What Does PEPR Actually Do? Inside Our Program Work - And Why It Costs Nothing for Animal Advocacy Nonprofits

Jay Barrett
3 days ago
7 min read

By Jay Barrett, CEO & Co-Founder, PEPR

If you've come across PEPR before, you may have a rough sense of what we are: something to do with operations, HR, finance, maybe strategy, culture and hiring.

One of the things we hear most often - even from organizations and peers we've been quietly working alongside for months - is that people don't fully understand all that we have to offer. And more than that, they don't know that one of the most significant parts of our work is available to animal advocacy nonprofits at no cost.

This post is for you if you're leading a farmed animal protection or vegan advocacy organization and you've wondered whether PEPR might be a valuable partner to you.

We exist because the movement is leaving impact on the table

Transformative change in our food systems requires more than passion and mission. It requires organizations that are built to last - with the systems, structures, leadership, and people infrastructure to grow and sustain momentum over time.

When those internal foundations are weak or missing, organizations struggle to respond quickly to change, manage growth without burning out their teams, build global talent, or turn strategy into consistent execution. The result isn't a lack of commitment - it's unrealized potential and more impact that could be gained.

That's the problem PEPR exists to address.

We are an Organizational Effectiveness organization. We partner with farmed animal and vegan advocacy organizations to strengthen their internal foundations - through strategic clarity and enablement, people and culture, finance, operations, and leadership support - so they can unlock their full impact potential.

We work alongside organizations at the moments that matter most: launching something new, navigating rapid growth, transforming their organization, managing a global team, designing internal systems, or realizing that the structures holding things together are no longer fit for the ambitions driving the work.

PEPR Elevate: The Program That Opens the Door

Before we dive into PEPR Elevate – let’s step back to clarify the three interconnected things we do at PEPR.

PEPR Enable provides embedded fractional operational teams for organizations that need ongoing, senior-level capacity - where we operate as an ongoing part of their team.

PEPR Engage is our Employer of Record solution, giving advocacy organizations access to compliant, affordable global hiring infrastructure.

But for most organizations encountering us for the first time, PEPR Elevate is where we start - through which we run our advisory program and the Animal Advocacy Ops Collective, our peer community for operations professionals across the movement. The Ops Collective is a space for connection, shared learning, and reducing the isolation that often comes with being the only ops person in the room.

PEPR Elevate is our offering enabled by philanthropic partners - which means there is no cost to eligible and participating animal advocacy nonprofits. Elevate exists because we believe that access to high-quality strategic and operational support shouldn't be limited to organizations with large budgets. Thanks to the support of our philanthropy partners, we're able to deploy our team's expertise across the movement where it's most needed.

Our model also allows us to work with organizations in a way that removes barriers - partnering deeply to address root cause obstacles to their long-term potential and success.

In 2025, through PEPR Elevate, we reached 44 organizations across the farmed animal and vegan movement — and more than 50 have been reached since we launched.

What does PEPR Elevate look like in practice?

This is where we want to be specific, because "strategic and operational support" can mean almost anything.

Through PEPR Elevate, we work with Executive Directors, Operations Leads, leadership teams, and sometimes full staff groups across four core areas:

Organizational Strategy and Effectiveness — navigating organizational change and growth, facilitating team retreats and workshops, designing internal structure, role design and ways of working, clarifying strategic priorities, developing growth, succession and transformation plans, and shaping mission, vision and values.
People and Culture — helping teams build effective and inclusive cultures and ways of working, working through team challenges, leadership support, recruitment and onboarding processes, performance and development frameworks, policies and processes, and employee engagement.
Total Rewards and Global Hiring — compensation strategy, benefits, payroll management, and navigating the complexity of global hiring and the various solutions available to manage a global workforce.
Finance and Operations — financial reporting, back-office setup and systems implementation, budgeting, cost classification and management, cash flow forecasting, runway planning, policies, processes, governance and reporting.

Together, this work ensures that organizations have a clear strategic direction, are equipped to operationalize that strategy with a supported and engaged team effectively moving in the same direction, with healthy, responsible and sustainable financial management and governance. That combination is what maximizes an organization's potential to deliver on their strategy.

We work through a range of cadences with the organizations we reach: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, project-based, and ad hoc - allowing us to right-size our involvement as needs evolve.

What kinds of projects do we work on?

Three examples from our work give a sense of what this looks like in real organizations.

Helping an organization launch faster — and better prepared.

