Executive summary: Connect For Animals aims to accelerate the end of factory farming by connecting and empowering animal advocates through an online platform, with 2025 priorities focused on user engagement, fundraising, AI integration, visibility, and organizational efficiency.
Key points:
Mission & Approach: Connect For Animals connects pro-animal advocates, providing resources, events, and networking opportunities to strengthen the movement against factory farming.
User Growth & Impact: The platform has grown to 1,700 registered users, launched a mobile app, and improved engagement through an events digest, user profiles, and AI-powered event management.
2025 Strategic Priorities:
Understand Users: Conduct surveys and analyze metrics to refine engagement strategies.
Enhance Engagement: Improve features like direct messaging, user recommendations, and onboarding.
Expand Fundraising: Increase individual donations, secure new grants, and engage board members in fundraising.
AI & Backend Development: Automate data processing and integrate AI-driven recommendations.
Increase Visibility: Launch PR campaigns, collaborate with organizations, and expand marketing efforts.
Call to Action: Supporters can contribute through donations, volunteering, expert consulting, or organizational partnerships.
Long-Term Vision: By 2030, Connect For Animals aims to be a global hub for animal advocacy, with tens of thousands of active users and localized support in multiple regions.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Connect For Animals 2025 Strategic Plan — EA Forum
Connect For Animals is a nonprofit platform for people who want to help end factory farming.
Our mission is to find, connect, and empower every person globally who wants to help end factory farming. By doing that, we believe we can accelerate the end of factory farming and work to bring about a better world for animals.
Connect For Animals is a platform connecting people who want to help end factory farming. By making it easier to find events, organizations, and advocacy opportunities, we aim to grow the movement and increase participation. Over the past year, we’ve expanded our platform features, improved user engagement, and grown our operations. We have over 1,700 registered users, strong engagement with our weekly Events Digest newsletter, inspiring testimonials from users who have gotten more involved in animal advocacy work, and a solid foundation on top of which to build.
Strategic Priorities
This year, we are especially focused on these priorities:
Understand Users and Usage – Conduct user surveys and interviews, monitor key metrics, and turn understanding into feature ideas.
If you're excited by our mission, here are ways you can support us this year:
Donate – We have a relatively small budget ($125,000 for 2025), so your support goes a long way. You can donate here.
Volunteer – There’s plenty of work to be done and we’re always looking for great people. Right now we would especially love to find people to help with internal project management, backend technical work (Python/data engineering/data analytics), marketing, and fundraising (email campaigns). You can apply to join the team here.
Provide Expertise & Consulting – If you have deep expertise with app product design or scaling an online network for user engagement, we’d love to get your advice. You can contact us here.
Bring CFA to Your Organization – If you are part of an animal advocacy group working on ending factory farming, we’d love to connect and hear how we can support your work. You can reach out to us here.
Background
The Problem
Factory farming causes an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering. We believe that ending factory farming is one of the most pressing issues of our time. But factory farming, and animal exploitation in general, is deeply entrenched in society, which makes it very difficult to address.
The Opportunity
Thanks to growing awareness, there are millions of people globally who already want to help end factory farming. But many of these people are disconnected from each other and don’t know how to take action in ways that are right for them. This leads to isolation, demotivation, recidivism, and lost impact. By connecting and empowering these millions of people, we can accelerate the end of factory farming.
The Solution
Connect For Animals exists to find, connect, and empower people who want to help end factory farming.
We work to help people find “right fit” connections, resources, and impact opportunities, and to make it easy and fulfilling for people to connect with each other and take action. And we aim to do this at a scale that will move the needle on these issues, helping get tens of thousands of people more engaged with animal advocacy.
To accomplish this, Connect For Animals has built an online platform to help pro-animal people find events, discover organizations, learn about advocacy opportunities, and connect with others. The platform is available as both a website and mobile app (Android and iOS), and our weekly Events Digest email newsletter provides users with a comprehensive list of upcoming virtual events, local events, and conferences relevant to ending factory farming.
We will work to become a go-to online platform for people who want to help end factory farming, focused on connection, education, and action. By empowering tens of thousands of people, we will grow the animal advocacy movement, accelerating the end of factory farming and bringing about a better world for animals.
