Support ACE as a meta-fundraiser and evaluator

By Emma Cameron🔸, Animal Charity Evaluators @ 2025-11-18T22:48 (+39)

Summary

By identifying and promoting high-impact giving opportunities, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) aims to help people help more animals. We believe this approach to be particularly important for effective animal advocacy (EAA) because this cause area is not only deeply underfunded, the problem is growing (yet solvable!). During Marginal Funding Week, we present our thoughts on how filling ACE’s need for additional funding will empower us to help the movement reduce avoidable suffering for trillions of animals on farms and in the wild.

We need to raise at least $535,740 by March 31, 2026 to grow our meta-fundraising capacity (meaning our ability to raise money for the high-impact charities we recommend and for the highly promising projects we support through our Movement Grants program) and continue to improve the quality of our research in our next fiscal year. We do the research so that effectiveness-minded donors can conveniently and confidently maximize their impact for animals by donating to our Recommended Charity Fund and our Movement Grants. But we expect that the greatest counterfactual impact of our work comes from drawing new donors to EAA. This demands we invest in outreach and growth.

Our Track Record

Encouraging high-impact charity donations

We assessed how much money would not have otherwise been donated to our Recommended Charities if not for ACE’s Charity Evaluations program. Between January 2019 and March 2025, we influenced at least $59 million in donations to our Recommended Charities. There are likely additional donations we do not have data on. We estimate that $28 million would not have otherwise been donated to our Recommended Charities. Our data suggest that in our most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2024–March 31, 2025), we influenced at least $12.3 million in donations to our Recommended Charities. Our best guess is that $6.4 million of this would not have otherwise been donated.^[1] For every dollar ACE spent on our charity evaluations and recommendations, we generated $6.05 in donations for effective animal charities that wouldn't have been donated otherwise.^[2] See ACE’s Charity Evaluations and Recommendations Influenced Giving Report for more details on our assessment methods.

Driving funding for highly-promising projects

We examined how much money would otherwise not have been directed to our Movement Grant recipients if not for ACE. Between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025, we awarded $1.2 million to 32 promising organizations and projects around the world. Of this total, we estimate that we awarded $0.84 million in counterfactual funding to our grantees. For every operating dollar we spent, we counterfactually awarded $1.39 to our grantees. Our Movement Grants program started in 2018, and across eight application rounds, we have disbursed $6.3 million to our grantees. Our best guess is that without our funding, $3.8 million would not have been granted to the underrepresented interventions, animal groups, and countries we supported. See ACE’s Movement Grants Counterfactual Funding Report for more details on our assessment methods.

Charity evaluations and recommendations

Our track record in this program includes both improvements to our annual evaluation process and the results and recommendations:

• We just announced our 2025 Recommended Charities, including five new recommendations from a list of ten charities^[3] that our programs team spent several months deeply evaluating this year.

• We updated our Theory of Change assessments, following work with The Mission Motor to refine our methods to focus on the most important paths to impact and ones that are the cruxes for our recommendation decisions.
• Within our cost-effectiveness assessments, we more explicitly compared estimates of charities’ suffering averted per dollar, using the suffering-adjusted days (SADs) methodology developed by Ambitious Impact.
• We updated our meal replacement estimates for how much suffering is averted per year.
• To help inform our evaluations and grantmaking, we released Better for Animals in September, a living resource that summarizes the available evidence for 27 different interventions to help animals.
• Our 2024 Recommended Charities reported on their achievements since we awarded $1,837,466 toward their work from our Recommended Charity Fund in February 2025—our second-largest disbursement ever.  

Notably, a key question for assessing the performance of our Charity Evaluations program this year became a learning moment for our team. We asked, “Are the right charities applying for evaluation?” We set a key result: “fewer than five charities we know are likely to be high impact do not apply to be evaluated; at least 20% of invited charities apply. Our results for 2025:

• At least five charities we have good reason to believe are high impact did not apply.
• Only 16% of eligible invited charities applied.

We received positive feedback from charities that participated in evaluations this year. Two of the four quotes below come from charities who we ended up recommending. We did not have time to confirm we could share these, so they’re listed without attribution.

