2020 Giving Metrics Report

 
One of our goals at Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is to influence gifts to highly effective animal charities. We have implemented systems to help us estimate and track these donations, as well as to survey donors who have indicated that they contributed to our recommended charities, our Recommended Charity Fund, and our Movement Grants as a result of ACE’s guidance.¹ In this report, we will detail what we know about the 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” refers to the animal charities that we believe work most effectively on behalf of animals, of the charities we have evaluated. Since this report covers the full 2020 calendar year, “Top Charities” refers to both the current four Top Charities (as of November 24, 2020) and the previous four Top Charities (December 2, 2019 to November 23, 2020).
• “Standout Charities” refers to the animal charities that we feel are highly effective and showing promising progress in their efforts on behalf of animals, of the charities we have evaluated. Since this report covers the full 2020 calendar year, “Standout Charities” refers to both the current nine Standout Charities (as of November 24, 2020) and the previous five Standout Charities (December 2, 2019 to November 23, 2020).
• “Recommended Charities” refers to both Top Charities and Standout Charities.
• “Recommended Charity Fund” or “RCF” refers to ACE’s fund that was launched in 2017 to support ACE’s recommended charities in accordance with our research team’s recommended allocation.
• “Movement Grants” refers to ACE’s granting program that was launched in 2018, originally called the “Effective Animal Advocacy Fund,” to help expand the animal advocacy movement by supporting a broad scope of grant recipients that are doing promising work but that do not necessarily meet the criteria to be evaluated by ACE.
• “Animal Advocacy Research Fund” or “AARF” refers to ACE’s fund that was launched in 2016 as part of our plan to expand high-quality research in the animal advocacy movement.

How We Estimate Donations Influenced

ACE started collecting donations on behalf of our Top Charities in 2015. This has helped us better understand how donors use our charity recommendations. In 2020, donations through ACE accounted for 32% of the total amount of donations that we estimate ACE influenced to our recommended charities and Movement Grants recipients. The remaining 68% of donations were reported to us by the recommended charities or by donors themselves.

Twice per year, we ask our Top Charities to report to us the amount of donations they’ve received directly that they believe were influenced by ACE. As a condition of being an ACE Top Charity, we ask them to 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 they mention ACE in follow-up correspondence. We think charities report the donations that they believe were influenced by ACE with a fair level of accuracy. However, there are likely additional donations influenced by ACE that charities are unaware of because donors do not always specify ACE’s influence on their decision to give. Conversely, we are also aware of some occasions where charities reported gifts as being influenced by ACE, but upon some additional review, we came to believe that those grants weren’t actually influenced by ACE.

In 2017, we started asking our Standout Charities if they had systems in place to track their donations influenced by ACE, and we learned that most of them do not. Thus far we have not made tracking ACE-influenced gifts a condition of being a Standout Charity, as it may be difficult for some smaller organizations to implement. We do, however, distribute grants to them through our Recommended Charity Fund, and we allow donors to make large gifts ($5,000+) to non-U.S. Standout Charities through ACE for tax-deduction purposes. It is very likely that there are additional donations made directly to our Standout Charities as a result of ACE’s recommendation, of which we are not aware. We have also had an increasing number of donors report to us directly about their donations resulting from ACE’s charity recommendations.²

Estimated Donations Influenced, by Charity

In 2020, we estimate that ACE influenced over $8 million in donations to our Top Charities and over $2 million in donations to our Standout Charities. We acknowledge that an unknown but potentially significant amount of the donations made directly to our recommended charities may have been restricted to specific programs, possibly indicating less ACE influence. In the future, we aim to provide more scrutiny of restricted gifts in our reporting. The average gift that ACE accepted for our recommended charities was $360. We also raised $822,185 for our Movement Grants program, which supports animal advocacy projects around the globe that we feel are doing promising work to reduce animal suffering. This means that ACE helped to influence an estimated $11,063,882 within the animal advocacy movement in 2020, with 73% going to our Top Charities, 20% going to our Standout Charities, and 7% going to our Movement Grants recipients.

