Giving Metrics Report
One of our goals at Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is to direct donations toward the most effective programs and organizations in the animal advocacy movement. Over the years, we have implemented systems to help us estimate and track these donations, as well as to survey donors who give to our recommended charities, Recommended Charity Fund, and Movement Grants program as a result of our guidance, i.e., our “influence”.1 This report details what we know about donations and donors that were reported as influenced by ACE. While we receive support from many countries, all donation amounts shown are in USD.
Definitions
- Top Charities are organizations that work in ways that are most likely to produce the greatest gains for animals. Since this report covers the entire 2021 calendar year, Top Charities refers to both the three Top Charities announced in November 2021 and the four Top Charities announced in November 2020.
- Standout Charities are organizations that conduct strong work on behalf of animals in ways that could potentially affect numerous animals’ lives. Since this report covers the entire 2021 calendar year, Standout Charities refers to both the 13 Standout Charities announced in November 2021 and the nine Standout Charities announced in November 2020.
- Recommended charities collectively refers to both Top and Standout Charities.
- The Recommended Charity Fund (RCF) is ACE’s fund that supports our currently recommended charities. The fund is disbursed twice per year and allocated according to our research team’s recommendation.
- Movement Grants is ACE’s grantmaking program aimed at building and strengthening the global animal advocacy movement. Grants are awarded annually to groups working on various approaches to animal advocacy, especially those that are underfunded, target large numbers of animals, and are in regions with a relatively small animal advocacy movement.
How We Estimate Donations Influenced
In 2021, donations collected via ACE accounted for 49% of the total funding that we estimate to have influenced to our recommended charities and Movement Grant recipients. The remaining 51% of donations were reported to us by our recommended charities and donors themselves. The 34% increase in donations collected via ACE in 2021 compared to 2020 is partly due to two successful matching campaigns for our Recommended Charity Fund and Movement Grants program.
Fig. 1: ACE’s operating expenses2 and estimated revenue3 influenced to our recommended charities and Movement Grant recipients.
Every year, we ask our Top Charities to report to us the amount of donations they received directly that they believe were ACE-influenced. As a condition of being a Top Charity, we request that charities establish a tracking system to help both us and them understand the impact of their recommendation. Each charity tracks this differently: Some use checkboxes on their donation forms, while others add flags to their donors’ records when ACE is mentioned in follow-up correspondence.
We think charities are fairly accurate in identifying and reporting their ACE-influenced donations. However, there are likely some ACE-influenced donations that charities are unaware of because donors did not indicate whether ACE influenced their decision to give. Conversely, there have been some occasions where charities reported donations as being ACE-influenced, but upon further review, we came to believe otherwise.
In 2017, we started asking our Standout Charities if they had systems in place to track their ACE-influenced donations, and we learned that most of them do not. Unlike Top Charities, Standout Charities are not required to track their ACE-influenced donations, as it may be difficult for some smaller organizations to implement. However, they receive grants through our Recommended Charity Fund, and we allow donors to make large donations ($5,000+) to Standout Charities based outside of the U.S. through ACE for tax-deduction purposes. There are very likely additional donations made directly to our Standout Charities due to ACE’s recommendation, of which we are unaware. We have also had an increasing number of donors report donations that they made to our recommended charities directly to us.4
Since 2014, our estimates for total donations influenced have been our primary quantitative metric to assess our impact. We recognize this metric is not perfect. In 2021, we revised how we track, measure, and report ACE-influenced donations. We updated reporting instructions for our recommended charities to provide better guidance on determining whether donations were influenced by ACE’s recommendation. For significant donations ($50,000+), we asked charities and donors to specify the level of influence (substantial, moderate, or weak) ACE’s recommendation had on their donation. Of the ACE-influenced donations made to recommended charities in 2021, we estimate that we had a substantial influence on 45%, a moderate influence on 32%, and a weak influence on 23%. We consider donations to our Recommended Charity Fund and Movement Grants program to be 100% influenced by ACE. Grants from large funders in the movement, e.g., Centre for Effective Altruism, Open Philanthropy, and Farmed Animal Funders, are excluded based on conversations we’ve had with these organizations.
