Stien is the executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators, also known as ACE. Stien, wants to help people help animals and ACE tries to do that by finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals.

In this episode we speak with Stien Van Der Ploeg who is their fairly newly appointed executive director. We talk through the latest release of the recommendations for this year and go into some detail on why certain charities and their interventions were selected. We talk about why their work is so important, the difficulties in the recommendation process and their developing strategy for the upcoming year.

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

• Recommended charity fund and matching offer (to Dec 6th)
  • ACE 2023 recommendations
  • ACE Team emails 
• Menu of interventions
  • Intervention scores spreadsheet
  • Menu of outcomes
• Faunalytics review
• Legal Impact for Chickens review
• GWWC evaluation
• ACE Strategy Doc
• Other organisations discussed in the episode
  • Rethink Priorities
  • Scarlet Spark
  • Animal Legal Defense Fund
  • The Mission Motor
  • [Amy’s organisation] User-Friendly: Messaging Workshop
• Lead Together, by Tania Luna
• Podcast: Knowing Animals
  • Knowing Animals: Episode 210: Saving Animals (and Ourselves) with Jeff Sebo (libsyn.com)
  • Knowing Animals: Episode 168: Speaking with animals with Eva Meijer (libsyn.com)

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Today, we speak with Monica Chen, the Executive Director of New Roots Institute, formerly Factory Farming Awareness Coalition.
 
We speak about several big topics: 

• Theories of change for the animal advocacy movement
• Why collaboration between organisations isn’t always easy,
• The importance of focusing on changing culture and social norms
• The difficulties around management and organisational leadership, as well as some lessons Monica learnt along the way

Monica is an inspiring organisational leader who spends lots of her time thinking about what can benefit the movement as a whole so it was a real pleasure to speak with her about these topics.

Resources from our conversation:

• ACE 2023 Recommended Charities
• New Roots Institute strategy and theory of change
• Washington Post poll on climate solutions
• Naito, Rumi, Jiaying Zhao, and Kai M. Chan. “An Integrative Framework for Transformative Social Change: A Case in Global Wildlife Trade.” - Link
• Forge organizing articles: 
  • Maurice Mitchell: Building resilient organisations
  • How not to dismantle white supremacy
• New Roots Institute website

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Cameron is the executive director of Wild Animal Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of animals by accelerating the growth of wild animal welfare science.

In this episode Cameron helps us to understand the vast topic of wild animal suffering. Cameron makes the compelling case for why we should invest resources into understanding how we can reduce wild animal suffering responsibly with data-backed interventions, improving the overall well-being of wild animals.  

We talk through the importance of Wild Animal Initiative’s research in this area, their grant-making arm which is enabling the research field in this area to grow and the future plans for their work. 

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

• Wild Animal Initiative website 
• Animal Ethics website
• Cricket Science Game and WAI's blog post explaining the project
• WAI blog post: 
  • Core concepts of wild animal welfare suffering 
  • Farmed and wild animal welfare
  • Past interventions future welfare applications
  • House sparrow research
• Join the WAI researcher community 
• Twitter: @forwildanimals
• Heather Browning & Walter Veit: Positive wild animal welfare paper
  • Heather Browning talk on the above paper
• An Immense World by Ed Yong
• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• WAI Newsletter sign up
• WAI Donate

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

In this episode, we speak with Josh Balk who is the co-founder and CEO of The Accountability Board. Previously, he was vice president of farm animal protection for The Humane Society of the United States. In addition, he is a co-founder of EAT JUST, a food technology company.

We spoke to him about a promising new strategy that he’s trying out, which is shareholder activism. In a nutshell, that involves doing something that seems counterintuitive, buying shares in the largest food companies that use animals as products, and trying to get them to change. On top of that, we also speak about the successes he’s had through ballot initiatives in the US. such as prop 12 in California, the EATS act, and US politics more generally.

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Aurelia is the Africa co-ordinator for the Open Wing Alliance where she supports African organisations with their cage-free campaigning efforts. 

