ABOUT AAC > OUR IMPACT
2022 YEAR IN REVIEW
Empowering Individuals To Make a Change
for Animals
At AAC, we believe in the power of long-term change, and our positive impact often unfolds gradually as individuals take time to transition into new roles and discover opportunities months after engaging with our services.
With this in mind, we are excited to present our impact report for 2022. It highlights the amazing achievements made possible by your support, our users, and our donors. See the positive change we've created for the advocacy movement below!
3X
Impact
achieved, resulting in a 3x multiplier of value to the movement for every $1 spent.
30+
Placements
facilitated, helping individuals secure paid jobs in animal advocacy.
$300K
Raised
in current & pledged funds for animal advocacy organisations by our programmes.
$854K
Value Added
to the animal advocacy movement through our programmes.
Amounts are in USD. This is an internal rough estimation, considering the placements we assist with, the person's likelihood of obtaining the role without our help, and other factors such as the role's importance to the organization.
We've worked hard to accomplish these results through various
INITIATIVES:
Grew our Influence with Increased Reach
We hired a marketing manager and started several initiatives to amplify our services and improve our reach.
We were able to connect more individuals passionate about animal advocacy through channels like social media, SEO, advertising and email marketing.
Started Tracking Donations Raised Through Our Programmes
Last year, we uncovered that our impact goes beyond job placements, due to us influencing a large number of donations.
Therefore, we now track and quantify the value of donations to the movement raised through our programmes and referrals.
Improved our Metrics for Greater Impact
We're improving our internal metrics by involving external experts and assessing candidates more thoroughly.
This boosts the impact of our programmes, ensuring each career placement has an even greater potential to make a lasting difference in the lives of animals.
Created High-Value Roles with the Fundraising Work Placement
Our Fundraising Work Placement programme has been a game-changer for both individuals and organisations.
By focusing on upskilling and directly placing talented advocates in important roles, we've not only provided career opportunities but also raised $270,000 in current and projected donations to the movement.
Please note this is a preliminary review. Treat this as an imperfect, internal analysis that we share publicly for transparency and in case it’s useful for others. We will continue to improve our analysis over time; however, feedback on where we can improve is very welcome. Additionally, due to the lag results from most of our programmes, we expect a more complete picture of our impact for 2022 will be available between Dec 2023 - June 2024.
Stories of Impactful Placements in 2022
Some of the Placements We Made Possible
Kara spent most of her career in the public sector, primarily managing human resources for financial institutions.
After retiring from her corporate career to pursue her dream of working in farmed animal advocacy, she searched for job opportunities for about a year.
It was on AAC's job board that Kara discovered the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, a perfect match for her skills and aspirations. Today, Kara is living her dream, using her expertise to create a positive impact for animals.
Kara Lombard
Director of Operations at Factory Farming Awareness Coalition
Conor completed a JD (Juris Doctor) degree and did some legal internships and fellowships at animal advocacy organisations.
Conor was looking for various opportunities relating to the law and animals, with a particular focus on lobbying or policy roles.
After some time looking for opportunities, she accepted the opportunity to become a Policy Research Fellow at Pax Fauna, a job opening she found on Animal Advocacy Careers’ job board. She had never heard of Pax Fauna before seeing the role listed there.
Conor Lamkin
Policy Research Fellow at Pax Fauna
Lyda Durango had been searching for an animal advocacy role for 3 or 4 years. She was very close to quitting the search and looking for other jobs instead.
Everything changed after she signed up for AAC’s online course. Lyda renewed her efforts to find a role that helped animals.
She applied to a role at Vegetarianos Hoy that she found through AAC’s job board and now has line management responsibilities for several corporate campaigners across Latin America!
Lyda Durango
Project Director at Vegetarianos Hoy
In just one year, 2022, AAC assisted 32 placements
(compared to 25 placements between 2019-2021). Additionally, we raised $275,000 of current & expected donations for the movement.
The Past & Future of Our Programmes
Job Board
Expanding our reach
Our job board serves as a great landing page to attract people to all our other programmes.
After user research, our plans are to make small improvements to the job board and try to automate it.
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Career advising
Renewed Approach
Even though career advising has a significant impact, it takes a lot of our small team’s capacity.
For this reason, we'll continue offering career advising calls to only a small number of candidates.
