Hive Community Survey 2024
Executive Summary:
In early 2025, we conducted our 2nd annual community survey. 146 community members across 40 countries generously shared information about their participation in Hive, animal advocacy, and effective altruism throughout 2024. We gained valuable insights, including:
Hive Slack is actively used, but in different ways. Most users either actively network and join discussions, browse for updates, or seek job/volunteer roles. Each group has distinct needs, and tailored program support could boost engagement.
We’re capturing some–but not enough–of our global community’s voices. Only 35% of responses came from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, slightly below our goal of 40%. We’re still overrepresented in North America and Western Europe.
Our community is highly engaged in animal advocacy and effective altruism. 65% of our community works in or volunteers/interns at animal advocacy or adjacent organizations. Over 80% of respondents report at least moderate engagement with effective altruism.
Volunteering and new projects: Far more people credited Hive with helping them volunteer or start initiatives than get jobs or funding. Our value may be especially strong in early-stage support.
Subtle impact is strong, especially in motivation and belonging. Hive helps people feel more connected, motivated, and informed, but fewer report saving time, which may suggest some inefficiency or cognitive load.
Slack is working well, but there are areas for improvement. Most feel they get what they need, but 28% feel overwhelmed, and some may feel less comfortable sharing their opinion than we would like.
The Hive Resources program has some potential, but low awareness. Many people who would benefit from our Resources program don't know it exists. Selective prioritization and promotion are key.
Hive Events spark connection and growth. People credit Hive Events for networking, career clarity, and community support. Webinars and region- or role-specific events are the most appreciated.
We have added some meta-level insights for us and the survey below.
Introduction
Hive supports a global community of over 3,000 farmed animal advocates. We help advocates reach their impact potential by offering intentional spaces for learning, connection, and collaboration–our programs include Hive’s Slack, Newsletter, Resources, Events, and Connections. Our community is growing and dynamic–we aim to keep up by learning and evolving alongside our members.
In January 2025, we conducted our second annual survey with 3 goals in mind: To learn about ways we are making an impact for advocates, to gather constructive feedback on some of our key programs to inform how we should proceed with them, and to touch base with our community, gaining a high-level overview of its characteristics.
We believe that trying our best to understand the impact of our “meta” work is both challenging and crucial. We put considerable effort into our monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), and our annual community surveys are a core pillar of these efforts. We are grateful to each and every community member who took the time to respond–every response helps us decide what programs to grow, pause, or stop.
This report highlights the findings we found most interesting and informative for Hive’s priorities and strategy through 2025 and beyond. It is separated into:
4 Basic Insights (The who’s, why’s and how’s of Hive)
3 Actionable Insights (How we change course based on the survey)
3 Meta Insights (What we’ve learned from doing this survey)
And a collection of our favorite quotes!
Quick terminology note: We’re taking survey responses as an imperfect but useful proxy for the more active Hive community as a whole. In this report, we use “survey respondents” or “respondents” interchangeably with “community members” or “members.”
Four Basic Insights
1. How do community members use Hive?
In one sentence: Our members usually use Hive to interact with each other, stay up-to-date on the movement, or to seek job and volunteer opportunities.
We attempted to identify common and distinct member archetypes on our Slack space, so that we can develop more targeted programs in line with members’ main motivations. The community reported the following Slack use cases:
To stay updated on news, events, or developments – 76% (109 responses)
To network and connect with other members – 55% (79 responses)
To browse resources, introductions and learn about the movement – 47% (67 responses)
To participate in specific channels or discussions – 43% (62 responses)
To look for job or volunteering opportunities – 37% (53 responses)
To ask questions or get advice – 32% (46 responses)
For internal communications with my team, cohort or community – 15% (21 responses)
We can categorize them according to 3 member archetypes:
1. Interactive Participants
41% of our respondents (58 people) are “Interactive Participants.” They are members who actively engage in networking, discussions, and asking questions, selecting at least two of the following:
“To network and connect with other members”
“To ask questions or get advice”
“To participate in specific channels or discussions”
2. Opportunity Seekers
37% of our respondents (53 people) are “Opportunity Seekers.” They are defined as those who selected “To look for job or volunteering opportunities”; however, what we find especially insightful is that they also do other activities less.
