Apply for Charity Evaluations
Animal Charity Evaluators is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. One of the ways we do this is by evaluating animal charities, sharing our findings on our website, recommending where to donate, and encouraging donors to give to our Recommended Charities.
Every year, we invite approximately 15 charities to participate in our evaluation process. To select this group of charities, we consider organizations around the world and assess whether we expect them to perform well on our evaluation criteria1 and, therefore, have a high likelihood of doing exceptionally cost-effective work to help animals.
We introduced an evaluation application form to streamline our charity selection process in 2024. Although we will now require that all organizations interested in participating in our evaluation process fill out this form, we cannot guarantee an invitation to be evaluated.
Application Guidelines
The evaluation application process is divided into two phases. Phase 1 consists of questions about the organization’s basic details and eligibility. To meet the eligibility requirements to participate in our charity evaluations, charities must:
- Primarily work to help farmed animals and/or wild animals.
- Not be in an exploratory or testing phase where there is significant uncertainty about which of the charity’s programs will be scaled up
- Have been an organization for at least three years
- Have at least three paid full-time equivalents (including full-time, part-time, and contractors)
- Have an annual expenditure of more than $100,000 USD
- Not work or be based in a country that is comprehensively sanctioned by the U.S. (see list here)
- Be able to gather and send all documents required for ACE to distribute funds to the organization, either directly or through the use of a fiscal sponsor
Only organizations that meet our eligibility criteria will continue to Phase 2, which includes more in-depth questions to gain a better understanding of the organizations’ type of work. Through these questions, we expect to understand charities’ programs in terms of the interventions they use, the animals they help, and the countries they work in. We also expect to better understand charities’ strategic thinking on how their activities create positive change for animals in the short and long term. See all application questions here.
Note: Please make sure that only one person at your organization fills out the application form.
Process and Timeline
Stage 1 – Evaluation Application
We accept evaluation applications once per year. This year, we will be accepting applications from April 1 until 11:59pm PT on April 30, 2024.
Stage 2 – Invitation
We will inform all applicants of their selection status by June. Selected charities will receive an invitation and a handbook detailing the charity evaluation process and expectations.
Stage 3 – Evaluation
Participating organizations will respond to our information request, follow-up questions, and staff engagement survey between June and October. During this period, our team will draft charity reviews and share them with each organization alongside our recommendation decisions. The charity handbook will provide a more detailed timeline and description of the evaluation process.
Stage 4 – Publication
We aim to publish charity reviews and recommendation decisions in November.
If you have any questions about the application or the charity evaluation process, don’t hesitate to contact our Charity Evaluations Manager, Vince Mak.
Frequently Asked Questions
Being evaluated comes with many benefits for participating organizations. It provides an opportunity to be evaluated by a third party alongside other animal advocacy organizations, helping charities identify areas of strength and improvement and gain a detailed external perspective on their work. It’s also an opportunity to have a review published on ACE’s website, which could increase charities’ visibility and strengthen current and potential donors’ trust in their work.
Organizations selected as Recommended Charities enjoy even greater benefits. ACE will promote them for the two-year duration of the recommendation by featuring them on our website, promotional materials, social media, and presentations at events. We will also fundraise on their behalf through ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund (which is distributed among all of our Recommended Charities) and through donations given to ACE for specific charities. Where possible, we will provide organizations with donors’ contact information and distribute donations to the organizations at least twice per year.
We expect that filling out the application form will take about 1–2 hours.
According to our most recent survey of previously evaluated charities, participating in the entire evaluation process from May to October takes a median of 100 hours of staff time. However, the range is quite wide; we have noticed that the time commitment is typically higher for larger organizations with multiple programs but lower for those focusing on one or two programs.
We compensate organizations that participate in our evaluation process by awarding participation grants to those that, in our judgment, make a “good faith effort” to work with us toward the publication of a review, regardless of the final result. Allowing us to publish a review of an organization is not a requirement for receiving a participation grant.
Recommended Charity status lasts for two years. We reserve the right to revoke a charity’s status if we uncover significant new information about them.