Animal Charity Evaluators, or thinly disguised fundraisers for a favored few?

ACE 2025 Charity Recommendations: vegan baloney won’t save pigs

COVINA,  California––We could wish that Animal Charity Evaluators was actually and sincerely engaged in animal charity evaluation,  across the spectrum of animal charities and evaluating each charity against what that charity purports to be doing––but it is not,  never was,  and likely never will be.

We could wish that Animal Charity Evaluators [ACE] worked under a name clarifying that it exists to direct funds to a select few charities working on behalf of animals who are eaten,  most of which charities most animal charity donors have never heard of.

How is ACE like the tear-jerking appeals it does not resemble?

Under either circumstance,  ANIMALS 24-7 would welcome Animal Charity Evaluators’ newly released 2025 Charity Recommendations as something other than the cynical fundraising ploy it is,  aimed––like the innumerable tear-jerking online and direct mail appeals it assiduously does not directly resemble––at the gullibility of animal charity donors.

Unfortunately,  Animal Charity Evaluators 2025 Charity Recommendations, like the decade of periodic ACE recommendations preceding it,  differs from the tear-jerking approach chiefly in format.  Instead of hitting recipients with a barrage of photos either of atrocities to animals or happy endings,  Animal Charity Evaluators appeals,  it pretends,  to donors’ desire to ensure that their money does the maximum possible good for animals.

“Trick or treat!”

Opened the media release sent to ANIMALS 24-7 twice,  both before and after Halloween,  by Animal Charity Evaluators publicist Julie Zeilinger,  “Hundreds of billions of animals are killed for food every year;  It’s a huge problem that most people would love to help solve.”

Trick or treat!

The first trick behind the Animal Charity Evaluators’ mask is that “most people” do not give a damn that hundreds of billions of animals are killed for food,  so long as dinner is on the table.

If they did,  the world would be vegan long since.

Tricky numbers

The second trick behind the mask is the Animal Charity Evaluators implied claim that its 2025 Charity Recommendations,  billed as “a meticulously researched,  data-driven list of the ten charities that help the most animals per donor dollar,”  will actually help animal charity donors to direct their giving in accord with their own priorities.

“Crucially,”  wrote Zeilinger,  “these recommended charities address a significant imbalance in philanthropic giving when it comes to animals in need:  95% of U.S. animal [charity] donations support companion animal groups,  with only 4% reaching farmed animal causes.  Yet, in the U.S. alone,  more than 14,000 farmed animals are slaughtered for every single dog or cat euthanized in a shelter.”

True enough,  but far out of context.

Dogs & cats vs. farmed animals

Currently,  71% of U.S. households keep dogs and/or cats as pets,  approximately ten times as many as are vegans,  vegetarians,  or even just “meat avoiders,+  who actually consume less meat, according to some research,  than most people professing to be vegans or vegetarians.

Only about 13% of U.S. households donate to animal charities.

Clearly,  for most of these people,  their relationship with dogs and cats holds stronger appeal to their charitable inclinations than their relationship with “What’s for dinner?”

Assuming that the eating habits of animal charity donors are the same as among the general public,  even if half of all animal charity donations from the 7% who are vegan,  vegetarian,  or “meat avoiding” went to farmed animal charities,  that would be less than 4% of  total animal charity receipts.

The real problem,  in terms of giving priorities relative to animal suffering,  is not that dog and cat charities are getting too much donor support,  but rather that the whole spectrum of animal suffering is still barely visible as a concern of average donors.

“Umpire” is a player

Animal Charity Evaluators is not even addressing that issue.

What it is doing is pretending to be an impartial umpire while at the same time being very much a player,  as both a fundraising entity and a grant-maker,  pitting one sector of animal charity against the rest.

            Details the Animal Charity Evaluators statement of program accomplishments,  on the ACE filing of IRS Form 990 for 2024,  “Through our recommended charity fund,  ACE disbursed two rounds of funding totaling $2,339,876 to our recommended charities,”  along with $781,204 to “48 highly promising animal advocacy projects,”  $144,500 for “a project in collaboration with Vox Media”  and $9,337 for animal advocacy research.

The numbers,  please

One might find  reassuring that Animal Charity Evaluators puts money where its mouth is,  even though it is actually donors’ money raised with misleading claims.

But how many charities did Animal Charity Evaluators actually evaluate before concluding that the ten charities included in the ACE 2025 Charity Recommendations really do “help the most animals per donor dollar”?

Again according to the Animal Charity Evaluators statement of program accomplishments,  on the ACE filing of IRS Form 990 for 2024,  “We completed 14 comprehensive charity evaluations,  using four criteria to methodically provide a total of six new charity recommendations to advocates and donors…This brought our total list of recommended charities to eleven.”

There are,  at the present moment,  52,000 “animal-focused” charities in the U.S. alone,  according to IRS data.  The global total may be two to three times as high.

Evaluation count goes backward

ANIMALS 24-7,  during 25 years of producing annual summary evaluations of animal charities,  covering the fiscal years 1988-2013,   managed to cover as many as 185 of the most prominent animal charities per year,  including reviews of financial filings,  the accuracy of campaign claims,  leadership and policy changes,  and findings from site visits to several dozen shelters and sanctuaries per year.