In this episode Aurelia walks us through the state of the advocacy movement in Africa and the unique complexities of campaigning in this region. We hear Aurelia’s thoughts on progress in Africa and the importance of flexibility when devising and testing the strategies and tactics required to end cages in Africa.

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

• Open Wing Alliance Website
• Donate to the Open Wing Alliance
• Member organisations
• Which companies are leading the way on animal welfare in Africa?-  Ranking Report
• Ticking Clock: The Rapid Rise of Farmed Animals in Africa - EA Forum Post
• Animal welfare: A unique African Perspective - EA Forum Post

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Give us feedback on the podcast via this form! It should take just a few minutes and it would really help us improve the show. Thank you in advance, we really appreciate it.

In this episode, we speak with Ines Kostic, a Member of the Regional Parliament in the Netherlands for the Dutch political Party for the Animals and manager of Animal Politics Foundation.

We speak about the opportunities and challenges around advocating for animals within the political system, the impact the Dutch Party for Animals has had as well as what kind of people could be a good fit for politics.

Links from our conversation:

• Dutch Party For the Animals 2021 manifesto
• The end of animal farming – Jacy Reese
• Our World in Data – animal welfare & environment pages
• Faunalytics
• List of national animal welfare parties (if you scroll down)
• Contact: [email protected]

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Neil Dullaghan is a Senior Research Manager in the animal welfare department at Rethink Priorities. Neil also holds a PhD in Political Science and is a fund manager of the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund. 

In this episode Neil talks us through his policy research in the EU as well as other exciting projects and impactful research that Rethink Priorities has produced and includes some of the most obscure resource recommendations to date!

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

• Rethink Priorities Website
  • Strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation - Rethink Priorities research by Neil
  • Other Neil publications
• Revolutions: The Revolutions of 1848 - Mike Duncan
• History of Rome - Mike Duncan (Podcast)
• Engines of Liberty - David Cole
• Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in Postcommunist Countries - Valerie J. Bunce, Sharon L. Wolchik
• Danish political drama - Borgen - Season 3

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

In this episode, we spoke to Karolina from Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) about the new animal charities they want to incubate in their next program (starting February 2024), what the benefit of joining their charity incubator is, as well as how they select which charities to incubate.

If you’ve ever considered launching a charity to help animals, then this is the podcast for you! If you have a friend that has toyed with the possibility of starting their own project – then please do share this with them!

Links from the episode:

• A summary of Charity Entrepreneurship's newest ideas for their next incubation round
• The application form for Charity Entrepreneurship
• Lewis Bollard's farmed animal newsletter
• Corporate campaigns research from CE
• How to Measure Anything by Douglas W.Hubbard 
• Charity Entrepreneurship contact form 
• Karolina's email: [email protected]
• Rika's email: [email protected]

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

We interviewed Amanda Hungerford, Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer at Open Philanthropy. Open Philanthropy is one of the largest funders of farmed animal welfare, giving tens of millions of dollars each year. 

We spoke to Amanda about common misconceptions about Open Philanthropy's grantmaking, challenges with corporate campaigns, strategies that Amanda is excited about, and much more. 

This was a really exciting episode for us to record so we hope you enjoy it too!

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!

We are celebrating our 10th podcast episode - Yay! To celebrate, we interviewed Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla from the Shrimp Welfare Initiative who inspired the name of our podcast, How I Learned to Love Shrimp. 

Shrimp Welfare Project is the only organisation solely dedicated to improving the lives of shrimp. In this episode we talk about the case for working on shrimp, the current scale of and practices within shrimp farming, as well as what Shrimp Welfare Project have learned over the past 2 years.

Thanks to all of our listeners so far and we look forward to the next 10!
 

Some resources that were mentioned in this report:

• Charity Entrepreneurship: Shrimp Welfare Report
• Shrimp Welfare Project: Shrimp Welfare Report
• Shrimp Welfare Project: India Assessment Report
• LinkedIn: Shrimp fact of the week
• Benjamin Lorr: The Secret Life of Groceries
• Melinda French-Gates: The Moment of Lift
• Job Postings for Shrimp Welfare Project
• Link to Donate to the Shrimp Welfare Project

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at [email protected]. Enjoy!