Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

Connect For Animals (CFA) exists to make it easier for people to help animals by fighting factory farming. We’ve built a platform that connects advocates to events, actions, and one another, strengthening the movement’s capacity to end factory farming and reduce animal suffering.

Key Achievements

Movement Growth & Engagement

• Nearly doubled our user base in 2025, now surpassing 3,000 users.

• Initial results from our annual impact survey (still in progress) show that 75% of survey respondents discover impactful actions and connections they would not have found otherwise.

• CFA’s “long-tail” model appears to work: instead of channeling everyone into the same few events, the platform distributes advocates into the opportunities best suited to them—increasing overall impact by increasing opportunity fit.

Strategic Infrastructure

• Automated event aggregation at scale, ensuring that advocates never miss opportunities to get connected to organizations or take action.

• Improved data systems to track engagement and enable data-informed, personalized product development and services.

• Mobile app is now live (in addition to our web platform), ensuring broad accessibility.

Community Impact

CFA is already changing how people connect to the movement:

• “CFA connects animal advocates from across the globe with one another, fueling growth and collaboration, resulting in a higher impact in the animal advocacy movement.”

• “Through CFA, I’ve connected with a vegan meditation group in addition to finding courses to amplify my impact in animal advocacy. It’s inspiring a career shift into the movement.”

• “I found Connect for Animals on a Friday, and by Sunday I was already attending my first event. It’s exactly what the movement needed—making it easier than ever to get involved and take action for animals.”

• “It is absolutely essential to our movement. I truly believe CFA has the ability to propel the movement forward.”
  

Spending breakdown

The largest categories of spending through August 2025 were:

• Payroll (salaries, taxes, fees): ~$36,300 – core staffing to run the platform and sustain growth.

• Contract labor & professional services: ~$15,800 – technical contractors, bookkeeping, etc.

• Software, web services, and apps: ~$4,500 – automation, cloud hosting, and platform infrastructure.

• Advertising & marketing: ~$3,200 – outreach and user acquisition.

• Travel and conferences: ~$1,800 – representing CFA, fundraising, identifying partnership opportunities.

• Other administrative/office costs: ~$2,000 across bank fees, supplies, registrations.

Manifund grant funding contributed to everything except for the product development technical contractor, as that funding was provided by another source.

Looking ahead

CFA is increasingly positioned as a core piece of infrastructure for the animal advocacy movement, and we intend to provide more total value (and more value per dollar) each year going forward. Our core services on our platform continue to provide value for a growing number of users, and we are working to increase the quality of functionality provided on our platform as well through increased automation and personalization.

We envision a future where every pro-animal person is maximally engaged in the fight to end factory farming in precisely the ways that suit their skills, interests, and the impact that they can have.

We’ll continue to optimize for these four primary channels of impact and engagement:

• Community – helping advocates connect with local groups and global organizations.

• Learning – guiding users to educational resources and skill-building opportunities.

• Action – enabling consistent, effective advocacy actions.

• Giving – directing donations to high-impact opportunities for animals.

We’re deeply grateful to the Manifund community and all our supporters for making this work possible. The results already show: CFA is helping people get more connected and involved in the fight against factory farming.

This report closes out our Manifund project, but people who are interested in continuing to follow our work can sign up on our website or follow us on social media: https://connectforanimals.com/

And of course, your donations continue to help us operate. We are a donor-supported 501(c)(3) charity, so your support is what keeps us going. If you'd like to continue supporting CFA, you can do so here: https://connectforanimals.com/donate

Thank you!

–Steven Rouk, Executive Director

What progress have you made since your last update?

Since our last update, we have done the following:

1. Continued sending our weekly events digest newsletters, with consistent featured actions, featured organizations, key opportunity highlights, and upcoming virtual and local events (and conferences). Engagement rates remain high.

2. Developed, tested, and soft-launched our mobile app. Large launch of the mobile app coming soon (with a big press campaign).

3. Started working with User Friendly on a creative advertising campaign. Preliminary work is done, assets are almost done being created, and the ads will start running within the next week or so.

4. Worked with a fundraising consultant to create a fundraising process plan for this year.

5. Improved the design of several key features of the platform, including totally redesigned events pages.

6. Onboarded a new LinkedIn social media manager (volunteer).

7. Conducted a user survey to help determine current user needs. Used those survey results to ideate on next features to develop for the platform.

8. Created and shared our 2025 Strategic Plan.

We continue receiving testimonials from users who have used Connect For Animals to get plugged into the movement, and we also hear from organizations who have discovered new volunteers and activists through CFA.

For more updates, you can see our 2024 Year in Review page.

What are your next steps?

Executing our 2025 Strategic Plan.

Is there anything others could help you with?

