Top Charities

Jamie in Chile

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The best way to donate money to help animals? Animal Charity Evaluators has announced its recommendations today.

Announcing Our 2018 Charity Recommendations | Animal Charity Evaluators

I'm not necessarily saying its reccomendations of top charities should be followed. In fact, I would be interested to hear any opinions for/against the top charities or the organization itself.

GiveWell has also announced its top charities today.
 
When choosing and supporting an animal charity, I never make my choice via these animal charity evaluators. There criteria is far too complex and may not be objective. Moreover, as they include international charities that I've never heard of, this would deter me from donating to them.
As I have limited funds to donate, I base my choice on the reputation and communication given by the charity. I also prefer to donate to local charities with one exception which is Sana. Donkeys are dear to my heart for personal reasons and they are also one of the most absurd and overworked animals in the world.
As an animal lover, I obviously feel sorry for any animal that is abused, tortured or is in pain, but my choice is to help dogs and donkeys plus any animal that is bred for the meat industry.

The charities that I support are the following :

Dog's Trust
Sana
The Donkey Sanctuary
L214

 
I think it makes sense to give to the charities that will be the most effective in reducing suffering and death, and so I tend to agree with the so called effective altruism movement, of which ACE is a part.

Making such judgements is incredibly hard, and I don't have much confidence in ACE to do it right, but I think their estimate is probably as good or better as yours or mine, and that may be reason enough to give to them. This year I gave both to ACE and some charities directly. I did ask some of the charities what they thought of ACE, and they gave good feedback.

I do think giving internationally makes more sense than giving locally for charities working with humans. Poorer countries have much more serious issues than richer ones, and less government and private money to address them. It's pretty clear that $$s abroad can do more good, even allowing for some possible losses due to corruption, cultural exchange, lack of knowledge etc.

Whether this logic is true for animal charities I'm less sure about though. Possibly, the opposite may be the case. It may make more sense to give to charities working in US and Europe which have very intensive cruelty and suffering for animals which is largely ignored vs poor countries that don't have well known, well developed animal charities.

I tend to give to charities working to end or reduce or improve factory farming, since that's where the greatest and most intensive suffering seems to lie. I give to the Good Food Institute also, since it's possible that vegan burgers that taste like meat may be the most effective way to end factory farming.
 
I wanted to update this to add that ACE currently has a triple match going on.

A donor has agreed to match all donations to the end of December, as stated here
Donate | Animal Charity Evaluators

Double up drive is also doing a match
DoubleUpDrive – Multiply your Impact

So what you do is you donate to ACE at the above link, and then you email the receipt you get to:
receipts@doubleupdrive.com (before 29th December).

If you do this, your donation is tripled.

ACE, Animal Charity Evaluators, has not yet said who they are giving it to, but it will likely be to the top charities I mentioned in the original post, and they may keep a portion for their own activities. (This is limited to a very small amount.)

Some of the animal charities also have double matches going on in December - if you check their websites.