Introduction
From the Executive Director
This year we focused on our role as movement-builders. Rather than seeing ourselves as “just a street outreach organization”, we recognized the impact we can have by growing the animal rights community, by bringing new members into it, inspiring existing members to step-up into leadership positions, forming alliances with other organizations, and by giving our members the resources to be more sustainable.
Our work is far from finished, however, and animals suffer globally in numbers that seem totally incomprehensible. 73 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for food, and fish suffer in such vast quantities that their numbers can only be estimated in weight. For us to achieve real change, we need to do more, and we need to do better.
The good news is that 2022 was a year of great progress for We The Free and for our movement, I feel so blessed to be surrounded by such an inspirational team of passionate and dedicated activists. WTF launched officially in November 2021 having previously formed a small number of pilot groups in the UK. Since then we have formed teams all around the world, we have pioneered new event formats, and we have grown into an incredible global community. I am excited to share some of those successes with you in this Year In Review report.
From the bottom of my heart, I am deeply grateful to every single activist who supports our vision, and for every individual, team, and organization who spend their resources fighting for a more just world for the animals whom share it with us. I cannot wait to see what we achieve together in the coming year!
How Does WTF Measure Success?
Given the unfathomable scale of animal suffering, we recognize our moral duty to utilize resources in the most impactful way. To do this, we need measurable outcomes. This year we focused on vegan advocacy and movement building as our two main areas of focus, each focus area consisting of 4 Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
Vegan Advocacy KPI
The more we engage with members of the public, the more opportunities we have to inspire behaviour change towards adoption of a vegan lifestyle and long-term reduction of funding for animal agriculture.
Movement Building KPI
What is even more impactful than inspiring a non-vegan to go vegan? How about inspiring a non-active vegan to become active, an activist to step into a leadership role, or equipping an activist with training that will significantly improve their effectiveness and longevity in the movement?
WTF Movie Challenge Events
This year many of our teams experimented with a new event format: the Movie Challenge event. In this event, signs & banners read “watch 3 minutes, win a prize”. In exchange for people watching a short clip from an animal rights documentary, we give them a sample of delicious vegan food, then speak with them about veganism and share vegan resources. Here are just a few of our favorite photos from events:
Initial feedback from this event format suggests that it might be even more impactful than the traditional WTF Diamond style events we have prioritized in the past, we will be further exploring this in 2023.
WTF Solidarity Diamonds
On top of the regular WTF Diamonds, this year saw two “Solidarity Diamonds”: larger events where multiple teams come together to stand in solidarity with the non-human animal victims of human oppression. Our June event saw 30+ activists come together to hold an impactful event in Ontario, and July’s event in Birmingham had over 50 activists travel from across the United Kingdom to form a fierce presence in the heart of the city, resulting in hundreds of conversations.
Filling a Gap in the Movement?
In 2019, our Animal Rights Survey of over 1100 vegan activists from around the world communicated 3 serious issues faced by the movement; as a result, WTF was formed. We can compare this against the results of a recent pulse survey of WTF activists to see how we did!
Community
In the original survey:
People also reported issues with culture, claiming that the movement was sometimes unwelcoming to new participants.
In our 2022 Pulse Survey, respondents told us:
“When we are unbreakable as a team, we are unbeatable as a movement”
We believe that focusing on developing a resilient and united community would help to heal our movement. Hosting regular teambuilding and community events is an important part of the strategy to achieve that. More importantly, our pulse survey 2022 suggests that it’s working:
Movement Building Feedback
Based on the results from the 2019 survey and widespread infighting that we witnessed in the movement (and the resulting crash in the number of active outreach teams) we wanted to try to heal and unify the movement. It’s hard to measure that, but here are some promising signs:
Organizer Feedback
Getting regular feedback from volunteers is vital to ensure that they feel supported to carry out their important work. Here are just a few quotes from organizers in 2022:
Impact
In our original survey, not a single activist reported collected meaningful data on the impact of their activism. We were told that not understanding our impact (or feeling like we aren’t seeing change often enough) was common frustration leading to people withdrawing from activism.
That’s why we built MyStats and 3movies.wtf. Althought these launched in 2021, this year saw major improvements for both platforms, and some impressive statistics:
*only includes actions taken on our website, we estimate the true figure is much higher
Percentage of cards given by WTF teams that lead to an individual visiting a vegan resources website
*only includes views on our website, we estimate the true figure is much higher
What Do These Stats Mean?
A 31.1% conversion rate is honestly a staggering number. It might not seem it at first, as that means that for every 10 conversations our teams have in the street, on average 3 of them will lead to an action being taken by that person. If we compared that to leafleting, for example, which a recent Randomised Control Trial study found to have an “insignificant” intervention effect, then it seems like our attention-grabbing event formats and values-led coaching conversations could be making a world of difference in terms of inspiring behaviour changes. We intend to launch more methodologically robust studies on this in the near future.
Another focus for 2022 was the improvements we made to MyStats.wtf and 3movies.wtf to improve the user experience, increase uptake amongst activists, and to ensure that people understand how to use it. The below appears to suggest that this was worthwhile:
Training
Only 10% of Activist Organizers told us they receive training which supports their growth and development as leaders. Training among volunteers was reported as inconsistent, or unprofessional and not evidence-informed. In the last year alone we have provided free training to 500+ activists in the movement.