Fig. 1: 2021 Estimated Donations Influenced
Estimated Donations Influenced, by Charity
In 2021, we estimate that ACE influenced over $5.6 million in donations to our Top Charities and over $4.2 million in donations to our Standout Charities, including RCF grants. We acknowledge that an unknown but potentially significant portion of donations made directly to our recommended charities may have been restricted to specific programs, possibly indicating that they were less influenced by ACE. We aim to provide more detail on restricted donations in the future. The average donation that ACE accepted for our recommended charities was $475.5 We also raised $1,020,419 for our Movement Grants program. This means that ACE helped influence an estimated $10.8 million within the animal advocacy movement in 2021, with 52% supporting our Top Charities, 39% supporting our Standout Charities, and 9% supporting our Movement Grant recipients.
| 2021 Donations to Top Charities | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top Charities | Donated through ACE* | Donated through RCF | Donated Directly to Charity | Total |
| Albert Schweitzer Foundation† | $88,737 | $49,396 | $22,039 | $160,172 |
| Faunalytics‡ | $4,754 | $160,910 | $81,595 | $247,259 |
| The Good Food Institute§ | $108,230 | $49,396 | $916,390 | $1,074,016 |
| The Humane League | $207,490 | $210,306 | $3,376,711 | $3,794,507 |
| Wild Animal Initiative | $21,593 | $210,306 | $152,633 | $384,532 |
| Total | $430,804 | $680,314 | $4,549,368 | $5,660,486 |
| *Includes donations made to ACE for Top Charities and matching funds from our First-Time Donation Matching Opportunity, and excludes a donation made via ACE that was not ACE-influenced †ASF was a Top Charity through November 22, 2021 ‡Faunalytics changed from Standout Charity to Top Charity on November 23, 2021 §GFI was a Top Charity through November 22, 2021 |
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| 2021 Donations to Standout Charities | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standout Charities | Donated through ACE* | Donated through RCF | Donated Directly to Charity | Total |
| Anima International | $1,123,322 | $82,532 | $6,782 | $1,212,635 |
| Compassion in World Farming USA | $0 | $82,532 | $462,584 | $545,116 |
| Dharma Voices for Animals† | $10,000 | $55,700 | $3,175 | $68,875 |
| Essere Animali | $60,000 | $82,532 | $812 | $143,344 |
| Faunalytics‡ | $0 | $26,832 | $55,121 | $81,953 |
| Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations | $342,536 | $82,532 | $0 | $425,068 |
| Material Innovation Initiative† | $0 | $55,700 | $106,129 | $161,829 |
| Mercy For Animals† | $0 | $55,700 | $104,212 | $159,912 |
| New Harvest† | $0 | $55,700 | $103,497 | $159,197 |
| Sinergia Animal | $271,120 | $82,532 | $0 | $353,652 |
| Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira | $250,180 | $82,532 | $6,990 | $339,702 |
| Standout Charity§ | $100,000 | $82,532 | $0 | $182,532 |
| xiaobuVEGAN† | $50,000 | $55,700 | $0 | $105,700 |
| Vegetarianos Hoy | $70,500 | $82,532 | $110,793 | $263,825 |
| Total | $2,277,658 | $965,583 | $960,095 | $4,203,336 |
| *Excludes a donation made via ACE that was not ACE-influenced †DVA, MII, MFA, New Harvest, and xiaobuVEGAN became Standout Charities on November 23, 2021 ‡Faunalytics changed from Standout Charity to Top Charity on November 23, 2021 §Name withheld at charity’s request due to country-specific regulations |
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Estimated Donations Influenced, by Size
To estimate the amount of ACE-influenced donations by size—i.e., the total amount of donations each donor gave in 2021—we compared the names of all donations made directly to recommended charities to those made via ACE. This categorical information provides a rough estimate of the total number of donors in each giving category. This estimate is not precise, as many charities only provide us with donor ID numbers or no identification at all.
See the chart below and the table in the appendix for information about the estimated $8,165,088 influenced to specific recommended charities in 2021. These funds came from an estimated total of 5,633 generous donors, either via ACE or through donations made directly to individual charities. (It excludes donations to the Recommended Charity Fund and Movement Grants.)
Recommended Charity Fund
The Recommended Charity Fund is a convenient giving option for anyone who wants to support all of ACE’s recommended charities through a single donation. Grants are disbursed biannually in January and July, and funds are allocated according to the amount our research team determines is the most effective at that time. In 2021, 740 donors contributed $1,645,898 to ACE for our Recommended Charity Fund. An additional $821,281 was raised through the year-end Double Up Drive, including matching funds, which are excluded from this chart.