What makes Opportunity Seekers different
30% participate in discussions (compared to 43% of all respondents)
47% network and connect with others (compared to 55% of all respondents)
58% browse resources (compared to 47% of all respondents)
3. News Browsers
23% of our respondents (33 people) are “News Browsers.” These are members who use Slack to stay updated and browse resources, without interacting much further in other ways. They are defined as those who met two criteria:
Firstly, they selected at least one of the following:
“To stay updated on news, events, or developments” and/or
“To browse resources, introductions, and learn about the movement”
Secondly, they did not select any of the following:
“To network and connect with other members” nor
“To participate in specific channels or discussions”
We find these archetypes to be useful as we think of new projects to implement. For example, our recently piloted career journey was conceptualized under the suspicion that a significant part of our community uses Hive for job and volunteer opportunities—these results confirm this suspicion and increased our confidence to roll it out. The next insight tells us a bit about who these community members are and where they come from!
2. Where are our members, and what movements are they involved in?
In one sentence: Our members are highly engaged and effective altruism–aware farmed animal advocates from across the globe, with regional biases towards North America and Western Europe.
Regional Distribution:
Our goal was for 40% of survey respondents to be members in neglected regions (defined as countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe).
144 respondents indicated a country, with 40 countries represented in total, and 50 responses (34.5%) coming from neglected regions, breaking down as follows:
Africa: 14
Asia: 15
Latin America: 9
Eastern Europe: 12
Animal Advocacy Involvement:
We assessed animal advocacy involvement based on whether members are working or volunteering in the movement. Our goal was to do a pulse check on involvement levels; we hoped to see levels the same or higher than in 2023. We received 144 responses to this question and observed both decreased and increased involvement levels:
Decrease: 59 work at an animal advocacy or related organization (41%) vs. 60% in 2023
Increase: 34 volunteer or intern at an animal advocacy or related organization (24%) vs. 11% in 2023
Increase: 14 work outside the movement in roles that influence animal advocacy (10%) vs. 6% in 2023
Unchanged: 10 engage in animal advocacy or activism independently (7%) vs. 7% in 2023
Increase: 14 work outside the movement and donate to support animal advocacy (10%) vs. 7% in 2023
Increase: 7 engage with the movement by reading/discussing (5%) vs. 4% in 2023
Unchanged: 3 are interested in animal advocacy but do not engage (2%) vs. 2% in 2023
Decrease: 3 did not select any of the given options (2.0%) vs. 3% in 2023
Effective Altruism Involvement:
Our goal was to do a pulse check on engagement levels; we hoped to see engagement levels (specifically, the share of respondents indicating at least moderate engagement) the same or higher than in 2023. We received 145 responses to this question and observed similar levels overall:
1 hasn’t heard about effective altruism before (0.5%)
Increase: 5 respondents (3.5%) indicated no engagement (“I’ve heard of EA, but do not engage with EA content or ideas at all”) vs. 8% in 2023
Unchanged: 18 respondents (12.5%) indicated low engagement (“I’ve engaged with a few articles, videos, podcasts, etc.”) vs. 12% in 2023
Increase: 28 respondents (19.5%) indicated moderate engagement (“I’ve engaged with multiple articles, videos, podcasts, and sometimes consider the principles of EA when making career or charity decisions”) vs. 19% in 2023
Increase: 48 respondents (33%) indicated considerable engagement (“I’ve engaged extensively with EA content and often consider the principles of EA when making career or charity decisions”) vs. 30% in 2023
Increase: 45 respondents (31%) indicated high engagement (“I am heavily involved in the EA community, perhaps being a member of or leading an EA group or organization. I make heavy use of the principles of EA when making career or charity decisions”) vs. 27% in 2023
Overall, we consider these results, in addition to our other demographics, to be indicative of a healthy, diverse and well-engaged community, aligned with our mission and target audience. Now, onto how we help them make an impact!
