A research program of Project Animal Freedom

MARI: The Midwest Animal Rights Index

We are trying to change a region we have never actually measured. MARI is how we fix that.

Nobody knows what the Midwest animal rights movement looks like

Not because nobody knows their own city. Because there is no current public, region-wide source that answers those questions. Funders deciding where money goes, national organizations deciding where to expand, advocates deciding whether to start something in their own city, and Project Animal Freedom itself are all working without a shared regional baseline.

That is a strange thing to admit for an organization whose stated mission is a fully vegan Midwest by 2056. But it is true, and pretending otherwise would be worse. A movement that cannot describe itself cannot allocate itself well. Without a shared baseline, major decisions in Midwestern animal advocacy can default to impressions, personal networks, and whoever happened to be visible most recently. MARI is meant to replace that weakness with a documented, correctable regional picture.

The Midwest Animal Rights Index is the correction. MARI is a long-term research program that counts the movement, maps it, finds the gaps, and tracks whether any of it is getting stronger over time. It is the Measure pillar of MARA, the Midwest Animal Rights Alliance, and it is conducted through the Animal Freedom Lab, Project Animal Freedom’s research arm.

What MARI produces

The first edition, MARI 2027, delivers four things: a baseline census, a public map, a gap analysis, and a published methodology with a public-use dataset. The annual report that sits on top of them follows in the next phase, once there is a baseline worth reporting against.

The census

A systematic count of organized animal rights and vegan advocacy across Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Nonprofits, chapters, informal groups, student organizations, sanctuaries and rescues with advocacy programs, policy and legal initiatives, direct action groups, and recurring vegan community events. For each one: where it works, when it started, what it does, how many paid people and volunteers it has, roughly what it operates on, and the single largest constraint holding it back.

The survey takes about six minutes. That is a design decision, not a limitation. Response rate is the entire project, and every additional question costs coverage.

MARM, the Midwest Animal Rights Map

A public, searchable map and directory of what the census finds. One question drives it: where does organized animal rights activity exist, and where does it not?

We expect the answer to be uncomfortable. Some of the regions holding the greatest concentrations of farmed animals in the country almost certainly have the thinnest advocacy infrastructure. That is the kind of finding that should change where the movement puts its next organizer, and right now nobody can demonstrate it.

The gap analysis

The census tells us what exists. The gap analysis tells us what is missing: metro areas with real population and no identified advocacy, active volunteer communities with no paid organizer, states with outreach groups but no policy capacity, and organizations that depend entirely on one person who is tired.

We frame this as opportunity rather than failure. A county with no animal advocacy is not a place that lost. It is a place to invest.

The report

The annual publication that pulls it together is the State of the Midwest Animal Rights Movement report: the methodology, the coverage statistics, the findings, the gaps, and an honest account of what the data cannot support. MARI 2027 establishes the baseline and publishes the methodology, the map, and a public-use dataset. The first full State of the Midwest Animal Rights Movement report follows in the next phase, and from then on it launches each year at the MARS Summit. The second edition is when MARI becomes genuinely valuable, because it is the first time anyone can say whether the Midwest movement grew or shrank.

What MARI counts, and the one test behind it

MARI covers animal rights and vegan advocacy organizations. One test decides inclusion:

That is the same test that decides membership in MARA. One test, one universe, one determination. The alliance and the research mean the same thing by “animal rights organization in the Midwest,” which is what allows the numbers in one product to mean the same thing as the numbers in the next.

The test applies identically to every kind of organization, with no categorical inclusion or exclusion by institutional form. A farmed animal sanctuary with real advocacy, education, or vegan promotion work is counted. A sanctuary devoted entirely to animal care is not. A companion animal rescue is counted only if advocacy is a substantive part of what it does. A student group with no staff is counted on exactly the same terms as a funded organization.

Inclusion turns on activity, not on what an organization calls itself. Groups label themselves inconsistently, and a functional test is the only rule that can be applied evenly across twelve states. The criteria are published in full, any organization can ask to be reviewed, and any organization can appeal a decision.

Organizations that do not meet the test are recorded internally so we can document our own screening decisions and estimate coverage honestly. We do not publish that list. Reporting on it is limited to aggregate counts. The purpose is auditability, not publicly sorting organizations into worthy and unworthy.