Grants Distributed from Recommended Charity Fund
We disbursed two rounds of grants (July 2021 and January 2022) from our Recommended Charity Fund, which consisted of the $1,645,898 in donations made to ACE in 2021. With the second round of grants, we also disbursed funds received from the year-end Double Up Drive. However, we are excluding those amounts from this report because that revenue was recorded in 2022 and will be included in our next Giving Metrics Report.
| 2021 Recommended Charity Fund Grants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended Charities | Amount | Percentage | ||
| Albert Schweitzer Foundation* | $49,396 | 3% | ||
| Anima International | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Compassion in World Farming USA | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Dharma Voices for Animals† | $55,700 | 3% | ||
| Essere Animali | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Faunalytics‡ | $187,742 | 11% | ||
| Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Material Innovation Initiative† | $55,700 | 3% | ||
| Mercy For Animals† | $55,700 | 3% | ||
| New Harvest† | $55,700 | 3% | ||
| Standout Charity working in China§ | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| The Good Food Institute§ | $49,396 | 3% | ||
| The Humane League | $210,306 | 13% | ||
| Sinergia Animal | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Vegetarianos Hoy | $82,532 | 5% | ||
| Wild Animal Initiative | $210,306 | 13% | ||
| xiaobuVEGAN† | $55,700 | 3% | ||
| Total | $1,645,898 | 100% | ||
| *Albert Schweitzer Foundation was not renewed as a Top Charity on November 23, 2021 †DVA, MII, MFA, New Harvest, and xiaobuVEGAN became Standout Charities on November 23, 2021 ‡Faunalytics changed from Standout Charity to Top Charity on November 23, 2021 |
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Movement Grants
In 2021, ACE selected 35 promising animal advocacy projects around the globe to receive grants totaling $1,089,000. More information about the grant recipients can be found in our 2021 Movement Grants Announcement.
| 2021 Movement Grants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recipient | Amount | |||
| Factory Farming Law & Policy Fellowship Program | $75,000 | |||
| Encompass | $60,000 | |||
| Food Empowerment Project | $60,000 | |||
| Sentient Media | $60,000 | |||
| ACTAsia | $50,000 | |||
| Grassroots Artists Movement Inc. | $50,000 | |||
| Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Selangor | $50,000 | |||
| Animal Ask | $40,000 | |||
| Dharma Voices for Animals | $40,000 | |||
| Equalia | $40,000 | |||
| xiaobuVEGAN | $40,000 | |||
| Institute of Animal Law of Asia | $38,000 | |||
| Christopher Sebastian | $35,000 | |||
| We Animals Media | $31,000 | |||
| Expertise for Animals | $30,000 | |||
| Perkumpulan Sahabat Satwa Jogja | $30,000 | |||
| Sentient | $30,000 | |||
| Agriculture Fairness Alliance | $25,000 | |||
| Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği | $25,000 | |||
| Česká Veganská Společnost | $25,000 | |||
| Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute | $25,000 | |||
| Veg Student Alliance | $24,000 | |||
| World Day for the End of Fishing | $24,000 | |||
| UK Centre for Animal Law | $23,000 | |||
| Associação Vegetariana Portuguesa | $22,000 | |||
| Animal Law Europe | $20,000 | |||
| Cellular Agriculture Australia | $20,000 | |||
| Peace Advocacy Network | $20,000 | |||
| Menú por el Planeta | $18,000 | |||
| Vegan Caribbean Kickstart | $15,000 | |||
| Asociación para el Rescate y Bienestar de Los Animales | $10,000 | |||
| Asociația de Conștientizare a Industriei Agricole | $10,000 | |||
| Demissew Bekele | $10,000 | |||
| Rostlinně | $10,000 | |||
| Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy | $4,000 | |||
| Total | $1,089,000 | |||
Animal Charity Evaluators
In 2021, we spent $1,112,914 on ACE’s programs and operations while influencing an estimated $10,831,405 in donations within the animal advocacy movement. This means that for every $1 ACE spent on our own programs, we estimate that we influenced over $9 to our effective recommended charities and Movement Grant recipients. Since 2014, ACE estimates that we have helped to influence over $48 million within the effective animal advocacy movement.
Donations to ACE
ACE has been fortunate to see an annual increase in donations since our founding, with the exception of 2019 when we did not meet our operating budget. We are grateful to our generous supporters for enabling us to exceed our $1.1 million budget goal and fund our programs in 2021.
The average donation to support ACE’s programs and operations in 2021 was $219: a slight decrease from $287 in 2020. Excluding large annual grants from Open Philanthropy, the average donation in 2021 was $177, slightly lower than $201 the previous year.
Related Metrics
Donor Growth and Retention
ACE relies on the generosity of individuals, companies, charities, and foundations to support our work. Growing and retaining our valued donor base is critical to accomplishing our mission, expanding our programs, and ensuring long-term sustainability for our organization. We are thankful to have had an 11% increase in the total number of donors in 2021; however, our overall donor retention rate was 2% lower than the previous year (41% compared to 43%).
Web Traffic
We regularly monitor the number of users that visit ACE’s website and pay particular attention to the number of new users who visit our website during the critical giving season (November and December). This helps us track the growth of our audience, and we feel it is a probable indirect measure of growth in the effective altruism and effective animal advocacy movements as a whole.
