TOGETHER WE DID IT! 28 hours before our campaign ran out, we soared past our initial goal!
We are humbled by grateful for our hundreds of backers. Now, let's see if we can make it to $120,000 by 8:30/5:30pm on Wednesday! This money would allow us to hire a full-time market researcher AND make us the all-time number one vegan project on Kickstarter!
Better Eating International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is inspiring compassion and sparing animals from miserable lives and cruel deaths through smart, personalized educational videos. Our inclusive and empowering model will help create a future where animals are valued as unique individuals and no longer exploited for human gain. With a diverse and talented team armed with the latest technologies, we'll give people the knowledge and tools they’ll need to live more ethically.
If we reach our goal of $97,500, this campaign will be fully matched by a generous foundation! This will effectively double our funding to $195,000, and we will use that total to create nearly 100 short educational videos about animal agriculture and vegan eating. We'll make even more micro-targeted videos if we surpass our goal.
Humans exploit and abuse animals in countless ways, with none being more pervasive and sickening than the billions of chickens, turkeys, fish, pigs, and cows who are killed for human consumption each year. These unique individuals are capable of feeling affection, joy, loneliness, and pain, and they are made to suffer immensely by animal agribusiness.
Additionally, raising animals for food is a leading contributor to climate change, deforestation, and water pollution, while catching billions of fish is destroying aquatic ecosystems. Humans pay a price too: our lifesaving antibiotics are becoming less effective through use on farmed animals, farm and slaughterhouse workers are among the most mistreated workers in any industry, and 80% of staple crops are fed to farmed animals instead of people.
The only solution to these problems is to move toward a world without animal production. This will require revolutions in technology, in our institutional practices, and in our behavior, beliefs, and culture. The Better Eating team is uniquely poised to tackle this latter category.
It's time to jump-start a movement that has stagnated at around 2 percent of the population! We're aiming to see every internet-using young adult exposed to the realities of animal agriculture. Many of them will become vegan, and all of them will gain a firm understanding of the reasons to be.
We'll reach tens of millions of people each year with the same quality and depth of messaging that our movement has thus far only been able to offer on a small scale. To create such an experience, we’re organized around these core ideas:
We know from the best-practices of the marketing world, as well as from our team’s years of creating cause-based education for nonprofits, that long-term persuasion depends on a number of factors:
- Repeated exposure to the same content, brand, or idea.
- An emotional connection to the issue being explained or the need being filled.
- A rational explanation for behavioral change that can be conveyed to others.
- A practical solution that removes as many barriers as possible.
We’re taking in all this information to develop a stockpile of hundreds of 30-second animated PSA’s that span both Why and How topics related to veganism:
Why video subjects will include: animal sentience and ethics, standard practices on farms, environmental concerns, workers’ rights, and public health. How video subjects will include: fast food options, cafeteria options, navigating grocery stores, meat replacements, dairy replacements, talking to parents & friends, and more.
Our videos will string together to persuasively convey our message to English and Spanish speakers in the US through “sequential advertising” that will be delivered to viewers on their phones, tablets, and computers over several days or weeks. Every ad will conclude by encouraging the viewer to follow our Facebook page, where they’ll be offered further targeted educational content.
By approaching vegan education primarily from an ethical standpoint, viewers deciding to change their diet are likely to develop an identity as someone who cares about animals, which will influence beliefs and behaviors beyond eating.
Everyone has their own life experience, making certain messages more powerful to some people than others. A working student at a rural community college has different needs than a young professional in a large coastal city, but they both deserve tools to make choices that better align with their values.
By tapping into the online systems used in politics and marketing, the best Better Eating content will be automatically selected for each person. The relatively quick and unexpected success of the marriage equality movement, for example, was largely due to their smart, targeted messaging choices that led to a cultural shift. It’s time that we do the same for animals.
This initial Kickstarter will fund 96 videos: 8-12 topics, created in both English and Spanish, with considerations towards age, gender, income, region, education, and other interests and characteristics.
To assist in meaningful content creation, we will encourage supporters to join a Community Advisory Panel made up of people who represent diverse backgrounds varying in race, ethnicity, gender, age, wealth/income, and location. CAP members will act as vegan focus groups, reviewing content that is directed toward their unique demographics prior to and after production.
Using an online focus group service, we will also beta test all video content with the non-vegan general public before it reaches a wider audience, focusing the video’s clarity, credibility, and emotional weight. We’re working on longer-term assessment tools as well to measure changes to people’s beliefs, behavior, and purchases.
We also plan to support local animal rights, vegan community, and social justice groups by directing our viewers their way using location targeting. We know that even the best online educational experience is not a full replacement for in-person networking and community support.
