What is your current funding gap?

As of November 14, 2024, our funding gap for our 2025 budget is $740,000.

How does FWI spend its money?

In 2025, our planned spending breakdown is roughly the following:
 

• 43% on new intervention R&D, such as our satellite imagery and our stunning intervention development

• 17% on implementing and improving our farm program, the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture

• 16% on advancing fish welfare in China

• 6% on advancing fish-friendly government policies in India

• 19% on organizational operations

 

For more information, see our 2025 Budget and 2025 OKRs.

You can see previous budgets and OKRs linked on our Transparency page.

Why do you operate in India?

We didn’t have any prior connection to India when Tom and Haven launched FWI in 2019. However, based on our training in the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, we were resolved to launch operations in whichever country seemed like it would enable us to have the largest impact.

 

After launching, we conducted scoping research—both online and in-person—in various countries in order to assess which were the most promising. We ultimately chose India to become our first country of operation because:
 

• It has a massive fish farming industry—the second largest in the world (after China), with ~10B billion fishes alive in India at any given point in time.

• Farmed fishes in India face significant welfare issues (though this unfortunately seems to be the case anywhere animals are farmed in high numbers).

• Working in India is unusually tractable. The government is democratic, farmers are open to collaboration, and there is already a pre-established animal advocacy movement.

You can read more about our 2020 decision to work in India here.

Does FWI operate outside of India?

While India is our main focus of operations, we also have completed a project in the Philippines, and smaller ones in Portugal and the UK. We also have an ongoing smaller project in China.

 

We mostly focus our efforts on just operating bigger projects in a few contexts as opposed to smaller projects across many contexts. However, we do opportunistically consider particularly impactful opportunities if we appear uniquely positioned to help fishes in these cases.

What has been your impact so far?

As of November 2024, we estimate that we have improved the lives of 2.2 million farmed fishes, although the magnitude at which we improved their lives is still somewhat unclear. See our Impact Page for more information about this estimate.

 

We also believe that we’ve built important foundations and set important precedents for future fish welfare work—see more below.

How exactly do you help fishes?

Currently, most of our resources go towards developing new interventions to help fishes, such as via satellites, feed fortification, or pre-slaughter stunning. In this way, most of the expected impact of your donation actually occurs in the future, once we have fully developed and implemented one or more of these interventions.

 

At the same time, we run a direct impact program right now: the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture. In this program, as of November 2024, we work with 155 farms to improve welfare via water quality improvements or stocking density reductions.

 

In practice, this means fishes are helped by one of the following mechanisms at our partner farms:
 

• We detect poor water quality at the farm in one of our regular monitoring visits, we provide the farmer a corrective action to implement, and then our follow-up measurements indicate that conditions have significantly (and counterfactually) improved (more common).

• The farmer reduces stocking densities from what they would counterfactually have been, making a farm less crowded for the fishes (less common).

Note that we consider all fishes helped on a case-by-case basis. Fishes are not automatically helped—or considered as such—just when a farm enrolls in our programming. For more information on this, see our Impact page.

Why would farmers voluntarily make these changes?

There are a couple factors that lead farmers to want to make changes beneficial to fish welfare:

 

• Free water-quality monitoring: We provide free-of-cost water-quality monitoring to farmers participating in our Alliance For Responsible Aquaculture.

 

• Economic benefit: The practices we are currently recommending (improved water quality and capped stocking densities) have some benefits for farmers: farmers understand better than anyone that improved water quality leads to fewer diseases and lower mortality rates. We believe that stocking density reductions lead to a more stable operation for farmers— fewer fishes, feed, and antimicrobials are needed (lowering expenses), less labor is needed, and farms are less likely to experience catastrophic disease outbreaks and mortalities, thus mitigating two issues that currently plague Indian aquaculture.

 

• Supportive field staff: Our ground team live and work in the same or nearby communities as the farmers, and build trust with them. Some of our staff are from the same communities as the farmers. Our team is sometimes the only support these farmers receive.

 

• Pride in doing the right thing: Our experience has shown us that Indian farmers take pride in their professions and ways of life, and are held in high regard in Indian culture. Many thus take pride in doing the right thing for animals and for society, and are interested in adopting best practices.

Is FWI primarily a research or an implementation charity?

As you can see from our budget breakdown above, we are currently investing the majority of our programmatic resources into research. This is because we have come to believe that we can identify more impactful and cost-effective programs than we are currently undertaking.

 

The core of FWI though, as we announced in the first public talk we ever gave, has always remained the same: our focus is to implement impactful programs for farmed fishes. This is partly because of what we believe our long-term comparative advantage to be, and also partly because we are generally somewhat skeptical of theories of change that involve publishing research in the hope that some implementing organizations will later use it to improve their programming.

