How we’re working to secure our future for the animals

However, once the lockdown was in full swing, and in the face of growing longterm uncertainty, it became clear things would not be returning to normal quickly. Even when things do start to return to normal, we face a looming economic crisis and further challenges from the Brexit process. It was time to take action to ensure The Humane League UK could remain resilient, and continue to do its essential work #ForTheAnimals.

Like many, over recent weeks we’ve had to make difficult decisions about our work. Major disruption has meant we’ve had to bring our corporate campaigns to a halt, dramatically adjust our volunteer program and fundraising plans, and we’ve even had to hit the pause button on new work we were really excited about. Last month we made the decision that we had to put steadying the ship first; it was time to do all we could to future-proof. One of the things that meant was putting 75% of our wonderful team on furlough, and they’ll be furloughed until the end of June.

Since then, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to carefully review our programs, and our business model, and look at how we can continue to effectively campaign to end the abuse of animals raised for food, no matter what the world throws at us. We reviewed a range of tactics for ‘crisis planning’ and set a date in our diaries to work through an adapted method from McKinsey & Co.

Having looked at various models, we liked this one because we felt it was less rigid, and offered both broad and specific views over various timelines. The leadership team spent a full day working through the whole process together, which encouraged us to critically consider a range of plausible future scenarios, how we might react to them, and what might trigger those reactions. As we worked through various timelines - next month, in 6 months, next year etc - we pulled out commonalities in our discussion that gave us a set of strategic moves that would be the most likely to be robust in any future scenario, as well as moves that would be beneficial in specific scenarios should they unfold.

It’s never easy to think about the worst-case scenarios we face as a society, but the method we followed made sure we considered both the optimistic, pessimistic and sometimes uncomfortable potential scenarios ahead. Doing so will, I’m sure, put us in good standing to be both nimble and effective in our work.

We’re going to be continually reviewing this process, with monthly meetings to check in on what’s changed, where we need to adapt our strategy, and what future scenarios are looking the most plausible.

For now, we’ve got three main strategic themes we’re going to be working on;

1. Ensuring our financial stability and security. The looming economic crisis is a real cause for concern for all charities doing important work to make our world a better place. We’ll need to do everything we can to ensure security by broadening our fundraising and tightening our belts. It’s a great opportunity for us to drive even more focus than usual on being as effective as possible in our use of resources.

2. Sustainably broadening our tactics. We’ve had a really strong ‘laser-focus’ on very specific corporate welfare reform since we started our work in the UK four years ago. It’s delivered great results for animals but with a changing corporate landscape, we may need to broaden our tactics. We won’t be changing our mission or our focus, but we’ll be looking at different and new ways to drive change, that gives our campaign work more resilience and ensures we stay effective.

3. Maintaining a strong team. We’re incredibly lucky to have a great team here at THL UK that share values and attitudes which allow us to function really well together and deliver high-impact work. But, there’s no getting around it, the last couple of months have been really hard on a lot of people. We know that furloughing parts of our team has been disruptive and has put a new strain on team members, in different ways. As a team we know ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’ and we know how important it is that activists are supported to allow them to do the best work they can for the animals. We’ll be putting a special focus on making sure our team are supported as we adapt to our changing world and work.

Your support and dedication to creating a better world for animals has been a beacon of hope for the team during these trying times. Thank you.

To help ensure we can continue ending the abuse of animals raised for food, please consider making a regular donation.