16 minute read
We update our list of Recommended Charities annually. This year, we announced recommendations on November 4.
Each year, hundreds of billions of animals are trapped in the food industry and killed for food—that is more than all the humans who have ever walked on the face of the Earth.1
When faced with such a magnitude of suffering, it can feel overwhelming and hard to know how to help. One of the most impactful things you can do to help animals is to donate to effective animal charities—even a small donation can have a big impact. Our goal is to help you do the most good for animals by providing you with effective giving opportunities that greatly reduce their suffering. Following our comprehensive charity evaluations, we are pleased to announce our Recommended Charities!
The Humane League (working globally), Shrimp Welfare Project (in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and India), and Wild Animal Initiative (global) have continued to work on the most important issues for animals using highly effective methods, and all have had their status as Recommended Charities renewed after being thoroughly re-evaluated this year. We are delighted to once again recommend Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (Brazil)—last recommended in 2020 (status lasting two years). This year, a newly-evaluated charity joins their ranks: Animal Welfare Observatory (Spain). Aquatic Life Institute (global), Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği (Turkiye), Dansk Vegetarisk Forening (Denmark and E.U.), Good Food Fund (China), and Sinergia Animal (Latin America, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, and Thailand) have all retained their two-year Recommended Charity status from 2024.
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) spends several months each year evaluating animal advocacy organizations to identify those that can do the most good with additional donations. While all work to help animals is important, we believe that the 10 charities we selected to evaluate in 20252 are doing some of the most meaningful work to reduce the suffering of farmed and wild animals. We are grateful to each charity that applied and agreed to participate in this year’s charity evaluations.
If you would like to support our Recommended Charities, we invite you to join as a monthly donor to our Recommended Charity Fund. Our team of experts regularly assess each charity’s funding needs to make sure that your money goes where it can have the most impact. Thanks to a generous legacy donor, we will launch a Matching Challenge for our Recommended Charities next week to increase the impact of your donations! Join us for a live event in early December as we celebrate the achievements and progress of these exceptional charities.
Below, you will find a brief overview of why we are convinced that ACE’s 10 Recommended Charities will do the most good for animals with your support.
Charities Recommended in 2025
Animal Welfare Observatory
Animal Welfare Observatory (AWO) drives progress for farmed animals in Spain by persuading companies to adopt the stronger welfare standards specified in the European Chicken Commitment for chickens used for meat, transitioning egg-laying hens to cage-free systems, and advancing aquatic animal welfare. They also advocate for legislative change in Spain and the European Union to secure lasting protections for animals.
AWO’s recent achievements include:
- launching a multinational campaign targeting Lidl, combining investigations, outreach, and public pressure, and helping persuade Lidl Germany to commit to the European Chicken Commitment;
- engaging extensively with policymakers in Spain and Brussels (holding 10 meetings, submitting parliamentary questions, and contributing to workshops and consultations) to advance stronger animal welfare policy at national and E.U. levels; and
- working with 25 companies to hold them accountable to cage-free commitments (eggs), and five companies to hold them accountable to welfare commitments for chickens raised for meat.
With your support, AWO will be able to strengthen their accountability work for aquatic animals, chickens raised for meat, and egg-laying hens through investigations and public progress tracking. They will also be able to launch a shrimp welfare campaign, combining corporate outreach, investigations, and public awareness.
ACE proudly recommends Animal Welfare Observatory as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2025 comprehensive review of Animal Welfare Observatory. If you would like to support Animal Welfare Observatory’s work, you can donate here.
Shrimp Welfare Project
Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) is the first organization dedicated exclusively to improving the welfare of farmed shrimps, who are farmed in the trillions. They secure commitments for electrical stunning, which minimizes suffering during slaughter, through two key approaches: targeting retailers through campaigns and providing stunning equipment directly to farms. SWP also works to improve water quality on shrimp farms and researches shrimp welfare. In recent years, shrimp welfare advocacy has gained more traction and found opportunities to make meaningful change. SWP’s long-term goal is to transform industry standards toward higher welfare.
SWP’s recent achievements include:
- ensuring that 1.74 billion shrimps per year are covered by electrical stunning commitments secured in 2024, with nine stunners to be deployed in the next year;
- signing agreements to provide 17 stunners to producers, impacting approximately 3.3 billion shrimps per year;
- improving the welfare conditions of 88 million shrimps through sludge removal and stocking density improvements via their new pilot program, Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India; and
- contributing to three electrical stunning commitments signed in 2024 with major U.K. retailers.
