As I read through the Hatchery Fund applications, I would find myself thinking “we already do this kind of activism.” or “this is just taking something we do in America to Nigeria.” They were well-designed experiments, but lacked the element of novelty that I was prioritizing. With my limited funds, I had to leave those experiments on the table. That bothered me. So much of what we do as activists is untested, relying more on conviction than on systematic testing. We need novel approaches, but we also need rigorous evaluations of what we’re already doing. This led me to three research directions I’d like to see the movement pursue.
Existing Strategies. There are forms of activism we’re heavily investing in: plant-based defaults, street conversations with the general public, cage-free campaigns. These strategies and their related tactics lack rigorous evaluation. Their popularity makes it even more important that we verify their effectiveness and see if there are ways to refine our approaches. This research direction provides a sanity check on how we’re spending our resources. The core question: Is what we’re doing working?
Existing Strategies in New Contexts. There were several applications that ran along the lines of “Vegan messaging is US/Western centric. It would never fly in my home culture. I want to create messaging that does resonate for my culture.” Given that the majority of farmed animals exist outside North America and Europe, it’s a no-brainer to invest in figuring out how to adapt our existing approaches into new contexts. We can’t assume that what works in the US works elsewhere. This research direction is about scaling our movement to places it hasn’t reached before. The core question: Will what we’re doing work somewhere else?
New Strategies. These are the approaches that no one is really doing right now, including strategies and tactics from other movements. These are the kinds of experiments I was trying to get at with the Hatchery Fund, ideas that break out of our box. These obviously need to be evaluated: since we’ve never tried them, there’s no evidence going in any direction. This research direction concerns making our movement more effective than it has been. The core question: Is this new strategy or tactic better than what we have?
We need funders and experimenters addressing each of these research directions. They represent distinct and complementary problems. We need to be critical about what we’re doing, figure out how we can scale it up, and keep pushing the boundaries of what tools we have access to. I intend to keep The Hatchery Fund focused on new strategies; I’d love to see other organizations pick up the torch for evaluating our existing strategies and importing those strategies into new contexts.
Art by Kim Evans