The number of new users in November and December 2021 was 27,231, compared to 35,511 in 2020. Total website traffic visits (as measured by sessions) for November and December 2021 was 37,450, compared to 47,177 in 2020. We attribute the decrease in part to reaching our Recommended Charity Fund matching challenge goal early and ending the promotion on our website mid-December.
Appreciation
ACE is grateful to receive funding from a variety of sources, and we rely heavily on the generosity of individuals. We are continuously seeking funding to support our operations so that we can implement our mission of finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. Our work would not be possible without the generosity of people like you. Thank you for helping ACE help animals!
Appendix
| 2021 Donations to Recommended Charities by Giving Category | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giving Category* | Number of Donors | % of Total Donors | Amount Donated | % of Total Amount |
| $1,500,000+ | 2 | 0.04% | $3,047,610 | 37% |
| $1,000,000–$1,499,999 | 0 | 0% | $0 | 0% |
| $500,000–$999,999 | 0 | 0% | $0 | 0% |
| $250,000–$499,999 | 4 | 0% | $1,394,039 | 17% |
| $100,000–$249,999 | 7 | 0% | $960,495 | 12% |
| $50,000–$99,999 | 9 | 0% | $607,279 | 7% |
| $10,000–$49,999 | 47 | 1% | $813,462 | 10% |
| $5,000–$9,999 | 35 | 1% | $207,651 | 3% |
| $1,000–$4,999 | 300 | 5% | $508,698 | 6% |
| $500–$999 | 287 | 5% | $180,943 | 2% |
| $100–$499 | 1,602 | 28% | $300,185 | 4% |
| ≤$99 | 3,340 | 59% | $144,726 | 2% |
| Total | 5,633 | 100% | $8,165,088 | 100% |
| *Giving categories are based on donor’s annual giving across all ACE recommended charities. This categorical information provides a rough estimate of the breakdown by donor size; the numbers of donors are not highly accurate, as many charities only provide us with donor ID numbers or no identification at all. | ||||
| 2021 Donations to Recommended Charity Fund by Giving Category | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giving Category* | Number of Donors | % of Total Donors | Amount Donated | % of Total Amount |
| $250,000+ | 1 | 0.1% | $300,000 | 18% |
| $100,000–$249,999 | 2 | 0.3% | $380,750 | 23% |
| $50,000–$99,999 | 2 | 0.3% | $105,000 | 6% |
| $10,000–$49,999 | 19 | 3% | $375,927 | 23% |
| $5,000–$9,999 | 16 | 2% | $114,537 | 7% |
| $1,000–$4,999 | 112 | 15% | $242,567 | 15% |
| $500–$999 | 78 | 11% | $51,475 | 3% |
| $100–$499 | 286 | 39% | $66,664 | 4% |
| ≤$99 | 224 | 30% | $8,977 | 0.5% |
| Total | 740 | 100% | $1,645,897 | 100% |
| *Giving categories based on donor’s annual giving to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund | ||||
| 2021 Donations to ACE by Giving Category | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giving Category* | Number of Donors | % of Total Donors | Amount Donated | % of Total Amount |
| $250,000+ | 2 | 0.2% | $620,642 | 46% |
| $100,000–$249,999 | 0 | 0.0% | $0 | 0% |
| $50,000–$99,999 | 3 | 0.3% | $271,844 | 20% |
| $10,000–$49,999 | 9 | 0.8% | $168,319 | 12% |
| $5,000–$9,999 | 13 | 1% | $84,720 | 6% |
| $1,000–$4,999 | 57 | 5% | $107,399 | 8% |
| $500–$999 | 49 | 4% | $31,369 | 2% |
| $100–$499 | 291 | 25% | $53,857 | 4% |
| ≤$99 | 753 | 64% | $19,143 | 1% |
| Total | 1,177 | 100% | $1,357,293 | 100% |
| *Giving categories based on donor’s annual total donations to ACE | ||||
You can read archived Giving Metrics Reports from previous years here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016.
We have excluded in-kind Google Ad Grants from our operating expenses.
This estimate includes all donations accepted by ACE for our Recommended Charity Fund and specific recommended charities (excluding two donations that were passed through ACE but reported as not influenced by us), plus direct donations to our recommended charities that the charities and/or donors have reported as ACE-influenced.
To avoid counting a donation twice, we compare our internal list of donor-reported donations to the list of donations reported to us by charities. If we suspect a donation might be a duplicate, we review both donations with the charity to confirm whether this is the case.
This figure excludes two donations that were passed through ACE but reported as not influenced by us.