Agreed- there is so much potential! It feels like the calvary is coming and we'll be able to make such an impact. A side note, my first animal job was 25K, had to negotiate for health insurance, slept on many couches while traveling throughout my career and I'll never forget the CFO at my second job where I made 28K asking why I was charging my groceries on a credit card (because rent in DC was so high!).
Great post! I fully agree that raising salaries will help the movement in many ways. Something I think about all the time is activist burnout, which is a real threat to long-term resilience. More stability and higher salaries can really help keep us dedicated, driven, and talented advocates around for the long haul.
Thanks for identifying the lesser noticed animal atrocities. I agree that having managers for each issue will bring them to light for funders and to encourage advocates to support these issues to end them for good.
Perceptive article. Thank you. While you touch upon it, I would like to see more emphasis made, as a macro strategic objetive for the animal rights movement, to make the animal issue a mainstream political issue. While there's some progress to report, and some successful initiatives, the animal issue is largely outside of the mainstream political arena. It needs to sit alongside such issues as food production, human health, society's values, including violence, and so on. Our mission must be to get a progressive agenda for animal issues always included in political manifestos, platforms, policiy papers, and so on.
Given the scale of farmed animal suffering, never seen before in history, raising salaries is really needed now, even if it isn't sustainable forever. It is the only way to attract experienced professionals at scale (lawyers, engineers, product managers etc) who can push for a world where reducing animal suffering is somebody's legally required job. Once such jobs are required by law, they will pay far better than they do now, because they will be paid by industry and the state rather than by donors.
Hi Lewis. From the perspective of having from FY 1988 through to FY 2013 monitored & published the top salaries paid by an average of about 150 of the most prominent animal advocacy organizations worldwide, I find your statement that "I do think salaries in our space are mostly too low" to be over-simplified, incomplete, and naive. Indeed, the rank and file, from your local animal shelter to the grunts at the big organizations are mostly underpaid relative to their skill levels in both government and the for-profit sector. Executives, however, have often been hideously and egregiously overpaid, and still are. Does anyone really believe that ASPCA president Matt Bershadker, heading a $640 million organization, is worth $1.2 million a year, plus fringe benefits? On the other side of the fence, the $4.5 billion Simons Foundation, funding & promoting animal use in biomedical research, pays its chief executive slightly less, though this gent has significantly longer tenure & higher professional credentials––and, in killing the plan to turn the Oregon National Primate Research Center into a sanctuary, has had a recent campaign success trumping anything the ASPCA has accomplished during Bershadker's 13 years in charge. Going back at least to the 1980s, when International Foundation for Animal Welfare founder Brian Davies paid himself $100,000 a year, twice what anyone else in the animal advocacy field was making, & bluntly said, "I'm worth it," animal welfare chief executives have often pulled down disproportionately high compensation, & unlike Davies, who built IFAW from nothing, have usually had zip to do with institutional affluence coming mainly from bequests left by donors attracted by their predecessors.
Thanks for the reply and historical context. I think this is an important perspective, and one I used to share, but I've come to disagree pretty strongly with it. I'll respond in depth here because I think you've articulated well the viewpoint that I'd like to see our movement move away from.
But first I should clarify that I only intended to speak about the farm animal welfare movement, where I'm not aware of any executives earning even 1/4 as much as the ASPCA president does. I don't know enough to have views on salaries in the rest of the animal movement.
Within the farm animal welfare movement, I actually think our pay is most insufficient at the top end. Groups have correctly raised entry-level salaries and there's still scope for them to do so further. But as the graph I included shows, it's at the higher end (the 75th percentile in the graph) where our salaries most lag comparable sectors.
Of course all the comparable sectors could be wrong in paying more at the higher end. But I think they're on to something, which profit-motivated companies discovered long ago: that the most senior talent in an organization is disproportionately important, and that higher salaries help attract and retain the very best talent for these roles.
My experience has been that the quality of an organization's CEO matters >10X more for the organization's impact than the quality of its average entry-level employee. That doesn't mean that organizations need to pay >10X more to their CEOs. But it does mean that it's not crazy to pay >3X as much, if that will enable the organization to recruit and retain a much better lead.