Imagine that…
Connect For Animals is a go-to social network app for people who want to help end factory farming.
Anyone who cares about animals and wants to help end factory farming uses Connect For Animals for events, connecting with others, and finding ways to get active. Every organization posts their events and campaign actions on Connect For Animals, making it easy to take action and stay updated.
The movement grows and gains greater ability to create change through our increased people power.
“Oh you want to help end factory farming? (Oh, you’re veg*n?) Do you know about Connect For Animals?”
Present Results and Impact
Platform Development
We made significant improvements to the Connect For Animals platform to enhance usability, engagement, and functionality across web and mobile.
Rebrand: We did a complete rebrand with the help of User-Friendly, with a new logo, new fonts, and improved color selection. We received very positive feedback on the rebrand, and the new logo and brand help us be perceived as trustworthy and professional by people who discover us.
Events: We streamlined events functionality for users by enabling easy event duplication, refining event filters, and adding mobile bottom-menu functionality. We also improved our backend events management processes by developing new scripts to automatically detect duplicates, check events for relevance, and auto-publish relevant events.
Mobile App: We released the first version of our mobile app for iOS and Android, enabling users to access events, connect with others, and stay updated on the go. (We’re currently planning a big press campaign to launch the app.)
User Profiles: We added the ability for users to create profiles and discover other users. We also created an improved platform onboarding process that encourages users to create their profiles immediately after signing up, boosting profile creation rates from 12% before the change to 45% after the change.
New Home Page: We design a new Home page as the default landing page for logged in users. The Home page shows users upcoming virtual and local events, local groups, and people who live nearby. This makes it easier for users to discover different types of relevant resources quickly when they first load Connect For Animals.
Integrating Artificial Intelligence: AI tools now help with events data processing and event publishing, greatly improving their efficiency.
User Data
User Growth
Registered Users: We have ~1,700 registered users, compared to 800 at the beginning of 2024.
56% of our users are in the US, 11% in Canada, 19% listed no country, and 14% are in other countries.
In the US, 23% of our users are in Colorado (because of heavier promotion there for the first year of CFA’s existence), 13% in California, 9% in New York, 6% in Oregon, and 5% in Texas.
Web Traffic: 300–700 unique visitors per week and 21,000 total unique visitors in 2024, compared to 6,400 total unique visitors in 2023.
Google Ads Grants search ads boosted these numbers, accounting for about 18% of 2024 website sessions.
Events Digest Newsletter: The twice-weekly newsletter reaches 1,300 recipients, with a 50% open rate and 10% click rate, demonstrating strong engagement.
User Sign-Up Motivation: The majority of our users are motivated to sign up by connection (~37%), impact (~31%), events (~16%), and education (~15%), with many users expressing interest in multiple categories.
User Engagement
Events Digest Newsletter link clicks: Currently, about 46% of newsletter email link clicks are on event links, 14% are on featured actions, and 40% are on featured organizations and other links (resources, CFA links, etc.).
Events and Resources drive the most website engagement, but newer features like Actions and User Profiles appear to be gaining traction.
Our Resources page is one of the top site pages mostly because of Google Ads Grants search ad traffic.
Events Submitted By Others: 130 unique users submitted 500 events to Connect For Animals in 2024 representing 100 different organizations and groups.
Stories of Success
Users have told us that Connect For Animals helps them find events, take action for animals, find other pro-animal people, and discover new resources. Users also appreciate the high-value nature of the Events Digest email newsletter, including the diverse learnings, resources, and inspirational messages shared in the opening text of each email. Organizations have also told us they have gotten new event attendees and volunteers through Connect For Animals.
Below are testimonials from users illustrating the impact of Connect For Animals.
“I found Connect for Animals on a Friday, and by Sunday, I was already attending my first event. It’s exactly what the animal advocacy movement needed, a space to find resources, events, and like-minded people all in one place. I’m excited to see this platform grow because it’s making it easier than ever to get involved and take action for animals.”
“Thanks for what you do and for connecting people to the Cube! We had someone new join us at the Cube today and she loved it. She mentioned she found us through Connect For Animals!”