With your support, SWP will be able to continue deploying stunners to accelerate industry-wide change, develop a cheaper model of the electrical stunner, and bring in third-party verification for electrical stunning to ensure compliance.
ACE proudly recommends Shrimp Welfare Project as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2025 comprehensive review of Shrimp Welfare Project. If you would like to support Shrimp Welfare Project’s work, you can donate here.
Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira
Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB) is a nonprofit in Brazil that promotes plant-based eating as ethical, healthy, sustainable, and accessible. The high dependence on animal products in Brazil, which fuels large-scale animal suffering, contributes significantly to climate change and environmental destruction, and threatens public health. Their mission is to replace animal proteins with plant-based proteins, expand access to vegan products and services, and provide information on the feasibility and benefits of vegan diets. Their movement-building work also ensures grassroots support and public visibility, reinforcing their institutional and policy gains.
SVB’s recent achievements include:
- implementing their Institutional Meat Reduction program in 111 municipal schools of Mogi das Cruzes, five municipal schools in Novo Triunfo, and 65 community kitchens in São Paulo city;
- serving over 16 million plant-based meals at the institutions (schools, hospitals, and community kitchens) that have implemented SVB’s meat reduction program;
- achieving a seat at the National Council for Food Security (CONSEA); and
- helping veto a bill in São Paulo that aimed to prohibit the use of the word “meat” on plant-based products.
With your support, SVB will be able to expand government engagement and policy influence, grow their campaigns and training capacity, and expand their nutrition outreach through university courses and lectures. Funding will also support international climate event participation and strategic fiscal policy engagement by hiring a specialized consultant.
ACE proudly recommends Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2025 comprehensive review of Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira. If you would like to support Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira, you can donate here.
The Humane League
The Humane League (THL) drives corporate and legislative change for farmed chickens worldwide. Billions of chickens raised for eggs and meat suffer in intensive farming systems designed to maximize output at the expense of welfare. THL accelerates the adoption of cage-free and other welfare commitments, backed by their international Open Wing Alliance (OWA) network. Their tactics include direct company engagement and public pressure campaigns. They also establish lasting welfare reforms through their Animal Policy Alliance and direct political outreach.
THL’s recent achievements include:
- working with 129 U.S. companies to hold them accountable to cage-free commitments for egg-laying hens;
- engaging 123 global companies on cage-free accountability, with most entering dialogue and reporting progress on their compliance;
- securing 140 new cage-free egg commitments (achieved by OWA members); and
- supporting 90+ Open Wing Alliance member organizations on an ongoing basis.
With your support, THL will be able to expand their Open Wing Alliance regional teams and grants, expand their U.S. cage-free accountability team, strengthen global corporate engagement, and support policy alignment to convert corporate norms into durable legislation.
ACE proudly recommends The Humane League as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2025 comprehensive review of The Humane League. If you would like to support The Humane League’s work, you can donate here.
Wild Animal Initiative
Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is a U.S.-based organization working to improve our understanding of wild animals’ lives by advancing the field of wild animal welfare science. The vast majority of animals live in the wild, many of which live very short lives and experience painful deaths. However, we know very little about most wild animals’ quality of life or how to improve it. WAI conducts their own research and supports other wild animal researchers to expand academic interest in wild animal welfare. Together, these efforts help uncover evidence-based solutions to improve the wellbeing of wild animals.
WAI’s recent achievements include:
- awarding $4.7M in research funding to 72 projects focusing, for example, on fish welfare, near-term interventions, affective valence indicators, and impacts of parasites/pathogens on wild animals’ wellbeing;
- getting wild animal welfare science research featured for the first time at the Animal Welfare Research Network annual meeting, and getting a Newcastle University Animal Welfare postgraduate course to include a mandatory lecture on wild animal welfare science; and
- contributing to 16 conferences, presenting interactive workshops, posters, and talks.
With your support, WAI will be able to partner with Conservation X Labs to accelerate research and development for rodent contraception. They will also be able to invest in their fundraising capacity and services program staff.
ACE proudly recommends Wild Animal Initiative as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2025 comprehensive review of Wild Animal Initiative. If you would like to support Wild Animal Initiative’s work, you can donate here.
