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November 2025 Funding Updates

  • Writer: Haven King-Nobles
    Haven King-Nobles
  • 12 minutes ago
  • 4 min read

Summary

This post provides an update on our funding situation. Specifically:


  • We have been more successful than usual at fundraising lately (thanks in part to the recent FarmKind fundraiser). Because of this, our funding gap is now full until the first few months of 2027.


  • FWI generally has a policy of not fundraising beyond what we have published plans for. As our current plans and budget only extend through the end of 2026, donors should consider FWI’s case for additional funding as less strong than before. Specifically:

    • We recommend large donors hold off on additional donations for now.

    • We recommend small/recurring donors consider continuing to donate.


  • We expect to have a large funding gap again in about a year, once we have set our plans for 2027. 


We also conclude this post with a word of thanks to all those who have donated so far.


FWI’s Current Funding Situation

Our work to improve the lives of farmed fishes is only possible because of the many individuals who donate each year. Raising sufficient funds is no small undertaking—we have to pay for our team of about 25 people, as well as the various equipment and travel expenses that accompany it. In 2025, our annual budget was about $830,000.


Thanks to the generosity of many donors, both large and small, we have now raised not only sufficient funds for our 2025 budget, but for our newly finalized 2026 budget as well. In fact, based on our current assets and promised donations, FWI currently has a financial runway projected to last until the first half of 2027—meaning that, if we were to receive nothing more than the currently promised donations, we would run out of money then. 


For an organization that has occasionally worked with financial runways of 1–2 months, a runway of over a year is quite a change, and we believe it represents the broader growth and professionalization of our organization.


Advice to Current and Potential Donors

We are, and aspire to be, an organization driven by our values. One of those values is being “good movement citizens”, meaning that we recognize that FWI is just one piece in a much broader animal advocacy movement, and that we always aspire to put that movement ahead of ourselves.


One implication of this value is that we try not to take more money than we need, as we are mindful that a dollar not donated to FWI is likely a dollar donated to one of our peer organizations, organizations that we think are also quite impactful. Because of this, there was actually a period early on in our history when we stopped accepting any funds entirely, as we felt like we had already raised sufficient funds for our plans.


Our specific principle here is to only raise funds for the time periods over which we have published plans and budgets. This is also helpful for donor transparency, as donors can see exactly the sort of outcomes and impact they can expect to “buy” with their marginal donation.


By this principle, our default course of action would be to once again pause all new donations—closing our donation page and not actively fundraising again until we set our plans and budget for 2027, likely around November 2026. However, we are hesitant to do this due to the risk of long-term donor attrition: many of the supporters who currently give to FWI semi-regularly might stop, and some may not resume even once we have a significant funding gap again. We’re also mindful that shutting down donations would be highly unusual by nonprofit standards and could give the impression that FWI is better funded than it truly is, further reducing future support. Finally, any marginal donations we receive now will go toward our 2027 work—which, while not yet finalized, we expect to be at least as impactful as our current programs.


Given all the above, our recommendation to current and potential FWI donors right now is the following:


  • Large donors (>$1,000): We recommend you redirect your donations elsewhere for the time being. For donors we are already in contact with, we expect to reach out in 1 year with an update on our 2027 funding gap.


  • Small and recurring donors: We have less of a firm recommendation here. Receiving regular monthly donations is helpful for our future financial planning, and we are, of course, confident that our 2027 plans will be a good use of funds, even if we don’t know exactly what those will look like. However, we are mindful that other cost-effective organizations may have a more urgent need for marginal funds right now. Ultimately, we think you should still consider donating to FWI, but consider our case for marginal funding as slightly less strong than before. Much of whether you choose to continue donating to FWI should also depend on how promising you think your next best donation opportunities are.


Note also that the above is only temporary: We do expect to begin fundraising for 2027 in November 2026.


Interested in exploring other charities to donate to? We encourage you to review the recommendations of FarmKind and Animal Charity Evaluators (animal-focused charities), and also GiveWell (human-focused charities). For those interested in supporting an organization similar to FWI, we recommend Scale Welfare.


And as always, if you are interested in donating a larger amount to any charity, we recommend inquiring about that organization’s funding gap, as organizations often have different approaches for how they fundraise for and publicly communicate this.


A Word of Gratitude

It’s not often that we get to write a post saying that our funding gap is full. In particular, we are very grateful to the following parties for continuing to believe so much in our mission and our work:



It is very meaningful to us that so many individuals and institutions believe in this cause enough to want to donate to support it. We are extremely grateful. Thank you for helping us improve the lives of these overlooked animals.

 
 
 

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