3. How do we make a direct impact?
In one sentence: Hive directly makes an impact by helping its members directly contribute to farmed animal advocacy, through our role connecting advocates with opportunities to volunteer or launch new projects, and to a lesser extent, by connecting advocates with jobs.
We asked respondents whether any of the following results have occurred for them in 2024 as a result of our work at Hive. Our main intention here was to gather more insights into how we create impact, but also to compare the community survey results with the “manual” process we rely on to discover, investigate, and track each potential instance of impact. We sought to understand how well we are tracking our impact in the absence of large-scale impact surveys. Later in this report, we share our evaluation of how we did, under [Meta Insights].
Which of the following results have happened for you in 2024?
I was hired for a new job (role): 3 responses
Compared to our manual tracking: All of the respondents provided details about their role, and we already knew about them.
I was hired for a new job (freelance or short-term opportunity): 5 responses
Compared to our manual tracking: All of the respondents provided details about their job. We identified 2 instances we had not known about.
I took on a volunteering opportunity: 29 responses
Compared to our manual tracking: 25 of the respondents provided details about their opportunity, 8 of whom referenced volunteering opportunities with Hive. We identified 11 instances we had not known about.
I started a new project or initiative: 21 responses
Compared to manual tracking: 16 of the respondents provided details about their project/initiative, 8 of which were categorized under a different form of impact or as not actualized yet after analysis. We identified two 2 instances we had not known about.
I received funding for my project or organization: 4 responses
Compared to manual tracking: 2 of the respondents provided details about the funding they received, and we already knew about them.
None of the above: 93 responses
A few people also reported receiving significant support for their project (13) and deciding against starting a new project and thus potentially avoiding project duplication (7). But naturally, our impact may likely go beyond these measurable instances.
4. How do we make a subtle impact?
In one sentence: We do pretty well across the six metrics we use to gauge Hive’s “subtle impact,” with at least 65% of respondents indicating agreement or strong agreement on every metric except for “saving meaningful time.”
We asked respondents about some more subtle and indirect impacts and influences that we hope to have within our community.
Hive’s Levels of Subtle and Indirect Impact
Below are the percentages of respondents who answered “agree” or “strongly agree” to our six general influence questions:
92% feel a stronger sense of connection to the animal advocacy movement.
78% feel more motivated to contribute to animal advocacy efforts.
78% are more likely to stay involved in animal advocacy over time.
68% feel they can create a larger positive impact.
65% better understand the animal advocacy movement’s strategies and challenges.
43% indicated that they save meaningful time.
Notably, 46% indicated “neutral” for this statement.
Notably, this was the only statement in which a significant number of people indicated that they disagreed (10%).
For the most part, we are happy to see these results, in particular our impact on movement retention (“are more likely to stay involved in animal advocacy over time”). We find it unfortunate that we couldn’t gather deeper insights into the large share of “Neutral” statements about “saving meaningful time” (more on that below in our Meta Insights).
3 Actionable Insights about Hive Slack, Resources, and Events
1. What should we change about Hive Slack?
In one sentence: Our Slack seems healthy overall, but we could reduce overwhelm by combining channels, providing more guidance on making the most of Slack, and by providing even more active moderation.
Slack is our core program, so it’s important that we deeply understand how members feel about our Slack space and how we can improve. We asked about a variety of statements:
84% of respondents (118 people) agreed or strongly agreed with “I get what I hope to receive from the Slack space.”
21 people (15%) were neutral, and only 1 person (1%) disagreed
We were glad to see these results, since many people may hope to get different types of value from a community, so maintaining a space in which different needs are addressed can sometimes feel overly complex.
65% of respondents (91 people) agreed or strongly agreed with “I feel comfortable voicing my opinion in the Slack space.”
27 people (26%) were neutral, and 13 people (9%) disagreed
Agreement levels were below our expectations, but unfortunately, we didn’t follow up with the people who were neutral and are therefore uncertain how to interpret these results.
70% of respondents (98 people) agreed or strongly agreed with “I feel comfortable asking for help in the #help-requests channel.”
36 (26%) were neutral, 6 (4%) disagreed, and 1 (1%) strongly disagreed.
