Donate with confidence
Guide
We’ve done the homework for you, so that you can donate to the best charities working to end factory farming without the hassle of spending hours doing research.
Holistic
Together, our charities help all the main types of animals impacted by our food system. Plus, they collectively address the harms of factory farming to animals, people and the planet, making FarmKind the holistic choice.
Fully independent
We operate independently, funded by philanthropic grants. This ensures that 100% of your donation goes to your chosen charities and that our recommendations stay free from bias.
Learn more about us:
Our mission
We help people who love animals help the animals most in need: those in factory farms
Our ambition is for the world to move beyond the destructive and cruel factory farming era. To do this, we identify charities with the best track record of making farming kinder and help introduce them to folks.
Our top animal charities help animals in need right now in factory farms and are helping us move past factory farming for good.
We’d love for you to join our growing community of people who love animals and want to help make farming kinder, not just for them, but for the planet too.
Animals
Factory farming puts profits before animal welfare, causing suffering at an industrial scale.
People
Factory farming endangers our health: It increases antibiotic resistance and the risk of new pandemics, all while contributing to global hunger.
The Planet
Factory farming is a major climate change culprit, it drives deforestation, it depletes the ocean and pollutes our soil, air and waterways.
Our founders
Thom Norman
Co-Founder and Director of Outreach
My cats, Luna and Sirius, mean the world to me. When I think about farmed animals, I can't help imagining how I'd feel if they suffered the same fate. If you spend any time on a farm sanctuary, you'll quickly learn that pigs, cows and even chickens have the same loving, mischievous and loyal personalities that our pets do. The only difference between your dog and them is that you haven't met them yet – that's really no difference at all.
That's why I left my job as a lawyer to find out how I could help end the abuse of animals and the planet that is factory farming, which led me to create FarmKind. I think we all know that factory farming is wrong, but we don't think there is anything we can do about it. FarmKind aims to show people the real change that they can make with their donations so that everyone can be part of the solution.
Aidan Alexander
Co-Founder and Director of Platform
When I learned that some charities do 100x more good per dollar than others, I was inspired to start giving a percentage of my income to these super-effective charities. It's a way to make a huge difference, without a huge disruption to your life. I started FarmKind to make it easier for other people to do the same.
I spent years trying to eat less animal products, so if you are on that journey too, I get it: it's hard! It took me seven years to meaningfully change my diet, and I wish I'd known sooner that it isn't the only way to help animals and the environment – I could have made a real impact and felt better about my progress right from the start by also giving. If you are on the same journey, I'm always here to share my experience and support.
The top animal charities can help hundreds (if not thousands) of animals with the same donation that some of the best-known animal charities need to help just one. It costs about $3,000 to look after a dog in a shelter for a year, but the top animal charities we recommend together can help more than a quarter of a million animals for that same amount!
By giving at least some of your donations to these charities, you can be confident your donation isn't going to waste and is going to make a big difference for the animals suffering in factory farms that desperately need your support.
But figuring out which are the best animal charities is too much work for any individual donor to take on. That's why we've done the homework for you, with our recommended charities.
Our top animal charities
What we look for
We look for top animal charities that will do the most good with your donations, based on the best evidence available.
Our top animal charities help animals suffering in factory farms now and are helping end factory farming for good. They are helping to put an end to some of the cruelest practices and evolve our food system to become kinder for animals, people and the planet.
How we pick them
Our top animal charities are transparent, trustworthy and focused on delivering results. We only recommend charities that are transparent about how they use your donations and can show that they are making a real impact.
All our charities must have been rigorously assessed and then recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, who are an independent organization that spends thousands of hours interrogating charities' operations to understand how much good they do with each donation. We also work with expert grant-makers to further refine our recommendations
Make it simple with our Impact and Climate Funds
All of our top animal charities charities are included in our Impact Fund, and we’ve picked a few with programs that make a particularly big difference to combatting climate change for our Climate Fund.