Inspiring Behaviour Change
This training draws on decades of social science, research in behavioural change, and a wealth of research from the fields of animal rights and other social justice issues informs trainees on best practices from what questions to ask, body language, attitude towards non-vegans, and how to handle objections to veganism.
Testimonials:
-"It's exactly what the animal rights movement needs."
-"If, for the whole rest of your life, you only attend one course, make it this one. Seriously, guys. You do NOT want to miss this. It's -absolutely amazing."
-"The information is solid and very easy to apply. I've been to 1 WTF Diamond since, and I know I did a better job advocating for veganism and felt a lot more confident."
Here are some of the other free trainings available to WTF volunteers:
And here’s some feedback we received from activists who went through our training:
Infrastructure
This year we performed groundwork to ensure that we will remain compliant, strategic, and forward-facing. This work is under constant review as we learn from mistakes and develop as individuals and as an organization, in line with our organizational values.
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Implemented v1.0 of key policies including conflict & dispute resolution, anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, DEI statement, data privacy
We also developed a comprehensive Organizer Handbook and Code of Conduct which will be released in January 2023.
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Formed partnerships with experts and specialist organizations, including Animal Defense Partnership, who support us with improving our processes and procedures.
We overhauled employment documentation and contracts to ensure fair treatment of valued team members and legal compliance.
Official company documentation for the Non-Profit was reviewed and updated to account for changes to our Board of Directors.
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Implemented a Board of Non-Executive Directors (see below) to provide governance and compliance oversight.
Appointed an advisory panel of respected activists and professionals in the movement, whom are well-equipped to provide us with feedback and strategic guidance.
WTF Non-Executive Board of Directors
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Natalie Frey
International Operations Manager, ProVeg International
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Sash Jolliffe
Activism Organizer & Political Candidate
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Rebecca Owen
Activist & Organizer (Vegan Pixie Warrior on YouTube)
WTF Advisory Panel
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Ronnie Lee
Vegan Animal Liberationist and Co-Founder of ALF
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Sebastian Joy
Founding President of ProVeg International
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Flavia D'Erasmo
Nonprofit Executive specialized in people operations, management, and culture
Presence
In 2022 we set out to reach more people than ever before with our strong animal-rights message. We mostly focused on Facebook and Instagram platforms due to the relative ease of reaching a large number of people and content guidelines which are (mostly) favourable towards animal-rights content.
To achieve this, we built a media team tasked with creating engaging vegan and animal rights content for use across our social media accounts, our hope was to both inspire non-vegans to go vegan, and to inspire non-active vegans to get involved. We also developed and implemented branding guidelines, for consistent and beautiful content and brand-identity.
Here are some of the results for what we achieved online in 2022:
This is how many unique individuals came into contact with our content
This is how many people visited one of our social media profiles
Combined visits across our websites
Unique peices of vegan content crafted by our Media Team
Blog Posts
Collaboration
Here are some of the organizations and projects we are proud to have formed collaborations with in the last year:
Onwards and Upwards
Lets’s have a sneak peek at some of the things in store for 2023:
Trainings
On top of the trainings already offered, here are the free trainings that are actively in the process of being developed or curated for WTF Activists to access:
Kingian Nonviolence
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Nonviolent Communication
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Conflict Resolution
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Organizer Masterclass
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Inspiring Behaviour Change (elearning edition)
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Farmer Outreach
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Kingian Nonviolence 〰️ Nonviolent Communication 〰️ Conflict Resolution 〰️ Organizer Masterclass 〰️ Inspiring Behaviour Change (elearning edition) 〰️ Farmer Outreach 〰️
Mental Health Support
We already made progress on supporting the mental health of our community:
We sourced sustainable activism training since launch - generously provided by renowned social psychologist Dr Melanie Joy.
We fostered a culture where team members are encouraged to talk about our mental health needs.
As of today, we have launched our Activist Mental Health Portal, we sincerely hope it is helpful to our community.
In 2023, we hope to further develop the mental health resources available to activists:
We are working with In Defence of Animals to scale-up their Activist Support Line to be available Globally.
We will survey our community to ask what resources they need.
We will keep the conversation live, to normalize honest and vulnerable conversations around mental health.
WTF Campaign Builder
Running successful advocacy campaigns is incredibly difficult, takes a special set of skills, is time consuming, and can be very expensive considering the costs of materials, web development, hosting, and more.
Imagine if every activist, organization, and grassroots team in the world suddenly had the power to launch professional campaign websites completely free, just by filling in a short form. Now imagine if that campaign site was empowered by the technology behind 3movies.wtf so those activists understood what actions had been taken by visitors (such as signing a petition, sending a letter, or donating to a fundraiser). This significant upgrade to MyStats is just around the corner and will be launching in sping 2023, we are beyond excited to see how teams can elevate their activism using this revolutionary new tool!
Thank You!
To all WTF volunteers, organizers, ambassadors, advisors, our board of directors, our media team, and to our generous donors.
We The Free couldn’t do what we do without you, and we are indebted to you.
Understanding the differences between veganism and eating plant-based can be difficult. It is especially difficult when you consider that vegans eat a plant-based diet, but people who eat a plant-based diet aren’t necessarily vegan.