Sinergia Animal review by Vetted Causes / Animal Charity Evaluators - looking for opinions

By PreciousPig @ 2025-02-22T00:53 (+21)

Hi all,

some of you may remember that a while back, Vetted Causes had posted a quite poor review of Animal Charity Evaluators on this forum which led to lengthy discussion between the two in the comments. 

Vetted causes has now released their first review of one of the top Charities according to Animal Charity Evaluators, here are the two reviews:

Review of Sinergia Animal by Animal Charity Evaluators
Review of Sinergia Animal by Vetted Causes

As a long time donor to Animal Charity Evaluators, I obviously find it troubling that one of the Charities they recommend might be vastly overestimating its own impact, or even claiming successes as their own which they had no part in. At the same time I am not sure how trustworthy Vetted Causes is as their initial review of ACE was - imo - worded quite poorly and their review of Sinergia Animal almost sounds a bit - for lack of a better term - unbelievably negative, claiming problems with every single (7 out of 7) pig welfare commitment achieved by Sinergia Animal in 2023.

This leaves me in a difficult position where I don't really know who to believe and if I should cancel my donations to Animal Charity Evaluators based on this. 

Thats why I wanted to ask for some additional opinions, if you all find Vetted Causes' Review trustworthy and if so - who to donate to instead of ACE to help the most animals possible going forward. 

(For transparency, I am not associated with ACE, Vetted Causes or Sinergia Animal, beyond my donation to ACE.)

Thank you!

Rockwell @ 2025-02-22T03:16 (+34)

My primary advice is to avoid rushing to any judgements. The criticism came out yesterday and neither organization was aware of it in advance. I assume Sinergia and/or ACE will respond, but it makes sense that that might take at least several days.

PreciousPig @ 2025-02-22T15:18 (+1)

Thanks, yeah this seems like a reasonable approach. Hoping from a statement from ACE or Sinergia.

MarcusAbramovitch @ 2025-02-22T09:38 (+33)

It's eag weekend. I would give at least a week before rushing to a judgement.

Aidan Alexander @ 2025-02-22T12:07 (+16)

I think it's pretty safe to assume that the reality of most charities' cost-effectiveness is less than they claim. 

I'd also advise skepticism of a critic who doesn't attempt to engage with the charity to make sure they're fully informed before releasing a scathing review. [I also saw signs of naive "cost-effectiveness analysis goes brrr" style thinking about charity evaluation from their ACE review, which makes me more doubtful of their work].

It's also worth noting that quantifying charity impact is messy work, especially in the animal cause area. We should expect people to come to quite different conclusions and be comfortable with that. FarmKind estimated the cost-effectiveness of Sinergia's pig work using the same data as ACE and came to a number of animals helped per dollar that was ~6x lower (but still a crazy number of pigs per dollar). Granted, the difference between ACE and Vetted Causes assessments are beyond the acceptable margin of error

NickLaing @ 2025-02-22T17:01 (+4)

I love this wisdom and agree that most charities' cost effectiveness will be less than they claim. I include our assessment of my own charity in that, and GiveWell's assessments. Especially as causes become more saturated and less neglected. And yes like you say with Animal charities there are more assumptions made and far wider error bars than with human assessment.

I haven't (and won't) look into this in detail but I hope some relatively unmotivated people will compare these analysis in detail.

Ben Millwood🔸 @ 2025-02-22T17:06 (+9)

They posted about their review of Sinergia on the forum already: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YYrC2ZR5pnrYCdSLt/sinergia-ace-top-charity-makes-false-claims-about-helping

I suggest we concentrate discussion there and not here.