Best Charities to Help Animals in 2022 and 2023

If you care about animals and want to reduce their suffering, but don’t know exactly how, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) may be able to help. This California-based nonprofit publishes its annual guide to recommended animal charities and just released this year’s list. (Disclosure: ACE funded some of Future Perfect’s work in 2020 and 2021.)

Most of the leading charities focus on improving conditions on factory farms. Death isn’t the only thing that happens there. About 10 billion land animals are killed each year in the United States by factory farming. It is the suffering that animals must endure while they are alive. Hens, calves and pigs are often confined in such tight spaces that they can hardly move, and the conditions are so harsh that “ag-gag” laws exist to hide their cruelty from the public. increase.

When you hear about some of these conditions, such as the fact that chickens are forced to lay eggs at a very fast rate and sometimes their intestines partially collapse under strain, you may want to stop them. , it can be difficult to know which charities are actually putting our money to good use.

ACE researches and promotes the most effective and effective ways to help animals. group As my colleague Kelsey Piper previously explained, we use three main criteria when deciding whether to recommend an organization.

• Charities must be “likely to provide the greatest benefit to animals.” In other words, they are doing high-impact activities and have the evidence to back them up.
• Charities must “proactively evaluate and improve their programs.” They always try to find the most effective ways to advocate for animals (which may change over time) and adjust their programs accordingly.
• Charities need to “demonstrate a need for more funding.” In reality, it takes more cash on hand to reach everyone you know how to reach (this is not true for all charities).

With this in mind, ACE has selected the top four charities for 2022.

1) good food research institute: The organization works to make alternative proteins (think plant-based burgers and cell-cultured meats) competitive with traditional proteins such as beef, potentially helping reduce livestock consumption. There is a nature. We are committed to scientific research, industry partnerships, and government advocacy to increase the chances of alternative proteins becoming mainstream.

Charity evaluator Giving Green recommends the organization as one of the best climate charities for 2022. If you want to donate to help the climate as well as help animals, make a two-for-one deal.

2) fauna: This US-based nonprofit is a bit meta in its approach to animal advocacy. It conducts and publishes independent research, primarily related to livestock, to make other animal advocates more impactful and evidence-based.

For example, we examine data from social psychology on how to influence public opinion about animals in ways that actually lead to behavioral change. Noting that advocacy research is a neglected intervention, ACE notes, “Faunalytics’ program explores effective advocacy strategies, problem areas, and tactics, and draws on a curated database of academic research summaries to advocates.” By donating, we support the animal advocacy movement.”

3) Humanitarian League: Founded in 2005, the organization operates in the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Japan. We have a successful campaign to encourage businesses to adopt higher animal welfare standards. We have worked internationally to end the use of battery cages and improve the environment for chickens raised for meat. We also do grassroots legislative advocacy. Importantly, the Humane League has an evidence-based outlook, collecting and using data to guide its approach and test new ways to improve its programs.

Four) wildlife initiative: As my colleague Dylan Matthews has documented, this group does something unique. We research and advocate ways to help wildlife. Rather than focusing on the welfare of animals on factory farms, it focuses on the welfare of free-range animals, from birds to raccoons to insects. It studies questions such as: Which animals are subjective? What is their quality of life in the wild? How can we support them safely and sustainably?

ACE also named some standout charities — those that didn’t make the top four but are doing good work — xiaobuVEGAN, a Chinese organization that aims to reduce the suffering of captive animals and increase the availability of animal-free products in China, and the Federation of Indian Animal Welfare Organizations, which are pursuing similar goals in India. Mark Gunther As explained on Vox, it’s nice to see non-US-based groups highlighted. The majority of captive animals are located outside the US and EU.

If you donate to one of the charities listed above, you can be reasonably confident that the money will be used effectively to minimize animal suffering. You can donate to the Charity Fund and let ACE distribute that money based on what their research suggests is most effective at the time.

Is it irrelevant to worry about animals when so many humans are suffering?

Americans are increasingly concerned with animal welfare. The incredibly rapid acceptance of plant-based meat products such as Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat is partly due to the fact that they can and should cause far less animal suffering. This is due to the heightened awareness of

A 2015 Gallup poll found that 62% of Americans believe animals deserve some form of legal protection. Another, 32% (nearly one-third), said they believed animals should be given the same rights as humans, and expressed even stronger animal protection positions. In 2008, only 25% expressed that opinion.

It seems that more and more Americans see animals as part of their moral circle.

But some people respond to this with “What’s wrong?” What about pressing human problems like poverty? Underlying this objection is the general sense that compassion cannot be ‘wasted’ on animal suffering.

But as Ezra Klein writes, research by Yon Soo Park at Harvard and Benjamin Valentino at Dartmouth shows that concern for human suffering and concern for animal suffering are not zero-sum.

Half of the study used data from general social surveys to see whether people who support animal rights were more likely to support various human rights, and whether abstract compassion was zero-sum. They then compared how strong animal-treatment laws in individual states are to how strong human-protection laws are, testing whether political activism is zero-sum. Did.

In both cases, the answer is that compassion seems to breed compassion. Those who strongly supported government support for the sick “he were more than 80% more likely to support animal rights than those who strongly opposed animal rights,” the authors wrote. This finding held even after adjusting for factors such as political ideology. Advocacy for animal rights was also correlated with support for LGBT people, racial and ethnic minorities, unauthorized immigrants, and low-income people, but to a lesser extent. .

Similarly, the states that are most committed to protecting animal rights are also the most committed to protecting and promoting human rights. States with strong laws protecting LGBT residents, strong protections against hate crimes, and comprehensive policies against illegal immigration were much more likely to have strong protections for animals.

The question of why these correlations exist is debatable, but the bottom line is that we would rather our society take action against animal suffering. .

Update, Nov 29, 2022: This article was originally published in 2019 and has been updated for 2022.