Our Animal Welfare Giving Fund in H2/2023

In 2023, more than 1,700 donors supported our recommended charities or our Giving Fund: Improving Animal Welfare . A total of 1.8 million euros was donated, with our Giving Fund receiving about a third of the donations. In the second half of the year, approximately 465,000 Euros were donated to the Fund. (~350,000 euros from Germany and ~107,000 francs from Switzerland).

The Giving Fund supported our recommended charity The Humane League with 200,000 euros. (The Good Food Institute received the same amount from our Climate Change Giving Fund). To allocate the remaining funds to other organizations, we again consulted extensively with external experts, in particular the EA Animal Welfare Fund. On their recommendation, we have so far supported two organizations. Other grants are in the pipeline.

• The Mission Motor (75,000 euros)
• Fish Welfare Initiative (approx. 100,000 euros)

The Mission Motor

The Mission Motor aims to accelerate the impact of animal welfare organizations through the use of comprehensive evidence about which interventions work and why. To this end, the organization is piloting a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) training program. In the program, participating animal welfare organizations learn how to conduct needs assessments, develop theories of change, and conduct process evaluations, among other things, and receive ongoing support in implementing these methods.

Together with the EA Animal Welfare Fund, we are supporting the financing of the first training cohort in which The Mission Motor is continuously developing and evaluating its approach.

Fish Welfare Initiative

Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) is dedicated to improving the welfare of farmed fish. An estimated 77 to more than 100 billion fish are farmed each year. Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of the food industry. This makes fish the most farmed group of vertebrates in the world. However, the living conditions for fish in aquaculture are often very poor. Yet their welfare receives little attention and is severely neglected.

FWI’s approach is to research and identify the most promising ways of improving fish welfare, and then to implement those. Most of FWI’s work is focused on India, the world’s second largest fish producing country. There, they run the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture, which supports over 100 farms in reducing stocking densities and improving water quality. They also heavily invest in on-the-ground research and development (e.g., here) to identify more promising ways of helping these animals.

FWI has been an Animal Charity Evaluators recommended charity since 2022. On the recommendation of the EA Animal Welfare Fund, we specifically support their research and development program.

About the author

Sebastian Schienle

Founder & Former Head of Research

I co-founded effektiv-spenden.org and headed up the Research department there until 2024.