 

What has changed here is that we now feel the need to do much more research than we initially thought. We have thus updated our capacity accordingly, for instance by working with experts in fish welfare (see Marco) and evidence-based program design (see Paul). Overall, we believe FWI is best viewed as an implementation charity that happens to be in a primarily research stage right now.

Per our 2026 Goal, we intend to have developed a program that warrants investing the majority of our resources into scaling after 2026.

Where is FWI’s headquarters located?

That depends on what you mean by headquarters:
 

• Our first entity, and the entity that receives most of our funding, is registered in the US, but we have no office there and only one US staff member.

• Most of our workforce is Indian, and most of our work takes place in India. There, Fish Welfare Initiative India Foundation has several smaller offices.

Is FWI a registered charity?

Yes, we have registered organizations in both the US and India.

 

In the US, Fish Welfare Initiative is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (#85-2065536). Your donation is tax-deductible in the US to the extent allowable by law.

 

In India, Fish Welfare Initiative India Foundation is registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act. Your donation is also tax-deductible in India to the extent allowable by law.

How cost-effective is a donation to FWI?

As of November 2024, FWI’s farm program—the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture, or ARA—currently helps about 7 fishes per dollar. You can see more about how we calculate this figure on our Impact Page.

 

However, the ARA only comprises about 17% of our 2025 budget. As donations go to support all of our work, including for instance our R&D programs and our field-building work in China—the more immediate marginal cost effectiveness of your donation is currently closer to around 1 fish per dollar. 

 

We, of course, hope and intend that by enabling these other programs, your donation today will prove much more cost-effective in the future.

What would a marginal donation of $50 fund?

All donations we receive go into our general operating fund, which is used to fund all of the expenses outlined in our budget. For this reason, rather than thinking about one specific outcome that an additional donation would fund, we think it’s more accurate to think of a small donation as funding a corresponding percent of our annual budget and all the outcomes we intend to achieve with it.

 

It might also be helpful to think about a marginal donation as funding a certain amount of fishes helped in expectation, as per the overall cost-effectiveness of the organization. So for instance, a $50 donation to FWI in expectation improves the lives of ~50 fishes.

 

If your $50 donation was restricted to a particular program, this is what it could cover:

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• 5 farm visits to assess welfare on the farm, and give corrective actions if needed (includes travel, equipment, and staff costs), OR

• 1 month of travel expenses for us to take water quality ground truth data to compare with satellite imagery predicted values

Who else has supported FWI?

As of November 2024, FWI has been the recipient of six grants from the Effective Altruism Funds. In September 2022, FWI was awarded a $250,000 two-year grant from Open Philanthropy. We were also especially honored to be the recipient of part of the $1 million Berggruen Prize that ethicist Peter Singer received and subsequently gave away; Singer’s ideas inspired FWI’s work perhaps more than anyone else’s. Additionally, FWI is proud to be recommended by FarmKind.

 

We are also honored to have been the recipient of donations from over 450 individual people to date.

What are the best arguments for donating to FWI?

The following are some arguments in favor of donating to FWI, roughly in descending order of our view of their significance:

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1. FWI’s future potential for impact: About 67% of our current budget (specifically our R&D, exploratory programs, and China budget items) goes towards developing more cost-effective interventions in the future rather than having a direct impact. We conduct this intervention research in what we believe is an unusually rigorous and ground-proofed way. For examples, see our recent studies focused on developing interventions on satellite imagery and feed fortification.
    

2. FWI’s current impact: We currently estimate that we’ve improved the lives of over 2 million fishes. This makes FWI one of the most promising avenues in the world to reduce farmed fish suffering, and likely the most promising avenue in the world to reduce the suffering of farmed Indian major carp, one of the largest and most neglected species groups of farmed fishes.
    

3. Tackling some of the animal movement’s hardest questions: If we are ever going to bring about a world that is truly humane, we will need to focus on the more neglected groups in animal farming, particularly including farmed fishes and animals farmed in informal economies. We believe that FWI’s work is demonstrating some avenues of helping these groups, and will thus enable other organizations to work more effectively on them. For instance, some of the lessons we learned in implementing our own farmer-centric work later inspired the model that Shrimp Welfare Project is pursuing in their Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India.
    

4. Movement building in Asia: Almost 90% of farmed fishes, as well as the majority of farmed terrestrial animals, are in Asia. We thus believe it is critical to launch movements in Asian countries to address the suffering these animals face, and to expand the animal movement by bringing in new people. We are proud to have hired a local team of about 20 full-time equivalent staff in India as well as contractors in China and the Philippines. We are also proud that most of these people did not work in animal protection previously, and are now more likely to have careers helping animals even after they leave FWI.

What are the best arguments against donating to FWI?

