This is an online portal with information on donations that were announced publicly (or have been shared with permission) that were of interest to Vipul Naik. The git repository with the code for this portal, as well as all the underlying data, is available on GitHub. All payment amounts are in current United States dollars (USD). The repository of donations is being seeded with an initial collation by Issa Rice as well as continued contributions from him (see his commits and the contract work page listing all financially compensated contributions to the site) but all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies belongs to Vipul Naik. Current data is preliminary and has not been completely vetted and normalized; if sharing a link to this site or any page on this site, please include the caveat that the data is preliminary (if you want to share without including caveats, please check with Vipul Naik). We expect to have completed the first round of development by the end of July 2025. See the about page for more details. Also of interest: pageview data on analytics.vipulnaik.com, tutorial in README, request for feedback to EA Forum.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Affiliated organizations (current or former; restricted to potential donees or others relevant to donation decisions) | Centre for Effective Altruism |
| Website | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare |
| Donations URL | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/ |
| Regularity with which donor updates donations data | irregular |
| Regularity with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | irregular |
| Lag with which donor updates donations data | months |
| Lag with which Donations List Website updates donations data (after donor update) | days |
| Data entry method on Donations List Website | Manual (no scripts used) |
Brief history: This is one of four Effective Altruism Funds that are a program of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). The creation of the funds was inspired by the success of the EA Giving Group donor-advised fund run by Nick Beckstead, and also by the donor lottery run in December 2016 by Paul Christiano and Carl Shulman (see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WvPEitTCM8ueYPeeH/donor-lotteries-demonstration-and-faq (GW, IR) for more). EA Funds were introduced on 2017-02-09 in the post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/a8eng4PbME85vdoep/introducing-the-ea-funds (GW, IR) and launched on 2017-02-28 in the post http://effective-ahttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iYoSAXhodpxJFwdQz/ea-funds-beta-launch The first round of allocations was announced on 2017-04-20 at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsaS8JKrR8nnxyPkK/update-on-effective-altruism-funds (GW, IR) The funds allocation information appears to have next been updated in November 2017; see https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/1606722932717391/ for more
Brief notes on broad donor philosophy and major focus areas: As the name suggests, the Fund's focus area is animal welfare, but it includes both factory farming and wild animal welfare, and it has also funded opportunities for priorities research. At inception, the Fund had Lewis Bollard (Program Officer for Farm Animal Welfare at Open Philanthropy) as its sole manager. In October 2018, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yYHKRgLk9ufjJZn23/announcing-new-ea-funds-management-teams (GW, IR) announces a new management team for the Fund, with Bollard staying on as chair of the management team, but with three new members Jamie Spurgeon, Natalie Cargill, and Toni Adleberg
Notes on grant decision logistics: Money from the fund is supposed to be granted about thrice a year, with the target months being November, February, and June. Actual grant months may differ from the target months. The amount of money granted with each decision cycle depends on the amount of money available in the Fund as well as on the available donation opportunities
Notes on grant publication logistics: Grant details are published on the EA Funds website, and linked to from the Fund page. Each grant is accompanied by a brief description of the grantee's work (and hence, the intended use of funds) as well as reasons the grantee was considered impressive
Notes on grant financing: Money in the Animal Welfare Fund only includes funds explicitly donated for that Fund. In each grant round, the amount of money that can be allocated is limited by the balance available in the fund at that time
Full donor page for donor Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Facebook page | AnimalCharityEvaluators |
| Website | http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/ |
| Donors list page | https://animalcharityevaluators.org/about/top-donors/ |
| Transparency and financials page | https://animalcharityevaluators.org/about/transparency/ |
| Twitter username | AnimalCharityEv |
| Wikipedia page | https://github.com/vipulnaik/working-drafts/blob/master/wikipedia/ace.mediawiki |
| Timelines wiki page | https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Animal_Charity_Evaluators |
| Org Watch page | https://orgwatch.issarice.com/?organization=Animal+Charity+Evaluators |
| Key people | Jon Bockman |
| Launch date | 2012-08 |
Full donee page for donee Animal Charity Evaluators
| Item | Value |
|---|
| Cause area | Count | Median | Mean | Minimum | 10th percentile | 20th percentile | 30th percentile | 40th percentile | 50th percentile | 60th percentile | 70th percentile | 80th percentile | 90th percentile | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2 | 10,000 | 255,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 |
| Animal welfare | 2 | 10,000 | 255,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 |
If you hover over a cell for a given cause area and year, you will get a tooltip with the number of donees and the number of donations.
