ACE announced that they removed the $50K USD funding cap on Movement Grants applications and the $150K USD lifetime cap on Movement Grants applicants as of 2024. We were concerned in our 2023 evaluation that these caps constrained ACE MG’s ability to size grants in a way that was optimal for marginal cost-effectiveness. As such, we think that this reflects an improvement. Some early benefits of removing these caps have already been realised, with ACE MG advising two promising-seeming grants this year for amounts over $50K USD.
Seven grantees received a grant of $50K USD in 2024, which we were initially concerned might reflect that a $50K USD cap is still implicitly used by ACE MG. However, among the six of these that we have information on, five applied for $50K and received full funding; only the sixth received partial funding. For this sixth grantee, we do not think that the award of $50K is good evidence of an implicit $50K cap, as there is information in MG’s notes that they were also considering a smaller amount for this applicant and increased this to $50K — implying the grant was not intended to be larger and then simply rounded down to an arbitrary bar. We are also aware of other instances where MG was considering grants larger than $50K USD, but decided against making them for reasons not related to their previous cap.
Overall, we think that the removal of the arbitrary cap on grant size is a positive update that has enabled ACE MG to grant to highly promising opportunities that would otherwise not be available to the program.
Among the 24 Movement Grants ACE announced on 30 July 2025, the amount granted of 1⁄3 (= 8⁄24) fell between 49.7 k and 51 k$. Is there an informal cap, @eleanor mcaree?
From the same evaluation:
In the future, we would hope for ACE MG to have a clearer framework for prioritising between interventions. However, given that our review of more than 10 individual grants across our various investigations indicates that ACE MG’s grants are generally promising, we do not think this concern is sufficient to constitute a meaningful difference in the expected cost-effectiveness of ACE MG and EA AWF. This is particularly true as EA AWF was not doing clearly better on this metric in our 2023 evaluation than ACE MG is now:
[W]e saw some references to the numbers of animals that could be affected if an intervention went well, but we didn’t see any attempt at back-of-the-envelope calculations to get a rough sense of the cost-effectiveness of a grant, nor any direct comparison across grants to calibrate scoring. — GWWC’s 2023 evaluation of AWF
I wish there was a greater focus on cost-effectiveness analyses.
Sorry I was out of the country without internet so only just getting back to this!
Of those eight grants, six received 100% of what they applied for. One organisation was partially funded because we collaborated with the Strategic Animal Funding Circle and they were excited to partially fund this organisation, otherwise we likely would have fully funded their grant. The final organisation we have been funding at the same level for a few years and weren’t as excited about what they would do with additional funding compared to the other projects we were considering.
In general, our experience is that organisations that are seeking larger grants tend to apply to be evaluated by ACE, as the Recommended Charity Fund raises more money, so usually disburses larger grants and offers more stable funding. As we raise more funds for Movement Grants we might see orgs applying for larger amounts, as well as proactively encouraging applicants to think about what they would do with more funding.
We have started making improvements in our cost-effectiveness analyses, although we are constrained by a number of factors, namely limited team capacity, the volume of applications, the exploratory nature of applications, so I want to be honest in saying there is still room for improvement here.
Thanks for the questions, and do keep posting or email me if you have any other thoughts on how we can improve our grant making!
From your evaluation of ACE’s Movement Grants:
Among the 24 Movement Grants ACE announced on 30 July 2025, the amount granted of 1⁄3 (= 8⁄24) fell between 49.7 k and 51 k$. Is there an informal cap, @eleanor mcaree?
From the same evaluation:
I wish there was a greater focus on cost-effectiveness analyses.
Hey Vasco,
Sorry I was out of the country without internet so only just getting back to this!
Of those eight grants, six received 100% of what they applied for. One organisation was partially funded because we collaborated with the Strategic Animal Funding Circle and they were excited to partially fund this organisation, otherwise we likely would have fully funded their grant. The final organisation we have been funding at the same level for a few years and weren’t as excited about what they would do with additional funding compared to the other projects we were considering.
In general, our experience is that organisations that are seeking larger grants tend to apply to be evaluated by ACE, as the Recommended Charity Fund raises more money, so usually disburses larger grants and offers more stable funding. As we raise more funds for Movement Grants we might see orgs applying for larger amounts, as well as proactively encouraging applicants to think about what they would do with more funding.
We have started making improvements in our cost-effectiveness analyses, although we are constrained by a number of factors, namely limited team capacity, the volume of applications, the exploratory nature of applications, so I want to be honest in saying there is still room for improvement here.
Thanks for the questions, and do keep posting or email me if you have any other thoughts on how we can improve our grant making!
Thanks for clarifying, Eleanor!