When it comes to reducing animal cruelty at scale, nonprofit organizations do tremendous work. Send a good one some money and you’ll help a great many animals. Plus, if you want to gain experience doing animal protection work, many nonprofits are constantly seeking volunteers.
The two behemoths of the animal protection movement are PETA and Humane World for Animals, which each employ hundreds of people and consequently have the resources to work on numerous campaigns simultaneously. PETA also puts out a steady stream of material promoting veganism and cruelty-free living, whereas Humane World devotes itself primarily to advocating for improved animal welfare. Both of these groups amount to one-stop shopping, allowing your donations to fund dozens of different projects protecting animals. PETA, unfortunately, has a decades-long history of operating under the belief that any publicity is good publicity. It routinely resorts to all sorts of silly publicity stunts to attract attention, which, I think, needlessly antagonizes people, thereby making vegans appear like fringe zealots. Humane World, by contrast, embraces the establishment and, for better or worse, doesn’t overtly promote veganism or animal rights, even though a high percentage of its staff is vegan.
Smaller organizations by necessity work within a tighter focus, since they have fewer resources and staff. This specialization and expertise in carefully chosen areas enables the best of these organizations to deliver tremendous bang for your donation buck. Some of these organizations put veganism at the forefront of their messaging, while others don’t mention vegan lifestyles at all. Most animal protection or vegan nonprofits focus on one or two of the following areas:
- Corporate and legislative activism: A handful of nonprofits specialize in lobbying for stricter state and federal animal protection laws, while also engaging with companies to pare back animal use or upgrade welfare standards. Lobbying and corporate outreach are probably the most consequential work done by animal nonprofits, since this work can impact the well-being of billions of animals each year. I regard the most effective of these groups to be The Accountability Board (USA), Compassion in World Farming (international), and the Albert Schweitzer Foundation (Germany). These organizations are always seeking volunteers to contact elected officials to support bills that will advance animal protection.
- Grassroots groups: These organizations engage in a variety of efforts geared toward preventing animal cruelty and promoting veganism. Some of these groups fund undercover investigations that expose cruelties occurring at factory farms and slaughterhouses. These investigations are conducted by animal advocates who gain employment at these facilities, and use hidden video cameras to document abuses. Other grassroots organizations wage what are known as single-issue campaigns that target specific injustices, such as freeing beagles from testing laboratories or protesting elephant abuse at circuses. Prominent grassroots organizations include Animal Equality, Mercy For Animals, and Direct Action Everywhere.
- Promoting vegan lifestyles: Organizations such as the American Vegan Society, Vegetarian Resource Group, and Vegan Outreach focus on producing material advocating for and supporting vegan lifestyles. Many vegans trace their adoption of the lifestyle to receiving information from these groups.
- Local advocacy: A number of cities have local nonprofit groups dedicated to organizing vegan festivals and social events. If there’s a local vegan advocacy group near you, it’s usually easy to find through Meetup.com.
- Animal rescue: These locally-based groups do everything from operating local dog and cat shelters to rehabilitating injured wildlife.
- Farm animal sanctuaries: Perhaps the best advocates for farmed animals are the animals themselves. In 1986, Farm Sanctuary pioneered the rescue of animals from factory farms—housing them in idyllic environments open to the public, so that their stories could be told. There are now dozens of farm animal sanctuaries in the United States, and many more worldwide.
If you wish to donate to an animal protection organization, choose one that has an impressive track record. This is admittedly much harder than it sounds. Two groups, for instance, might each run campaigns to abolish gestation crates, with one group racking up a string of victories, while the other group spends years and gets nowhere.
Every nonprofit issues an end-of-year report, highlighting its accomplishments. These are essential documents for anyone making a major donation, but they must be read skeptically—it’s sadly commonplace for one group to take credit for victories largely won by other organizations. These end-of-year reports typically indicate the percentage of incoming funds spent on fundraising (also called development). I wouldn’t donate to a group that spends more than about 25 percent of its income on fundraising, nor do I support groups that pay outrageously high salaries to their executive teams—a few organizations pay top staff members well in excess of $500,000 per year, money that could surely be spent more effectively if the goal is to impact as many animals as possible. The first thing I do when I consider supporting a nonprofit is look up its executive salaries, since it’s crucial information that takes only a couple of minutes to find via an online search.
To put a finer point matters: I don’t think most animal protection groups deserve your money, but a tiny handful are capable of spending it to tremendous effect. It’s worth the time to properly research and think carefully about which groups are most worthy of your support. If you lack the time or skills to do this research, consider going through a “donor advised fund” such as the Navigation Fund (minimum donation $10,000) and the EA Animal Fund (minimum donation: $75). These funds are run by people with financial acumen and a background in animal protection, who’ve spent time carefully selecting the nonprofits they’ve determined to be most effective.
Before donating to or volunteering with one of these organizations, you may find my animal rights activism guide and Hillary Rettig’s local vegan activism guide to be helpful reading.
