Many animal welfare charities compete for donations. Evidence-based giving guides like Animal Charity Evaluators help donors identify where their money will do the most good.
The effectiveness of animal welfare charities varies enormously. Local shelters do important work for individual animals but typically cannot achieve the scale impact of organisations working on systemic change. ACE-recommended organisations focus on areas that are: affecting large numbers of animals, neglected by other funders, and tractable to intervention. Corporate campaigns — persuading large food companies to adopt welfare commitments — affect millions of animals at very low cost per animal. Farmed fish welfare is estimated to be extremely neglected relative to the number of fish suffering, making the Fish Welfare Initiative particularly cost-effective. Effective giving requires researching beyond familiar brand names.