The Climate Fund reforms the food system through two approaches: The first is supporting alternative proteins – like plant-based and cultivated meat – by unlocking government investment and policies that support development and adoption. The second approach is institutional reform, like pressuring financial institutions to divest from unsustainable and inhumane farming practices, helping big organisations to make low-carbon plant-based options more available to their staff and fighting corporate greenwashing. This reduces the reliance on factory-farmed products to feed the population.
= Climate fund
Frequently asked questions
Getting in touch
How do I get in touch?
If you have any questions that are not answered here, or just want to talk to us about your donation, please send us an email or give us a call. Click here for contact details.
I'm a journalist and would like to speak with the team. How should I get in touch?
Please email press@farmkind.giving and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
I’m interested in making a large donation and would like to speak with the team. How should I get in touch?
We’d be happy to help! You can contact us by phone or email (details here). We can provide additional advice on making the most of your donation or help with tax deductibility for non-US tax-paying donors.
Donating
Are donations tax-deductible?
If you pay taxes in the USA, your donation will be tax deductible. You’ll receive a donation receipt from Every.org after you donate. If you are not a US citizen and you want to make a tax-deductible donation, please contact us (details here) and we may be able to help you with this.
Are my donations secure?
Yes. Neither FarmKind nor our donation distribution service, Every.org, handles your payment information. Instead, we use Stripe, a leader in global internet payments, to store your payment information. Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry.
Can I donate from anywhere in the world or just the US?
You can donate from anywhere. Donations by US taxpayers are tax deductible. If you want your donation to be tax deductible and you don’t not pay your taxes in the USA, please contact us (details here) and we may be able to help you with this.
Can I donate through a donor-advised fund (DAF)?
Yes. Once you’ve chosen the donation amount and which charities to donate to on our site, click donate just like normal. You’ll be sent to our donation service Every.org, on that page choose the "DAF" option. There, you may choose to donate directly via Chariot to automatically initiate a grant from your DAF, or you may request instructions to initiate a manual DAF donation.
If you have any questions or difficulties, please contact us (details here) and we can help you with this.
Do you charge any fees? How are you funded?
We don’t charge any fees. 100% of your donation goes to the charities you select. The only additional fees you may need to pay will be payment processing fees charged by our payment providers. These will be clearly displayed before you donate and our donations distributor, Every.org, does everything it can to reduce these fees as much as possible.
We’re able to do this because we are funded by individuals and foundations that believe in our mission to help everyone be a part of making farming kinder for animals, people and the planet.
How are donations processed?
Each donation you make goes to Every.org first and they immediately issue a receipt for your charitable contribution, then make a disbursement to the nonprofit you recommended.
Every.org aggregates donations from all of our donors and make disbursements periodically. If the nonprofit connected their bank account to Every.org, they can request payouts at any time and cadence. Otherwise, Every.org disburses to nonprofits in partnership with Network for Good, another 501(c)(3) nonprofit. On a monthly basis, Network for Good issues lump-sum grants to selected nonprofits.
This process ensures your eligibility for a tax-deduction (for US donors) and consolidated records of your giving, and reduces the administrative burden of the nonprofits to process multiple small donations from hundreds of donors.
When I click donate, why am I redirected to another site?
When you click donate, you’ll be temporarily sent over to our donation distributor, Every.org. Every.org securely handles your donation using Stripe to handle your information and payment to ensure security. Every.org then lets us know that you’ve made a donation. Every.org is a non-profit and does not take any portion of your donation for itself, nor does it sell your data.
We work with Every.org because they are a trusted system that has raised over $50 million and is used by thousands of non-profits, providing a secure donation system that keeps your information safe and ensures your donation is delivered to your chosen charity.
When I try to finish my donation, Every.org asks me to add 15% for them. What is this?