While we think a donation to FWI is one of the more marginally impactful uses of money, it’s not the right fit for all donors. Here’s some reasons, again in descending order of significance, as to why you may not choose to donate to FWI:

 

1. Experimental, unprecedented nature of work: Even though we are five years into working, at the moment, FWI is still in an explore/research stage. The welfare improvements we’re making and seeking to make have never before been made at the scale or in the contexts where we intend to make them—and the evidence base on how to make such welfare improvements is sparse at best. All these facts have contributed to the frequent pivots we’ve made, and the challenges our current model in India faces.
   
   We are heavily investing in R&D to identify improved, evidence-based interventions to run in India, which will hopefully enable us to shift more to an implementation phase. However, until we have implemented and evaluated these interventions, we believe a donation to FWI should be regarded as enabling moderate but somewhat uncertain impact right now, and (hopefully) enabling much greater and more certain impact in the future.
   
   This is broadly the reason why FWI is not currently recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE). You can read more about their reasoning here.
    

2. Possibly supporting industry intensification: It is possible that by supporting farmers in addressing water quality and disease issues, we enable more farmers to get into the business and/or to make their farms more intensive. Note though that our team has considered this issue in medium depth and do not find it particularly compelling right now, in part because our stocking density caps are designed to prevent intensification. However, we believe it is still a reasonable concern one can have. To learn more about our thoughts here, contact us.

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We do not think the belief that fishes lack the ability to feel pain is a good argument against donating to FWI, as there is significant evidence and consensus that fishes, like most other vertebrates, do feel pain.

Why do you say “fishes” instead of “fish”?

We consciously decided to part from the conventional usage here because we aim to highlight the individuality of these animals. Too often humans think of fishes as an amorphous, unfeeling blob, when the reality is that every single one of them has an inner life, and with it the ability to experience positive and negative states of being. Reflecting this individuality in our language is one way we seek to influence human attitudes towards them.

Improve the lives of billions of fishes? Is that even possible?

We dream big, but yes, we do think so. This is partly a testament to the vast scope of aquaculture: smaller farms hold thousands of fishes, while the largest ones hold over a million. Therefore, with fishes, even working at just the farm level means that you can impact the lives of a massive number of individuals. Although we currently impact only one fish per dollar, we intend to find more cost-effective ways of working in the future, allowing us to reach thousands or tens of thousands of farms (analogously, see the impact of cage-free corporate advocacy for chickens). Working in this way, over the next 5–10 years we hope and expect to surpass over a billion fish helped by scaling across India and across other regions of Asia.

I would like to make a tax-deductible donation in a country that is not the US. How do I do that?

Currently, donations to Fish Welfare Initiative may only be tax-deductible in the US, UK, the Netherlands, and India. For your donation to be tax-deductible in the UK or the Netherlands, you will need to donate through the Giving What We Can.

 

Donors in other countries are still able to donate in the currency of their choice via our donation portal above.

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To make a donation from India, contact us. As they allow us to save in admin fees from moving money overseas, donations from Indian citizens are particularly appreciated!

I donated to FWI during a donation match period. Was my donation matched?

FWI's latest donation match ran between December 16 and 31, 2022, and included up to $10,000 in matching funds. Matching funds ran out on December 24th—all donations received between December 16 and December 23rd were matched 100%; all donations received on December 24th were matched either 100% or partially; and all donations received after December 24th were not matched. The match applies to all mediums through which people donate to FWI, including our website donation page, via the EA Funds, direct bank deposits, and cash donations.
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FWI only partakes in true matches. This means that any money left over at the conclusion of the matching period will not be given to FWI.

I’m interested in making a donation of $1,000 or more to FWI. What should I do?

You should email us so that we can ensure that FWI is a good organizational fit for you and that if so, you make your donation via the most efficient avenue. This is in part to avoid the processing fees (~4% if done via our website) of our donation processing platform.

I would like to mail a check. How should I do that?

Checks should be mailed to the following address:

 

Fish Welfare Initiative

3123 Butterfly Dr

Normal, IL 61761

USA

I would like to donate stock or crypto, or via PayPal, to FWI. How can I do that?

You can do all of these via our donation portal on every.org. Note that as of this writing (January 2024), few people have donated in these ways to FWI thus far, so feel free to  contact us  if you face any issues while doing so.

Which other organizations should I support?

Our team members are proud to support the work of ACE-recommended and GiveWell-recommended organizations, and we encourage you to do the same. In addition to those recommended by ACE and GiveWell, some of the organizations our team members individually support include Anima International, Pro-Animal Future, Lead Exposure Elimination Project, Development Media International, and GiveDirectly. We believe in the impact of these organizations and aim to replicate their successes.

Where can I learn more about FWI?

You can review the various pages on our website, or for a more detailed and month-by-month snapshot of our work, see our newsletter archive.

I have another question not discussed here.

Then you should contact us. We’re very happy to chat candidly about the pros and cons of a donation to Fish Welfare Initiative.