Estimated Donations Influenced, by Size

We compared the names across all donations made to (i) recommended charities through ACE, (ii) recommended charities directly, and/or (iii) the ACE Recommended Charity Fund. We believe that ACE’s charity recommendations influenced at least 4,160 donors overall in 2020.³

See the table below for information about the estimated $8,991,204 influenced to specific recommended charities in 2020. These funds came from an estimated total of 3,648 generous donors⁴, either via ACE or through donations directly to individual charities (excludes donations to the Recommended Charity Fund and Movement Grants). In future reports we will provide additional segmentation of the $10,000+ giving category when it contains the majority of donations.

Recommended Charity Fund

The Recommended Charity Fund is for anyone who wants to support ACE’s recommended charities through a single donation, simplifying the process so that donors can easily give to multiple effective animal charities at once. Disbursed biannually in January and July, grants are made to our Top Charities and Standout Charities according to what our research team determines will be an effective use of the funding at that time. In 2020, 571 donors contributed $1,146,493 to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund.

Grants Distributed from Recommended Charity Fund

ACE disbursed two rounds of grants from donations made to our Recommended Charity Fund in 2020, totaling $1,123,718. In July 2020, we awarded grants of $17,744 (money raised between January 1–June 30, 2020) to each of three of our four Top Charities and grants of $14,195 to each of our five Standout Charities. In January 2021, we awarded grants of $110,448.79 (money raised between July 1–December 31, 2020) to each of our four 2020 Top Charities and grants of $59,996.87 to each of our nine 2020 Standout Charities. Some funds (approximately 1%) were used for donation processing and wire transfer fees.

Movement Grants

Launched in 2018, Movement Grants is for anyone who is interested in making the animal advocacy movement more effective. It aims to address some of the underfunded areas that our research indicates are necessary to help grow the movement. Contributions to this fund are distributed to a number of promising grant recipients around the world, and have thus far been smaller, less well-funded projects. Applications are currently accepted once per year.

ACE created Movement Grants for three main reasons. First, we believe that the movement should continue to fund a wide range of approaches because a broad, pluralistic animal advocacy movement will be more impactful overall than a narrow, monistic animal advocacy movement. Second, we believe that we should continue to support a broad range of interventions given that there is little available evidence supporting the effectiveness of any given one. Third, we believe that building relationships with a larger group of advocates and charities will make our own work more effective by providing us with new information to consider and new groups with whom to collaborate.

In 2020, our Movement Grants review committee selected 42 promising animal advocacy projects around the globe to receive grants during two funding rounds totaling $822,185. Thanks to the estate of a generous donor, ACE ran a successful matching challenge campaign last fall, which helped us raise a total of $822,185 in 2020. More information about the grant recipients can be found in our Summer 2020 Grants Announcement and Fall 2020 Grants Announcement.

Animal Charity Evaluators

Last year, we spent $975,014 on ACE’s programs and operations while influencing an estimated $11,063,882 in donations within the animal advocacy movement. This means that for every $1 ACE spent on our own programs in 2020, we estimate that we influenced over $11 to our effective recommended charities and to promising projects (via Movement Grants).⁵ Since 2014, ACE estimates that we have helped to influence over $37 million within the effective animal advocacy movement.

Donations to ACE

We have seen donations to ACE increase steadily since our founding in 2014, with the exception of 2019 when we did not not meet our operating budget. In 2020—while navigating a global pandemic—ACE was grateful to our generous supporters for enabling us to surpass our $1 million budget goal and fund our programs during a challenging year.

Excluding donations to the Animal Advocacy Research Fund and a gift restricted to a project in collaboration with Vox Media’s Future Perfect, the average gift to support ACE’s programs and operations in 2020 was $287, an increase from $255 in 2019. Further excluding large grants from Open Philanthropy each year, the average gift in 2020 was $201, slightly higher than the previous year ($177).

Related Metrics

Donor Retention

ACE relies on the generosity of individuals, companies, charities, and foundations to support our work. Retaining our valued donors is critical to accomplishing our mission and ensuring long-term sustainability for our organization. In 2020, our goal was to increase our overall donor retention rate—donors who give in consecutive years—by 2%, from 40% to 42%. Last year, while navigating a global pandemic, we were grateful to exceed this goal and increase our overall donor retention rate by 3% to 43%.

Web Traffic

We monitor the number of users who visit the ACE website, but we also pay particular attention to the number of unique new users who visit the website during the critical giving season. This helps us track the growth of our audience, and we also feel that it is a probable indirect measure of growth in the effective altruism and effective animal advocacy movements as a whole.

