Hey Vaidehi, thanks a lot for reading and your questions:)

1. Of the 100 strategic pairings you did, how would you break down the impact / what was the outcome of the pairings?

We have only started doing strategic connections actively in August and have a follow-up time after three months of connections, so we don’t know the outcome for the majority yet. We have a system set up that notes down the input (resource provided, short or long consultation, funding, warm introduction or others) and output (tool adopted, meaningful or impactful connection, project consolidation or extension, knowledge gained, funding/volunteering/job opportunity gained, time saved, project started, co-founder paired, other). Some of the connections we have checked on had resulted in some outcomes from the above, some had no outcome, but the data we got won't be informative yet. It is possible that long-term the impact of these connections can change too. We are going to check in on the connections in February after the survey and report back on the data in a post. 

2. how do you think the AI for animals group will benefit animals? E.g. what kind of concrete outcomes do you expect to see?

It’s hard to know at this point what concrete outcomes will arise. The most ideal would be if we were able to establish a dialogue with companies that are involved with precision livestock farming and influence them to prioritize animal welfare higher than they otherwise would have. There is usually a point in intensive farming where welfare and economic gain are opposed and we would like to be in a position to influence these tradeoff decisions. With our initiatives to have animals included in the ethics frameworks in LLM companies, we are hoping that animals will have more consideration in future applications of the LLM. One hypothetical could be if someone asked for the steps to build a highway responsibly and the LLM would be more likely to advise to find and avoid cutting through any animal migration routes. Of course, we don’t expect to be able to do this on our own. Our focus on writing about AI and animals would ideally result in others feeling motivated to work on it too so this field grows faster and we can better take advantage of this window of time where changes in AI policy are easier to make. Finally, the work we do with helping animal advocates to use AI to improve their work efficiency aims to save valuable time and money in the movement.

3. do you have a user survey or feedback on the relative value of the different services you provide? How do you prioritize between different initiatives?

We haven’t done extensive user surveys yet but we have done some user interviews (35 1:1 conversations) based around the needs of the community members and have incorporated some of their feedback into our strategy and programs. We also have continuous feedback being requested through all our channels.
Initially, because we started from such a small project, we were guided mainly by the feedback on the MVP experiments we conducted (which were in turn chosen because we identified a gap we thought was worth filling). Once the MVP launched and was converted into a program, the content was largely community-driven (e.g. members requesting channels). To help us decide whether a program is worth continuing, we look at the engagement indicators such as newsletter and Slack channel views, as well as talking to community members to find out whether a service is valuable. During these conversations we sometimes find more tangible impact.
We created a weighted factor model to help us choose between different programs (with Potential Impact, cost, feasibility, neglectedness and scalability as criteria). So far the highest ranking are the AI and Animals, the Slack space, resource wiki and the newsletter, with the Forum following close (largely because of the uncertainty around us being able to overcome the “cold start”). However, this model is initial, and we will be updating it based on the results of the community survey we’ll do in February.
We always have new ideas, either from ourselves or suggested. We will also ask this question in our upcoming survey to see how impactful and/or valuable these programs are to the community members and if there is something else people would like to see.

Hey Julia and Ozzie, thanks a lot for writing this! I enjoyed reading it and agree with your points, nice to see the gaps highlighted, hopefully it will lead to more people considering and starting these projects! I actually used the gap approach to start Impactful Animal Advocacy, and we now have a very active Slack space which the readers of this forum (interested in animal advocacy) are welcome to join. The main purpose is coordination and knowledge sharing in animal advocacy, and we also have a regular newsletter among other programmes like resource databases and wikis (building these up at the moment).

Thanks for reading Jessica and glad it resonated with you! I used to feel quite isolated at the beginning but I've been sharing my experience with other entrepreneurs and it has helped a lot to feel like my experience has been "normal" and others are going through similar stuff:) 
Anything in particular do you think resonated with you, or any experience sounds different?

Thanks for reading Luke and thank you for the kind words 😊

Thanks a lot Corentin for reading and wow new org - exciting!!! 

thanks for reading Simon and thanks for keeping us entrepreneurs mentally and physically healthy:) 

Thanks a lot for writing this Lizka! I especially appreciate the "what you find hard" section. We really need more transparency about what successful people struggle with so that others, especially people who are just starting out, don't feel bad for having a bad day (or a week, month, etc.). I also believe it's valuable for other Forum users to see what happens behind the scenes, as many online products look like they "just happen" while many hours and people's energy go into them! 
As an additional benefit, if any org decides to hire for a Content Specialist this post can be very useful! 

So excited for this!
I will post two things:
1. Writing about my job: Co-founder of a new charity
2. What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy

Thank you!
 

Many thanks Jamie. This is very useful! How I wish though AI didn’t make things up 😂😂 it’s so keen to please us!