Charities Recommended in 2024
Aquatic Life Institute
Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) works to reduce the immense suffering of farmed and wild-caught fishes and other aquatic animals. Despite outnumbering all farmed land animals combined, aquatic animals remain neglected in animal advocacy. Through strategic campaigns and partnerships with policymakers, retailers, and certifiers, ALI drives meaningful welfare improvements across the supply chain. ALI has a strong track record of success and has been able to help many animals at relatively little cost. For example, through their corporate outreach program, we estimate them to have reduced the suffering of thousands of shrimps per dollar spent. With ambitious 2026 plans, ALI is poised to create lasting change for aquatic life.
ALI’s recent achievements include:
- proposing indicators to help set global standards for interoperable, full-chain, and digital seafood traceability;
- publishing a landmark research article that links welfare innovation directly to environmental performance, biosecurity, product quality, and public health;
- being cited in the new Aquatic Stewardship Council Farm Standard Interpretation Manual;
- building momentum on the global octopus farming ban campaign; and
- expanding the U.N.’s definition of “sustainable development” to include the critical role of aquatic animal welfare in achieving global sustainability goals.
With your support, ALI can improve global aquatic animal welfare by encouraging seafood certifiers to adopt stronger welfare standards. They will continue to influence international and local policy, shape corporate commitments for large-scale impact, build unified global coalitions, and fight against the developing octopus farming industry.
ACE proudly recommends Aquatic Life Institute as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2024 comprehensive review of Aquatic Life Institute. If you would like to support Aquatic Life Institute’s work, you can donate here.
Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği
Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği (ÇHKD) is the only organization working to improve the lives of the more than 109 million egg-laying hens and 680 million farmed fishes that suffer at any given time in food production systems in Türkiye. Through corporate outreach, pressure campaigns, and producer engagement, ÇHKD secures cage-free commitments and drives better welfare standards for egg-laying hens and fishes. Their programs have been able to help many animals at little cost; we estimate their work improves conditions for around three hens per dollar and has the potential to be even more cost effective in the future.
ÇHKD’s recent achievements include:
- securing new cage-free egg commitments in 377 locations;
- convincing major hotel chain Marmara Hotels and Keyveni Catering to fulfill their cage-free egg commitments;
- Persuading major retailers CarrefourSA, Migros, Şok, and File to launch new price-competitive cage-free egg products;
- helping major retailer Migros achieve 45% cage-free egg sales; and
- conducting new research on the effectiveness of pre-slaughter electrical stunning for sea bass and sea bream.
With your support, ÇHKD will be able to secure more cage-free egg commitments, strengthen their campaigns, and mobilize greater public support to drive Türkiye toward a cage-free future. Your contribution is crucial in amplifying their reach, empowering them to influence more corporations, and build widespread backing for animal welfare. By expanding media outreach, enhancing staff capabilities, and ensuring financial stability, your support will sustain and grow the movement in Türkiye for lasting change.
ACE proudly recommends Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği (ÇHKD) as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2024 comprehensive review of Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği. If you would like to support the work of Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği, you can donate here.
Dansk Vegetarisk Forening
Dansk Vegetarisk Forening (DVF) is transforming Denmark’s food system to reduce animal suffering and promote plant-based alternatives. Their work helps reduce the immense suffering endured by the 47 million farmed animals (including 11 million farmed fishes) and 32 billion wild-caught fishes who are exploited for food production each year in Denmark. With a clear strategy for long-term systemic change, DVF drives progress through policy and funding advocacy at both the national and E.U. levels. Their efforts deliver exceptional impact for minimal cost, influencing millions of dollars of investment from the Danish government in the plant-based industry. Their 2026 plans will bring about even greater positive changes.
DVF’s recent achievements include:
- influencing the equivalent of $65 million (USD) in Danish government funding to support the development and promotion of plant-based foods;
- stewarding a partnership between the Danish Government and the E.U. Presidency for the Plant Food Summit; and
- launching the Danish Plant-Based Diplomacy initiative, supported by several farmers’ associations and other mainstream stakeholders.
With your support, DVF will be able to keep influencing the Danish government to prioritize plant-based ambitions while simultaneously using the case of Denmark to inspire other governments within the E.U. and globally.
ACE proudly recommends Dansk Vegetarisk Forening as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2024 comprehensive review of Dansk Vegetarisk Forening. If you would like to support the work of Dansk Vegetarisk Forening, you can donate here.