I think this is especially true where organizations are competing for scarce talent sets that pay much better elsewhere. For example, our movement's top fundraisers are often paid 2-3X less than what they could earn at other non-profits, which is why so many leave to work at other non-profits. Our movement's top lobbyists often earn <5X what they could earn working for the private sector, which is why we can't recruit experienced and connected lobbyists.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for paying rates competitive with the private sector. We can pay less because we're offering people other benefits, like the opportunity to work on the issue they're passionate about. And I don't think we should pay people more just because they want more money. I think we should pay rates competitive with the rest of the non-profit sector, because it will attract and retain the very talent to fight for animals.
Here I'll quibble with you again: "Our movement's top fundraisers are often paid 2-3X less than what they could earn at other non-profits, which is why so many leave to work at other non-profits." Actually the top fundraisers in the animal welfare field have in the past 50 years almost NEVER been employees of the nonprofit organizations, the sole exception having been Brian Davies and his longtime second looie, Paul Seigel, who after Davies retired, formed his own nonprofit fundraising firm & went on to represent many of the most effective nonprofits in the international animal advocacy field. The top fundraisers for the top tier & even second tier national, international, and even local animal charities are almost entirely hired guns from for-profit companies, hired as subcontractors. Because these are not nonprofit organizations, their pay scales are not disclosed, but lawsuits have occasionally disclosed salaries of $1 million plus per year, at entities which raise, on behalf of multiple charities in multiple fields, sums dwarfing anything raised by any fundraisers working directly for 501(c)(3) nonprofit animal charities.
I actually with you on this: that the direct mail and other outsourced fundraising firms are quite shady. But my sense is reliance on them is much more common with the big groups in the broader animal welfare space than in the farm animal welfare movement specifically. Most of the farm animal welfare groups I know do all or most of their fundraising in-house and rely on much higher ROI major donor fundraising more than expensive mass marketing efforts.
Agreed- there is so much potential! It feels like the calvary is coming and we'll be able to make such an impact. A side note, my first animal job was 25K, had to negotiate for health insurance, slept on many couches while traveling throughout my career and I'll never forget the CFO at my second job where I made 28K asking why I was charging my groceries on a credit card (because rent in DC was so high!).
Great post! I fully agree that raising salaries will help the movement in many ways. Something I think about all the time is activist burnout, which is a real threat to long-term resilience. More stability and higher salaries can really help keep us dedicated, driven, and talented advocates around for the long haul.
Thanks for identifying the lesser noticed animal atrocities. I agree that having managers for each issue will bring them to light for funders and to encourage advocates to support these issues to end them for good.
Better problems indeed!
"Let’s go solve them." 💯
Thanks, Lewis!
Perceptive article. Thank you. While you touch upon it, I would like to see more emphasis made, as a macro strategic objetive for the animal rights movement, to make the animal issue a mainstream political issue. While there's some progress to report, and some successful initiatives, the animal issue is largely outside of the mainstream political arena. It needs to sit alongside such issues as food production, human health, society's values, including violence, and so on. Our mission must be to get a progressive agenda for animal issues always included in political manifestos, platforms, policiy papers, and so on.
Fantastic, shared with many so much important info going foward, thank you!
Given the scale of farmed animal suffering, never seen before in history, raising salaries is really needed now, even if it isn't sustainable forever. It is the only way to attract experienced professionals at scale (lawyers, engineers, product managers etc) who can push for a world where reducing animal suffering is somebody's legally required job. Once such jobs are required by law, they will pay far better than they do now, because they will be paid by industry and the state rather than by donors.