“My local area doesn’t have one place with a comprehensive list of all the animal events going on, besides CFA. The CFA weekly digest let me know about a protest I had missed through other channels. I attended and met activists I didn’t know before. I had a great chat with the organizer, and we’ve opened up the possibility of collaborations between our organizations in the future.”
“I just signed up and already learned about vegan organizations and events in my city I had no idea about. I’m going to spread the word 💪”
“I actually met [two local animal advocates] through Connect for Animals. Having dinner with them was also the first time that I’d heard about Earning to Give as a potential pathway and set me on a deeper dive into the EA side of animal advocacy.”
5-Year Vision
By 2030, we aim for Connect For Animals to be a go-to platform globally for people who want to help end factory farming, with tens of thousands of monthly active users.
We anticipate strong user growth as we refine our platform, expand outreach and visibility, and improve retention. If current trends continue, we could see tens of thousands of new users over the next five years and improved functionality that helps users get maximally engaged in right-fit ways.
To ensure that our platform measurably increases advocacy participation, supports organizations, and strengthens movement-wide connection and collaboration, we will track and optimize for:
Advocacy event sign-ups per month
Users per week taking action via events, campaigns, or volunteering
New connections per week through messages, resource or opportunity discovery, or collaboration
Pro-animal organizations and local groups actively using CFA for outreach, events, campaigns, and mobilization
We will also expand our geographic reach, with a goal of localized platform support in key regions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
As a young and fast-evolving organization, our strategy and projections will adapt as we learn. However, our core mission will guide our steps—to grow the movement to end factory farming by ensuring that every pro-animal person anywhere in the world has the connections, resources, and support they need to take action.
2025 Strategic Priorities
This year, we have identified the following strategic priorities for us as an organization. These are actionable areas that we believe will have the largest impact on our growth and success this year, based on our organizational mission and understanding of our current situation.
We will review our progress on a monthly and quarterly basis, and will do a comprehensive review at six months to determine if we need any major changes.
SP #1: Understand Users and Usage
*(SP = Strategic Priority)
Why?
We have plenty of usage data and many success stories, but knowledge gaps still limit our ability to prioritize in the most effective way. We would like to increase our monitoring of key metrics—like conversion rates, churn rate, and monthly active users—that could directly influence our decisions, as well as proactively request feedback about user needs and impact on a more regular basis. We can become a more effective “learning organization” that tests, learns, and adapts based on information from users and the outcomes of experiments, staying curious about our users, our programs, and our impact.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Conduct at least 3–5 user surveys with 200+ responses total to gain insight into engagement, needs, successes, and barriers.
Hold 20+ structured user interviews across different user types (new users, super users, event submitters, organizational users, and inactive users).
Implement automated tracking for key metrics, ensuring we have weekly active user (WAU) and monthly active user (MAU) data readily available.
Measure and track full Pirate Funnel (AARRR) metrics—Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue (Impact, in our case)—at least monthly in order to better understand user behavior, identify drop-off points, and optimize engagement strategies.
Specific Actions
Regularly get closer to our users through surveys, conversations, and usability testing.
Document 5–10 user success stories, analyzing how they found CFA, the value they received, and unmet needs. Use these to refine product direction.
Identify and define at least one “aha moment”—a key first action that predicts long-term engagement—and refine onboarding to guide users towards these actions.
Build closer relationships with pro-animal organizations to understand their needs and how CFA can support them. Schedule calls with group leaders/organizers and organizational staff involved in events, campaign actions, and activist mobilization.
Expand our metrics infrastructure to track retention, login frequency, weekly active users (WAU), and Pirate Funnel conversion rates (source1 / source2).
Define and track key impact metrics, such as advocacy actions taken and volunteering participation.
Review existing user motivation data to inform product priorities.
Consider expanding user preference fields/questions to learn more about user motivations and provide more personalized functionality.
SP #2: Use Understanding to Meet User Needs
Why?
As we continue to understand what our users need and how they are using Connect For Animals (SP #1), we will develop product features and services to meet those needs, using experiments to test ideas (such as concierge tests or “person behind the curtain” tests) before fully committing.