Note: Cause area classification used here may not match that used by donor for all cases.
| Cause area | Number of donations | Total | 2018 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animal welfare (filter this donor) | 2 | 510,000.00 | 500,000.00 | 10,000.00 |
| Total | 2 | 510,000.00 | 500,000.00 | 10,000.00 |
Graph of spending by cause area and year (incremental, not cumulative)
Graph of spending by cause area and year (cumulative)
| Title (URL linked) | Publication date | Author | Publisher | Affected donors | Affected donees | Affected influencers | Document scope | Cause area | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How frequently do ACE and Open Phil agree about animal charities? (GW, IR) | 2019-12-17 | Ben West | Effective Altruism Forum | Open Philanthropy Effective Altruism Funds: Animal Welfare Fund | Animal Charity Evaluators Compassion in World Farming International Animal Ethics Faunalytics Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira | Miscellaneous commentary | Animal welfare | Ben West compares the grantees of the Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) in its focus area of farm animal welfare against the charities recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE). He finds a substantial overlap: Open Phil has made grants to all charities that ACE has ever given top charity status, about half of the charities ACE has ever given standout charity status, and only one charity that ACE reviewed but did not recommend. Also, "5% of the charities ACE did an "exploratory" review of received a grant, as did 3% of the ones they "considered" but did not review." A spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NRSVnSgg33vtOByfYwCFhB6VrytZGYeJ/edit with the data is linked. The post also notes: "Three charities which were named “Standout Charities” by ACE but did not receive Open Phil grants did receive grants from the Centre for Effective Altruism’s Animal Welfare Fund (Animal Ethics, Faunalytics, and Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira)." |
Graph of all donations (with known year of donation), showing the timeframe of donations
| Amount (current USD) | Amount rank (out of 2) | Donation date | Cause area | URL | Influencer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500,000.00 | 1 | Animal welfare/factory farming/meta/charity evaluator | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/4Bianu30diUQeWGU2Oiq8E | Lewis Bollard | Donation process: Part of the June 2018 grant round disbursing $1,205,000. Specifically, this is part of the set of grants made in the "Research and EA movement building" category in the grant round, which totals $760,000 Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: Grant to support ACE's operations. However, Bollard expects that ACE will hit its self-imposed limit of $1.25 million in funds raised, and will therefore redirect the excess funds to its top charities, which is also something Bollard is fine with Donor reason for selecting the donee: The grant page says: "I think ACE: (1) serves a critical role in the farm animal movement in promoting EA values (transparency, use of data, constant reflection on what works), (2) has room for more funding and good plans for spending additional funds, and (3) will raise more funds for its recommended charities if it can wrap up fundraising for itself earlier in the year, which it will do once it hits its self-imposed cap of $1.25M to support ACE’s operations." Also: "And I see additional benefits to giving ACE greater financial security sooner and more influence over the distribution of funds in the movement." Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): The grant page says: "This is an unusually large and conventional grant for the EA Fund. But the EA Fund raised over $2M last year — thank you for your generosity! — and I don’t want it to sit idle while I identify more small and unique funding opportunities." Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 41.49% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round |
|
| 10,000.00 | 2 | Animal welfare/factory farming/meta/charity evaluator | https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/tI97LtH5AsIkgUa2IMCKi | Lewis Bollard | Donation process: Part of the April 2017 grant round disbursing $180,000 Intended use of funds (category): Organizational general support Intended use of funds: The grant page says that ACE works to "build a more effective farm animal movement through research, charity recommendations, and outreach to donors, researchers, and advocates." Donor reason for selecting the donee: On the grrant page, Bollard says that he likes the work ACE does to "build a more effective farm animal movement through research, charity recommendations, and outreach to donors, researchers, and advocates." Moreover, at the time of making the grant recommendation, he was concerned that ACE will not fill its room for more funding this year Donor reason for donating that amount (rather than a bigger or smaller amount): Amount likely determined based on funds available, competing needs of other grrantees, and room for more funding of the grantee Percentage of total donor spend in the corresponding batch of donations: 55.60% Donor reason for donating at this time (rather than earlier or later): Timing determined by timing of grant round, as well as funding situation of the grantee Donor thoughts on making further donations to the donee: The grant page says: "I’m now more confident that funding gap will be filled by large funders, so it’s unlikely that I’ll direct more funds to ACE this year." This confidence is likely linked to a $500,000 grant from the Open Philanthropy Project (investigated by Bollard) that happens around the same time: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/animal-charity-evaluators-general-support Donor retrospective of the donation: Bollard would recommend a $500,000 grant from the Open Philanthropy Project at around the same time: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/farm-animal-welfare/animal-charity-evaluators-general-support The Animal Welfare Fund would also make a $500,000 grant to ACE in 2018: https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare/payouts/4Bianu30diUQeWGU2Oiq8E This suggests that Bollard would continue to stand by his positive assessment of ACE that motivated the grant |