A frontier problem worth solving, a co-founder, and full funding. Everything you need to build a charity that changes what’s possible for animals.
Since 2018
Recognised by leading evaluators
Many of our charities are on track to become field leaders, recognised as some of the most cost-effective organisations in the world.
What you’ll receive
The program is fully funded. You focus on building. We handle the rest.
Our research team is assessing 100+ potential animal welfare problems. Choose one to solve yourself, or execute a fully-scoped, evidence-backed idea. No guesswork.
Get paired with a co-founder through real-life projects during the program. Build a partnership tested under real conditions.
Around 95% of projects receive seed funding in this range to get your charity off the ground, following a proposal process built around your frontier problem.
Full-time, expert-led training covering cost-effectiveness analysis, fundraising, strategic planning, and monitoring & evaluation, followed by a new funded exploration phase to develop your approach.
Join a network of 100+ nonprofit founders, mentors, and donors. Access ongoing mentorship, a London co-working space, and optional time in San Francisco.
Cost covered, plus a monthly stipend of $2,000–$5,000 based on your needs and cost of living, with room to request more if your circumstances call for it.
Our founders come from every continent, range in age from 20–50+, and join from a wide variety of backgrounds. This round is dedicated entirely to animal welfare, but nobody comes onto the program already an expert in it.
Nobody comes onto the program qualified to start a charity. That’s what the training is for!
~50% of our most successful founders didn’t even think they should apply. Give yourself a chance.
For most people, the highest-impact time to start a charity is right now.
The application process is designed to help you explore whether this is a good fit.
We think these backgrounds are a particularly good fit for this round. But AIM has a track record of successful founders from a wide range of backgrounds, so don’t rule yourself out if you don’t see yours below.
You understand how decisions actually get made on farms, in supermarkets, and in corporate ESG teams. That’s exactly what’s needed to design strategies that are realistic and adoptable.
Your credential brings instant credibility with industry and funders, and clinical training of any kind sharpens program design from day one.
Welfare tech needs builders. If you’ve shipped hardware, software, or ML products, there’s a frontier problem waiting for you.
The movement needs better primary evidence, and you know how to generate it.
The movement has real talent bottlenecks. Charities can be built specifically to fix them.
Most of our founders don’t come from animal welfare at all. If you’re good at structured thinking under uncertainty, that transfers.
You don’t need to be vegan or vegetarian.
You don’t need to be familiar with animal advocacy.
You don’t have to be an activist.
You just need to take seriously that factory farming is one of the biggest problems of our time and be willing to follow the evidence on what will make the biggest difference to fixing it.
Factory farming is one of the greatest moral catastrophes of our time. It is also, increasingly, tractable.
The best ways to fight factory farming, like cage-free corporate campaigns, have taken animals a long way. The US alone went from around 4% to 45% cage-free eggs in a decade. But the pipeline of what comes next is thin, and that’s an opening for you.
Historically, only 2 to 4 new animal welfare charities launched through AIM each year. Not because good ideas were scarce, but because talent and mid-stage funding were. These bottlenecks are easing. Our recent cohort saw a particularly high number of top applicants interested in founding animal charities, and major grantmakers have significantly more to deploy than they did a few years ago. Conditions have never been better to launch an animal welfare charity.
This round isn’t just trying to nudge the existing movement forward. With more funding available in animal welfare than ever, we want founders whose charities are ambitious enough to shift what the movement believes is possible.
Unlike most of our rounds, we’re not just recommending fully pre-scoped charity ideas this time. We’re mostly recommending frontier problems: big, tractable problems without a single obvious pre-built solution.
Animal welfare has far fewer well-evidenced, ready-to-execute solutions than other cause areas. Large parts of the field remain almost entirely unexplored. What animal welfare, as a field, does have is big problems with strong willingness to pay, from funders, industry, or consumers, to solve them. Our research team is evaluating more than 100 potential problem areas, shortlisted for total impact potential, unit economics, evidence base, stakeholder landscape, and richness of plausible solutions.
These are our current leading candidates. We won’t necessarily recommend all of these, and we’ll likely recommend others too as the research concludes. If you’d prefer a defined starting point, some fully-scoped ideas will still be on offer.
New welfare tech, driving industry adoption, or acting as evaluator.
Example: Bringing in-ovo egg sexing, which spares male chicks from culling, to Asia’s largest egg producers.
Faster, better research, e.g. re-granting to academics against milestone-gated funding.
Example: Studying which farming changes most improve chicken welfare, to focus reform where it counts.
Moving talent into the movement and building its management capacity, often the real bottleneck.
Example: A fellowship placing industry operators into animal charities.
Concentrating on a high-scale, low-attention population, the way Shrimp Welfare Project did for shrimp.
Example: A dedicated welfare organisation for honeybees.
Shifting breeding goals toward welfare. A handful of companies supply most of the world’s farmed animals, so their decisions are high-leverage.
Example: Chicken breeds without today’s chronic leg and heart problems.
If you didn’t apply before because the funding felt too low, or because you wanted to develop your own idea rather than execute ours, this round is for you.
100% animals. For the first time, the entire round, research, curriculum, mentors, and cohort, is dedicated to one cause.
You can develop your own solution. First round where incubatees can build their own answer to a frontier problem, instead of only executing our plan. If you’d rather work from a fully-scoped idea, we’ll still offer some, and choosing either option won’t affect your application.
Three extra months to explore. The core 9-week program (Feb 1 – Apr 5, 2027) is followed by a new funded 3-month exploration phase, your stipend and an exploration grant continuing throughout, ending in a seed funding proposal for your first 12+ months.
