Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund

Background

The Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund (EA Animal Welfare Fund) is a grantmaking organization whose grantees focus on improving the lives of animals that are part of large-scale animal agriculture operations, characterized as “factory farms,” or other large animal populations. It also provides grants to organizations that are working to end large-scale animal agriculture. Grants may support research, policy advocacy, or campaigning and activism. ²

EA Animal Welfare Fund is a project of EA Funds. As of 2025, EA Funds managed four funds: Global Health and Development, Long-Term Future, Infrastructure, and Animal Welfare. ³

EA Funds was created in 2017 by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), a left-leaning project of Effective Ventures, and funded by startup investor and accelerator Y Combinator. As of 2020, EA Funds was a separate project from the CEA but still part of the Effective Ventures Foundation (EV UK). EV UK is a charitable organization in England and Wales, and a tax-deductible entity in the Netherlands. There is also an Effective Ventures Foundation in the United States (EV US) that is a separate charity but is under the Effective Ventures name. ³ EA Funds was in the process of separating from Effective Ventures in 2025. ¹

The EA Animal Welfare Fund creates a shared fund by pooling donations from individuals who are looking to support animal welfare. The organization solicits grant applications worldwide and the fund managers evaluate them. Grants are awarded to the organizations that are deemed to have the best impact. ⁴

Funding and Affiliations

EA Funds collaborates and receives funding from Open Philanthropy, the philanthropic venture of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna. ²

As of November 2024, Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund had granted $23.3 million across 347 grants to animal rights organizations around the world. ¹  Grantees include Animal Charity Evaluators (previously Effective Animal Activism), Animal Equality, Animal Policy International, the Animal Welfare League, Campaigns and Activism for Animals in the Industry, DC Voters for Animals, activist Don Staniford ‘s “covert surveillance of salmon farms,” Encompass (for a grant “to build a more racially inclusive, equitable, and diverse farmed animal movement”), The Intercept for “video stories to promote awareness of factory farming,” Sentient Media, and the Good Food Institute. ⁵

Rethink Priorities received almost $1.7 million, including approximately $350,000 in 2024. Fund manager Neil Dullaghan was a senior research manager for Rethink Priorities until May 2025. ^{5 6}

EA Animal Welfare Fund affiliates include the Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford. As part of the Effective Ventures Foundation, EA Funds also work with GiveWell and Giving What We Can. ² The Animal Welfare Fund was featured on the Giving What We Can site as a recommended fund for donors. ⁴

Fund Managers

In 2025, the fund managers for the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund included Karolina Sarek, Neil Dullaghan, Zoe Sigle, Urszula Zarosa, and Renata Scarellis. Sarek became the organization’s first fund chair in August 2024. ¹ She has been with the EA Animal Welfare Fund since 2019, starting as a fund manager. She is on the board of several animal welfare organizations including the Fish Welfare Initiative and the Shrimp Welfare Project. Previously she was the co-founder, co-executive director, then board member of Ambitious Impact (Charity Entrepreneurship) which launched more than 40 charities. ^{7 8}

Sigle was a fund manager for the EA Animal Welfare Fund as of 2025 and was also serving as the director of philanthropic advising and programs at Farmed Animal Funders (FAF), which works to end large-scale animal agriculture. Previously she worked at Mercy For Animals, a group that seeks to end all animal agriculture, and at the Humane League. ^{9 10}

Scarellis was a full-time fund manager for EA Animal Welfare Fund as of 2025. Previously she was a program manager for Effective Ventures and prior to that spent almost eight years at Mercy For Animals. She is on the board of the Welfare Footprint Institute, a research organization focused on animal welfare. ^{11 12  13}