Introduction

In 2026, the Open Wing Alliance awarded ~$1.9M to 28 organizations globally. This post gives background on our grant program, strategy, and highlights some grants we are particularly excited about this year. It also gives some info on how you can become a member and apply to receive a grant.

Background

The Open Wing Alliance (OWA) is a coalition of over 80 member organizations located across more than 70 countries, focused on cage-free and broiler welfare corporate work. It is a program of The Humane League (THL). You can find out more about THL and the OWA in this post, and the OWA’s approach to maximizing impact through supported regranting strategy here.  

The OWA has two main goals:

• End the abuse of chickens worldwide.
• Strengthen the global farm animal welfare movement.

One of the ways in which we work towards achieving our goals is through our grant program. 

The OWA provides 1-2 year grants of up to $100,000 per year for corporate cage-free and broiler welfare campaign work to our member organizations. Our funds primarily cover campaign and corporate relations staff positions, but also cover other costs associated with corporate campaigns such as travel, campaign materials and legal counsel. We fund broiler work only when significant progress has been made on cage-free — meaning that the shift to cage-free eggs in the country has momentum and has advanced to late stages. We find that at this threshold it is much more likely broiler campaigns will succeed. 

Our primary focus is on new and emerging organizations with little to no access to alternative funding sources. The OWA as an incubator — helping groups who are new to cage-free or broiler welfare corporate work get off the ground and find success by providing hands-on support and resources. Building a global network of strong corporate campaigning organizations is crucial to making progress for hens and broiler chickens. Organizations embedded in their national contexts are often best positioned to secure commitments from the largest companies in their markets, such as retailers, because they can engage companies with a nuanced understanding of local dynamics, relationships, and advocacy opportunities.

The OWA combines funding with strategic support to increase our grantees’ effectiveness. We conduct in-person trainings on corporate work. We host summits where members can collectively come together to discuss strategy. We have staff members located in each of the regions we operate in who provide tailored support to each member organization. We have an online resources library with over 200 resources on corporate campaigning work. This support, in addition to funding, is essential in enabling our grantees to succeed. 

The Open Wing Alliance has ambitious plans to spare one third of egg laying hens from cages globally by 2030. Funding and upskilling our member organizations is crucial to achieving this goal.

2026 funding

In 2026, the OWA provided a total of $1,939,636 of funding to 28 organizations. This includes 20 first-year grantees from the 2026 grant cycle, as well as 8 second-year grantees from the 2025 cycle.

Among the funded groups, 6 are located in Africa, 5 are located in Asia-Pacific, 8 are located in Europe, 1 is located in North America,  and 8 are located in Latin America. They represent a total of 24 countries.

24 grants are being awarded for cage-free work, 3 grants are being awarded for broiler work, and 1 grant is being awarded for both cage-free and broiler work.

16 of the grants are for 1 year of funding, and 12 are for 2 years of funding.

Highlighted grants

Korea Animal Rights Advocates - $50,000 (cage-free)

South Korea has approximately 53 million laying hens, of which it’s estimated over 95% are in cages. Asia itself is home to over 60% of laying hens worldwide. At the Open Wing Alliance we recognize the importance of work in this region, and we see South Korea as a particularly promising country to make progress in. South Korea is a large democracy with one of the highest GDPs per capita in Asia and it has a highly concentrated food and retail industry that is desperate to grow internationally. Additionally, they have a highly fragmented egg industry, with the largest producers accounting for no more than 1.5 million hens. They also have some track record on cage-free. The largest egg distributor (selling around 12% of all eggs), Pulmuone, committed to go 100% cage-free by 2028 and is currently reporting 30% progress.

Given this, we believe that South Korea may be one of the most tractable countries in Asia for corporate cage-free campaign work. This grant will support Korea Animal Rights Advocates (KARA) to begin their corporate campaign work. KARA are new to cage-free work, but have been working across farm animal, lab animal and companion animal welfare for over 20 years. This includes playing an instrumental role in the ban of the dog meat industry. KARA will start the grant period by determining their targets, and then work to get an incremental 5-10% cage-free commitment from a large player. They are potentially looking at targeting bakery chains, but this is subject to further research. In February one of KARA’s team members attended our Asia Corporate Accelerator training in New Delhi, enabling them to upskill and prepare ahead of the grant period. Our APAC team at the OWA will be on hand to support KARA throughout the grant period.