• "I'm not disappointed that we weren't picked as a "top charity" this year, as I know there are other very strong organizations whose programs are more "fully baked" than [our]’s right now. I consider it a pretty big honor to be reviewed by ACE at all [...]. The process of the review has also been helpful to us in our own self-evaluation and choosing directions going forward."
• "Thanks for providing this service for the movement. In particular, thanks for rising to the immense challenge of asking questions that don't have easily quantifiable answers, and evaluating charities with very different theories of change. That takes a ton of work, and we appreciate it."
• "Thank you for letting me know and for sharing the review and accompanying documents. I understand that ACE’s role is to evaluate the best use of extra funding to help our collective movement and animals, and I appreciate the clarity and thoughtfulness of your message. [...] While demanding, the application process was invaluable. I encourage all organizations to explore the different facets of the evaluation, as it can strengthen an organization and guide teams to focus on the right priorities at the right time.”
• “I want to sincerely thank the entire ACE team for the care, rigor, and inspiring approach throughout this process. Participating in this evaluation has made us a more professional and data-driven organization — helping us strengthen our systems, our metrics, and our accountability. We’ve learned a lot from this process, and it reinforces something we deeply believe: animals deserve our very best — and that means thoughtful, pragmatic, and measurable action."

Operationally, we have an organization that is set up to thrive.

Our staff are engaged with the work and enthusiastic about the mission. Every month this year, the average score on how strongly they feel connected to the mission, the clarity they have on their tasks, how included they feel in decision making, and the opportunities they have to learn, was 9 out of 10.

We’ve doubled our newsletter subscribers over the last year and engagement on social media has grown—and for the most part with people from outside of the EAA space.

We emphasize responsible and safe adoption of AI tools. Our Responsible AI Usage policy was one of the first published in EAA, alongside policies from Faunalytics and The Humane League. The policy demonstrates our commitment to using AI safely. We aim to continue to update both our evaluations and grantmaking with potentially rapid AI developments in mind, understanding that priorities may quickly change on short timescales.

Our Need for Funding

We aim to raise at least $535,740 to cover our current operating budget of $1.9 million, which runs through March 31, 2026. Any additional funds raised beyond this amount will help us increase our budget for the next fiscal year beginning April 1, 2026. We aim for at least minor (e.g., 15%) growth, but can absorb much more. We are also committed to reallocating any excess funds beyond which we have suitable plans to our Movement Grants or the Recommended Charity Fund, as we did for the first time this year.

Strategic goals for the coming years

Goal 1: Each year, make increasingly high-quality giving recommendations

Tactics:

• Increase our expertise regarding existing evidence
• Update our evaluation methods based on measurement and impact assessments
• Optimize our recommendation process to best support meta-fundraising
• Demonstrate the reasoning behind our methods to our stakeholders

Goal 2: Make high-impact grants that strengthen the effectiveness of the animal advocacy movement

Tactics:

• Assess areas of greatest neglect and needs in the animal advocacy movement
• Enhance the efficiency of our grantmaking processes internally and for applicants
• Refine our current grantmaking approach to optimize for meta-fundraising

Goal 3: Be a trusted resource for donors who want to help more animals

Tactics:

• Promote effective giving to our core audiences
• Be present in the spaces and on the platforms where our key audiences are active
• Position ACE within influential networks as an expert in animal-focused philanthropy
• Grow our influence with donors new to animal advocacy

Goal 4: Increase counterfactual funds for high-impact animal protection initiatives year-on-year

Tactics:

• Identify the fundraising methods with the highest ROI and adjust our strategy accordingly
• Optimize our giving options for our core audiences
• Partner with philanthropic communities as their effective giving resource for animal advocacy

Goal 5: Be a well-resourced team who evaluates their impact and identifies opportunities for improvement

Tactics:

• Assess our programs for how well they advance our theory of change
• Assess and update our processes and tools for collaboration and productivity
• Invest in our people and expertise

Specific use of funds for meta-fundraising

Most contributions to ACE influenced by the EA Forum will likely be used to accomplish our goals as a meta-fundraiser for EAA and improve the quality of our recommendations and grantmaking. It’s highly likely (80–90%) that a significant portion of our funding gap will be filled by pre-existing donors through our regular outreach and with the support of initiatives like the Double Up Drive. Those contributions are most likely to cover our regular expenses, which are about 90% personnel costs. New contributions made to ACE through the EA Forum will most likely be used to fund increased marketing via ads, sponsorships, partnerships, and earned- and paid-media contracts. They would also likely contribute to an increase in our representation at philanthropy events, e.g., those supporting workplace giving and DAF conferences. In the past year, we have increased our marketing and found that so far, this has led to good results for our meta-fundraising (e.g., increase in influenced donations to our Recommended Charities). With more support, we believe we can influence conventional animal donors (e.g., those donating to shelters) and conservation-minded grantmakers to dedicate a portion of their giving portfolio to EAA.

