Thanks for asking those important questions, and for following our work. We have some pages on our site explaining our process; I’ll list them below. I should note that, as with the first blog page below, we have begun periodically writing “Our Thinking” posts which we intend to compile in a page on our site in the near future. We have a good amount of additional information about our process that we will be detailing in the coming months; our transparency on the subject is mostly limited by resources and time.
As for what is especially good or bad about each of our top charities, we have a series of template questions at the beginning of each full review that discuss our brief thoughts on that. See the links to their full reviews below, and check out the “What are their strengths/What are their weaknesses” sections near the top of each respective review for more information.
I should note that the more in-depth reviews for both last May and this December’s recommendations are deemed “medium-depth reviews.” Again due to time and resources limitations, coupled with the need for us to update our recommendations twice this year instead of just once, we were not able to do a deeper level of analysis (or “deep review”). We hope to be even more thorough in subsequent years.
Finally, with regard to the units of goodness question, I think that animal advocacy is often a particularly low-hanging fruit. That means that even if you value helping an individual human much more than helping an animal, it still doesn’t mean that you should necessarily donate to human charities. You can save a significantly higher number of animals (see our leafleting calculator link below for an upper/lower bound) by donating to one of our top charities than the number of humans you could save by donating to the best human charities. –Jon Bockman, Executive Director of ACE
Thanks for asking those important questions, and for following our work. We have some pages on our site explaining our process; I’ll list them below. I should note that, as with the first blog page below, we have begun periodically writing “Our Thinking” posts which we intend to compile in a page on our site in the near future. We have a good amount of additional information about our process that we will be detailing in the coming months; our transparency on the subject is mostly limited by resources and time.
As for what is especially good or bad about each of our top charities, we have a series of template questions at the beginning of each full review that discuss our brief thoughts on that. See the links to their full reviews below, and check out the “What are their strengths/What are their weaknesses” sections near the top of each respective review for more information.
I should note that the more in-depth reviews for both last May and this December’s recommendations are deemed “medium-depth reviews.” Again due to time and resources limitations, coupled with the need for us to update our recommendations twice this year instead of just once, we were not able to do a deeper level of analysis (or “deep review”). We hope to be even more thorough in subsequent years.
Finally, with regard to the units of goodness question, I think that animal advocacy is often a particularly low-hanging fruit. That means that even if you value helping an individual human much more than helping an animal, it still doesn’t mean that you should necessarily donate to human charities. You can save a significantly higher number of animals (see our leafleting calculator link below for an upper/lower bound) by donating to one of our top charities than the number of humans you could save by donating to the best human charities. –Jon Bockman, Executive Director of ACE
Our thinking blog on our process
Summary of criteria and process
Full charity evaluation template
Our thinking blog on expanding “standout” category
Explanation of categories
List of organizations
Leafleting calculator