Two Truths about a Lie
The best thing about almost dying
Preface, and more important than my bit below
From David Ramms’ latest, What Pain Taught Me About Animal Advocacy:
It’s too easy for us to make what I call “vegan porn”.
It’s easy to cause conflict that appeals to the vegan community, or to rage-bait people into watching fights and arguments that likely turn them against veganism (despite [or because] this sort of content regularly performing very well on social media).
It’s hard to actually break through with people, and it’s much harder to make this less inflammatory sort of content successful on social media. [We get the clicks from the already-converted, and we don’t personally experience the backlash we’re creating.]
The linked article, Does Veganism Have a Porn Problem? should be required reading for anyone who wants to actually help animals, rather than just get clicks and hearts and praise from the already-convinced.
Back to our regularly-scheduled program.
tl;dr
In 2025, One Step for Animals no longer received our largest single annual contribution. Because of this, our harm-reduction outreach has been significantly restrained.
The good news is that donation matching is still in effect.
Please contribute if you can.
Please share the below with anyone who believes in animal-first advocacy. Thanks.
Fundraising Is Based on Manipulation
In the 25 years before co-founding One Step, I studied fundraising extensively. I was in the communications department for two eight-figure organizations. During those tenures, I worked closely with “development” teams (fundraisers). (Details in the postscript.)
One of the “tools” every group uses is a “matching” contribution. I won’t get into the details - you know the drill - but the organization always received the “matching” money, regardless of how many people donated.
Except One Step. One Step receives the matching funds only if the goals are met:
Straight Talk about Uncertainty
Now, do I know that donating to One Step is the best thing you can do with your money?
No.
Are you a moral monster for giving to other groups?
Again: No.*
But One Step’s work is so much better than so many other things. And it won’t cause more suffering, unlike the work I did back in the day.
So please donate to One Step’s work.
We won’t try to suck-up to you. We won’t send you little “gifts” in the mail. We won’t put you in a CRM and send you the “funnel” email series.
We’ll just try to help prevent as much cruelty to animals as we can.
*Well, maybe a moral monster. Yeah ... definitely maybe.
PS: The Best Thing Since Almost Dying (from 2023)
Like every political party and candidate, charities have teams dedicated to “development” – which means “figuring out what potential donors want to hear and then telling them that over and over” (and wherever possible, have the message given by attractive young blond women**).
There is also a “communications” team to “build relationships with” (read: “suck up to” / “feed the ego of”) members of the media. The more nice things said by “third parties,” the more the nonprofit is “validated,” and thus an easier sell to donors and other funders. (“Other people like us – you should too!”)
Comms teams are also dedicated to building a “social media presence” – getting the most likes and clicks, again to show donors just how “popular” the charity is, regardless of the actual consequences of the posts [see David’s “Vegan Porn” above].
For nearly all of my adult life, I have tried to get people to “like” me and whatever organization I was working for at the time. How many views, how many opens, how many likes, how many mentions ... all to serve the ultimate question of how many dollars we could fundraise … so we could then have bigger development and communications teams! WOO! [Seriously, “Animal Asylum” exists just to raise money. I’m still in contact with someone there, and it is just as bad as when I was there.]
Two great things have happened since I was fired in 2021 following my fractured neck and facial reconstruction.
Probably the best is that I no longer spend hours every single day desperately trying to figure out how to get people to like me / my group.
OMG, being freed from this is so fantastic. I honestly had no idea how stressful it had been, nor how great it is to not be constantly viewing everyone as potential profit / seeking external validation. I just can’t tell you how great it is. Praise Jebus!
** DUBNER: Give me a sense of how big this beauty effect is. So, let’s say one solicitor is ranked a 9 out of 10 by unbiased or disinterested parties and one is ranked a six. How much more does the nine raise than the six?
LIST: Right, you’re looking at roughly a 100 percent increase when you look at going from a six to a nine.
DUBNER: Oh my goodness. And what about hair color?
LIST: So, hair color ends up being important as well. And it turns out that blondes certainly have more fund raising more money. You just can’t beat a beautiful blonde who’s going door to door to raise money for your cause.