👋 Welcome to the Impactful Animal Advocacy's Getting Started Guide. This resource aims to equip you with evidence-based information and a plethora of resources to make your advocacy as impactful as possible.

What Should I Focus On?

🌍 There are trillions of animals suffering in this world. As advocates with limited time and resources, the question arises: how can we best allocate them to maximize our impact for animals? 🐾 Below is a useful framework for prioritization:

• 🎯 Importance: Assess the scale and severity of the issue. How many animals are affected, and how deeply does the issue compromise their well-being? Use this tool to compare the amount of suffering involved in each animal products and this report to see how many farmed animals are slaughtered in each country.

• 🛠 Tractability: Evaluate how solvable or manageable the problem is. This involves considering the availability of effective interventions and the likelihood of achieving significant change.

• 🕵️‍♂️ Neglectedness: Gauge how much attention and resources are currently being devoted to the issue. Problems that are less well-addressed present opportunities for a high impact.

• 📝 One note about tractability: It's crucial to consider both the solvability of the specific issue in the world and your personal ability to make a difference. Ask yourself, "Am I a good fit for tackling this issue, and is it sustainable for me to work on it long-term?" 🌱 This ensures a more effective and personally rewarding advocacy journey.

To see the ITN framework applied to animal charities, see Animal Charity Evaluator’s cause area priorities.

A variation of this framework applied to countries can be seen in Mercy for Animal’s Farmed Animal Opportunity Index.

An example of an issue that is highly important and neglected, but lower in tractability due to the complexity and lack of research is wild animal suffering.

There are many interventions available to help animals from grassroots activism to policy change to research. See an analysis of 16 different strategies used in the animal advocacy movement in Farmed Forward’s 2020 report. To see a list of interventions that have not yet been tried, see this list of potential megaprojects.

For additional resources, please see our other pages under the resource tab.