In 2017, we set a fundraising cap for unrestricted donations to ACE, where we pledged that we would only accept donations for ACE until we reached a total of $1 million for the year. Thanks to our generous supporters, we reached that goal at the end of November. At that point, we were able to shift course and focus the entirety of our efforts on raising money for our recommended charities, which included a year-end gift matching opportunity for our new Recommended Charity Fund. That campaign was enormously successful; we raised over $1.2 million in donations to our Recommended Charity Fund in a little over one month!
We think that setting a cap worked well. Many philanthropists communicated to us that they were comfortable donating to ACE earlier in the year knowing that we would only take in as much as we could effectively spend. They were also excited at the prospect of allowing us to spend the entire year-end giving season focused solely on raising money for our recommended charities. We are implementing a similar fundraising strategy for 2018—we will again set a cap, with the hope that we can meet ACE’s funding needs early so that we can then focus entirely on helping others.
Our 2018 fundraising cap for unrestricted donations to ACE will be $1.25 million. This is a 25% increase from our 2017 cap, and includes the amount that we think we could raise and spend efficiently as well as some additional funds to fill out a full year of reserves. The sooner we meet ACE’s own funding needs, the sooner we can pivot to fundraising for our recommended charities.
Here are some of the additions we made to our 2018 budget:
- We are seeking to recruit people to work in the following roles in 2018:
- Research Associate
- Researcher (for experimental research)
- Philanthropy Officer
- Social Media Coordinator
- Data Analyst
- We are providing full-year salaries for five new staff members that we hired over the course of 2017.
- We plan to prepare and execute studies through our experimental research division and provide base funding of $50,000 for materials and participant compensation (this does not include the salary for the Researchers involved).
- We are continuing our commitment to increase salaries across the board to provide more sustainable living wages for staff.
- We are doubling the size of grants that we give to charities who undergo a comprehensive review in order to better compensate them for their time, increasing the amount from $1,000 per evaluation to $2,000 per evaluation.
- We are holding two staff retreats this year—an increase from the single retreat we held in 2017—to bring the entire team together for strategic discussions and in-person collaboration between teams.
- We are exploring introducing a longer-term paid fellowship. We feel that offering paid internships and a longer-term paid fellowship increases the likelihood that we will see a broad, diverse set of applicants.
- We are adding a number of software services that will enable our staff to operate more efficiently, including media tracking, donation services, and a new internal database.
- We plan to hire contractors during our busiest time of the year—the last two months of charity evaluations—to reduce the burden on existing staff.
In addition to the components noted above and independently of our budget cap, we will offer opportunities to donors who want to contribute restricted funds for specific research projects in our experimental research work. Quality research can be expensive; increases of funding in this area will not lead to any loss of efficiency from staff, as these funds will be used for materials and to recruit participants. The opportunity to fund these projects is separate from the funding cap mentioned above.
We are currently working to prioritize the most impactful research projects, so prospective funding may be limited by what we select as promising options. We are happy to hear from individuals who would like to fund impactful research studies to see if there is a convergence of interests, so please feel free to reach out to us if you would like to discuss this further.
We are sincerely grateful to everyone who has contributed to our work. We view all of ACE’s accomplishments as shared victories between ACE and our supporters; together, we influenced over $6 million in donations to our recommended charities in 2017 alone. Thank you to everyone who has enabled us to complete our mission—we look forward to working together to do as much good as possible in 2018.
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