We are Not a Watchdog Organization. Here is What That Means.
Here are some questions we sometimes receive from our community:
- Why does ACE review such a small number of animal charities?
- Why haven’t we reviewed certain well-known charities, like PETA or the World Wildlife Fund?
- Why do we only publish charity reviews with the charities’ permission?
- Why do we allow charities to decline to be reviewed or to decline to publish reviews that we’ve written?
- Don’t we have a responsibility to share all of our concerns about animal charities with donors?
The answers to each of these questions are related to ACE’s role in the movement. ACE is an evaluator that aims to provide donors with impactful giving opportunities that can reduce animal suffering to the greatest extent possible, not a watchdog organization that aims to highlight bad actors.
Watchdog organizations view their role as providing oversight for governments, industries, or movements. Even though watchdog organizations are valuable, we view ACE’s role quite differently. We do not aim to monitor the entire animal advocacy movement or call attention to bad actors. Rather, we aim to identify particularly high-impact animal charities and direct resources toward them. In doing so, we actively support the movement by increasing funding for initiatives that will likely benefit the greatest number of animals. We encourage charities to carry out effectiveness-oriented programs and foster healthy governance practices and work environments to sustain them.
Here are some key differences between a watchdog organization and ACE:
| A Watchdog Organization | Animal Charity Evaluators | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Provides oversight for governments, industries, or movements | Identifies highly effective giving opportunities for animal lovers |
| Scope | Aims to oversee all organizations within the relevant sector | Only evaluates charities that seem likely to improve the lives of animals the most |
| Process | Independently investigates organizations under their scope | Invites the most promising charities to participate in the evaluation process and only publishes reviews with their approval |
| Output | Alerts citizens, consumers, and donors to inefficient and/or corrupt activities | Recommends particularly effective animal charities to donors |
| Incentive | Uses positive punishment to compel change in the worst performers and improve the movement | Uses positive reinforcement to elevate the best performers and improve the movement |
Why We Work to Identify the Most Effective Charities
Our mission is to find and promote charities that are reducing animal suffering to the greatest extent possible. The number of animals suffering today is huge compared to the small amount of resources being invested in reducing that suffering, so it is crucial that the movement’s resources are spent as effectively as possible. Our impact as an organization comes from influencing funding to where it does the most good for animals and influencing people and organizations in the movement to value (and measure) effectiveness.
To carry out our mission, we conduct research and analyze available evidence to provide information about effective interventions and charities. Our approach is consistent with our guiding principles of using logical reasoning and empirical evidence to do the most good we can.
Why We Limit Our Scope
Since watchdog groups aim to identify wrongdoing in their sector as opposed to finding opportunities to do more good, they often conduct relatively shallow quality checks of a large number of organizations. ACE, on the other hand, aims to identify only the most effective giving opportunities. We could, in principle, attempt to evaluate every animal charity and then hone in on the most effective ones. However, we have limited resources, and we find that it’s more efficient to focus on a smaller group of charities that seem likely to be particularly effective at helping animals.
To make our evaluation process as efficient as possible, we focus on cause areas that we believe are especially promising: those that affect a lot of animals and cause a lot of suffering, have the potential to change or be solved, and are neglected in advocacy. One cause area that meets these criteria is farmed animal advocacy. We are also increasingly interested in wild animal welfare, and we are always open to considering new animal cause areas as they develop. In general, we do not evaluate large charities that work across many different cause areas because their programs are likely to vary widely in effectiveness, which dilutes the impact of donations.
A number of other considerations allow us to narrow down the charities we evaluate within our priority cause areas. For instance, we look for charities that employ effective interventions, have significant track records of success, and have plans that would enable them to absorb a large amount of funding. We use these and other criteria to determine the organizations we recommend each year.
Why We Involve Charities in the Evaluation Process
Being evaluated by ACE requires significant participation from each charity. We do not simply write our reviews based on publicly available information. We ask charities interested in being evaluated to apply. We then solicit information about each charity’s budget, activities, and strategy and distribute an employee engagement survey to each charity’s staff. Charities need to have both the availability and desire to engage in our process for us to evaluate them. We acknowledge that information sourced from charities directly instead of third-party, independent sources is more likely to be biased, so we attempt to independently verify select major claims made by each charity and engage external experts. We found that the value we gain from charity participation is greater than the issue of obtaining potentially biased information.
Why We Seek Charities’ Permission to Publish Our Reviews
The process of being evaluated by a third party can be uncertain and perceived as somewhat risky for charities. Allowing charities to have the final say on publication, as well as an opportunity to provide feedback on the content of the reviews, gives them some control in the process. We believe this added security is an important factor in charities agreeing to engage. Seeking charities’ approval to publish their review also helps us avoid publishing confidential or erroneous information.
While this means that charities can withhold their reviews from publication, this is of less importance to our aim of recommending valuable giving opportunities. It is far more important that we don’t discourage promising charities from agreeing to be reviewed in the first place by mandating publication of the review before the charity has had a chance to engage with our evaluation process.
Final Thoughts
On the surface, the work we do at ACE can appear similar to that of a watchdog organization. However, our mission is not to identify areas of concern in the movement, and we feel that focusing more on those activities would reduce our impact. Ultimately, we think our work to find and promote effective animal charities—as opposed to identify the worst actors—is the most impactful way for ACE to make the biggest difference for animals and contribute to a thriving and resilient animal advocacy movement.