In 2020, our web traffic remained fairly stable. In November and December 2020, the number of new users totaled 35,511, compared to 35,074 in 2019. Total website traffic visits (as measured by sessions) for November and December 2020 was 47,177, compared to 46,855 in 2019.

Animal Advocacy Research Fund

ACE launched the Animal Advocacy Research Fund (AARF) in 2016 as part of our plan to expand high-quality research in the animal advocacy movement. The AARF and its Program Officer have been funded entirely by a multi-year $1 million gift from a generous donor. In 2020, ACE received a final gift from this benefactor which accounted for $52,400 of our revenue. To date, no general donations to ACE have been used to support this research and we are seeking funding to continue building on the success of the AARF. Last year, we funded eight research projects conducted by academic teams in India, South Africa, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Poland—our most geographically diverse funding round yet. To date, the AARF has funded 46 novel research projects via eight rounds of open proposal submissions that address our key focus areas. More information can be found on the Animal Advocacy Research Fund website.

Lessons from 2020

While ACE started tracking estimates of donations influenced by our charity recommendations in 2014, in recent years we have thought more about the limitations of this metric. ACE has different levels of influence on donors. For instance, perhaps we have more influence on donors new to supporting animal advocacy and less influence on donors who were already aware of our recommended charities prior to our recommendation of them. Additionally, our estimate of gifts influenced likely depends heavily on the budgets of our recommended charities: If we added or removed a large charity from our recommendations, influenced gifts could change significantly solely due to the change in room for funding, regardless of ACE’s influence. We have become less certain that charities are able to report donations influenced by ACE with a high level of accuracy. For these and other reasons, we will restructure and improve our gifts-influenced metrics in 2021. As our presence in the animal advocacy movement has grown over the years, we are also working to identify and implement new key performance indicators in order to better measure our impact more broadly, e.g., on charities’ programs, strategy, and research in animal advocacy. To accomplish this goal, we have revised two team members’ roles so that one now has capacity to explore several qualitative and quantitative metrics and methods, such as creating a “business scorecard,” conducting surveys and interviews with stakeholders, and using currently available data (e.g., website analytics).

While ACE continues to attract new supporters, the majority of our annual revenue is still attributed to a small segment of donors. Last year, approximately 76% of ACE’s funding came from 17 donors, which included a significant grant from one supporter. Being overly dependent on any one source of funding can be risky for a charity, particularly when unexpected events occur (such as a global pandemic). In order to increase ACE’s financial stability and ensure that we secure funding to support our operations and programs in the future, we need to continue to prioritize diversifying our fundraising sources and cultivating our current donors.

---

1. You can read archived reports from previous years here: Animal Charity Evaluators (2019); Animal Charity Evaluators (2018); Animal Charity Evaluators (2017); Animal Charity Evaluators (2016). 

2. To avoid counting a gift twice, we compare our internal list of donor-reported gifts to the list provided by the charities. If there is any question about a possible duplicate, we review both gifts with the charity to confirm if these were additional or the same.  

3. Some charities provide us with donor names (but no other private or identifiable information) so that we can compare these donors across all ACE recommended charities that they may have supported. Other charities provide us only with donor identification numbers, which means that we are unable to confirm if those donors gave any gifts to other ACE recommended charities or to the Recommended Charity Fund. Because of this, we cannot say definitively that we influenced 4,160 donors in total. However, given the likelihood that many donors do not report or identify donations that were influenced by ACE, we suspect that the number of donors who use ACE’s recommendations as a consideration for their annual donations is significantly higher than what we are able to identify through our annual gift-reporting process. 

4. Some charities provide us with donor names (but no other private or identifiable information) so that we can compare these donors’ gifts across all ACE recommended charities that they may have supported. Other charities provide us only with donor identification numbers, which means that we are unable to confirm if those donors gave any gifts to other ACE recommended charities. Because of this, we cannot say definitively that we influenced 3,648 donors to give to specific recommended charities. However, given the likelihood that many donors do not report or identify donations that were influenced by ACE, we suspect that the number of donors who use ACE’s recommendations as a consideration for their annual donations is significantly higher than what we are able to identify through our annual gift-reporting process. 

5. We do not intend to frame this as causal, but rather to illustrate the amount of funding ACE uses compared with the amount of funding we influence.