Where MARI sits

MARI is one part of a larger structure, and the pieces do different jobs:

How we keep this credible

Project Animal Freedom is a significant player in the movement MARI measures. We are also building an alliance those same organizations are invited to join. That is a real conflict of interest, and saying we intend to be fair about it is not a safeguard. These are:

• The methodology is preregistered on a timestamped public repository before any data is collected. Inclusion rules, analyses, thresholds, and how we handle missing data all exist before the results do.
• An independent methodological review group of outside researchers reviews the design and audits how difficult inclusion cases are handled. It does not administer the eligibility test or replace the published appeals process. At least one reviewer has no stake in the alliance and need not be an animal advocate. Reviewers are named in the published methodology and MARI outputs.
• Criteria are published before the assessment period they govern, never written after the data arrives, and they are applied identically to every organization including Project Animal Freedom. PAF takes no part in voting on its own placement in anything MARI publishes.
• MARA members can advise, correct errors, and tell us who we missed. They cannot vote a variable out because it makes the movement look weak. Research and data governance sits with PAF and the Animal Freedom Lab, not with the alliance, and MARA’s steering committee can acknowledge these protections in its own charter without administering them.
• Response rate and coverage are reported as headline findings, not as buried caveats. If our coverage is thin, that will be the first thing you read.
• What organizations tell us in confidence stays confidential, under a published consent and data-use policy. The survey does not field before those rules are public. The policy states what is reported at organization level, what is only ever aggregated, what requires opt-in, how small samples are handled so that organizations cannot be identified indirectly, how long data is kept, and how any organization corrects or withdraws its record.
• We distinguish what we observed from what we can attribute. A march happening is an output. A law changing is an outcome. We will not blur them.

What the public-use dataset is, precisely. It carries public directory fields plus research variables that are publishable, de-identified, or aggregated in line with the consent and data-use policy. It is not confidential raw responses, and no organization’s individual answers are posted. Survey data can be withdrawn up to the deadline stated in the consent policy; once results have been aggregated and published, individual responses cannot be pulled back out of them.

Assessment, ranking, and what actually gets published

The distinction that matters is between assessment and exposure.

MARI will eventually maintain an internal assessment of animal rights and vegan advocacy organizations in the region, scored against criteria published in advance and applied the same way to everyone, so that the alliance can see where regional capacity actually sits. A serious audit of a movement means assessing the organizations in it. Pretending otherwise would make the research softer, not kinder.

What gets published from that assessment is deliberately narrow. Each year MARA expects to name a Top Ten, the MARGOs, recognized for the strength of their work that year and voted on by the alliance against the published criteria. An organization named to that list can decline to be listed. Nothing below it is published. Individual placements, full league tables, and bottom rankings stay internal. Your organization’s own assessment goes to you, not to the public. Case studies naming a specific organization are published only with that organization’s consent. You can correct factual errors in your assessment and you can appeal it.

None of this exists yet. The scored index is the last thing MARI builds, not the first, and it is years out.

Why the first edition has no score

MARI will not produce a composite score in 2027, regardless of how well the first year goes.

A score built on thin coverage is a number we would spend years defending instead of improving. Worse, it would arrive before anyone has reason to trust how it was built. So the first edition describes, and the later editions measure.

When scoring does arrive, opportunity leads and strength supports it. The question worth answering is not which state is winning. It is where an additional organizer, an additional grant, or an additional chapter would do the most good.

What MARI is not

• It is not a public league table of organizations. No group receives a published grade. The only organization-level list MARI ever publishes is the annual Top Ten MARGOs, voted by the alliance, which an organization can decline.
• It is not a duplicate of existing movement research. Faunalytics maintains a research library of thousands of studies. Stray Dog Institute runs a global State of the Movement survey tracking how the farmed animal movement allocates resources by region, animal, intervention, and outcome. Those are good and we use them. What is missing is a Midwest-specific operational baseline showing where organizations exist, where capacity is absent, and how regional infrastructure changes year over year. We are approaching Stray Dog Institute before our methodology freezes, so that where our categories can align they do, and organizations answering both surveys are not asked the same question twice.
• It is not a membership directory. MARI counts organizations that have never heard of us.
• It is not restricted to the Midwest in its usefulness. The methodology is published in full, including definitions, eligibility criteria, sampling, limitations, and version history, so that advocates elsewhere can replicate it. A Great Plains version, a Southern version, or an Appalachian version would be a success of this project, not competition with it.

Timeline

If the Lab is not ready in January, the fieldwork moves. We would rather publish late than publish a baseline nobody should build on.

What it costs, and what funding buys

MARI’s single largest determinant of quality is response rate, and response rate is bought with fieldwork hours. Somebody has to find every organization across twelve states, send the invitation, send it again, and then pick up the phone.

We can run the first edition on volunteer labor. It will work, and it will produce lower coverage than the same project with a paid fieldwork coordinator for three months. We would rather say that now than explain it afterward.

Questions

Take part

If you run an animal rights or vegan advocacy organization in the Midwest, the most useful thing you can do is answer the census when it opens in March 2027, and tell us now about the groups in your area we are likely to miss. The organizations hardest to find are usually the ones the map most needs. You can also join MARA, free, though you do not have to join to be counted.

Tell us who we are missing

If you fund this movement, MARI is the infrastructure that makes the rest of your Midwest giving legible. We would welcome a conversation before the first edition, not after it.

Fund MARI

A research program of Project Animal Freedom, conducted through the Animal Freedom Lab. Last updated September 2026.
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