The EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) invites you to Ask Us Anything. You can ask questions from now until next Tuesday morning, December 24. We will stop responding at 2:00 PM CET on Tuesday.
About AWF
The AWF’s mission is to alleviate the suffering of non-human animals globally through effective grantmaking. Since its founding in 2017, AWF has distributed $23.3M across 347 grants. This year, we’ve distributed $3.7M across 51 grants.
You can read about our 2024 year-in-review post and our request for more funding analysis to learn more about our recent work and future goals.
Why Now?
We believe now is an especially good time for an AMA because:
- AWF entered a new stage of growth, with a new full-time chair.
- We recently won the Forum’s 2024 Donation Election (alongside Rethink Priorities and Shrimp Welfare Project).
- We are seeking additional funding during Giving Season to continue funding promising new opportunities in animal welfare.
- We were recommended by Giving What We Can as one of the two best regrantors in the animal welfare space (alongside ACE’s Movement Building Grants), and by Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare as the best donation opportunity for individual donors interested in animal welfare.
- We currently have an open application for AWF fund managers with a deadline of December 29 and an expression of interest form for a potential future role related to fund development.
We are open to questions from interested donors, applicants, past grantees, people interested in jobs at AWF, and others interested in animal welfare.
Our team answering questions is:
- Karolina Sarek, Chair
- Neil Dullaghan, Fund Manager
- Zoë Sigle, Fund Manager
We look forward to hearing your questions!
What are your best guess for the expected impact of donating 100 k$ to AWF as a fraction of the expected impact of donating 100 k$ to GiveWell's top charities? It would be great if you could give a quantitative answer, and explain how you got it. I would also be curious to know about disagreements you may have with my estimates that:
What are your best guesses for the cost-effectiveness of the 3 interventions above? Why?
How do your answers to my questions above change if you assume expected total hedonistic utilitarianism?
Thanks for doing this! As I asked a few weeks ago, do you have any thoughts on whether it is better to donate to the AWF or the Shrimp Welfare Project? I estimate this is 412 and 173 times as cost-effective as broiler welfare and cage-free campaigns.
Hi Karolina, Neil, and Zoë,
First of all, thanks so much for your work, and for hosting an AMA. I've been continually impressed at the array of initiatives funded by the Animal Welfare Fund, as well as its team's dedication.
My question is this (now that we are in the midst of the Giving Season time of year): when do you recommend donating to the AWF, and when to individual charities?
Rick
Do you estimate cost-effectiveness based on guesses for the intensity of the 4 categories of pain defined by the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP), as I do, and Ambitious Impact (AIM) does? If so, which values are you using?
I think Ambitious Impact's values greatly underestimate the intensity of severe pain. Feel free to ask Vicky Cox for the doc with my suggestions for improvement.
How do you handle welfare comparisons across species? Do you basically use Rethink Priorities' median welfare ranges as I do, assuming that 1 year of a practically maximally happy life in animals of a given species is as good as N years of a practically maximally happy life in humans, where N is the welfare range?
With respect to other causes areas:
Animal advocates seem to spend a lot of energy engaging in mutually destructive conflict with one and other.
Even accounting for the above, mental health seems unusually poor and willingness to use existing services is low
How open are you to funding related interventions?
I don't have a question top of mind, but wanted to say thanks for doing an AMA, seems like it could be really useful for some people deciding where to give.