As the product continues growing to better meet user needs, this will also impact our marketing and the rate of user sign-ups. Word of mouth marketing will continue to increase, and our marketing efforts will have greater ROI due to better product-market fit.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Increase Day 1 app retention from ~37% → 45%+ by improving onboarding and engagement nudges.
Increase Day 7 app retention from ~10% → 35%+ through follow-ups (email, push notifications).
Increase percentage of new users completing a meaningful app action within 3 days from TBD% → 50%+.
Improve visitor-to-signup conversion rate from ~1% → 3%+ by optimizing calls to action, signup flow, and landing page messaging.
Launch and test 3+ major product improvements aimed at increasing engagement (e.g., direct messaging, user recommendations, content contributions).
Ensure 50%+ of event submitters return to submit additional events.
Specific Actions
(Continuous user research will lead to more detailed action items in an iterative process.)
Set quantitative targets for user growth, retention, and engagement, aligning initiatives with these goals.
Develop features that facilitate user-to-user connection, such as:
Direct messaging
Personalized user recommendations
Interactive content (e.g., Q&A forums, user-generated requests and discussions)
Improve onboarding by guiding users toward key actions that drive long-term engagement.
Increase utilization of communication strategies (email, push notifications) to bring users back.
SP #3: Expand Fundraising Efforts
Why?
Additional funding allows us to grow our team’s capacity and open up new opportunities for marketing, product development, etc.
In addition to deepening our relationships with our existing pro-animal foundations (THANK YOU!), we also want to build relationships with more foundations in order to continue expanding and diversifying our funding.
This year we also want to continue growing our base of individual donors in order to give individuals a way to support our growth.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Grow individual contributions to cover ~25% of our 2025 budget, helping us build a long-term financial foundation.
Grow recurring monthly donations to 3x current amount.
Apply for 10+ grants from pro-animal or other aligned funders.
Engage at least two board members in direct fundraising efforts.
Specific Actions
Improve fundraising systems, processes, and strategy with a fundraising consultant.
Strengthen foundation relationships by maintaining regular communication and demonstrating impact.
Apply for 10+ grants from pro-animal and aligned funders, including the Navigation Fund.
Create targeted campaigns to increase monthly donations.
Consider adding new team member focused on fundraising efforts.
SP #4: Increase Use of AI and Continue Developing Backend Infrastructure
Why?
Strategic use of AI and backend infrastructure already saves us hundreds of hours of work per year (cost savings of thousands of dollars in labor). As one example, we automate much of the process of finding pro-animal events and adding them to CFA. Further investment could save us more time and effort on existing projects and expand what we’re able to do with our budget and team capacity, including providing our users with additional functionality.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Reduce manual data processing time for events by at least 50% through AI-driven automation.
Test at least one AI-powered feature for user engagement, such as automated recommendations for connections, events, or resources.
Specific Actions
Expand AI automation in event processing to increase quantity and quality of events data.
Continue building out metrics infrastructure (as outlined in SP #1), including the improvement of our data dashboards.
Test using AI-driven recommendations to connect users with relevant events, people, and resources.
Analyze existing backend scripts and processes for improvements, such as implementing a better logging and monitoring platform and tying together workflows using an orchestration tool for better execution and monitoring.
Identify workflows that can be improved through either automation or better use of technology.
SP #5: Be More Visible
Why?
So far, the majority of our efforts have focused on product development, with comparatively little effort invested in marketing, advertising, and other ways of being visible to our target audience and the pro-animal movement. While this has allowed us to build a strong platform, our ability to attract and retain users is limited by awareness.
By investing in greater visibility of our product and our team, we can grow our user base and be seen by the movement as a valuable tool for animal advocates.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Increase total user base from 1,700 → 3,500+.
Run 2+ PR and advertising campaigns, including a mobile app launch campaign.
Secure endorsements and promotions from 5+ pro-animal organizations.
Increase social media engagement by 50%+ across 3+ platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn).
Specific Actions
Run a PR campaign for the launch of our mobile app, reaching out to press, influencers, and partner organizations.
