Animal Charity Evaluators

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is dedicated to our mission of finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. We aim to assist compassionate donors, advocates, and volunteers in making informed decisions about how to help animals as effectively as possible. ACE strives to identify ways to alleviate suffering and improve the lives of animals on a wide scale, while continuously updating our recommendations based on new evidence. Our goal is to help people help animals. Ultimately, ACE's vision is a world in which no individual is given less than full moral consideration on the basis of any morally irrelevant feature of their identity, including species membership.

To achieve ACE’s mission of finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals, we pursue two main programs: Charity Evaluations and Grantmaking.

Charity Evaluations: ACE evaluates animal charities around the globe in order to determine their effectiveness in reducing animal suffering. Our comprehensive Charity Evaluations Program provides an in-depth look at each charity’s Programs, Cost Effectiveness, Room for More Funding, and Leadership and Culture in order to recommend them as either a Top Charity or a Standout Charity. We publish our recommendations to help people help the most animals with their donations.

Grantmaking: ACE awards grants from both our Recommended Charity Fund and Movement Grants program. Our Recommended Charity Fund is distributed biannually to our current effective Top Charities and Standout Charities. Our Movement Grants program aims to build and strengthen the global animal advocacy movement by awarding grants annually to applicants working on approaches that are underfunded, target large numbers of animals, and are in regions with a relatively small advocacy movement. Since 2014, ACE estimates that we have helped to influence over $56 million USD in donations within the animal advocacy movement.

ACE has a talented globally-distributed team that is knowledgeable in research, development, communications, management, and leadership. Our organization welcomes diverse perspectives from both the animal advocacy and effective altruism communities to help inform our decision-making processes about the best ways to help the most animals. Each year, our research team solicits feedback and consults experts in academia as well as in the field on what ACE can do to increase our support of the movement. In our work, we include the ideas of people with expertise and lived experiences in their local areas. Our team solicits input from the animal advocacy movement and listens openly, seeking to understand their point of view. When we encounter new information, we update our thinking. ACE learns from the charities working in the communities they serve so that we can help them operate more effectively to reduce animal suffering.

Since our founding in 2012, ACE has considered thousands of charities for evaluation and recommended 28 charities as impactful giving opportunities to help people make a difference for the most animals with their donations. We have supported our Top Charities and Standout Charities with more than $7.2 million distributed through our Recommended Charity Fund and awarded over $4.5 million to 178 promising animal advocacy projects in 42 countries through our Movement Grants program. Since ACE began tracking this metric in 2014, we estimate that we’ve helped to influence over $56M within the animal advocacy movement.

Select 2022 accomplishments:
–Recommended 4 Top Charities and 11 Standout Charities
–Distributed over $2.6 million in grants from our Recommended Charity Fund to our Top and Standout Charities
–Awarded $910,000 from our Movement Grants program to 35 promising animal advocacy projects
–Helped to influence an estimated $8.3 million within the animal advocacy movement
–Welcomed a new Executive Director