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Sandcastles · September 12 · 46 min

The Campaigner Crunch

New funding is exacerbating a critical shortage of talent in animal advocacy. How we got here and how we get out. Anti-Fur March during Milan Fashion Week (September 26). Join a CAFT organizing calls September 14 or 20, 7:30pm CET: https://abolishfur.org/mfw-woa/ Farmed animal advocacy is about to receive more money than it has ever had, and it has already run out of the people who know what to do with it. In this first of two episodes on the movement's talent crunch, I trace how nearly every leader we have climbed the same ladder from volunteer to organizer to professional, how the professionalization wave of 2016 pulled that ladder up behind them, and why hiring impressive mid-career outsiders to fill the gap keeps failing on culture rather than competence. Along the way: Russian peasants and their seed grain, corporate moral mazes, a Dutch nursing company that discovered its least-supported teams did best, the two-thirds failure rate of my own hiring rounds, and the one scrappy organization that has quietly rebuilt the pipeline the rest of the movement abandoned by running disciplined campaigns on volunteer power alone. If you've ever wondered why job postings draw hundreds of applicants while orgs insist they can't find anyone, or why the world's most neglected problem is also one of its lowest-status careers, this one's for you. And yes, I'm going to ask you to come to a fur march in Milan. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

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New funding is exacerbating a critical shortage of talent in animal advocacy. How we got here and how we get out.

Anti-Fur March during Milan Fashion Week (September 26). Join a CAFT organizing calls September 14 or 20, 7:30pm CET: https://abolishfur.org/mfw-woa/

Farmed animal advocacy is about to receive more money than it has ever had, and it has already run out of the people who know what to do with it. In this first of two episodes on the movement's talent crunch, I trace how nearly every leader we have climbed the same ladder from volunteer to organizer to professional, how the professionalization wave of 2016 pulled that ladder up behind them, and why hiring impressive mid-career outsiders to fill the gap keeps failing on culture rather than competence. Along the way: Russian peasants and their seed grain, corporate moral mazes, a Dutch nursing company that discovered its least-supported teams did best, the two-thirds failure rate of my own hiring rounds, and the one scrappy organization that has quietly rebuilt the pipeline the rest of the movement abandoned by running disciplined campaigns on volunteer power alone. If you've ever wondered why job postings draw hundreds of applicants while orgs insist they can't find anyone, or why the world's most neglected problem is also one of its lowest-status careers, this one's for you. And yes, I'm going to ask you to come to a fur march in Milan.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com
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