Animal Charity Evaluators
Movement Grants Program
The Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) Movement Grants fund promising advocacy projects around the globe working to reduce animal suffering. Applications are accepted annually and grants are determined by a review committee.
What problem is the Movement Grants fund working on?
The ACE Movement Grants fund (formerly “Effective Animal Advocacy Fund”) is for anyone who is interested in making the animal advocacy movement more effective.
ACE launched Movement Grants in late 2018 for three main reasons:
- It believes that a broad, pluralistic animal advocacy movement is more likely to be resilient — and hence more impactful — than a narrow, monistic animal advocacy movement.
- There is little available evidence to support the effectiveness of any given intervention, and ACE thinks that animal advocacy is more likely to be successful by continuing to fund a wide range of interventions.
- Many countries do not yet have a well-established animal advocacy movement — by funding projects in those countries, donors can help build up the movement in neglected regions and address animal suffering as a global problem.
What projects does the Movement Grants fund support?
Donations to ACE Movement Grants will be distributed to promising projects around the globe working to reduce animal suffering. The annual disbursement will be determined by the review committee. Recently, Movement Grants have been awarded to:
- Agriculture Cellulaire France
- Black Veg Society
- Brigada Animal México
- Animal Advocacy Africa
- Middle East Vegan Society
- Insect Welfare Project
- Shrimp Welfare Project
For more information about how donations are allocated, see the list of past recipients and frequently asked questions on the ACE website.
What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of ACE’s Movement Grants fund?
The Giving What We Can research team looked into ACE as part of our 2023 evaluator investigations, and decided to not currently rely on their 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.
Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).
At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.