These results were below our expectations, but unfortunately, we didn’t follow up with the people who were neutral and are therefore uncertain how to interpret these.
72% of respondents did not indicate agreement with “I feel overwhelmed by the Slack space.” Of this 72%, 33 respondents (24%) were neutral.
35 respondents (25%) agreed, and 4 (3%) strongly agree with the statement
While still significant, 28% voicing overwhelm-related concerns was overall a slightly lower level than anticipated.
Popularity of Options for Improving Overwhelm
To identify ways that we can improve Hive Slack, the survey prompted follow-ups when respondents disagreed with the statements in the above section, or when they agreed with the statement about overwhelm. Respondents selected one or more of the following ideas:
12 respondents (36%) selected combining channels (i.e., fewer, but broader channels to follow)
10 respondents (30%) selected more guidance on how to use Slack as a platform
8 respondents (24%) selected separating channels (i.e., more, but more focused channels to follow)
8 respondents (24%) selected stricter moderation (i.e., fewer, but more focused messages)
4 respondents (12%) selected more/better tools/plug-ins to improve Slack as a platform
Tentatively Proposed Solutions to Improve Hive Slack
There doesn’t seem to be one very popular option for how to improve Slack. The low sample size makes it difficult to interpret these results as well. The following combination of solutions covers at least one chosen solution for 22 people without contradictions:
Combining channels (12 people)
More guidance on using Slack (4 additional people)
Stricter moderation (6 additional people)
On feeling comfortable voicing your opinion on Slack
Of the 13 respondents who indicated that they don’t feel comfortable voicing their opinion on Slack, 8 offered responses to our open question on how we can help. They can be put into two themes:
General Inexperience (e.g., “ Not sure, I think I just feel inexperienced compared to many other members.”): Mentioned 6 times
Personal thing (e.g., “I don't think it has to do with this specific channel” or “I think it’s more of a personal preference”): Mentioned 2 times
It appears that we can best support our community by reinforcing that everyone’s input is valued, regardless of their level of experience. Overall, we see this as a less urgent concern than, for example, feelings of overwhelm. We're encouraged that the hesitation to speak up seems rooted more in respect for the community and a desire to meet a high standard, rather than in feelings of exclusion or negative norms. Striking the right balance between maintaining a thoughtful and high-quality space without discouraging less experienced voices remains a nuanced challenge.
Conclusion: It is hard to identify solvable issues about our Slack space here. Even for our biggest concern (overwhelm), we had much fewer people indicating this issue (28%) than anticipated (and some of them even mentioned that they don’t consider overwhelm an issue in this context). We tentatively plan to implement the set of three solutions highlighted above, but we will be careful to rely on them too heavily. The obvious issue we face here is that most of our survey respondents are active Slack members(and thus less likely to voice concerns). It may be more effective to recommend prioritizing solutions for which we don’t have the data, but seem to plausibly address more common issues for a wider sample.
2. What should we change about Hive Resources?
In one sentence: Our Resources–an actively updated knowledge hub on key advocacy topics– appear to be broadly useful, but we have not done enough to build awareness of them, so we will focus on maintaining and improving the highest-priority Resources and on promoting those with the most potential.
We asked respondents about the awareness of and anticipated benefit from each Resource. Here are the average percentages across all Resources:
Didn't know and wouldn't benefit: 27.9%
Didn't know and would benefit: 39.4%
Knew and didn't benefit: 14.6%
Knew and benefited: 18.2%
It follows that 57.5% of respondents benefit or would benefit from Hive Resources, but only 31.6% of those who do or would benefit from our Resources knew about them. Awareness, of course, is only a problem worth solving if benefits are given. We may consider building awareness more for our most useful Resources, as well as those that are disproportionately unknown.