The Good Food Fund
The Good Food Fund (GFF) is transforming China’s food system to reduce animal suffering and promote plant-based eating. With 56 billion farmed animals and 190 billion wild-caught fish affected each year, China’s potential for impact is enormous. GFF drives change through chef training, diet change workshops, youth programs, and its annual Good Food Summit—all designed to reduce meat consumption and improve animal welfare. Their work aligns with government priorities and partners with top institutions to ensure lasting influence. Strategic and cost-effective, GFF’s programs are well-suited to China’s context and have strong potential to spare vast numbers of animals from suffering. Their plans for how they’d spend additional funding in 2026 give us confidence that they will use donations in ways that likely create the most positive change for farmed animals.
GFF’s recent achievements include:
- building momentum and social capital for plant-based transition in China through their annual Good Food Summit, Mama’s Kitchen, and other initiatives;
- collaborating with the Culinary Institute of America and Harvard to develop a plant-forward reference diet in the Hangzhou region; and
- kicking off a Global Food Systems Accelerator at Peking University in March 2025.
With your support, GFF will be able to continue as the most powerful voice for plant-based transition and animal welfare in China’s food systems space, where they have already established themselves as a first-mover, a widely-recognized innovative leader, and a trusted hub for all changemakers. Your help will enable GFF to continue building social capital and break new ground on policies for animals.
ACE proudly recommends the Good Food Fund as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2024 comprehensive review of the Good Food Fund. If you would like to support the work of the Good Food Fund, you can donate here.
Sinergia Animal
Sinergia Animal works across Latin America and Southeast Asia to reduce the suffering of farmed animals in countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, and Thailand. In these regions, more than 800 million hens and 40 million pigs endure intensive farming conditions. Sinergia drives meaningful welfare improvements through corporate outreach, institutional meat reduction, and programs for pigs’ welfare. Their campaigns are both locally tailored and globally strategic, helping hundreds of animals for every dollar spent. With a strong track record and impressive plans for 2026, Sinergia is well positioned to create lasting change for farmed animals worldwide.
Sinergia’s recent achievements include:
- securing 34 new corporate commitments to eliminate cages for egg-laying hens and gestation crates for sows, including a cage-free egg commitment from Subway in Indonesia and a global policy from Belmond Hotels, affecting 46 properties;
- helping implement cage-free egg labeling in Argentina;
- helping establish Colombia’s national farmed animal welfare transport committee; and
- expanding their Nourishing Tomorrow program, which promotes plant-based eating at educational institutions, to include 37 new commitments, bringing the total to 264 locations.
With your support, Sinergia Animal will be able to enhance their capacity to help farmed animals in relatively-neglected Latin American and Asian countries. Future plans include strengthening influence over public policy, movement building, and high-impact campaigns.
ACE proudly recommends Sinergia Animal as an excellent giving opportunity. To learn more, read our 2024 comprehensive review of Sinergia Animal. If you would like to support Sinergia Animal’s work, you can donate here.
Support our Recommended Charities
Each one of these exceptional charities depends on the generosity of people like you to carry out their mission. The animals they help around the globe will have measurably better lives with your support. By making a single donation to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund, you support all 10 of our Recommended Charities and their efforts to reduce animal suffering worldwide. These different charities each represent different approaches and ways of working that are necessary to meet the complex challenge of reducing animal suffering. This fund is distributed twice per year among our Recommended Charities, according to up-to-date data on the greatest need at that time.
Thanks so much for all the research and effort that went into this! This is a really exciting group of organizations.
I was, however, curious about one aspect the numeric cost-effectiveness estimates. It's great to see these as part of ACE's process, and I definitely learned a lot from them! But I was surprised to see how narrow the estimates were for the two Shrimp Welfare Project programs, given how radically uncertain I think basically everyone is about some of the key parameters influencing the results. Am I right in understanding that this disconnect is largely coming from ACE using AIM's suffering-adjusted day estimates per animal impacted, and those estimates not including uncertainty ranges? If so, would ACE consider trying to add uncertainty estimates on those numbers in future years?
Listed cost-effectiveness estimates:
AWO:
SWP:
SVB:
THL:
WAI: Unknown SADs/$
This year's recommendations have a pretty wide range of methods: institutional meat reduction, policy advocacy, corporate campaigning, producer outreach/support, and academic field building. Was having a wide range of approaches represented among the recommended charities something you were intentionally aiming to have, or just happenstance from the evaluation results?
