Bespoke Philanthropic Advising

Our values are at the forefront of our philanthropic advising:

  • Bidirectional Learning: We aim to learn and understand your positioning and values, and learn from each other in assessing giving opportunities.

  • Transparency & Integrity: We aim to develop a trusted space that welcomes curiosity and is open to challenging views, based on a “scout’s mindset.”

  • Maximizing Impact: We aim to focus on where philanthropic dollars can drive the most impact within the scope of your philanthropy.

  • Commitment to Addressing the Harms of Factory Farming: We take a “big tent” approach to ending factory farming, recognizing the many paths to do so.

What can you expect from FAF’s philanthropic advising?

  • Expert Guidance: Throughout your grant-making journey, we provide guidance tailored to meet your needs, like defining your giving strategy, finding giving opportunities, best practices in evaluating charities and projects, maximizing the impact of your donation, improving the grantee experience, or tracking your impact. For those with limited capacity, we can provide custom recommended giving portfolios.

  • Charity Recommendations: Based on your unique values, priorities, and theory change, we provide customized charity recommendations alongside our evidence-based reasoning for the recommendations. In the spirit of transparency, we provide the pros and cons for each recommendation and are available to discuss in further detail. Please expect that some reasoning may challenge your existing assumptions.

  • Connections: As helpful and requested, we can connect you with other funders who can provide insight into how they fund, nonprofits that you might want to explore funding, and experts who can provide critical insight for your giving strategy.

  • Grant Follow-Up: If you choose to give anonymously or otherwise cannot handle follow-up on the grants to collect and analyze impact reports, we can conduct follow-up for major grants.

What does FAF expect from you?

  • Thoughtfully consider recommendations. You retain full decision-making authority over your giving.

  • Report back on how you’ve given (e.g., how much and where to). This helps us track our advising’s impact.

  • Provide feedback, including constructive feedback. We are dedicated to improving the value of all FAF programs, including philanthropic advising.

We do not offer:

  • Tax or legal advice. We recommend engaging a tax accountant and lawyer to understand the tax and legal implications of your giving vehicles and strategies.

  • Advice beyond scope. We restrict our advising to interventions that address the harms of factory farming, including the environmental, animal welfare, health, and human harms. For interventions outside this scope, we will refer you to other philanthropic advisors.

If FAF’s philanthropic advising services are a strong fit for you, please register your interest.

After registering, FAF’s philanthropic advisor, Zoë Sigle, will email you to schedule a time to talk.