To determine which Resources to prioritize, we used responses to create three categories: “Full Attention” has the highest share of benefit or would benefit responses, “Raise Awareness” has the highest share of would benefit, and “Keep It Up” has the highest share of benefit. Here is our preliminary prioritized Resource list:
Priority 1: Resources ranked “Full Attention”
Research and Data: 72% (would benefit 48% + already benefit 24%)
Conference Database for Farmed Animal Advocacy: 68% (would benefit 45% + already benefit 23%)
Jobs and Careers: 61% (would benefit 30% + already benefit 31%)
Priority 2: Resources ranked “Raise Awareness”
Community Building: 61% (would benefit 44% + already benefit 17%)
Building Organizations: 56% (would benefit 43% + already benefit 13%)
AI Prompts for Animal Advocates: 52% (would benefit 47% + already benefit 5%)
Priority 3: Resources ranked “Keep it Up”
Fundraising for Farmed Animal Advocacy: 56% (would benefit 30% + already benefit 26%)
Mental Well-Being: 56% (would benefit 34% + already benefit 22%)
Resources that seem lower priority
Wild Animals: 50% (would benefit 37% + already benefit 13%)
AI and Animals Wiki: 54% (would benefit 41% + already benefit 13%)
Media: 47% (would benefit 34% + already benefit 13%)
When asked how we can improve our Resources, the overwhelming majority suggested that Hive promote them more prominently. Here are the top three selected ways we can improve Resources:
Promote Resources more prominently: 82% (80 responses)
Remove some Resources (to reduce overwhelm): 12% (12 responses)
Add more Resources (to cover more topics): 11% (11 responses)
Conclusion: We set out to assess the Hive Resources program to determine whether and how we should continue it. We believe it’s unclear whether we should continue working on Resources broadly. There appears to be a large call for more promotion of them and some specific Resources seem to regularly bring about benefits. We tentatively plan to revamp and actively promote our 4-5 highest priority Resources. We will also consider collaborating with other capacity builders to co-host Resources, specifically Research and Data with Faunalytics and Conference Database with Connect For Animals.
3. What should we change about Hive Events?
In one sentence: Our events are popular—especially high-value webinars and networking sessions—but could benefit from better promotion, so we plan to continue them with a greater focus on networking and fewer, higher-quality webinars.
How do people even benefit from Hive Events?
We wanted to gain a deeper and more practical understanding of how members benefit from our events and how we could improve them. We are concerned that some events may fall into the trap of being generally cool and interesting, without providing significant real-world impact. As such, we asked open-ended questions about “notable and concrete outcomes” people had as a result of Hive Events. In reading through the answers, we identified a few themes and made preliminary conclusions about our next steps (see below). The following themes were mentioned most often:
Networking and relationship building: Many participants formed new professional connections, expanded their networks, or engaged in meaningful discussions. Some went on to collaborate on projects, connect with potential co-founders, or support advocacy initiatives in different countries.
Career and project development: Many participants found Eventsdirectly useful for their work or career development. Several attendees reported applying knowledge gained to refine their advocacy strategies or using event discussions to validate their career interests.
Community and movement engagement: Many attendees expressed that the Events helped them feel more connected to the farmed animal advocacy movement. Online Events were particularly valuable for those who felt isolated due to remote work or limited access to in-person advocacy spaces.
Learning and knowledge sharing: Many participants used Events to expand their understanding of advocacy topics, even if they weren’t directly working in those areas. Some found webinars particularly useful for staying informed on issues like shrimp welfare.
How can we make Events better?
Here are the top ways we can help advocates benefit more from Hive Events:
Promoting Events more prominently: 56% (53 responses)
Tailoring to more time zones: 31% (29 responses)
Running different types of Events: 30% (28 responses)
Running events more frequently: 29% (27 responses)
Most of our event ideas were fairly popular, with respondents indicating interest in the following:
Webinars/presentations (e.g., How to grow the shrimp advocacy movement): 63% (79 responses)
Region-specific networking events: 57% (72 responses)
General networking events (e.g., Hive Community Conversations): 48% (61 responses)
Role-specific community events (e.g., Fundraising Community Calls): 46% (58 responses)
Conclusion: We set out to assess the Hive Events program to determine whether and how we should continue it. It appears that some of our Events (e.g., Fundraising Community Calls or the Shrimp Advocacy Webinar) were particularly popular and useful, and we should continue running them, with increased promotion. We will likely run slightly fewer events and have a higher bar for hosting them. We will also continue to experiment with a variety of networking events, since they were all similarly popular.