The Animal Charity Evaluators 2025 Charity Recommendations appears to be based on less than 1% as much investigative input.  Further,  the Animal Charity Evaluators output seems to be going backward,  at least in statistical terms.

In 2017 our colleagues at Showing Animals Respect & Kindness [SHARK] posted an extensive exposé of Animal Charity Evaluators,  noting that ACE at that time had “‘fully reviewed’ only 21 animal organizations.”

This,  however,  was nearly twice as many as Animal Charity Evaluators claims to have reviewed as of 2025.

Nick Cooney

Showing Animals Respect & Kindness noted that,  “Out of that tiny number,  only those who have a relationship to [ACE founder] Nick Cooney have been given Top Charity status.  This represents a very significant conflict of interest,  for it indicates neither science nor chance,  but predetermination.”

Confronted about that point,  a representative of Animal Charity Evaluators admitted to ANIMALS 24-7 that what Animal Charity Evaluators is actually doing is not “evaluation” at all,  but rather “directed giving.”

Nick Cooney is no longer anywhere in sight.  Indeed,  the Animal Charity Evaluators web site now includes a 6,200-word declaration of policies,  mostly focused on conflict of interest issues having to do with people giving ACE money being ineligible to receive ACE grants.

“Effective altruism”

The operating philosophy of Animal Charity Evaluators,  meanwhile,  remains “effective altruism,”  as outlined by Cooney in his 2015 book How to be Great at Doing Good: Why Results Are What Count & How Smart Charity Can Change the World.

Effective altruism in animal advocacy means,  in translation,  donating and investing money and time in the activities and organizations that do the most to help the most animals.

This premise is discussed at much greater length by Jeff Thomas in his 2023 book The Farm Animal Movement:  Effective Altruism,  Venture Philanthropy,  & The Fight to End Factory Farming in America.

(See Money, power, & farmed animal advocacy: Jeff Thomas tells all.)

“Effective” for whom?

In strictly numeric terms,  effective altruism in animal advocacy means focusing on farmed animals and fish,  first and always.

While not disagreeing with an emphasis on farmed animals and fish as a first priority for donors wishing to help the most animals with every dollar,  ANIMALS 24-7 must point out that what is most effective is also what best responds to what each individual donor and volunteer feels is most urgent and important,  keeps donors and volunteers involved,  and rewards donors and volunteers with feelings of accomplishment.

If all that animal advocacy volunteers had to keep themselves motivated was whittling away tiny fractions of percentage points of meat and dairy industry growth and profit margins year after year,  the animal advocacy sector could probably be stuffed inside an old refrigerator and sunk in a lagoon of hog slurry.

Wolverines

Further,  significant accomplishment cannot always be numerically quantified.

For example,  winning “threatened species” status for about 300 surviving wild wolverines after a 48-year legal battle,  accomplished toward the end of November 2023,  was a small victory indeed compared to any of the needs of farmed animals,  but was a major achievement toward establishing the right of animals to exist,  regardless of economic benefit to humans.

(See Wolverines, known for tenacity, win federal protection after 48-year fight.)

Between the billions of suffering farmed animals,  and the comparatively tiny numbers of endangered species,  exist hundreds,  perhaps even thousands of other animal issues mattering just as much to the particular animals involved.

If the dictates of “effective altruism” were always observed,  no one would address animal suffering in laboratories,  in recreational hunting,  fishing,  and trapping,  or in entertainment,  even entertainments as obviously abusive as bullfighting,  cockfighting,  dogfighting,  and steer-tailing.

Essential to recognize is that so long as these entertainments remain socially acceptable,  anywhere,  eating cattle,  poultry,  and even dogs will persist likewise.

So who does ACE favor?

So,  out of all the hundred-thousand-odd animal charities in the world,  which ten does Animal Charity Evaluations recommend,  besides,  we presume,  itself?

Chances are,  most American animal charity donors will have heard of only one of them,  if any,  the $28-million-a-year Humane League,  founded by––you guessed it––Nick Cooney.

The only other U.S. organizations on the Animal Charity Evaluators list are the Aquatic Life Institute and the Wild Animal Initiative.

IRS Form 990 for 2004 shows the latter making $5 million in overseas grants,  perhaps all to worthy projects,  but since the recipients are mostly beyond the scope of U.S. media coverage,  and do not file IRS Form 990,  we really can only accept the word of Wild Animal Initiative and Animal Charity Evaluators for it.

To ANIMALS 24-7,  anyhow,  the word of Animal Charity Evaluators is at best tarnished,  while Wild Animal Initiative is clearly an interested party.

Charities whose work few donors can verify

The remaining Animal Charity Evaluators recommendations favor the Animal Welfare Observatory,  in Spain;  the Shrimp Welfare Project,  in the United Kingdom;  Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira,  in Brazil;  Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği,  which works to improve the welfare of egg-laying hens in Turkey;  Dansk Vegetarisk Forening,  in Denmark;  the Good Food Fund in China;  and Sinergia Animal,  an Austrian organization with projects in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Even finding a physical address for Sinergia Animal on the organization’s web site requires discovering it among the German text in a 357-word legal disclaimer.

Again,  all of these organizations may be doing good work,  but when it comes to evaluating it,  ANIMALS 24-7 would prefer to see the assessments of persons other than thinly disguised fundraisers.

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