I'm glad it was helpful! No, the follow-up would not necessarily be online, unfortunately. It's something we track internally for our own strategic purposes and impact assessment. But a lot of progress is made through behind-the-scenes negotiations—we only launch public campaigns if companies don't make progress during the negotiation phase. And if there is a public campaign, sometimes part of the final negotiation is that we agree to take all our public materials down in exchange for the company publicly reporting its progress. 

Trader Joe's is a bit of a weird example—it seems like they are making progress (they have lots of in-store signage, for example) but they haven't publicly reported their cage-free progress. But since we suspect they're already making progress, they wouldn't be a particularly meaningful campaign target. So your suspicion about Trader Joe's is right, there haven't been follow-up campaigns, but you couldn't generalize that to other companies.

Thanks Elijah! Great summary. To your question "Why did they put in effort if not to get customers to see them more positively? I would guess that follow through is much more about avoiding negative publicity than gaining positive reputation." This is basically right. Some companies have been more proactive, even fulfilling their pledges early. Some drag their feet and it takes public pressure for them to move. Groups like The Humane League (which I work for, as a disclaimer) have been running the same types of campaigns used to get the original commitments to ensure that companies actually implement those pledges. These have been successful, but avian flu in the US is a major complicating factor.

As for gaining new commitments, this is now focused outside the US, so maybe that's where your impression came from? For more context, Asia, where the majority of hens live, is focused on getting new commitments. Latin America is a mix of securing new commitments and working on accountability. Parts of Europe are widely cage-free with other parts still advancing this. Africa is securing new commitments, as well as convincing company to stay cage-free as a lot of farming is less industrialized, but companies elsewhere want to export their cages there. 

I'm writing this comment as both a fundraiser and someone who has been involved in leading an organization's participation in an evaluation process. I don't have the knowledge base to engage on whether ACE or Sinergia's claims or evaluations are accurate, but reading your posts makes me worry that you lack some essential understanding of how charities work, which would be greatly improved if you discussed your reviews with charities prior to publishing.

I think you're underestimating how difficult cost-effectiveness estimates are in animal advocacy. The work is highly complex and interdependent, and reliable impact data is not always available.  My organization does not currently publish our own cost-effectiveness estimate because we have found it too complex and time consuming to meet the standard of accuracy we anticipate some supporters or potential supporters might hold—essentially out of fear of reviews like yours—and rely on external evaluators like ACE and Rethink Priorities, though their estimates are not really suitable for a general donor audience as they are not widely accessible. 

As we have been developing our measurement & evaluation capacity, we are working on creating a cost-effectiveness estimate for our work. Seeing your reviews makes me very hesitant to go through with that process, even though I think overall publishing such an estimate would increase our funding and enable us to spare more animals from suffering. We know that our estimate would be imperfect (different reviewers use different methodologies—there is simply disagreement about what matters and the best methodology) and we would plan to publish our assumptions and work, in line with your expectation that "charities to provide sufficient and publicly stated evidence to justify their publicly stated important claims." 

In fact, I think reviewers reaching out to us makes us more likely to publish evidence for our claims, contrary to your Other Reason #1, as we understand the expectation for this and what kind of evidence we might need to collect and publish. On the other hand, anonymous, scathing reviews make us less likely to publish anything at all. In addition, I disagree with the level of seriousness you assign these types of mistakes and the idea that there needs to be some sort of severe public accountability. There is enormous pressure to produce cost-effectiveness estimates because they are such effective fundraising tools, and too make them broadly legible, contrary to what you or an EA reviewer would expect of them. I would conservatively estimate that I've been asked by a potential supporter, meta-charity, or other interested party for a cost-effectiveness estimate at least every month since I started fundraising for an animal advocacy non-profit over 8 years ago. In that time, I've seen plenty of cost-effectiveness estimates be revised, or fall in and out of favor. I'm not defending deliberate misinformation, but without talking to charities I think you have no way of knowing whether those mistakes are deliberate, simply mistakes, or valid philosophical disagreements. 

Thanks for posting this! I saw the tool and was intrigued, appreciate the opportunity to learn more about it, and about what you all are finding is working.

Agree on all counts, Aidan!

Thanks for writing this, Aidan! As a fundraiser, this take resonates. One of the strategies we use to acquire new donors is encouraging our existing supporters to engage in relational fundraising, whether that's a peer-to-peer birthday fundraiser as you suggest, or a larger time investments (and potentially $, as hosts will also sometimes offer matching gifts to incentivize their friends) like hosting a fundraising event in your home or leading a giving circle. (I've also participated in non-EA giving circles that do political education as part of the gift allocation process, which EAs could emulate, but that's an aside.) Your network likely shares many of your values, and educating them about effective giving opportunities is super helpful to charities. 

That said, it is difficult to convince people who don't care about a particular cause area to care. For those in the farmed animal advocacy space, consider how difficult it can be to get people to reduce or eliminate their animal product consumption. It's more about presenting values-aligned people with opportunities to enact those values, rather than changing people's values altogether, in my experience. 

Hi there, writing on behalf of The Humane League!

THL is grateful to GWWC for their support of our corporate campaigns to reduce farmed animal suffering, previously as a recommended program and moving forward as a supported program. GWWC provides an important service to the philanthropic community, and the funds they have directed to THL have driven highly impactful victories to reduce animal suffering, including a recent groundbreaking victory that will spare 700,000 hens from immense suffering annually once implemented and kickstart the cage-free supply in Asia, a neglected yet highly important region for corporate campaigns.

While we are disappointed that our corporate campaigns to reduce farmed animal suffering will no longer be listed as a recommended program, we understand GWWC’s decision to limit the scope of their recommendations in line with their evaluating evaluators project. We hope that donors will continue to support our corporate campaigns and the Open Wing Alliance as highly impactful giving opportunities to reduce the suffering of millions of sentient beings and build an effective global animal advocacy movement, given the strong marginal impact of our supported regranting programs in neglected regions. We are grateful that GWWC will continue accepting gifts on THL’s behalf; in addition gifts can be made directly to THL, or through our other international charity partners for donors outside the US seeking tax deductions. 

If you have any questions about THL’s programs or high-impact funding opportunities, please reach out to Caroline Mills at cmills@thehumaneleague.org.

With gratitude,

The THL team

omg, I did! Thank you for the correction :)

Thanks for the question and feedback Jason, that's a point well taken! I think my main response is that this is less of a dispute, and more of simply a strategy that, from my perspective, lacks awareness and understanding across the effective animal advocacy movements, and I imagine across other movements as well though I'd love to hear from folks in EA but non-EAA movements.

We do see a mix of behaviors from grantmakers - some who solely fund grants, and some who fund both grants and the associated program support. For those who only fund grants, I think it's a mix of rationale. Some grantmakers have specific grantmaking priorities to, say, direct funding to a particular region of the world, and they find our grants to be an efficient way to do that. We're definitely still grateful for that support, and it is highly impactful. Some grantmakers who solely fund grants I think are simply not aware of all that goes into making those grants successful, and those are conversations we try to have with funders when we're able. But your comment is a good reminder to me as a fundraiser to gain a deeper understanding of that behavior. 

I think this post was aimed less at our existing funders who may or may not be funding grant program support, and more at other funders who might be looking for ways to create efficiencies in their funding strategy and maximize impact. But that may not have totally come across, so again thanks for the points here!