1. Take a look at our 2025 Strategic Plan. Is there anything you can help with? If so, please contact us!

2. We need to raise another $45,000 to have our 2025 budget fully met, allowing us to scale up our operations and bring on key individuals to help. If you can donate, please do! For larger donations or grants, contact us.

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported Connect For Animals. This work wouldn't happen without you!

@Caroline-Oliveira thank you so much for your donation, Caroline! Thanks for all of your work for animals, and I'm honored to have your support.

@Marine-Lercier wonderful, thank you for the note! That all sounds great. I hope you're able to get funding and be successful with it. Thank you for your work!

@ceciliavalenza Thank you for your support, Cecilia!

I have been incredibly excited by how Thrive Philanthropy focuses on some of the most underfunded regions globally. It seems like they've made rapid progress, and I'm very impressed by the footprint of their work. I think Thrive Philanthropy's approach to the work to end factory farming globally is rather unique among funders, and it seems like the Thrive team is investing in many initiatives that simply wouldn't get funded otherwise. I'm grateful for the Thrive Philanthropy team, and hope they are able to continue scaling up the funding they have for grants globally.

AI is one of the most powerful new technologies to be created, and there are numerous important intersections with the animal advocacy space that need to be explored. There aren't many individuals organizing conferences or events at this intersection of AI and animals, so I think it's important for something like this space to exist, especially if the physical aspects can be located in the Bay Area (which is a key AI hub).

Increasing the scholarship around animal rights seems important. I'm impressed by how the team seems to come from a diverse group of institutions globally. Increasing the representation of animal law in the legal field seems like it could have positive second-order effects, as well, in addition to the increased legal scholarship.

I know that there are other animal rights law organizations globally, and I think the Journal of Animal Rights Law could probably be maximally successful if they connect with those other organizations, collaborate where appropriate, and position themselves to fill a hole in the existing animal law space.

Farmed animal advocacy is extremely funding constrained, which is why I am excited about new, experimental projects like FarmKind that could help the movement access more funding. It seems that FarmKind has a strong team with lots of relevant experience, and they are being strategic about the work that they are doing. I think the results of their work over the next 1-2 years will be interesting and informative, and hopefully they are successful at attracting new funding to the space, which could help many organizations.

Pro-Animal Future seems to be experimenting with growing the people power of the animal advocacy movement in a way that is rather different from what any other organization is doing. I like that they are research-based, that they have many years of combined advocacy experience, that they are very effective and efficient with the funds they have, and that they seem to be running a smart and impactful multi-year initiative very well. I think the work that Pro-Animal Future does over the next 2-5 years will be extremely informative for the rest of the movement, regardless of the outcomes.

The Hive Slack fills a neglected part of the animal advocacy movement, which is a space for interactive communication and resource sharing. I personally have found value in the Hive Slack workspace (such as hearing about resources I wouldn't have known about otherwise, or making connections with individuals I wouldn't have otherwise), and I have heard from others who have similarly benefitted. There is no other communication space quite like the Hive Slack, and the team has done a great job of rapidly evolving the space to meet community demands.

Animal advocacy work in Africa is particularly neglected, and I'm glad that a cross-country movement building organizations like Animal Advocacy Africa exists. Although the work seems extremely challenging, I expect that the impact per dollar is particularly high given that there are so few organizations doing this work and given that factory farming is probably expected to increase significantly in Africa in the coming decades.

Work on aquatic animals is particularly neglected, and I'm excited by the global, coalition-led work that AAA does. I think the team is strategic and capable, and would love to see AAA get more funding for aquatic animal work especially given the successes they've already gotten with such a small team.

Farmed animal advocates work in the Global South is particularly neglected, and I think Sinergia Animal does great work.

I think that New Roots Institute is doing some of the most strategic work in the animal advocacy movement when it comes to multi-year leadership development. I'm impressed both by the scale of New Roots Institute's work and also by how they seem to become more strategic and impactful over time. Without New Roots, I'm not sure who would be doing this type of work when it comes to ending factory farming.

Animal advocacy in Africa is extremely neglected. This project hasn't gotten any funding or upvotes, and I think it deserves at least some attention and consideration.

Hey @fountain-gate-foundation- , this sounds like a great project, and I hope you get funding for it from another foundation or source. Do you know Thrive Africa, and Animal Advocacy Africa? I believe both of them give out grants, and this project might be a good fit for one of them. Thank you for your work!

@jp Thank you for the contribution, Johannes!

@Laura Thank you for contributing to CFA, Laura!

@sagemax @EmPonders- Thank you both for the extremely kind words. :)

@coaguila Thank you so much for contributing to CFA's work!

@mesagzimmerm Thank you so much for your contribution to CFA, Gary! And a bigger thank you for your dedication to helping non-human animals.