London and San Francisco. The usual two weeks in London, plus a new optional (highly recommended) two weeks in San Francisco right after. Travel is fully covered, with visa support available for the UK and US.
Meaningfully higher financial support. The program stipend is rising significantly, fully cost-covered and adjusted for location, with space to request more if your circumstances call for it. We’re committed to cost not being a barrier to taking part. Founder salary guidance is also becoming explicitly needs-based rather than defaulting everyone to a narrow, low range.
Run by someone who’s done it. Aaron Boddy, co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project, is joining as Program Manager for this round.
Bigger ambition. With more funding available in animal welfare than ever, we’re aiming for charities that shift what the movement believes is possible, not just nudge it forward incrementally.
Around 95% of AIM-incubated projects go on to receive seed funding, with recent seed grants ranging from $150,000 to $190,000. Founders who don’t end up launching their own charity often move quickly into another high-impact role, sometimes within days, frequently at another AIM-incubated charity.
One application, two phases. The core program is followed, for the first time, by a funded exploration phase.
Feb 1 – Apr 5, 2027 (9 weeks)
Full-time training on cost-effectiveness analysis, strategy, fundraising, and monitoring & evaluation, plus two weeks in person in London. You leave with a co-founder and a plan.
Stipend: fully cost covered, with room to request more for higher needsApr 5 – Jul 5, 2027 (3 months)
Time to develop and test your approach to a frontier problem, with your stipend and an exploration grant, covering costs like flights and contractors, continuing throughout. Includes optional time in San Francisco.
Ends with a seed funding proposal for your first 12+ monthsOur application process is the result of years of experience, refined to identify potential for starting a high-impact charity, regardless of background, age, or skill set. No special preparation needed.
Multiple-choice questions and two short written answers.
15–30 minutesA framework to compare and contrast your top career options and explore your priorities and tradeoffs.
~3 hoursAnswer general and situational questions relevant to founding a charity.
~30 minutesOne to three prompts testing factors that make all the difference when actually founding a charity.
~3 hoursA Zoom conversation covering your approach to impact, evidence, and decision-making.
~60 minutesThe entire application process should take no more than 10 hours from start to finish.
Applications open
Aug 3, 2026
Applications close
Sep 13, 2026
Offers for the program
Dec 14, 2026
Core program begins
Feb 1, 2027
None of them started out as animal welfare specialists.
Co-founder, Shrimp Welfare Project
Previously: Private Equity“After 15 years in investment banking and private equity, I had zero animal welfare experience. AIM gave me a co-founder and the structure to build the Shrimp Welfare Project, now working with 11 major retailers across three continents.”
Founder & CEO, Animal Advocacy Careers
Previously: Client Success Manager“One thing I hear constantly from people who’d be brilliant at this: ‘I don’t have the right skills or experience.’ It’s one of the most common reasons people don’t apply. It’s simply not true.”
Co-founder, Shrimp Welfare Project
Previously: Business Analyst, NHS“I spent years as a business analyst in the NHS with zero animal welfare background. AIM paired me with a co-founder, and together we built Shrimp Welfare Project into the fastest charity to earn Animal Charity Evaluators’ top recommendation.”
No. Many successful founders came from consulting, industry, tech, or other fields with no prior nonprofit or animal welfare experience. The program teaches you everything you need; see “Why animals” above for who tends to thrive.
Yes. The program is entirely free. All materials are provided, and we cover transport and accommodation for in-person components.
Meanwhile, we cover your living expenses through a stipend so you can focus fully on the program. Most candidates take $2,000–$5,000/month, based on their individual needs and cost of living.
If your needs are higher, for example if you have dependents or live in an expensive city, we encourage you to request more. We’re committed to accommodating reasonable requests, up to a hard cap of $10,000/month, money shouldn’t be why great talent doesn’t found a charity. If cost is making you hesitant to apply, get in touch with [email protected]; we feel strongly that finances shouldn’t stop top founders from starting a charity.
Equally, if your needs are lower (for example, no dependents or a low cost-of-living location), we encourage you to request less, so the difference can go further for animals.
This is separate from your salary once you found a charity: you set that yourself, paid from your organisation’s budget. And if you don’t end up starting a charity, we provide two further months of stipend plus career support as a safety net.
Primarily online, with two weeks in person in London, plus a new optional (highly recommended) two weeks in San Francisco right after. Travel is fully covered, with visa support available for the UK and US. Anyone from any country can participate.
Around 95% of projects receive $150,000–$190,000 in seed funding, plus ongoing mentorship, operations support, and access to a co-working space in London. Founders who don’t end up launching their own charity often move quickly into another high-impact role, sometimes within days, frequently at another AIM-incubated charity.
No, and for this round you have a choice. Our research team is assessing 100+ frontier problems in animal welfare, and you can develop your own solution to one of them. If you’d rather execute a fully-scoped idea instead, we’ll still offer some, and choosing either option won’t affect your application.
Applications open August 3, 2026 and close September 13, 2026. The core program runs February 1 – April 5, 2027, followed by a new funded 3-month exploration phase through July 5, 2027.
You can apply for our Global Health and Development round as well, which focuses on large-scale global health interventions. There’s a question on the application form where you can flag this. If you’re accepted early and don’t want to wait for the program to start, we’ll also work with you to get involved sooner within the AIM community, including potentially placing you with one of our existing charities in the meantime.
The initial application takes about 15 to 30 minutes, no special preparation needed.
Apply NowApplications close September 13, 2026