Execute a creative advertising campaign in partnership with User-Friendly that (a) drives sign-ups and (b) tests what types of messaging are most effective with our target audience.
Build deeper relationships with pro-animal nonprofit advocacy organizations, and provide resources to organizations about how they can use CFA. (See SP #1 for a similar action.) As part of this outreach, explore opportunities for having CFA featured in organization blogs, email lists, or social media channels.
Re-engage past users who may not be aware of recent platform developments, inviting them to explore CFA again.
Develop an outreach plan for podcasts, influencers, and media publications, both in the pro-animal space and in relevant adjacent communities.
Consider sponsoring or having a booth at the Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit and/or another conference, or otherwise having a visible presence at such events.
Create VegFest outreach strategy and team dedicated to developing and executing this strategy.
Share our learnings (e.g., from SP #1) with other organizations.
Leverage in-person and virtual branded events to create high-value interactions to spread word-of-mouth and create lasting awareness.
Consider adding another person to the team (part-time or volunteer) who can help with marketing, advertising, and branding.
SP #6: Reduce Team Bottlenecks and Improve Processes
Why?
A stronger organizational structure with well-documented workflows and more distributed responsibilities will allow Connect For Animals to scale more effectively. By developing clearer, consistently followed processes, we can empower all team members to pursue goals while maintaining strategic alignment through effective communication and review channels.
Targeted Metrics for 2025
Reduce tasks requiring our Executive Director’s direct involvement through team empowerment, automating workflows, delegating responsibilities, and improving documentation.
Add one part-time or volunteer team member to assist with technical projects, marketing, or project management.
Document 80%+ of key recurring workflows in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Conduct quarterly team process reviews to identify inefficiencies and streamline workflows.
Specific Actions
Work with an external consultant to assess and improve internal processes and culture. (Can also learn from similar organizations with better processes.)
Document core processes in SOPs (e.g., fundraising, event processing, outreach).
Add another person to the team (part-time or volunteer) who can help with backend technical projects (Python, GCP, metrics, etc.).
Add another person to the team (part-time or volunteer) who can help with project management.
Review team dynamics and gather feedback from surveys or 1:1 check-ins to identify pain points and improvement opportunities.
Reinvent the role of the board of directors as a more engaged entity that helps drive success and impact. Seek advice from organizations that have been particularly successful at this.
Identify workflows that can be improved through either (a) automation (as outlined in SP #4), or (b) developing a clear process.
Appendices
Appendix A: Targeted Results
The Strategic Priorities above target the following primary results:
Increase the number of active users: More users means more actions being taken, more events attended, and more connections made, which leads to increased impact for animals.
Regular users
Organizational users
Improve user retention and engagement: Higher engagement translates to more advocacy participation and a stronger network effect, increasing platform value.
Regular user needs
Connection
Learning / Education / Resources
Action
Organizational needs
Engagement
Action
(future/speculative) Donations
Expand team capacity: Greater team capacity means a greater ability to produce new and better features and services for users, as well as a greater ability to support the fundraising and operational needs of the organization.
Grow funding: Increased funding gives us the ability to hire staff and contractors to expand our team capacity, pay for advertising and creative marketing campaigns, pay for technical products and services to expand our platform’s functionality and backend operations, and plan further ahead.
Appendix B: Targeted Impacts
We believe these are the primary impacts that our work has (or could have in the future), and that these impacts are what drive change for animals:
Increased advocacy: More users actively engaging in advocacy events, campaigns, and volunteering.
Decreased recidivism (diet change, movement engagement): Supporting users in maintaining long-term involvement in the movement and pro-animal/pro-veg lifestyles.
Increased information and resource flow: Making it easier for pro-animal people to discover opportunities, organizations, and actions.
(future/speculative) Increased movement funding: Encouraging a culture of donating throughout our user base, such as by nudging users towards the Giving for Animals 10% Pledge.
This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
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Executive summary: Connect For Animals aims to accelerate the end of factory farming by connecting and empowering animal advocates through an online platform, with 2025 priorities focused on user engagement, fundraising, AI integration, visibility, and organizational efficiency.
Key points:
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.