Our mission is to direct animal advocates to opportunities to achieve the highest impact possible through their careers.
Research shows that organisations with a higher talent density overperform all others. This enables organisational leaders to be more hands-off and transparent, knowing their staff have the skills and attitudes to act in the best interests of the organisation. This, in turn, often results in higher retention, better culture, more productivity and higher engagement with staff, ultimately accelerating change for animals.
The aim of international talent density is deeply aligned with AAC’s mission: the focus is on paying more attention to hiring the right people, and having the right people in the right positions that can help animals the most.
CEO & Founder Lauren Mee was working in the for-profit sector consulting organisations on using data to make market-driven decisions. After 7 years of working in the industry and volunteering, she began eagerly searching for a job with more purpose and aligned more with her values.
After years of job searching, she joined a charity incubator programme targeting the most promising areas to start a new non-profit. Experts agreed that there was a critical shortage of mission-aligned candidates with specific skills in the animal advocacy movement, holding back the impact & expansion of organisations fighting animal suffering. Animal Advocacy Careers (AAC) was born.
AAC helps advocates find and transition into meaningful opportunities that make the world better for animals. Alongside this, AAC closely monitors the skills and roles that are hardest to hire for, and areas outside nonprofits where mission-aligned candidates are most needed to accelerate change for animals. This enables us to guide and match candidates to roles where they can achieve the highest impact for animals and best align with their skills and career goals.
We empower individuals to make a lasting impact in the fight against animal suffering by providing high-quality career support and connecting them with impactful ways to get involved in animal advocacy.
For that, we have the following programmes:
Fueled by our awareness of the injustice of unnecessary animal suffering, we set ambitious goals and are willing to take risks for high potential returns.
We regularly analyse our programs and think of ways to do better. If a program is not effective at previously defined early stopping points, we stop it.
We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethical standards and strive to be transparent and honest in all of our actions and decisions.
We believe in the power of compassion to drive change and inspire action. We create a positive and inclusive culture that prioritises the well-being of animals and each other.
We value collaboration and open communication to achieve our goals. We believe in working together (externally and internally) to achieve more than we can alone.
Over 40 thousand people have visited our website and many have changed their career plans based on our programs.
AAC’s mission is pursued by a dedicated team of highly skilled individuals with a common mission to end unnecessary animal suffering.
Examples of the likely consequences of these existing bottlenecks include that:
Organisations may grow more slowly. High impact animal organisations often have roles open for a number of months while they look for candidates, leaving important work not done.
Organisations may make lower quality hires, leading to inefficiencies.
High-impact programmes may be deprioritised.
Our research has highlighted a number of types of skillsets that the movement needs more of, including management and leadership, fundraising, and legislative expertise.
Read about it in our blog articles about AAC Bottleneck Surveys.
Our research has identified evidence from academia and the for-profit world that a number of interventions that Animal Advocacy Careers could carry out have been effective in those contexts.
For example, management and leadership training can be effective and some interventions can significantly increase the quality of recruited staff to organisations. 80,000 hours seems to have had success in addressing career and talent problems in the effective altruism community; similar services focusing specifically on the animal advocacy movement could seem likely to have positive impacts for animals.
AAC’s initial services offered in 2020 have had promising results; we continue to conduct further research to understand the best opportunities in this space.
Animal Charity Evaluators estimated that the US farmed animal movement spends only 2.5% of its resources on “capacity building” — activities that “help strengthen the animal advocacy movement by expanding membership and increasing available resources to the movement.” Animal advocacy capacity building also seems to be neglected by the “effective altruism” movement; some effective altruism organisations such as 80,000 Hours and the Centre for Effective Altruism do not prioritise animal advocacy as much as some other cause areas.
Our surveys of animal advocacy organisations suggest that nonprofit leaders perceive a need for such careers services.
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