Meta Insights
1. How good are we at manually tracking impact?
In one sentence: We did a very good job manually tracking Job Opportunities and Funding Received. We did a relatively poorer job tracking Volunteer Opportunities and New Projects, although it remains unclear how many of these new projects can be considered as such.
One insight we hoped to gain from our community survey is how commonly we miss out on the impact of our community members. We carefully maintain a manual database of stories and outcomes that we come across or that have been reported to us, but this manual method is not systematic, and we know that we miss out on some impact stories. Catching as many impact stories as possible–and verifying them–is critical to Hive because these “High Impact Outcomes” (HIOs) are how we try to quantify our impact. If we have reason to believe that our manual impact tracking misses many HIOs, we may need to implement a more systematic tracking method. We therefore wanted to assess how many more impactful outcomes we could identify through a larger-scale community survey.
Note: “New and Corrected” instances exclude instances we knew about, don’t consider counterfactual or fitting for the category of impact or came without further explanation, making it hard to assess accurately.
New jobs (permanent roles)
Total we had manually tracked: 13
Total reported in community survey : 3
New and corrected: : 0 = +0%
New jobs (freelance or short-term)
Total we had manually logged: 11
Total reported in community survey: 5
New and corrected: : 2 = +18%
Volunteer opportunities:
Total we had manually logged: 31
Total reported in community survey: 29
New and corrected: 11 = + 35%
New project or initiative:
Total we had manually logged: 9
Total reported in community survey: 21
New and corrected: 2 = + 22%
Funding received:
Total we had manually logged: 10
Total reported in community survey: 4
New and corrected: 0 = + 0%
In total, we manually logged 74 High Impact Outcomes for 2024, and the community survey revealed 15 additional ones we hadn’t logged before, making a total of 89 HIOs (+21%) in 2024. However, we need caution in interpreting these results due to the differences between the types of HIOs.
2. How can we improve the annual community survey?
Following up with neutral responses
In many cases, “neutral” responses were more common than outright negative ones. For example:
43% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they save meaningful time, while 46% indicated they felt neutral about this statement.
Our survey design only triggered follow-up questions for explicitly negative responses, asking for follow-up only when the respondent indicated they disagreed or strongly disagreed, but not if they indicated they felt neutral.
This approach unintentionally limited the amount of feedback we collected, and we believe we may have missed valuable insights. Many people who feel overwhelmed may not be comfortable selecting a negative response and instead default to a neutral one. Instead, asking more open-ended questions like “How can we improve?” for all responses could encourage more constructive and honest feedback.
Should we continue running community surveys?
In its current form, the relevant, actionable and (importantly) surprising insights from our community survey seem fairly rare. As such, we must ask whether we ought to run community surveys on a regular basis. The benefits we see from running a community survey (generally) are:
Ensuring our community is happy, healthy and engaged; spotting potential red flags early, and ensuring that we don’t miss something.
However, this could be done in a much shorter way and/or only every other year.
Hearing about the impact we otherwise wouldn’t have heard about
We already cover a fairly large amount of impact we made via manual tracking and logging throughout the year (83%, even more when we consider them weighted by importance). Moreover, this could be done in a much shorter survey.
Ensuring that community members feel that their voices are heard and community members get a sense of being appreciated. While we have several feedback mechanisms and try to be a widely approachable organization, we acknowledge that there may be barriers to providing feedback and input if not explicitly prompted.
3. How well do we know our community?
It seems to be the case that we could have saved some effort with this survey by relying on our own judgment. Many results were as expected from our personal experience and our everyday interactions with community members. The following insights were important and surprising. All other insights came back as suspected:
From a more meta perspective, we expected more survey respondents.
We thought we would learn about more High Impact Outcomes related to jobs and funding.
We thought our community was overall less engaged with effective altruism (EA) than in 2023 when in reality it was more engaged.
We think this may be because, as an active Hiver, you start engaging with EA almost inevitably. An alternative explanation is that the animal advocacy movement is engaging more with EA in general.
We thought (hoped) more survey respondents would be outside of North America and Western Europe.
