Transparency

Theory of Change  

By cultivating online spaces through our Hive Community Slack, centralizing and enhancing access to key information through our Newsletter, and facilitating strategic connections, we will increase and improve knowledge exchange and create more and stronger connections between animal advocates and animal advocacy organizations. 

This will lead to increased support for existing animal advocates and projects, and increased collaboration between animal advocates. 

These in turn will lead to existing animal advocates and animal advocacy projects being more impactful, as well as more impactful animal advocacy projects being started, ultimately reducing more animal suffering or reducing animal suffering faster.

Plans for the future  

Strategic focus for 2024

In 2024, we are leaning into what we already do best: our core program, the Hive Community Slack. In addition to improving and automating our onboarding process, we plan to strategically partner with other organizations and advocates to increase engagement in specialized or neglected Slack subcommunities. 

To help maintain Hive’s strong momentum, we will continue with our other programs. That means we will keep hosting impactful events, releasing biweekly newsletters, updating our Hive Resources, facilitating strategic connections, and leading on AI & Animals work. These programs all support each other and can help make the Hive Community more valuable.

Decision-making process  

All our decisions, big and small, are made with our values in mind. Decisions on our team are made by those closest to the problem and with most knowledge and experience on it. For example, our Communications Lead can make decisions about how to best reach our audience, and our Slack Admins can make decisions about moderation according to the policies we’ve created. 

Our co-founders provide oversight to the team members’ decision-making to ensure that our decisions remain in line with our values and strategy. If one of our team members isn’t confident about a certain decision, they consult with the other team members and our advisors. Decisions about our strategic focus are normally made by our co-founders with input from our team members and advisors. 

Hive’s annual strategy takes into consideration insights from the prior year and our mission. It is initiated together, at a team brainstorming session, then later expanded and refined by the co-founders with feedback from advisors and the entire team. Program-specific strategy is usually decided by the team members running the program and is overseen by the team’s supervisor, which is usually one of the co-founders.

When deciding which programs to run, we rely on the data that is collected by our measurement, evaluation, and learning (MEL) team. Every year, we conduct a thorough analysis of our programs, which relies on information and insights from the annual community survey, user interviews, and other collected data. We publish this analysis in our Year in Review document, which contains our impact, progress, lessons learned and provisional plans for the next year. This document is sent out to our fiscal sponsor, donors, advisors, stakeholders, and team members. The Year is Review is fully available on our website.

Our governance  

Hive is led by two co-founders who share the responsibility of managing the charity 50/50: Constance Li and Sofia Balderson. Our board currently consists of Cameron King - President (Hive’s former co-founder and co-founder at Animal Advocacy Africa), Constance (Secretary) and Sofia (Treasurer). We are planning to expand our board as we grow. 

We are currently waiting for the IRS letter of determination to confirm our 501(c)(3) status in the US. In the meantime, we are also fiscally sponsored by Humane America Animal Foundation (HAAF), which is a 501(c)(3) organization. This means that we are operating as an independent organization and donations to us can still be tax deductible through donating to HAAF. 

To ensure compliance, we have hired Good Structures as our operations contractor. Their team has many years of experience in operations and take care of our bookkeeping/policies. 

We send an monthly update to our donors, supporters, and stakeholders reporting on what we achieved in the past month and any significant upcoming plans. 

We have recruited an excellent advisory board to help guide us in areas where we may need a deeper understanding. They are all experts in their field and have extensive experience and knowledge. Whenever the co-founders are uncertain about an aspect of managing the project, such as management or theory of change, we consult with our advisors to ensure that our work is up to the movement-level standard.