Animation makes it easy to explain complicated ideas and to create new videos quickly and cost-effectively. Unlike graphic undercover footage, animation escapes most online censorship, allowing us to reach millions more people.
As we confirm the appropriate content for a specific audience segment, our Creative Team will start to tackle video creation. In just four to five days, we can turn a video script into a completed 30-second animated video.
As we continue to make videos for different audiences, our Lead Animator, Lead Designer, and Audio Engineer can begin to reuse elements of older videos to make new ones. We anticipate this will shorten the production time to two to three days.
Better Eating International’s first program is an incredibly ambitious effort. It wouldn’t be possible without a founding team of talented individuals with the combined skills to ensure that our message is culturally-responsive and effectively conveyed and delivered.
Alex and Michael have been active in social justice together for over a decade, and were behind one of the most powerful vegan advocacy programs in the animal rights movement. Michelle has years of experience in organizational and financial management plus a wealth of marketing knowledge. Jess, Thomas, Luuly, and Sina have refined their respective creative and communications trades for years at commercial and nonprofit firms.
Kickstarter has long been a major incubator for creativity and disruption. Recent mission-driven successes have modernized childhood literacy programs for the digital age and launched collaborative games that promote social justice. It’s a platform where motivated people can achieve the near-impossible and we are proud to be joining this tradition.
Competing with the marketing force of the meat, dairy, and egg industries is not easy or cheap. By leveraging social networks, we will counter their problematic messaging on a mere fraction of their budget -- but to do so we'll need to raise $195,000. Fortunately, this campaign will be fully matched by a generous foundation, so whether big or small, your contribution will go twice as far.
This is an all-or-nothing proposition. If we make $97,500 from our generous Kickstarter supporters, it will instantly become $195,000 -- but we can't properly undertake this effort for less. If we fall short, we get nothing.
Back this project today and help us bring a fresh perspective to vegan education!
Our exciting backer rewards include various forms of recognition and merchandise, a personalized animation, and a strategic conversation with our Leadership Team over dinner! (And we plan to release some special bonus rewards throughout the campaign).
To choose one of the backer levels, simply click the pledge box of your choice. We’ll follow up by email to confirm the details of your rewards. We hope you’ll enjoy these perks, but most of all we hope you’ll take advantage of the matching opportunity to do twice as much good for animals.
Note: Delivery dates for some levels reflect the latest reward offered. Our expected schedule is as follows:
- Facebook and email recognition - throughout the campaign
- Website and video recognition - June 2017
- T-shirts, stickers, buttons & digital caricatures - October 2017
- Printed caricatures & animated cameos - December 2017
- Staff dinner - April 2018
- Leadership Team dinner - August 2018
If we achieve our base goal of $97,500, we will be on our way to creating this revolutionary new program. However, our initial plans are truly just the beginning! After that, Kickstarter backers can expand this project in a myriad of ways.
Better Eating International is a tax-exempt 501c3 nonprofit in the United States (EIN 81-4124366). All US backers will receive letters after the campaign verifying that your donation was tax-deductible (minus the market value of your rewards).
We are committed to building a staff that is as diverse as our audience, and providing fair and living wages for our team members. With our production being handled entirely by our staff in Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; and across the globe, most of the income from this Kickstarter campaign (60-65%) will go towards compensating our Creative Team as they produce these life-changing resources. The other 35-40% will be spent on researching content, placing videos online, and other program costs.
If we surpass our fundraising goal, we will shift more funds toward research and video placement, making our work even more effective and seen more widely. Our initial overhead costs have been largely offset by a handful of early donors.
Please contact us with any questions:
(443) 738-4751
Info@BetterEating.com
Risks and challenges
As stated under Meet the Team, the members of Better Eating have several decades of combined experience in this field - from both the creative and management perspective. Our Leadership Team in particular includes: Michael, the former Executive Director of a Maryland-based national animal rights nonprofit that he tripled in size; Michelle, who sits on the board for another charity, works in management at another, and is deeply involved in community building among diverse peoples of color; and Alex, who oversaw the development of several cross-country activism tours, supplemental websites, and online advertising campaigns. We have spent 8 months laying the groundwork for this project, and are completely confident that we can carry it out given adequate funding.
However, we realize ambitious projects always carry some risk. Most of our rewards don't involve delivering a physical product, but there is always the possibility of artwork production delays or other unforeseen circumstances. That's why we’ve given ourselves plenty of time to deliver rewards, and we're committed to communicating clearly with our backers.
Our educational programming will be rolled out in waves, beginning with focus group tests in summer 2017. We will start this work immediately following the success of this campaign, and do not have any reason to expect delays.
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Funding period
- (28 days)