Every.org is a non-profit that helps us process donations to our recommended charities. We work with Every.org because they are a trusted system that has raised over $50 million and is used by thousands of non-profits, providing a secure donation system that keeps your information safe and ensures your donation is delivered to your chosen charity.
They rely on donations themselves, and so by default they ask donors to make an optional donation to support their services. You do not have to support Every.org – it is up to you. If you don’t want to support Every.org, set the slider to 0%.
When I use your compassion calculator and then go to donate the suggested amount, why does the impact estimate say I'll help more animals than are impacted by my diet?
Great question! Our impact estimate during the donation process shows roughly how many animals charities have been able to help with this amount of money. Whilst each animal's life is made significantly better by being helped, the charity's work may not have made their treatment completely humane yet, i.e. there may be remaining cruel practices to phase out. And so when it comes to the offset calculator, which estimates how much it would cost charities to do as much good for animals as they experience on factory farms, one generally needs to help more animals than they consume to offset all of the harms. This is why donating the amount suggested to do as much good as your diet does harm will show that you're helping more animals than were required to produce your food. A second reason is that your donation will get a top-up from our matching system, allowing you to help even more animals. Still confused? That's fair -- it's quite unintuitive. Please email us and let us know so we can improve this explanation for other donors.
Charities
How do you recommend highly impactful charities?
We work with expert charity evaluators to identify charities that are transparent about how they spend their money, can provide evidence that their work is making a difference and are likely to be able to do a lot of good per dollar spent.
We work with Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) and all our super-effective charities have been ACE recommended. We also take advice from other expert assessors of animal charities to ensure that our curated list is well tailored and balanced, improving farming for people, the planet and animals.
We are not claiming that these are the only super-effective charities out there, but we’re confident that donating to these charities will ensure your donation goes as far as possible to fix factory farming.
More information is available here.
Can my charity be considered for recommendation?
At this time, only charities that have at some point been recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators are eligible for consideration.
What are the Impact Fund and Climate Fund?
To make donating even easier, we have aggregated our recommended charities into two funds, so you don’t have to choose a specific super-effective charity to support. The Impact Fund includes all of our recommended charities, while the Climate Fund includes those of our recommended charities with programs that reform our food system to be more climate friendly, for example by promoting the development of alternative proteins or pushing big organisations to make low-carbon plant-based options more available to their staff.
'Split and boost' system
What is FarmKind's split and boost system?
Many people have already favorite charities that are important to them. This makes it hard to choose between their favorite charity and our expert-recommended ones. Our 'split and boost' system means you don't have to choose: You can split your donation between a favorite charity and one of our recommended ones, and we'll add a bonus to your donation so it goes even further. Try it out here
Can I choose any favourite charity to split my donation with?
Currently, you can donate to any 501(c)(3) registered charity through our platform. We have plans to expand the range of charities you can donate to in the future.
How do you boost my donation? Where does this bonus funding come from?
We have a fund that is set aside to add bonuses to donations. When you donate through us, we match a portion of your donation from that fund and the money goes to the charities you selected. The more of the donation you allocate to our recommended charities, the larger the bonus you receive. That money will be donated to charity whatever happens, but by donating, you get to control where it goes, supporting the causes and organizations that mean the most to you. We have a detailed explainer about this here.
You can become a bonus supporter yourself if you like, so that your donation helps encourage more people to donate. The survival of our powerful bonus system relies on people choosing to 'pay it forward' by becoming bonus supporters themselves.
What happens if I become a bonus supporter?
If you become a bonus supporter, then your donation will go to our bonus fund. The money will, guaranteed, be donated to charity. But, by donating to the fund you are helping us to continue to boost people’s donations, encouraging more people to donate to help make farming kinder. You'll generate more support for the charities working to make farming kinder than if you donated to them directly, because each dollar donated into our bonus system will indirectly cause more than a dollar to be donated to highly effective charities, on average.
If, for any reason, we stop boosting donations, any money remaining in the bonus fund will be distributed between our super-effective charities. We won’t keep a cent.
