. Local advocates will generally have a stronger understanding of which of these challenges can be overcome than funders, but they may need financial or logistical support to navigate them and adopt new approaches.
For Advocates
- Larger organizations can develop and share blueprints of successful campaigns with groups in other regions. Advocates often had to plan their campaigns, such as vegan challenges, from scratch. Instead, successful projects could be used to develop blueprints that can be adapted by advocates globally. As a step in this direction, many organizations that focus on education or grassroots lobbying freely share their materials and guides (e.g., Institute for Humane Education; Plant-Based Treaty).
- Investigate knowledge exchange opportunities with organizations pursuing similar approaches. Seek opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange with organizations pursuing similar strategies to enhance effectiveness. For example, one advocate participant suggested co-developing a global calendar for vegan events, while others highlighted cooperating on local institutional approaches within regions.
- Work with support organizations to explore institutional approaches. Organizations that focus on movement support or capacity-building, such as incubators (e.g., Charity Entrepreneurship) and accelerators (e.g., Thrive Africa Accelerator), provide opportunities for individual advocates and small organizations to explore and pilot institutional approaches.
- Aim for equitable international advocacy collaboration that prioritizes the knowledge and skills of local advocates. When conducting advocacy outside your home country (e.g., for organizations with branches in multiple countries), key strategic and implementation roles should be held by local advocates. Not only does this retain power with those individuals most affected by the decisions, it also ensures that those with the greatest understanding of the cultural nuances are able to influence the creation of a positive impact for animals.
For Researchers
- Conduct case studies on successful transitions towards institutional approaches. Investigate how some advocacy organizations transition from individual advocacy or direct work with animals to larger-scale institutional approaches. Whether they switch from one approach to the other or expand from one approach to both, understanding these pathways can inform future strategies for expanding our repertoire of approaches.
- Investigate potential geographic or context-specific factors that influence the viability of institutional approaches. Some institutional approaches seem to be more feasible in lower-income or non-Western countries, due to institutions having fewer barriers to entry. Additional research on this topic can help determine whether these approaches may have a higher impact in certain regions.
- Consider partnering with smaller advocacy organizations to conduct useful applied research. Many organizations are already doing some degree of research—often to better understand their target audience—but smaller, more funding-constrained organizations could greatly benefit from support from researchers to do this more transparently or systematically. Researchers can help these organizations measure their impact and better convey their theory of change to funders. This may be a particularly impactful opportunity for early career researchers and organizations such as Vegan Thesis could be well-positioned to facilitate the matching process.
Applying These Findings
We understand that reports like this have a lot of information to consider and that acting on research can be challenging. Faunalytics is happy to offer pro bono support to advocates and nonprofit organizations who would like guidance applying these findings to their own work. Please visit our Office Hours or contact us for support.
Behind The Project
Research Team
The project’s lead author was Jack Stennett (Good Growth). Other contributors to the design, data collection, analysis, and writing were: Jah Ying Chung (Good Growth), Dr. Andrea Polanco (Faunalytics), and Ella Wong (Good Growth). Dr. Jo Anderson (Faunalytics) reviewed and oversaw the work.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Tessa Graham, Craig Grant (Asia for Animals Coalition), and Kaho Nishibu (Animal Alliance Asia) for providing the impetus for this research and contributing to aspects of the design, as well as ProVeg and an anonymous funder for their generous support of this research. Finally, we thank our participants for their time and support of the project.
Research Terminology
At Faunalytics, we strive to make research accessible to everyone. We avoid jargon and technical terminology as much as possible in our reports. If you do encounter an unfamiliar term or phrase, check out the Faunalytics Glossary for user-friendly definitions and examples.
Research Ethics Statement
As with all of Faunalytics’ original research, this study was conducted according to the standards outlined in our Research Ethics and Data Handling Policy.
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Citations:
Stennett, J., Chung, J. Y., Polanco, A., & Anderson, J. (2024). Pathways To Impact: An International Study Of Advocates’ Strategies And Needs. Faunalytics. https://faunalytics.org/pathways-to-impact-an-international-study-of-advocates-strategies-and-needs/
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