Request for Proposals - Strategic Animal Funding Circle Fall 2025

About this Funding Opportunity

Strategic Animal Funding Circle is a group of donors looking to support cost-effective and high-impact animal welfare and protection nonprofits, particularly during a critical growth phase where targeted funding can have a significant impact. Twice a year, the donors in the circle grant a total of ±$500k divided among the most promising applicants, with a typical grant size of $50k. 

Grants will initially be one-off support, though renewals may be possible in some cases at the discretion of individual donors. We aim to keep the application process relatively short and fast, reflecting the smaller and sometimes time-sensitive grants.

See the results from our first two rounds here. More info about SAFC and how you can join at the bottom of this post.

➡️ Apply here by August 25th.

Eligibility Criteria:

1. The intervention is focused on reducing the suffering of farmed or wild animals or on reducing the number of farmed animals.
2. The intervention can be service delivery, campaigning, policy work, or any other intervention type that delivers measurable impact in improving animal welfare outcomes and is able to help multiple animals per dollar spent. Roughly we use cage-free corporate campaigns or stunning improvements for aquatic animals as the benchmark of effectiveness.
3. Your project has potential and willingness to scale
4. (Highly preferred) You are a registered not-for-profit entity or are partnering with one as a fiscal sponsor.
5. Preference is given towards
   1. funding opportunities below $200k
   2. organizations with less than 4 years of operating history or less than $500k in annual budget. 

Areas we funded in our last rounds

Whilst it is not guaranteed that donors will want to fund in the same areas, donors supported these focus areas in our last round, ordered roughly on relative priority: 

• Advancing invertebrate welfare through advocacy or research
• Improving welfare of neglected species such as fish or shrimp
• Policy advocacy for tractable animal welfare improvements
• Reducing suffering of wild animals or city wildlife (numerous species such as small mammals and birds)
• Helping animals in neglected geographic regions, such as Southeast Asia.
• Corporate campaigns for cage-free and broiler welfare
• Genetic/Pain Research
• Certifier-focused advocacy
• Legal advocacy

Areas we are open to funding

• Metacharities helping other actors in the animal welfare space to significantly and demonstrably scale up their impact (though we think these will have a higher success rate at the Meta Charity Funding Circle)
• Charities effectively and measurably advancing the shift from animal to plant-based/alternative proteins

Areas we are not considering this round

Donors in the funding circle are not interested in funding the following categories:

• Farm Transitions
• Individual diet change and awareness campaigns
• Sanctuaries or direct care of animals 

Application & Timeline

Apply here by August 25th 2025 to be considered for this funding round. We aim for applicants to hear if they are invited for an interview soon after. After the initial application form, there will be one more stage with a request for more information and an interview before the final decision. 

We have very limited capacity to respond to specific questions or give feedback on the applications beyond our 'results'-posts, and will only contact those that seem like a good fit.

Selection Criteria - What makes a competitive application?

Competitive applications will have the following qualities:

• A Great Idea: The applicant is proposing a strong program where funding can catalyze progress. Factors that make an idea great are innovativeness, neglect, scalability and cost-effectiveness.
• Focus on Impact: The applicant can demonstrate results through metrics, internal data, or models backed by external data. Especially strong applicants state SMART goals for the duration of the grant period and a clear “north star” metric by which they want to be held accountable in ~2-4 years. We recommend using tools such as Goal Review Rubric and GoalsGPT.
• Cost Effectiveness: We are looking to support interventions that are highly cost-effective in achieving positive outcomes for animals. Promising applications have potential to be significantly more impactful than cage-free corporate campaigns.
• Quality of Evidence: What studies, data, or information exists to indicate that the program is or will be successful?
• Scalability: The applicant has concrete expansion plans to scale and achieve significantly more impact.
• Demonstrated Funding Gap: Support will enable work which wouldn't otherwise happen. We are most excited about areas that are neglected by other major farmed animal funders.

Future Rounds

We plan to invite and review applications twice per year, with another funding round starting around March 2026

About the Strategic Animal Funding Circle

We are a group of donors who support promising farmed animal welfare and animal protection nonprofits during the critical growth phase where targeted funding can have a significant impact. By coordinating funding during this inflection point, we help elevate the next generation of farmed animal welfare and animal protection innovators. 

There are several programs helping early-stage groups start up. And later on, a select few highly-effective nonprofits attract substantial attention from major funders. But between these stages lies a gap - a time when organizations lack the track record to attract major donations yet have demonstrated initial success and have the capacity and willingness to scale. We seek to bridge this gap by identifying and propelling organizations poised to maximize impact for animals by handing out relatively small grants with a relatively light due diligence and evaluation process.

Join us and support impactful animal welfare charities!

If you are a funder who has the capacity to donate ±$100k or more a year to animals and are interested in our funding scope, we invite you to join the group! You can express interest by sending an email to jozden[at]mobius.life. 

If you are a funder who occasionally gives larger $10k+ grants to animal welfare organisations or is thinking of doing so, we will be experimenting with an exclusive ‘Funder’s Inbox’ where we forward promising applications that have room for more funding beyond the circle rounds. You can express interest here.

See www.animalfundingcircle.com for more information