Fundraising Work Placement
Very impactful, but funding is a challenge
Out of 9 participants, 5 were hired by impactful organisations for fundraising roles after completing the programme. In addition they raised a massive $386,231 of current & expected funding, $276,000 was likely to not happen without them.
Unfortunately, even though the costs recoup for the movement, this programme is very costly to run. It requires significant hiring and training time (expected $115,000). If you’re interested in funding this programme, please email lauren@animaladvocacycareers.org.
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Recruitment
Stopped
We will no longer provide recruitment services in the previous format.
Instead, we’re pivoting this service into one that we believe is more scalable: the top candidate database.
Online Course
Combining with Other Learning Material
Our online course will now be part of a programme that includes all our educational content.
Our goal is to create a more complete and engaging learning experience for animal advocates.
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Introducing our new programme:
TOP CANDIDATE DATABASE
In 2023, we are excited to introduce the Top Candidate Database, an invite-only programme that connects organisations with pre-vetted high-quality talent from previous hiring rounds.
This programme addresses key challenges and enables both small and large organisations to access top candidates efficiently. We anticipate that the Top Candidate Database will play a crucial role in strengthening the long-term infrastructure of the movement by retaining and supporting talented advocates.
In the first six months of its existence, this programme achieved 2 placements, which is promising. However, we will evaluate it again at the end of 2023 to make a decision whether to continue it or not.
Transforming our programmes for a Better Movement
In 2022, we identified critical areas within the animal advocacy movement that needed improvement. To tackle these challenges head-on, we're introducing innovative solutions through new programmes.
Our goal is to empower organisations, bridge skill gaps, and elevate hiring standards, ensuring a brighter future for animal advocacy.
PROBLEM
OUR SOLUTION
1. Recruitment takes a lot of organisation’s time & resources
There is a need for organisations (in particular small organisations) to have assistance in recruitment due to it being so time-consuming and resource intensive. This was a consistent theme in both our recruitment programme and FWP programme. The latter was even more successful due to organisations being able to outsource their vetting and getting well matched candidates.
Partially addressed by Top candidate database
2. Skill shortage of fundraisers in the movement
Our movement needs more skilled fundraising candidates, especially for senior roles.
As fundraising is the lifeblood of all charities, fundraising roles are essential not only for generating funds but also for enabling senior organisational members to focus on other impactful work.
Check out the testimonials from our Fundraising Work Placement (FWP) programme to see how this support has made a difference.
Partially addressed through all of AAC’s programmes, but a targeted programme like the Fundraising Work Placement programme could create much more impact.
3. Highly skilled candidates dropping off
Highly skilled candidates are dropping off in the hiring process or not applying due to poor organisation hiring processes.
Top Candidate Database & Hiring events series
4. Small organisations struggle with small talent pool
A small number of larger organisations have access to the majority of talent but still want to have assistance and access to more talent in order to potentially increase their average quality of hire.
Small organisations have much smaller candidate pools and struggle to get any candidates to match their bar for hiring, sometimes leaving a role unfilled or hiring someone below the bar needed to do a good job.
Top Candidate Database & Job board
Our next evaluation point is December 2023.
Fundraising Work Placement TESTIMONIALS
This programme is a huge gift to organisations and the animals.
The time saved in recruiting, hiring, and training enabled the rest of our team to do more programmatic work.
We're also more efficient thanks to Sabine's external eye on fundraising goals and campaigns. Thank you AAC for helping us grow the movement to end factory farming!
Animal Advocacy Careers was able to place someone with the skills we needed most, and it took very little of our time apart from approving the final candidate.
We now have a lot more insight into our existing and potential donors and a plan to diversify our funding sources.
An unexpected bonus was that through her network she was also able to put us in touch with people who helped us start an outreach programme in a new region.
As a leader of a small nonprofit I am very grateful to AAC for providing us with a dedicated fundraiser for 6-months.
Recruiting is a time intensive process and knowing that the individual has been through a hiring process before coming to us made me feel safe and secure with the new hire.
This service has allowed me to access the impact of our work and saved me time during reporting and drafting grant applications. I am very grateful to AAC for providing this service.
AAC's fundraising placement participant far exceeded our expectations and our participant did an excellent job at grant writing, communication with funders and creating a fundraising training programme for our African partner orgs.
This also freed up valuable co-founder time to focus on programming, operations and research.
Overall I'm excited about this individuals long term impact at both our organisation and for the movement in general.