Wild Animal Initiative donations received

This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2024. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.

Table of contents

Basic donee information

We do not have any donee information for the donee Wild Animal Initiative in our system.

Donee donation statistics

Cause areaCountMedianMeanMinimum10th percentile 20th percentile 30th percentile 40th percentile 50th percentile 60th percentile 70th percentile 80th percentile 90th percentile Maximum
Overall 2 50,000 1,775,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000
Animal welfare 2 50,000 1,775,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000 3,500,000

Donation amounts by donor and year for donee Wild Animal Initiative

Donor Total 2021 2019
Open Philanthropy (filter this donee) 3,500,000.00 3,500,000.00 0.00
Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund (filter this donee) 50,000.00 0.00 50,000.00
Total 3,550,000.00 3,500,000.00 50,000.00

Full list of documents in reverse chronological order (4 documents)

Title (URL linked)Publication dateAuthorPublisherAffected donorsAffected doneesAffected influencersDocument scopeCause areaNotes
Where ACE Staff Are Giving In 2019 and Why2019-12-26Erika Alonso Animal Charity EvaluatorsHeather Herrell Erika Alonso Gina Stuessy Jamie Spurgeon Melissa Guzikowski Cash Callaghan Marianne van der Werf Animal Charity Evaluators Animal Charity Evaluators Recommended Charity Fund Effective Animal Advocacy Fund Farm Sanctuary StrongMinds The Good Food Institute Rethink Priorities The Humane League Wild Animal Initiative Fish Welfare Initiative Aquatic Life Institute Faunalytics Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations Essere Animali Christopher Sebastian McJetters Periodic donation list documentationAnimal welfareAnimal Charity Evaluators (ACE) staff describe where they donated or plan to donate in 2019. The list differs from the previous year: almost all the donations are in the animal welfare space (with none in the domains of AI safety, other global catastrophic risks, or GiveWell-style global health and development). Donation amounts are not disclosed, likely by policy
Effective Altruism Foundation: Plans for 2020 (GW, IR)2019-12-23Jonas Vollmer Effective Altruism FoundationOpen Philanthropy Effective Altruism Foundation Raising for Effective Giving Wild-Animal Suffering Research Utility Farm Wild Animal Initiative Sentience politics Donee periodic updateEffective altruism/movement growth/s-risk reductionThe document includes the 2019 review and plans for 2020 of the Effective Altruism Foundation (EAD). Key highlights: EAD plans to change its name in 2020 as a rebranding effort to highlight its focus on s-risk reduction, rather than the effective altruism; as part of this, the Foundational Research Institute brand will also be deprecated. Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm merged to form Wild Animal Initiative, which is now completely separate from EAF. Raising for Effective Giving and Sentience Politics continue to be housed under EAF. The post also describes communication guidelines developed along with Nick Beckstead of the Open Philanthropy Project (that also made a $1 million grant to EAF). The guidelines "recommend highlighting beliefs and priorities that are important to the s-risk-oriented community" and "recommend communicating in a more nuanced manner about pessimistic views of the long-term future by considering highlighting moral cooperation and uncertainty, focusing more on practical questions if possible, and anticipating potential misunderstandings and misrepresentations." The post also says the guidelines will soon be made public, and that it was a mistake to not announce the guidelines earlier; doing so might have addressed https://www.simonknutsson.com/problems-in-effective-altruism-and-existential-risk-and-what-to-do-about-them/ and related concerns
Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff - 20192019-12-18Holden Karnofsky Open PhilanthropyChloe Cockburn Jesse Rothman Michelle Crentsil Amanda Hungerfold Lewis Bollard Persis Eskander Alexander Berger Chris Somerville Heather Youngs Claire Zabel National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls Life Comes From It Worth Rises Wild Animal Initiative Sinergia Animal Center for Global Development International Refugee Assistance Project California YIMBY Engineers Without Borders 80,000 Hours Centre for Effective Altruism Future of Humanity Institute Global Priorities Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute Ought Donation suggestion listCriminal justice reform|Animal welfare|Global health and development|Migration policy|Effective altruism|AI safetyContinuing an annual tradition started in 2015, Open Philanthropy Project staff share suggestions for places that people interested in specific cause areas may consider donating. The sections are roughly based on the focus areas used by Open Phil internally, with the contributors to each section being the Open Phil staff who work in that focus area. Each recommendation includes a "Why we recommend it" or "Why we suggest it" section, and with the exception of the criminal justice reform recommendations, each recommendation includes a "Why we haven't fully funded it" section. Section 5, Assorted recomendations by Claire Zabel, includes a list of "Organizations supported by our Committed for Effective Altruism Support" which includes a list of organizations that are wiithin the purview of the Committee for Effective Altruism Support. The section is approved by the committee and represents their views.
Announcing Wild Animal Initiative2019-01-25Abraham Rowe Persis Eskander Wild Animal Initiative Wild Animal Initiative Utility Farm Wild-Animal Suffering Research MergerAnimal welfare/wild animal sufferingThe post announces that two organizations focused on wild animals, namely Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm, are merging into one organization called the Wild Animal Initiative. Cross-posted to https://was-research.org/blog/announcing-wild-animal-initiative/ on the Wild-Animal Suffering Research blog and to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jzikTHMSpckYg9ZPp/announcing-wild-animal-initiative (GW, IR) on the Effective Altruism Forum. See also the associated discussion on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/ajr27e/announcing_wild_animal_initiative_wildanimal/

Full list of donations in reverse chronological order (2 donations)

Graph of top 10 donors (for donations with known year of donation) by amount, showing the timeframe of donations

Graph of donations and their timeframes
DonorAmount (current USD)Amount rank (out of 2)Donation dateCause areaURLInfluencerNotes
Open Philanthropy3,500,000.0012021-06Animal welfare/wild animal welfarehttps://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/wild-animal-initiative-animal-welfare-researchLewis Bollard Intended use of funds (category): Direct project expenses

Intended use of funds: The grant page says: "[grant] to support research on animal welfare. This funding is intended to support academic projects relevant to the field of welfare biology."

Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "WAI, recently named an Animal Charity Evaluators Top Charity, has previously recommended to us a number of giving opportunities, including to the University of Missouri and the University of Glasgow." https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/university-of-missouri-animal-welfare-research and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/university-of-glasgow-animal-welfare-research are the linked grants.

Other notes: Intended funding timeframe in months: 24.
Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund50,000.0022019-03-06Animal welfare/wild-animal sufferinghttps://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/7ysr1iPZTjf4fBAPfP3xuBLewis Bollard Natalie Cargill Toni Adleberg Jamie Spurgeon Grant for research on tractable interventions to help wild animals. Two recipients of previous grants from the Animal Welfare Fund — Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm — have recently merged to form a new group: Wild Animal Initiative. Under the direction of Abraham Rowe, Wild Animal Initiative will focus on research prioritization, academic outreach, and research on potential near-term interventions. Over the next year, they plan to expand their research and communications staff. They are also looking into funding early-career academics to do research that is aligned with their goals. Donors think that wild animal suffering is a relatively large-scale and neglected problem, so they are happy to support one of the few organizations currently working in that space. Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 11.24%.