We have a detailed explainer about how the bonus fund works here.
Our bonus fund is a powerful tool for encouraging more donations to make farming kinder, but its survival relies on people choosing to become bonus supporters. You can donate to the fund here.
What if I was planning to donate to super-effective charities anyway?
If you already knew about our super-effective charities and were planning to donate to one or all of them before you came to FarmKind, we ask that you don’t donate through our 'split and boost' system. We ask this because the aim of this system is to help introduce super-effective animal charities to new people and if you were already going to donate, then it uses up limited bonus funds without helping encourage new donors.
Instead, we recommend donating through our standard donation portal, or better yet, you can support our bonus fund, encouraging others to start donating to fix factory farming. You can generate more support for our recommended charities than if you donated to them directly, because each dollar donated into our bonus system will indirectly cause more than a dollar to be donated to highly effective charities on average. The only downside is that you don’t get to choose which recommended charities get supported.
If you want help with getting tax deductibility on your donations (e.g. because you are not a US tax payer), please contact us (details here) and we can try to help you with this.
Privacy and security
Do you share my information with anyone?
When you make a donation through FarmKind, the information about which charity you want to donate to and how much is shared with our donation distributor, Every.org. Your payment information is handled by Stripe to ensure security and privacy.
We will never sell your email address or any other data we have about you to anyone. See our privacy policy for full details.
Are my donations secure?
Yes. Neither FarmKind nor our donation distribution service, Every.org, handles your payment information. Instead, we use Stripe, a leader in global internet payments, to store your payment information. Stripe has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry.
Transparency
Transparency in the charity sector is fundamental to building and maintaining trust. It's also a core value at FarmKind. For this reason we try to make as much about our organization transparent as possible.
Our operations
100% of donations on our platform go to users' chosen destination. We do not take a cut or charge any fees. To make this possible, our operational costs are independently funded by philanthropic grants. Our funders to date include:
A detailed breakdown of our funding sources over time can be found here.
Our organization was incubated in 2024 at part of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program and operates through a fiscal sponsorship with Players Philanthropy Fund (Federal Tax ID: 27-6601178, www.ppf.org/pp), a Maryland charitable trust with federal tax-exempt status as a public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Donations through our platform
A detailed breakdown of donations made through our platform can be found here. It includes details on how many donors and donations we had, how much they gave and to which charities on a monthly basis.
Our Supporters
We couldn’t have launched FarmKind, nor could we continue to operate it, without the generous support of many special people. You know who you are! We have been truly humbled by people’s willingness to support us with their advice, their time and money.
In particular, we want to thank:
Kate Rodman and the team at Violet Studios for the incredible graphic design
Vikram Singh from Vegan Hacktivists for his help crafting the donation user experience
Douglas Browne from Hive for his software development wizardry and the rest of the Hive team for their invaluable support
Pau Vidal Borday for excellent software development support
Every.org for their willingness to customise their API to meet our needs and Santi Hernandez for making it happen
Matt Coleman, Fabio Kuhn, Professor Josh Greene and Dr. Lucius Caviola at Giving Multiplier for supporting us to build off of what they’ve learned and achieved with their platform
Ambitious Impact for incubating our organization, and in particular Samantha Kagel, Steve Thompson and our cohort of fellow charity entrepreneurs
Our advisors, Karolina Sarek, Sebastian Schwiecker, Louise Pfeiffer and Matt Coleman
Karl Keefer, Lily Chamberlain and Jack Farrell for sharing your experience and expertise with us
Aaron Cahill for your generous analytics support — you should say “no” more!
Kristine Ford for your feedback and marketing advice
Harrison Wood, Danny Lipsitz, David Estillore, Deepak Thapa and Danielle Vassalo for vol creating video and blog content
And of course, thank you to everyone who has donated to fix factory farming through our platform. Your support inspires us to aim higher every day.
— The FarmKind Team