We have partnered with ambitious organizations preparing to launch. The leaders of these new projects anticipated significant delays due to uncertainty around hiring, compliance, budgeting, structure, and change management. Through our work together, they launched successfully - with compliant hiring, clear roles, strong governance, long-term financial plans and scalable infrastructure in place. As one leader put it: "Our launch would not have happened with the speed and agility it did."

Supporting leaders through complexity before burnout set in.

Several leaders we partnered with described situations where stress and uncertainty were escalating. Our Elevate advisory work created the space to navigate sensitive decisions, manage organizational complexity, build confidence, and improve the culture and performance of their teams - reducing internal friction and freeing their capacity for the mission-critical work only they could do. Leaders reported that without our partnership, burnout would have significantly increased, and key decisions would have been delayed or poorly made.

Building the foundations for long-term growth.

Other groups have come to us anticipating organizational growth — but recognizing they may not have the internal structure and capabilities to support it. Over extended engagements, we have helped organizations plan, identify capacity and capability gaps and future needs, design recruitment processes, develop performance management frameworks, facilitate alignment around mission, vision and values, and evolve internal roles to reduce overload and focus on more impact. The result is more resilient organizations that can execute on their ambitions and navigate future growth.

In short: we act as strategic partners to the organizations we reach - helping them overcome complexity, increase their operational excellence, and position themselves to scale their impact and leverage future opportunities to deliver on their mission.

What do organizations say about the impact?

The numbers from our 2025 impact report tell part of the story.

Overall satisfaction with PEPR: 4.9 / 5
Overall effectiveness of our work: 4.8 / 5
Of organizations we supported on finance and operations, 100% reported significant or transformational change
Of those we worked with on HR and culture, 91% reported the same
On long-term planning and organizational design: 88%

Counterfactual data - what would have happened without PEPR - was equally striking. Organizations told us that without our support, progress would have been significantly delayed, decision quality would have declined, burnout would have increased, key opportunities would have been missed, and talent may have left the movement.

What organizations told us mattered most was not the individual deliverables — it was the relational, ongoing nature of the partnership. As one animal advocacy leader put it:

"PEPR provides long-term support and creates a safe space to explore urgent matters that come up — which may be hard to anticipate"

That's what a trusted partner looks and feels like.

Who is Elevate for?

If you're leading or operating within a farmed animal protection or vegan advocacy organization - whether you're just launching, actively growing, or working to sustain what you've built - Elevate was designed for you.

We work with organizations at every stage of their journey: from launch to active growth, to sustaining and strengthening what they've built - and on occasion, providing thoughtful support when an organization needs to wind down responsibly.

You don't need to have it all figured out to engage with us. In fact, many of the most impactful conversations we've had started with leaders saying: "I'm not entirely sure what I need, but I know we can do some things better." That is exactly where we come in - to help you see the things you may be too close to see, and to provide hands-on implementation support to ensure long-term change – bespoke to your specific needs.

A note on capacity building for the movement

The farmed animal and vegan advocacy movement is fortunate to have access to several exceptional capacity building organizations. We strongly believe our work is complementary to - not duplicative of - the work of other capacity builders. Different solutions work for different organizations, at different times, based on different needs and context in the moment.

If we are the right fit for your organization at any time, we are always here and ready to help. If we're not the right fit right now, that's always okay - we want you to work with whoever is the right fit for what you need. And maybe we can work together in the future should you need our support. We regularly see organizations come back to us as needs evolve.

Our operating model allows us to take on new organizational partnerships on a rolling basis and support them for as long as we collectively agree is needed. We don't hand you frameworks and tools to implement alone. We are not a strategy consultancy that writes a report and leaves. We don't prescribe solutions from a distance.

We get into the weeds with you. In the complexity, at the inflection points, for as long as it takes to deliver on the change we are trying to drive together.

And through PEPR Elevate - thanks to the generosity of our philanthropy partners - that kind of embedded, relational, high-trust support is available to your organization at no cost.

Ready to find out if PEPR is the right fit?

If you're curious whether Elevate could support your organization, we'd love to hear from you. You can learn more & sign up here or get in touch with Jay or Elliot through our contact form.

The movement can achieve far more for animals. We believe that - and we exist to help make it possible.

PEPR is a Public Benefit Corporation committed to strengthening the global farmed animal and vegan movement by increasing organizational effectiveness, leadership capacity, financial governance, and operational resilience. Our PEPR Elevate program is philanthropically supported and available at no cost to qualifying animal advocacy nonprofits.