Freedom and Respect for Every Earthling - $92,700 (broiler)

Romania slaughters over 300 million broiler chickens per year, which makes it the 8th largest producer of broiler chickens in the EU. The vast majority of these broiler chickens are fast-growing breeds living lives of intense suffering. Although there has so far been minimal progress in broiler welfare in Romania, we believe there is potential to have impact. With almost half of the country’s flock being cage-free, the country is leading the way in this aspect of animal welfare in Eastern Europe. Additionally, data from research commissioned by Humane World for Animals found that 92% of Romanians find it very important to ensure good farm animal welfare, and 80% of Romanians are willing to pay up to 10% more for higher animal welfare products. As such we believe Romania is well positioned to make progress in broiler welfare.

Freedom and Respect for Every Earthling (FREE) have already conducted some preliminary public awareness campaigns on the topic of broiler welfare, obtaining media coverage across a number of outlets. Their work has also resulted in a health-foods retailer and a restaurant chain to sign up to the European Chicken Commitment (ECC). In this grant period, they plan to continue building on this momentum. They’ll start by targeting health-based meal delivery companies, a sector they believe will be more likely to adopt broiler welfare commitments. They’ll then switch their focus to the hospitality sector, with targets depending on how initial outreach progresses. Alongside this, they’ll continue awareness work, aiming to reach 1 million people with a new campaign. Staff from FREE attended the Europe Campaign Accelerator training hosted by the OWA in Belgrade in October 2025, and continue to work closely with staff members who led the training on their strategy.

Fórum Animal - $100,000 (cage-free)

Brazil is home to over 100 million laying hens, making it the second largest egg producer in Latin America (behind Mexico). While only around 5% of the flock is cage-free, this is significant for the region. Major companies in Brazil such as MBRF Global Foods, Nissin, and Fogo de Chão have fulfilled cage-free commitments. Less than a decade ago, the top egg producers in Brazil had no cage-free production whatsoever. Now, all 4 of the biggest egg producers have made industrial investments into cage-free systems capable of housing millions of hens. While there is some momentum in Brazil, there is still significant work to be done on cage-free.

While in recent years Fórum Animal have focused on producer engagement work, in this grant period they are shifting their focus towards corporate campaign work. They recently secured a commitment from Pizza Prime, which is the largest Brazilian-owned pizza franchise. Additionally Fórum worked with massive convenience store chain OXXO on a cage-free pilot. OXXO is the largest convenience store chain in Latin America, with over 20,000 locations across the region. This year Fórum will build out their corporate engagement team and they will then identify, approach and negotiate with key companies in the retail, hospitality and food service sectors to encourage the adoption of cage-free policies. In the last year, they have worked alongside the OWA’s Data and Insights Lead, Giovanni Fabris, to conduct extensive mapping of the Brazilian egg market in order to inform their approach for the coming year. At the beginning of this grant period team members from Fórum attended our Latin America campaign training hosted in Bogotá, Colombia, and will continue to work with our Latin America team throughout the year.

Animal Welfare League - $87,000 (cage-free)

Working in Ghana presents a unique opportunity: because approximately 50% of the laying hen flock is cage-free, advocacy organizations can act now to stop the spread of cages before the practice takes a firmer hold. Corporate engagement in Africa has had a much shorter history compared to other regions. As such, many tactics are still being trialled to determine what is most effective there. Ghana represents a promising country for potential progress. Its GDP per capita is growing — resulting in an increasing middle class, and it is also experiencing significant growth in the tourism sector — representing a promising opportunity for cage-free commitments.

Animal Welfare League (AWL) have already exploited the growing tourism sector by securing 9 cage-free commitments from hotels. Several of these commitments were secured after the release of a hotel ranking report, where they ranked hotels in Ghana from ‘Gold Standard’ to ‘Dishonorable mention’. In this grant they plan to scale up their work and work towards securing commitments from leading food service, retail, and hospitality companies in Ghana. A key part of this will involve building their team and recruiting new corporate outreach staff. To continue exploiting opportunities in the hospitality sector, they plan to release a 2026 edition of their hotel ranking report. Excitingly, they also have plans to launch their first pressure campaign against a quick service restaurant chain. Staff members from Animal Welfare League attended our Africa Accelerator training last April and have actively applied lessons learned. They continue to work closely with OWA’s Africa Lead, Aurelia Adhiambo, and Principal Strategist, Léo Le Ster, to continually refine their strategy.

All grants

If you’re interested in learning more

If you’re part of an organization doing cage-free corporate work, or you’re interested in starting cage-free corporate work, we’d love to hear from you. Please email info@openwingalliance.org if you’re interested. You can also visit our website for further information. Note that you must become an OWA member by August to be eligible to apply for a grant when the cycle opens in October.

Additionally, if you’re interested in funding this work, please reach out to Caroline Mills, Associate Vice President of Donor Relations at The Humane League via cmills@thehumaneleague.org.