Animal Charity Evaluators

09/17/2026

Here are the faces behind our charity evaluations, grants, recommendations, and a lot of shared Google Docs.

Most of us work from home, across different countries and time zones, so it's nice to see (almost) everyone together during our all-staff calls.

Some of the faces from our team are missing here and we’ve welcomed a few new teammates since this screenshot , you'll see a bigger grid next time. Introductions coming soon!

09/17/2026

If you'll be at the 2026 DAF Giving Summit in Austin on September 23–25, come say hi.

Animal Charity Evaluators will have a booth, with our and Executive Director, Stien van der Ploeg 🔸 and Development Director, Emma Gonzalez 🔸, attending as well. We’d love to hear about your giving goals and chat about how ACE’s research can help you support effective animal charities through your donor-advised fund.

You can find Emma or Stien on Whova, message us to arrange a time, or drop by our booth when you have a moment.

P.S. We also have a trivia game live on the Whova app and we'll manually select winners of a few cute animal magnets at the end of the Summit on Friday afternoon.

Hope to see you in Austin! 💙

09/08/2026

What works for animals depends on more than the intervention itself.

Better for Animals is a living document that maps the evidence across ~30 different animal advocacy interventions, from documentaries and podcasts to corporate outreach, legal advocacy, and vegan pledges.

Over the past year, we took a closer look at 11 of these interventions, spotlighting one each month. Across them, three themes kept appearing:
- Context matters. A tactic that succeeds in one place may not work the same way elsewhere.
- Strong evidence is still limited in many areas. Low confidence doesn’t necessarily mean an intervention is ineffective. It may mean we don’t yet have enough research to know.
- Most interventions don’t happen in isolation, making the impact of any single tactic difficult to untangle.

There may not be one “best” way to help animals. But we can keep examining the evidence, learning from advocates’ on-the-ground experience, and updating our thinking as we learn more.

Read the recap of all 11 intervention spotlights:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/better-for-animals-recap/
Explore the detailed evidence across the interventions:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/resources/better-for-animals/

09/01/2026

At AVA Summit, Ghana, our Executive Director, Stien van der Ploeg, led a workshop titled “Measure It, Do Better, Help More,” exploring how thoughtful impact measurement can strengthen both programs and fundraising.

The workshop centred on three main ideas:

- Funders are more likely to give when they believe your work does significant good and you can demonstrate that impact.

- A strong theory of change is your backbone, especially when impact can’t be captured in exact numbers and when precise measurement isn’t possible, interrogating assumptions and reasoning carefully becomes even more important.

- Measurement should help you improve your work and report it honestly. Data collected only to look impressive, or never used to inform decisions, is effort that could have gone toward helping animals.

The session created a space to explore how organizations can fundraise effectively, focus measurement on what makes a difference for animals, and use setbacks and course corrections to strengthen their work.

Thank you to AVA International and everyone who joined the conversation!

What has measuring your impact helped you see differently?

08/31/2026

For this month's spotlight, we connected with Darleen Martinez, community and education coordinator at Plant Futures Initiative, one of ACE's Movement Grants recipients.

Plant Futures is building the educational infrastructure for a plant-forward future in Mexico and Latin America. With far fewer resources available in Spanish than in English, they develop interdisciplinary education that connects food systems, health, climate, justice, culture, and animal advocacy, while building the knowledge, skills, and networks that long-term movement building needs.

You can read the full interview to find out what this work looks like on the ground and where it is headed. Link in bio.

08/26/2026

Thanks to your generosity, ACE awarded $1,365,823 from our Recommended Charity Fund to our Recommended Charities this month.

So, what does this funding make possible for animals? Explore the accomplishments our Recommended Charities shared with us from the first half of 2026.

Details in comments.



Observatorio de Bienestar Animal Aquatic Life Institute Kafessiz Türkiye Dansk Vegetarisk Forening - DVF Good Food Fund Shrimp Welfare Project Sinergia Animal International Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira - SVB The Humane League Wild Animal Initiative

08/20/2026

There's an interesting detail in ACE's logo that you might've missed. Swipe to see!

08/18/2026

WIRED just published an article on what could be one of the largest shifts in philanthropy in decades. As two of the biggest artificial intelligence companies prepare to go public, hundreds of employees are expected to give generously. By one estimate in the article, one company's IPO alone could add as much as $15 billion a year in new giving.

Of course, that money isn’t here yet and it’s not fully guaranteed. Also, if it does come, having more money to give doesn’t necessarily make it easy to figure out where it should go. But the article also describes funders and nonprofits already preparing for the possibility, working to make sure organizations can actually put large gifts to good use.

As our executive director, Stien van der Ploeg, put it, "We're trying to build the port before the ship arrives." Over the past year, ACE helped direct around $15 million to animal charities working to reduce some of the worst forms of factory farming.

So, when (if) big money arrives fast, how do we make sure it goes where it can do the most good, not simply where it's easiest to give?

Read the full article in Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-are-getting-ready-for-the-funding-anthropalypse/

Anthropic and OpenAI employees are expected to give generously after their companies go public. “It’s going to be a wild ride,” says one nonprofit leader.

08/14/2026

Once a month, we send a newsletter.

That includes new research on farmed animals, our Better for Animals series on which interventions seem to work and when, ACE updates, including grant announcements, application timelines, and job openings, and conversations with Movement grantees about what’s going well, what’s difficult, and what they’re learning.

If that's content you’d enjoy reading, join us here: https://animalcharityevaluators.org/newsletter/

08/13/2026

We were excited to host a fellow this summer from the Reducetarian, Sarah Maloney! Sarah worked with the Development team for ten weeks focusing on scoping out the creation of a new monthly donor program. She also assisted with donor communications, researching potential new funding partners, and development operations. The photo is from Sarah's final presentation of her work on the program to a group of our staff on August 11.

We now have an excellent foundation for a new program for ACE. If you're looking to hire anytime soon, we hope you consider Sarah!