The suggestions below aren't particularly EA-aligned but might interest you. Note that I am not a data scientist and haven't worked with any of them.
https://www.ideas42.org/ seem to work in your area of interest. I don't know if they would offer projects to work on though.
https://omdena.com/ has interesting data for good projects and can be a good place to build a data science portfolio (my partner volunteers for them and is quite satisfied with the experience).
https://www.drivendata.org/ has data for good challenges that might interest you.
Hope this helps.
Apart from funding, are there other leverage points you see to move the animal welfare movement as a whole towards higher impact? As an example scenario: early hits causing other organisations to alter their strategy?