Hi Lewis. From the perspective of having from FY 1988 through to FY 2013 monitored & published the top salaries paid by an average of about 150 of the most prominent animal advocacy organizations worldwide, I find your statement that "I do think salaries in our space are mostly too low" to be over-simplified, incomplete, and naive. Indeed, the rank and file, from your local animal shelter to the grunts at the big organizations are mostly underpaid relative to their skill levels in both government and the for-profit sector. Executives, however, have often been hideously and egregiously overpaid, and still are. Does anyone really believe that ASPCA president Matt Bershadker, heading a $640 million organization, is worth $1.2 million a year, plus fringe benefits? On the other side of the fence, the $4.5 billion Simons Foundation, funding & promoting animal use in biomedical research, pays its chief executive slightly less, though this gent has significantly longer tenure & higher professional credentials––and, in killing the plan to turn the Oregon National Primate Research Center into a sanctuary, has had a recent campaign success trumping anything the ASPCA has accomplished during Bershadker's 13 years in charge. Going back at least to the 1980s, when International Foundation for Animal Welfare founder Brian Davies paid himself $100,000 a year, twice what anyone else in the animal advocacy field was making, & bluntly said, "I'm worth it," animal welfare chief executives have often pulled down disproportionately high compensation, & unlike Davies, who built IFAW from nothing, have usually had zip to do with institutional affluence coming mainly from bequests left by donors attracted by their predecessors.
Thanks for the reply and historical context. I think this is an important perspective, and one I used to share, but I've come to disagree pretty strongly with it. I'll respond in depth here because I think you've articulated well the viewpoint that I'd like to see our movement move away from.
But first I should clarify that I only intended to speak about the farm animal welfare movement, where I'm not aware of any executives earning even 1/4 as much as the ASPCA president does. I don't know enough to have views on salaries in the rest of the animal movement.
Within the farm animal welfare movement, I actually think our pay is most insufficient at the top end. Groups have correctly raised entry-level salaries and there's still scope for them to do so further. But as the graph I included shows, it's at the higher end (the 75th percentile in the graph) where our salaries most lag comparable sectors.
Of course all the comparable sectors could be wrong in paying more at the higher end. But I think they're on to something, which profit-motivated companies discovered long ago: that the most senior talent in an organization is disproportionately important, and that higher salaries help attract and retain the very best talent for these roles.
My experience has been that the quality of an organization's CEO matters >10X more for the organization's impact than the quality of its average entry-level employee. That doesn't mean that organizations need to pay >10X more to their CEOs. But it does mean that it's not crazy to pay >3X as much, if that will enable the organization to recruit and retain a much better lead.
I think this is especially true where organizations are competing for scarce talent sets that pay much better elsewhere. For example, our movement's top fundraisers are often paid 2-3X less than what they could earn at other non-profits, which is why so many leave to work at other non-profits. Our movement's top lobbyists often earn <5X what they could earn working for the private sector, which is why we can't recruit experienced and connected lobbyists.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for paying rates competitive with the private sector. We can pay less because we're offering people other benefits, like the opportunity to work on the issue they're passionate about. And I don't think we should pay people more just because they want more money. I think we should pay rates competitive with the rest of the non-profit sector, because it will attract and retain the very talent to fight for animals.
Here I'll quibble with you again: "Our movement's top fundraisers are often paid 2-3X less than what they could earn at other non-profits, which is why so many leave to work at other non-profits." Actually the top fundraisers in the animal welfare field have in the past 50 years almost NEVER been employees of the nonprofit organizations, the sole exception having been Brian Davies and his longtime second looie, Paul Seigel, who after Davies retired, formed his own nonprofit fundraising firm & went on to represent many of the most effective nonprofits in the international animal advocacy field. The top fundraisers for the top tier & even second tier national, international, and even local animal charities are almost entirely hired guns from for-profit companies, hired as subcontractors. Because these are not nonprofit organizations, their pay scales are not disclosed, but lawsuits have occasionally disclosed salaries of $1 million plus per year, at entities which raise, on behalf of multiple charities in multiple fields, sums dwarfing anything raised by any fundraisers working directly for 501(c)(3) nonprofit animal charities.
I actually with you on this: that the direct mail and other outsourced fundraising firms are quite shady. But my sense is reliance on them is much more common with the big groups in the broader animal welfare space than in the farm animal welfare movement specifically. Most of the farm animal welfare groups I know do all or most of their fundraising in-house and rely on much higher ROI major donor fundraising more than expensive mass marketing efforts.