Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal
Connect For Animals (CFA) exists to make it easier for people to help animals by fighting factory farming. We’ve built a platform that connects advocates to events, actions, and one another, strengthening the movement’s capacity to end factory farming and reduce animal suffering.
Key Achievements
Movement Growth & Engagement
Nearly doubled our user base in 2025, now surpassing 3,000 users.
Initial results from our annual impact survey (still in progress) show that 75% of survey respondents discover impactful actions and connections they would not have found otherwise.
CFA’s “long-tail” model appears to work: instead of channeling everyone into the same few events, the platform distributes advocates into the opportunities best suited to them—increasing overall impact by increasing opportunity fit.
Strategic Infrastructure
Automated event aggregation at scale, ensuring that advocates never miss opportunities to get connected to organizations or take action.
Improved data systems to track engagement and enable data-informed, personalized product development and services.
Mobile app is now live (in addition to our web platform), ensuring broad accessibility.
Community Impact
CFA is already changing how people connect to the movement:
“CFA connects animal advocates from across the globe with one another, fueling growth and collaboration, resulting in a higher impact in the animal advocacy movement.”
“Through CFA, I’ve connected with a vegan meditation group in addition to finding courses to amplify my impact in animal advocacy. It’s inspiring a career shift into the movement.”
“I found Connect for Animals on a Friday, and by Sunday I was already attending my first event. It’s exactly what the movement needed—making it easier than ever to get involved and take action for animals.”
“It is absolutely essential to our movement. I truly believe CFA has the ability to propel the movement forward.”
Spending breakdown
The largest categories of spending through August 2025 were:
Payroll (salaries, taxes, fees): ~$36,300 – core staffing to run the platform and sustain growth.
Contract labor & professional services: ~$15,800 – technical contractors, bookkeeping, etc.
Software, web services, and apps: ~$4,500 – automation, cloud hosting, and platform infrastructure.
Advertising & marketing: ~$3,200 – outreach and user acquisition.
Travel and conferences: ~$1,800 – representing CFA, fundraising, identifying partnership opportunities.
Other administrative/office costs: ~$2,000 across bank fees, supplies, registrations.
Manifund grant funding contributed to everything except for the product development technical contractor, as that funding was provided by another source.
Looking ahead
CFA is increasingly positioned as a core piece of infrastructure for the animal advocacy movement, and we intend to provide more total value (and more value per dollar) each year going forward. Our core services on our platform continue to provide value for a growing number of users, and we are working to increase the quality of functionality provided on our platform as well through increased automation and personalization.
We envision a future where every pro-animal person is maximally engaged in the fight to end factory farming in precisely the ways that suit their skills, interests, and the impact that they can have.
We’ll continue to optimize for these four primary channels of impact and engagement:
Community – helping advocates connect with local groups and global organizations.
Learning – guiding users to educational resources and skill-building opportunities.
Action – enabling consistent, effective advocacy actions.
Giving – directing donations to high-impact opportunities for animals.
We’re deeply grateful to the Manifund community and all our supporters for making this work possible. The results already show: CFA is helping people get more connected and involved in the fight against factory farming.
This report closes out our Manifund project, but people who are interested in continuing to follow our work can sign up on our website or follow us on social media: https://connectforanimals.com/
And of course, your donations continue to help us operate. We are a donor-supported 501(c)(3) charity, so your support is what keeps us going. If you'd like to continue supporting CFA, you can do so here: https://connectforanimals.com/donate
Thank you!
–Steven Rouk, Executive Director