EA - You Can Also Help Animals By Earning (More) in Other Career Paths and Donating by Animal Advocacy Careers

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: You Can Also Help Animals By Earning (More) in Other Career Paths and Donating, published by Animal Advocacy Careers on August 1, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum."Animal Advocacy Careers" do not need to be only careers in animal advocacy organisationsThis is the first piece of AAC's new "Impactful Animal Advocacy Career Paths" series (more posts coming soon).Animal advocacy organisations play a vital role in creating a compassionate world for animals, but they face significant challenges in securing adequate funding. Almost all organisations need financial support in order to sustain and expand their programs. Many of these organisations are funding constrained.Providing these resources creates an essential, indirect yet major impact for animals through empowering the organisations helping them.Why Donations For Animals Are CrucialAlmost every advocacy organisation would like to:hire more staff who would work on important tasks,create more advertisements that would raise awareness about animal rights,start more programs to grow and strengthen the movement.None of these things are free.It is simply unrealistic and unfair to expect individuals to selflessly work for animals without any compensation. It is also hard to attract skilled, and competent individuals to work on animal advocacy without decent salaries.There are 3 main problems limiting our progress in putting an end to animal suffering:Lack of funding in nonprofitsAnimal advocacy organisations listed a lack of funding as the single most important thing that limited their organisations impact.For these reasons, organisations require extensive and stable funding.Unless animal nonprofits are adequately resourced, they cannot create meaningful impact for animals. While some organisations also earn money by selling merchandise or event tickets, they simply cannot function like a for profit company.Nonprofits primarily depend on donations to cover their expenses.Uneven distribution of fundingThe problem is not just the limited amount of money in the animal advocacy space, it is also about how the funds are shared and distributed.Farmed and wild animal welfare organisations receive significantly fewer donations compared to organisations working on companion animals, animals used in labs, and captive animals. Yet, the number and suffering of farmed and wild animals are much higher than these other groups.Farmed and wild animal advocacy is relatively more neglected than other animal advocacy fields, in terms of both public attention and funding.While "for every one dog or cat euthanized in a shelter, 3,400 farmed land animals are confined and slaughtered", farmed and wild animal organisations receive about %1 of total donations to animal charities (which also include shelters, organisations that focus on companion animals, etc.).Graphic by Animal Charity EvaluatorsStruggling Against Powerful InstitutionsFinally, the institutions that these organisations are struggling against are extremely powerful. The annual donations to farmed and wild animal advocacy organisations is approximately 200 million dollars.Animal agriculture industry, on the other hand, is a billions of dollars worth industry where tens of thousands people work each day.The animal advocacy movement, farmed and wild animal advocacy in particular is miniscule in terms of financial power compared to the institutions it is positioned against.When animal welfare organisations stage campaigns against corporations like McDonalds or Kroeger in order to achieve institutional welfare reforms, they struggle against organisations that have hundreds, even thousands times more financial resources than they do.Is Alt Protein the Solution? Exploring Ambitions and ChallengesThe alternative protein sector has much more investment and mar...