We expected clearer trends in our broad and open-ended “What is one thing we could change to make (any of) our programs more useful for you?” question. While we identified possible interventions on our program-specific feedback, in this broader format, there were no significant patterns across answers.
We expected non-professionals in the movement to be significantly less likely to stay involved in animal advocacy for the long term as a result of Hive compared to people working in the movement, because the latter have strong reasons to remain involved (namely, their job!). However, in response to the survey statement “I am more likely to stay involved in animal advocacy over time,” there was no significant difference between those in paid movement roles vs. those who were not in such roles.
Final Thoughts
We’re grateful to every community member who took the time to share their experiences, reflections, and suggestions. Your input helps shape Hive’s direction and ensures we remain responsive to the evolving needs of our global community. While some findings confirmed what we suspected, others challenged our assumptions or highlighted new opportunities for impact. As always, we’re committed to learning and improving together. Thank you for being part of Hive. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out to me (kevin@joinhive.org).
Appendix: Quotes we loved!
Our community has left us some incredibly kind and thoughtful comments and it warms our hearts to read their stories. Below, we share some of our favorites with you.
“Hive made me feel less alone as I was trying to build my organisation. It enabled me to feel like I'm part of something bigger than myself and made it a lot easier to get support for different needs.”
“I feel proud to contribute to the Hive Slack. The channels I've joined and lead help me to feel part of making the movement grow stronger, more cooperative, and more resilient. It connects me with our shared mission and expands my impact beyond the scope of my 9-5 role. So often I feel like efforts are duplicated when existing solutions have been discovered by others. Hive not only fills a critical gap in the movement, but creates a space where people can avoid making this very mistake. “
“I mainly use the Hive Slack as a way of feeling like I belong to a meaningful community. This may not sound like much, but social support really means a lot when trying to do this work. In addition, I frequently reach out to people when they introduce themselves on the Slack, if we seem to have things in common. In this way I've been able to form a little collection of science/data-oriented people and I'm now in conversations with one of them about possibly collaborating on a funding proposal.”
“The slack has been invaluable, really. Before I learned about it, I couldn't imagine there was this large community of people all working for the animals. Mostly, I use it to keep up with my areas of interest — research and Global South work. “
“The main program that I benefitted from was Hive Slack, in particular the Donut meetings, which have both allowed me to network for projects that I'm interested in and learn other perspectives about efficacy that have changed my priors. Additionally, the #introductions channel has given me a constant source of inspiration to see all of the people around the world working on a problem that originally felt like I was trying to tackle alone. “
“I benefited by feeling welcomed in the movement as it has been just few years for me in this movement. I always wanted to engage with people and conference is considered best place. But I take some time to engage with people in person on first meet. Hive helped me to bridge this gap and now I feel more easy going when I meet with people. I end up saying them about Hive and that becomes my starting conversations sometimes. “
“The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the benefits I received from being part of Hive and the programs offered is the motivation and connection I felt to the global animal advocacy movement. I now have friends from all over the world who are committed to the same cause as me. I feel like I'm truly part of improving the lives of animals because of the connections, conversations, friendships, and resources I've gotten from Hive. I've also learned that there are many more opportunities for impact than I first realized; though securing a full-time job in animal advocacy remains difficult, I can see more paths to indirect impact and even volunteer in small ways to help. [...] I have no doubt the connections I've made will prove beneficial in years to come; at least a couple of times a month, someone reaches out to me about a volunteer or job opportunity they think I would be good at.”
“It's hard to describe how much of an impact this organization has made on my life in such a short time. I've been absorbing information like a sponge! Through Hive, I've made dozens of new connections, joined two reading clubs, volunteered, attended several webinars, and have now started a side passion project. I’ve had discussions here that I wouldn’t have experienced anywhere else. [...] Being a vegan in the Midwest with no vegan friends or family can be isolating at times, but I now feel that I'm a part of a community. It's like I've been called to act. I'm more emboldened than ever to help make a difference for animals.”
Thank you for taking the time to read our report! If you would like to add your story to the quotes above, consider submitting a testimonial!
