Animal Charity Evaluators

What problem is Animal Charity Evaluators working on?

By examining factors such as neglect, scale, and tractability, advocates and philanthropists can increase the amount of good they create in the world. The animal advocacy movement has seen several notable successes over the past decade as it has strengthened its approach using these principles, from corporate campaigns that have helped millions of animals to significant technological advancements in animal product alternatives.

Despite a recent shift in public attention and attitudes toward animals, many challenges remain, and animal suffering remains prominent. To make tangible progress, animal advocates must adapt to a dynamic global environment and explore strategies to reduce the exploitation of animals. We need to understand the effectiveness of the approaches we use to help animals so that we can direct efforts and funding to groups that are doing the most good for them in areas where the most animals are suffering.

What does Animal Charity Evaluators do?

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is dedicated to finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. It prioritises its efforts based on available research, as well as the scale, tractability, and neglectedness framework.

ACE supports effective interventions within farmed animal advocacy and wild animal welfare via three programmes:

• Charity Evaluations: ACE conducts annual charity evaluations to identify the most effective animal charities working in high-priority cause areas. Each November, it publishes lists of recommended charities to promote organisations that would likely produce the greatest gains for animals with additional donations. ACE is transparent about its charity evaluation process and makes improvements to it each year.
• Movement Grants: Each June, ACE awards grants to organisations and individuals working on various approaches to animal advocacy — especially those that lack funding, target large numbers of animals, or operate in regions with a small animal advocacy movement. This allows ACE to reach organisations that are too small or novel to be considered in its Charity Evaluations programme, and it ensures that it can support the growth of a broad range of effective organisations.
• Driving Capital: Fundraising fuels all of ACE’s work, including its support for recommended charities and Movement Grants recipients. ACE also promotes its recommended charities on social media and supplies them with tools to enhance their own fundraising efforts.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of Animal Charity Evaluators?

We looked into ACE as part of our 2023 evaluator investigations, and decided to not currently rely on their charity recommendations. However, we still expect choosing ACE recommended programs to be significantly more impactful than choosing animal welfare programs without an impact-focused evaluation behind them, and we remain open to (some of) ACE's recommendations being among the most cost-effective donation opportunities in animal welfare.