Effective Giving for Animals: Evaluating Charities

Not all animal welfare charities have equal impact per dollar donated, and evidence-based evaluation helps donors direct resources where they can help the most animals most effectively.

Key Facts

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) provides evidence-based assessments of animal welfare charity effectiveness
Top-recommended charities typically focus on high-suffering, high-numbers animal groups such as farmed animals
Cost per animal helped varies enormously between charities, from fractions of cents to hundreds of dollars
Advocacy and corporate engagement campaigns can achieve welfare improvements for millions of animals at very low cost
Chicken welfare campaigns have been cited as among the most cost-effective animal welfare interventions available

Welfare Considerations

Effective altruism principles applied to animal welfare suggest that resources directed thoughtfully can have dramatically greater impact than naive giving. A dollar donated to an evidence-backed farmed animal advocacy organisation may help orders of magnitude more animals than the same dollar donated to a companion animal shelter. This does not mean companion animal work is unimportant, but that donors should be informed about relative impact when making giving decisions.

What You Can Do

Consult Animal Charity Evaluators' recommendations before making significant donations to animal welfare charities
Consider donating to farmed animal welfare organisations given the scale of suffering in food systems
Evaluate charities on transparency, evidence of impact, and quality of leadership
Advocate within professional and personal networks for evidence-based giving to animal welfare
Consider giving regularly to multiple evidence-backed organisations to spread risk