It’s possible that there are other already established or growing meta-fundraising organizations, like FarmKind, that can accomplish the movement goal of expanding the pool of effective animal donors. However, with ACE’s longstanding presence within the broader animal advocacy community (including EAA) since 2014, we do think we are well-positioned to help serve this role. In particular, our growing interest in supporting wild animals’ welfare may empower us to both 1) respond to the needs and interests of prospective donors interested in conservation and wildlife, and 2) positively impact animals in the wild as we learn of more and more effective ways to help them.

We expect that with additional outreach investments, we can increase awareness of effective giving as a responsible, compassionate way to help animals among the general non-veg*n, animal-loving public—and turn that awareness into donations that help animals around the world.

For reference, GiveWell’s average annual outreach budget (that’s costs like PR, marketing, etc.) for the last four years was $1.9 million. That’s the same as ACE’s total operating budget for 2025.

Specific use of funds for improved evaluations and strategy

Given what we’ve learned about the participation rate of charities in our evaluations, we have embarked on a feasibility study to help us compare alternatives to our current methods that minimize the reputational risk of participation, eliminate questions that are not decision-relevant, and otherwise ensure that the evaluation process has a high potential ROI for participating charities. Part of any additional funds we raise will go toward implementing the results of this feasibility study.

Alongside our feasibility study, ACE hopes to continue investing in movement strategy work. We think we can continue increasing the quality of our recommendations by hosting EAA events, strengthening our partnerships to grow our expertise, and meeting with external experts to determine which interventions, programs, and approaches work best for animals and for advocates. We are also working on creating an animal advocacy ecosystem map that we think will empower advocates across the movement.

Why ACE?

Non-human animals suffer in extreme ways and unimaginable numbers. Animal Charity Evaluators works to create a world where humans help animals experience wellbeing by improving their lives when we can—regardless of the species’ characteristics or what caused their suffering. We want to help people help more animals.

While effective methods exist to help farmed and wild animals at scale, relatively few resources are available to execute them. This means billions of animals are experiencing preventable suffering right now.

Three main factors contribute to this neglect. First, there's a lack of engagement with these issues among the general public. Second, even among people who care, there's limited knowledge about the most consequential ways to help animals. And third, there's simply not enough funding to do the necessary work.

ACE uses a four-pronged approach to increase the amount of high-impact work that gets done for animals. We identify the most effective ways to protect animals, promote the need for this work, raise the funds to do it, and disburse those funds where they'll go furthest.

We execute this approach through three programs: Our Charity Evaluations program carefully identifies high-impact animal charities that will likely do the most good with additional donations, then distributes grants to Recommended Charities based on need. Our Movement Grants program selects highly promising but neglected projects and supports them with grants. Our Meta-Fundraising program develops resources for these highly impactful charities and distinctly promising projects by creating awareness with donors and raising funds. These complementary programs are designed to collectively accelerate our progress toward impact, and hopefully, ultimately leading to a world that is more hospitable to all living beings. Contribute to ACE here. 

1. ^{^}

    Included in these estimates is $1.1 million in counterfactual ACE-influenced funding that was awarded to our Recommended Charities by other funders which is not already captured internally in our ACE-influenced funding totals.

2. ^{^}

    While a strong multiplier is encouraging, what ultimately matters for animals is the total amount of additional funding directed to effective work—$6.4 million in counterfactual donations. A hypothetical organization could have a multiplier of 100x but only influence $10,000; we'd rather have a lower multiplier and move millions more dollars to where they'll help animals most.

3. ^{^}

    For unforeseen reasons, Ethical Seafood Research had to withdraw partway through evaluation. While they were listed in our blog post announcing the charities being evaluated in 2025, we did not complete their evaluation. We hope to evaluate them in a future year.