What is the role of risk aversion in your recommendations? You recommended Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira (SVB), but not Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC). However, your estimate for the future cost-effectiveness of LIC of 343 suffering-adjusted days (SADs) averted per $ is 34.3 (= 343/10) times your estimate for SVB of 10 SADs averted per $. My understanding is that you are more uncertain about LIC's cost-effectiveness. From your review of LIC:
From your review of SVB:
However, I wonder if you would still recommend SVB, but not LIC if your best guess accounting for the considerations covered and not covered in their cost-effectiveness analyses was that donating to LIC was 34.3 times as cost-effective in expectation as donating to SVB.
If risk aversion plays a significant role (for example, if you do not value averting suffering proportionally to its probability, intensity, or duration), you may want to clarify which types of risk aversion you endorse.
ACE’s Evaluations program has a higher bar for uncertainty than Movement Grants, given that (i) the financial and non-financial benefits we direct toward recommended charities are greater, (ii) our target audiences have different expectations, and (iii) the downside risks are higher. These aversions include, but are not limited to, a lack of track record/wins/achievements, variance in possible outcomes, low probability of very high impact, and unknown probabilities.
We thought that LIC’s cost-effectiveness analysis was very promising, but it was ultimately based on hypothetical future scenarios. Unfortunately, we can’t go into further detail because it involves confidential information that, if public, could undermine their impact.
We also want to note that our understanding of a charity’s impact includes their theory of change. In LIC’s case, we considered their current track record of legal wins to be only moderate evidence that their theory of change would play out as intended, compared to SVB, where we were more convinced.
Thanks for all the work going into the evaluations! I especially like that you continue to run cost-effectiveness analyses.
I think it would be helpful to include the annual spending of the charities in this or similar future posts. This would give a better picture of their cost-effectiveness than their recent achievements alone.
I believe you underestimated the value of decreasing very intense pain. As last year, you relied on Ambitious Impact's (AIM's) suffering-adjusted days (SADs) to quantify the benefits to animals. So you put 45 % weight on excruciating pain being 7.06 (= 21.9/3.1) times as intense as hurtful pain (readers can ask Vicky Cox for the sheet). This implies 7.06 h of "awareness of Pain is likely to be present most of the time" (hurtful pain) is as painful as 1 h of "severe burning in large areas of the body, dismemberment, or extreme torture" (excruciating pain). I do not see how one would be indifferent between these.
Thanks, Vasco! We appreciate the feedback. For a complete view of each charity’s spending and cost-effectiveness, we encourage looking into their respective reviews, particularly the Cost-Effectiveness and Financials and Future Plans spreadsheets.
It’s correct that we maintained a 45% weight for the six academic estimates of disutility across different pain levels, and that these estimates are orders of magnitude lower than those reported in the EA and animal advocacy community surveys (which we weighted slightly higher at 55%). As you know, we’re testing alternative approaches intended to address these types of methodological concerns, including the issue that applying human trade-offs to animals may not be entirely accurate because it doesn’t fully account for their smaller welfare ranges. However, for this year, we chose to maintain the same moral weights framework to avoid large and potentially unwarranted shifts in our methods and values from one year to the next.
We also briefly looked at how these kinds of adjustments might affect our decisions. While they tend to shift prioritization toward animal groups that experience more intense forms of suffering (e.g., pigs and salmon over layer hens), we don’t think they would have changed our recommendation decisions this year. This is partly because we don’t rely solely on SADs averted per dollar when interpreting our CEAs, but also consider metrics like animals helped per dollar. We remain cautious about how precisely SADs reflect actual welfare differences, especially since results can vary substantially with small methodological changes or alternative pain classifications.
Thanks for clarifying!
Could you elaborate on why you use the number of animals helped per $? In the context of interventions targeting humans, that is analogous to using people helped per $ in addition to QALYs per $. I wonder whether you could change the estimates for SADs such that they account for the reasons which make you independently value the number of animals helped. Using animals helped per $ favours interventions targeting smaller animals with a lower capacity for welfare, so you may want to use a higher welfare range for these.
Ideally, we would be fully reliant on SADs, which take into account the species' capacity to suffer as well as the intensity and duration of their suffering. However, SADs are still a new method with some speculative inputs and ongoing updates. To account for this methodological uncertainty, our CEAs show results in both SADs averted per dollar and animals helped per dollar. In our decision-making, we look at both of these metrics and more, and interpret them alongside the broader context of the intervention.
I wonder how is ACE selecting charities? I wonder in particular because the Good Food Institute used to be considered a high-impact charity, but I have not seen any updates on that since 2022, when the assessment was broadly positive reference here. Not only that, but it seems GFI was probably one of the largest charities.
