That’s a good question. Our little organisation invests a lot of resources in policy work, training and education, but the greatest of our spending is on research. But how do we know that what we fund will replace animals in the lab?

What is ‘impact’?

‘Research impact’ means different things to different people. If you ask Google, you get the answer that it’s “the effect that research has on society and the economy beyond academia”. This could be ‘economic and societal’, ‘cultural’, ‘environmental’, ‘health and wellbeing’, ‘policy influence and change’, ‘legal’ and ‘technological’. In an ideal world, the work we fund would change the way academia did research and, directly or indirectly, create change in all these other areas too.

If we want to know whether we’re helping make changes in legislation or guidance around the use of animals, and their replacement with other methods, then it is relatively easy to do. We can find out if MPs, or civil servants within the Home Office Animals in Science Regulation Unit, and the regulated community – those actively making decisions about using animals in research and testing – are changing their guidance, policies and processes in line with our calls. We can also find out how many researchers, students, Unis and their Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Bodies are using our training resources to reinforce how they implement the R of Replacement, and if it’s having the right effect locally. But when it comes to academia things can get a little trickier…

‘Failure’ is a part of progress.

The projects we support with our Innovation Grants and Summer Studentships are all novel and innovative. They’re very varied, both in technique – from organs-on-a-chip to AI – and in the field of research – from nanotoxicology and cancer, through to respiratory medicine and neurodegenerative conditions.

Scientific research is risky. It doesn’t always turn out how you want it to. A University student will likely be told that “98% of their experiments will ‘fail’” – partly to manage their expectations, but also to teach that it’s OK if they don’t get the results they wanted.

Science isn’t cheap

We need to know we are spending our donors’ money wisely to get the best impact we can.

When a researcher applies for an Innovation Grant, we ask them to estimate the potential impact on both

(1) the advancement of alternatives to animals and non-animal techniques and

(2) the replacement of animal use in that field.

We know that this will be a ‘best guess scenario’ for them as the numbers in reported annual statistic are not accurate, and those taken from published scientific papers will only represent a fraction of animals used, due to publication bias towards ‘positive’ results.

Applications are reviewed by our Scientific Advisory Panel before we decide on which projects to fund. All winning Grant Holders must provide updates of their progress and how they think their evolving research will impact the use of animals in their field.

Impact needs communication

It’s not easy to predict impact on future animal numbers, and so our funded research must be shared with the wider research community. It’s only through the communication of techniques that we can create change in science – others must know about it before they can use it!

But developing the new non-animal techniques that are needed is only one side of the coin. Phasing out animal use is the other. We need impact in both areas.

We are a small charity and the science we fund is tiny compared to UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, but communicating what our researchers have achieved, is vital to encourage others to use new techniques. But this must also be combined with policy work, training and education, by us and our colleagues in the sector, to convince others to leave animal procedures behind.

If you have any other ideas about how a small charity like ours can measure and improve its effectiveness, please do drop them in the comments.