I’m not sure how I feel about so much money going to Encompass. I’m not saying that racial equity in the EAA movement isn’t desirable, but I’m sceptical that it is so important as to justify such a large grant that could have instead gone to an organisation working directly to improve the lives of animals.
To clarify, I’m not sure either way. Is there any reading I can do to become more informed on this?
Before answering your question, it may help to get a little more context about why ACE Movement Grants exist, and how they differ from the charity evaluation work that ACE does. This is important because you may be overestimating the relative importance of individual ACE Movement Grants compared to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund.
ACE’s overall goal is to find and support the most effective approaches to animal advocacy. The main way ACE accomplishes this is through ACE’s top and standout charities, which receive the highest (by far) influenced proportion of funds from ACE.
ACE Movement Grants complement this program by helping to foster a broad, pluralistic animal advocacy movement, which makes it more likely to be more resilient than a narrow, monistic animal movement. The amount of funding received through ACE Movement Grants are significantly lower than the funds influenced through the Recommended Charity Fund.
Keep in mind that ACE is in a different position than other charity evaluators in the EA community, such as GiveWell. The available evidence supporting any given intervention is limited in animal advocacy. Of the funding that currently goes toward addressing industrial agriculture, ACE and related EA charities influence a majority of those funds. Imagine if GiveWell had much less evidence for their preferred interventions, yet they directed half of all funding to the entire cause of global poverty. In such a world, should GiveWell continue to only fund a handful of charities, or would they be incentivized to direct a much smaller amount of funds to help diversify the movement? The ACE Movement Grants program allows us to consider the effectiveness of the movement as a whole instead of being limited to supporting only a small number of approaches.
Encompass in particular helps to build relationships with a larger group of advocates, specifically people of the global majority. Their grant goes toward fostering racial equity in animal advocacy organizations, which has the potential to make animal advocacy organizations overall more effective in the long term. To learn more about Encompass, you can read ACE’s 2017 interview with Aryenish Birdie, ACE’s reasoning on why promoting REI might be effective, or the Encompass FAQ.
I’m not sure how I feel about so much money going to Encompass. I’m not saying that racial equity in the EAA movement isn’t desirable, but I’m sceptical that it is so important as to justify such a large grant that could have instead gone to an organisation working directly to improve the lives of animals.
To clarify, I’m not sure either way. Is there any reading I can do to become more informed on this?
Before answering your question, it may help to get a little more context about why ACE Movement Grants exist, and how they differ from the charity evaluation work that ACE does. This is important because you may be overestimating the relative importance of individual ACE Movement Grants compared to ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund.
ACE’s overall goal is to find and support the most effective approaches to animal advocacy. The main way ACE accomplishes this is through ACE’s top and standout charities, which receive the highest (by far) influenced proportion of funds from ACE.
ACE Movement Grants complement this program by helping to foster a broad, pluralistic animal advocacy movement, which makes it more likely to be more resilient than a narrow, monistic animal movement. The amount of funding received through ACE Movement Grants are significantly lower than the funds influenced through the Recommended Charity Fund.
Keep in mind that ACE is in a different position than other charity evaluators in the EA community, such as GiveWell. The available evidence supporting any given intervention is limited in animal advocacy. Of the funding that currently goes toward addressing industrial agriculture, ACE and related EA charities influence a majority of those funds. Imagine if GiveWell had much less evidence for their preferred interventions, yet they directed half of all funding to the entire cause of global poverty. In such a world, should GiveWell continue to only fund a handful of charities, or would they be incentivized to direct a much smaller amount of funds to help diversify the movement? The ACE Movement Grants program allows us to consider the effectiveness of the movement as a whole instead of being limited to supporting only a small number of approaches.
Encompass in particular helps to build relationships with a larger group of advocates, specifically people of the global majority. Their grant goes toward fostering racial equity in animal advocacy organizations, which has the potential to make animal advocacy organizations overall more effective in the long term. To learn more about Encompass, you can read ACE’s 2017 interview with Aryenish Birdie, ACE’s reasoning on why promoting REI might be effective, or the Encompass FAQ.
For more info on ACE Movement Grants generally, see the ACE Movement Grants page or any of ACE’s blog entries on the topic.
Thank you for this very helpful reply. I will certainly have a look at some of those links when I get a chance.