You can find more information about our selection process here. In 2024, GFI decided to postpone re-evaluation to a future year to allow their teams more time to focus on opportunities and challenges in the alternative proteins sector. They decided not to apply to be evaluated in 2025.
Would you mind shedding some light on why The New Roots Institute wasn't recommended this year?
While we have high confidence in the quality of their fellowship program (with fellows reporting high rates of improved leadership skills, increased confidence, and motivation to pursue roles to help animals), as well as in the thorough monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) that New Roots Institute conducts for their programs, we’re not sure about the extent to which fellows are significantly stronger advocates because of the fellowship, and whether they fill key talent bottlenecks. Overall, this leads us to not being convinced that their cost effectiveness is comparable to our recommended charities.
Because the outcomes and impacts of the fellowship will span decade-long careers of the fellows, it is possible that a future evaluation, when the fellows are further into their careers, will bring more insight into the cost-effectiveness of the program. Their evaluated charity review has more details and is available on our website.
Thanks you!!!
From your review of Wild Animal Initiative (WAI):
The implementation facing external hurdles that WAI has limited influence over is an argument against the key assumption holding? This seemingly contrasts with the above.
In any case, even today, I think it is safe to say there are stakeholders supporting interventions which change (increase or decrease) the welfare of wild animals much more per $ than the interventions you recommend targeting farmed animals. I estimate funding the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF), which supports public health interventions in low and middle income countries (LMICs), changes the welfare of soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 101 k (= 70.6*10^3/0.701) times as cost-effectively as cage-free corporate campaigns for my preferred way of comparing welfare across species, where welfare per animal-year is proportional to "number of neurons"^0.5. I estimate funding HIPF changes welfare a lot per $ due to changing the living time of soil animals by 5.07 billion animal-years per $ due to increasing agricultural land (saving lives increases food production). However, I have little idea about whether funding HIPF increases or decreases welfare. I am very uncertain about whether it increases or decreases soil-animal-years, and whether soil animals have positive or negative lives.
I mostly worry about WAI's apparent lack of focus on the most abundant animals. I got no results for “springtail”, “mite ”, and “nematode” on their grantees page. WAI has funded many projects on invertebrates, but my impression is that most of its spending targets vertebrates. I would find it helpful to know which fraction of their marginal funding supports projects on invertebrates. I estimate the absolute value of the total welfare of soil springtails, mites, and nematodes is 5.56 M (= 6.95*10^15/(1.25*10^9)) times that of wild birds, 1.37 M (= 6.95*10^15/(5.08*10^9)) times that of wild mammals, and 2.57 k (= 6.95*10^15/(2.70*10^12)) times that of wild finfishes for my preferred way of comparing welfare across species.
I am sceptical that spending a significant fraction of funding targeting (optimising for increasing the welfare of) vertebrates is optimal for increasing the welfare of soil animals. I would target:
All this said, I feel like WAI is still the organisation you recommend I am the most enthusiastic about.
Below is very helpful context from @Casey Darnley. Historically, 9.39 % (= 0.46/4.9) of the granted funds have supported projects on vertebrates, but there is nuance.
Thanks for your comments and your interest in WAI’s work!
While we agree that an established field should focus on helping the most abundant animals, we also agree with WAI’s reasoning that while building the field, having a singular focus on optimizing for the number of animals would come at the expense of other strategic field-building goals.
We address this in WAI’s review, e.g., here: “Though not all grants funded have a very high scope, this aligns with WAI’s long-term strategy that balances maximizing immediate impact with building a diverse and engaged scientific field. This dual strategy is based on sound reasoning and endorsed by several experts we spoke to.”
Thanks! To clarify, I agree WAI should be supporting projects which do not target soil sprintails, mites, and nematodes (the most abundant land animals). I just think WAI should have supported projects targeting invertebrates with more than 9.39 % of the granted funds, and supported ones targeting sprintails, mites, and nematodes with more than 0 % of the granted funds. What do you think is the strongest empirical evidence for these fractions being close to optimal besides expert views per se (the empirical evidence could still have been provided by experts)?
Executive summary: Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) has announced its 2025 Recommended Charities—ten organizations judged most effective at reducing animal suffering worldwide—highlighting both returning and newly added groups whose evidence-based advocacy and policy work target the welfare of farmed, aquatic, and wild animals; the post invites donors to support them directly or through ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund.
Key points:
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