Executive summary: The author argues that Animal Charity Evaluators currently offers opaque guidance and under-prioritizes more tractable interventions—particularly corporate welfare reforms—and needs to refine its evaluation methods, clarify its comparisons, and focus more on its core mission of rigorous effectiveness evaluation.
Key points:
ACE’s evaluation style is seen as opaque, causing confusion for donors and advocates about how different interventions compare.
The author contends that ACE avoids making clear, substantial claims about which programs most effectively help animals, limiting its usefulness to the movement.
By mixing fund-management roles with evaluation, ACE may dilute its focus on identifying top charities with strong track records.
Evidence suggests corporate welfare campaigns for farmed animals have a proven and measurable impact, yet ACE appears to rate them similarly to less tractable interventions.
The author acknowledges uncertainty about ACE’s internal processes but calls for greater clarity, deeper research, and more decisive prioritization.
Recommended actions include developing clearer impact criteria, separating funding from evaluation functions, and more fully embracing a data-driven approach to prioritize interventions.
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@SummaryBot , have you considered summarising this post, which was just shared as a classic Forum post on the last EA Forum Digest?
Good idea! Here’s a summary of the post:
Executive summary: The author argues that Animal Charity Evaluators currently offers opaque guidance and under-prioritizes more tractable interventions—particularly corporate welfare reforms—and needs to refine its evaluation methods, clarify its comparisons, and focus more on its core mission of rigorous effectiveness evaluation.
Key points:
ACE’s evaluation style is seen as opaque, causing confusion for donors and advocates about how different interventions compare.
The author contends that ACE avoids making clear, substantial claims about which programs most effectively help animals, limiting its usefulness to the movement.
By mixing fund-management roles with evaluation, ACE may dilute its focus on identifying top charities with strong track records.
Evidence suggests corporate welfare campaigns for farmed animals have a proven and measurable impact, yet ACE appears to rate them similarly to less tractable interventions.
The author acknowledges uncertainty about ACE’s internal processes but calls for greater clarity, deeper research, and more decisive prioritization.
Recommended actions include developing clearer impact criteria, separating funding from evaluation functions, and more fully embracing a data-driven approach to prioritize interventions.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.