Announcing our latest influenced giving metrics

November 7, 2026

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The Second Year in a Row of Record Generosity: Announcing ACE’s 2025–2026 Influenced Giving Reports

For the second year running, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) supporters have set a new record for animals: $7.3 million directed to high-impact charities that would not have received it otherwise. I’m pleased to share our reports for our 2025–2026 fiscal year on both influenced giving and counterfactual funding.

These reports mark the steps we’ve taken together toward a more compassionate world for the animals who need our help the most. I’m grateful to our donors for their trust and beneficence.

It’s been four years since I started leading ACE’s efforts to help people help more animals. During my time at ACE, I’ve encouraged us to look more critically — and with more humility and transparency — at the specific difference we’re able to make for animals through our work. The way we assess our outcomes in these reports relies on a similar question. How much funding did our Recommended Charities and Movement Grantees receive specifically because of ACE’s work?

Another Milestone for our Recommended Charities

Every time I see a donation come through for our Recommended Charities, it makes me smile. So I’m incredibly grateful to report that your collective support fueled the highest annual counterfactual impact from ACE-influenced funding for the second year in a row. It’s heartening that so many people are taking charity seriously and support the data-driven work of animal advocates around the world.

In our 2025–2026 fiscal year¹, we influenced $7.3 million in donations that would not have been received by our Recommended Charities were it not for ACE’s work and your support. This amount is part of at least $14.7 million in total donations we influenced. The $7.3 million is the most important piece. We have good reason to believe that this is a direct result of our efforts to identify and promote the most effective ways to help animals. This funding is crucial to our efforts to help billions of animals — like hens, newly hatched tilapia, piglets, and sparrows — live better lives.

For every dollar ACE spent on our charity evaluations and recommendations, we generated $7.03 in donations for effective animal charities that wouldn’t otherwise have been given.²Our current Recommended Charities are doing remarkable work for animals, and after a summer of rigorous evaluations, we’ll announce our refreshed recommendations for the coming year on November 10, so stay tuned for that announcement.

Looking at our cumulative progress, since 2013, we’ve conducted 169 charity evaluations and influenced almost $89 million in total donations for outstanding organizations.

Growing to Two Rounds of Annual Regranting

I’m equally thankful for our Movement Grants team, who had an excellent year. Our grantmaking continued to focus on promising, yet underrepresented approaches to animal advocacy. In our most recently completed fiscal year, we awarded grants in this area via two rounds of funding instead of one.

We awarded $2.3 million to 54 promising organizations and projects around the world. Within this amount, we estimate that $1.6 million was counterfactual funding, or support these groups wouldn’t have received otherwise.

We started the Movement Grants program in January 2019. Between then and March 2026, we disbursed $8.4 million across 10 rounds of granting.³Our best guess is that $5.5 million of this funding would not have otherwise supported the novel interventions, neglected animal species, and promising advocates around the globe that we prioritize.

In our upcoming grant round, we’ve refined our scope to stay responsive to the needs of the animal advocacy movement. We’re favoring animals who suffer at scale but almost nobody funds (e.g., aquatic animals, insects, wild animals), farmed animals in emerging regions like Africa and Asia, and work that makes our movement stronger. These changes signal how we aim to shift our grantmaking strategy next year.

Assessing Our Influence Impact

This year, we took a step back from making further revisions to our methodology. After two years of refining the way we measure and evaluate the difference we make in the philanthropic landscape, we kept our methods largely unchanged for our third annual report. We made this decision partly because of our plans to evolve our programs next year, which will require an overhaul of our approach to assessing our impact (more about this evolution below).

One change we did make is including information about donations made through FarmKind for the first time. FarmKind is a nonprofit donation platform that connects compassionate people with impactful charities that are fixing farm cruelty. We’ve been glad to be able to support FarmKind’s goals with capacity-increasing services. While we believe we likely had some influence on where FarmKind directed donations and on their ability to do so, we ultimately decided to exclude all reported FarmKind donations from our totals, to ensure we did not double-count influence across organizations.

Preparing for an Uncertain Future

ACE exists to help more people help more animals. We do this by finding and promoting the best ways to reduce their suffering. When funding for animal protection was scarce and specific interventions were showing clear progress for animals, the most direct path to impact was obvious to us: recommend charities based on their funding gaps and share those recommendations with an impact-focused audience.

Now, technological and economic advancements are reshaping the landscape. We find ourselves moving into a new world where the money available for effective animal advocacy looks to grow significantly, and where AI and international development are changing how and where animals are farmed and studied. But what that future will look like is still highly uncertain.

In response to these shifts and to be ready for multiple future scenarios, ACE is restructuring our recommendations and grantmaking. We want to ensure that donors can continue to feel confident and excited that their generosity does good for animals at scale — no matter the size of their gift. We want to make sure that animal advocates can count on ACE as a resource to increase their impact on animals — even in changed circumstances. And we want to encourage more people with different worldviews to use their donations to help neglected animals, whatever their species or the cause of their suffering.

In early 2027, we will tell you more about the new funds that we’re launching, what recommendations will look like going forward, the focus of our research, and how we’re engaging new supporters for wild and farmed animals. Until then, we are testing our hypotheses, talking with peer funders and advocates, listening to your feedback, mapping the gaps in the animal protection ecosystem, and, of course, moving money quickly for high-impact work.

A Moment for Celebration and Gratitude

ACE must adapt, grow, and change in order to do as much good for animals as we can. And we will. But I also want to pause and celebrate this record generosity for animals.

I want to extend my thanks to Emma Gonzalez for taking on this year’s analysis of our giving, and to our entire team for their dedication to helping animals. The people at ACE push their time, skills, and expertise to the point of headaches and tears — because their kindness runs deep and their standards are high. I feel gratitude too for our grantees and peers who are building a world I want to live in and who took the time to respond to our surveys. We continue to learn from the feedback they share with us.

But of course, we would not be anywhere without our supporters. You entrust your resources to ACE and advocates around the world so we can create change for animals. I deeply appreciate that you take on this responsibility of compassion and generosity; it inspires me to work harder toward a more peaceful world.

I feel fortunate to be a part of a community of people devoted to combining their heads and hearts for animals.