Announcing the first distribution from ACE’s Greatest Need Fund

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ACE’s new Greatest Need Fund launched on December 1, 2025. Your generosity powered our first distribution of $357,254 this month! We look forward to sharing the impact.

About the Greatest Need Fund

The Greatest Need Fund is a multi-purpose fund that serves the dynamic needs of animals in a shifting philanthropic landscape. It disburses funds across the Recommended Charity Fund, Movement Grants, and our own operating costs (up to a maximum of 10% of each distribution).

As opportunities and challenges evolve across the animal advocacy movement, this fund lets ACE pivot quickly, ensuring your support always flows where it does the most good.

Why share this information?

We built this fund on transparency. Transparency helps donors give with confidence by making clear. exactly how our decisions are made, the reasoning behind them, and how our methodology evolves with each distribution.

Read on to learn how we made this decision and where your donations are making the most impact for animals.

The decision

Our decision committee — the Movement Grants Manager, Charity Evaluations Manager, Development Director, and Executive Director — held its first meeting in May 2026.

We first determined ACE’s allocation (up to 10% of the fund balance), then split the remaining balance between the Recommended Charity Fund and our Movement Grants program.

ACE (Operations)

• $3,573: 1% of the fund balance
• This allocation supports a specific sponsorship opportunity that we believe will drive more donations to the Greatest Need Fund.
• Learn more about ACE.

Movement Grants

• $110,000: 31% of the fund balance
• This allocation supports four additional grants that met our bar for funding, but that we otherwise would not have funded in the current round.
• Learn about our Movement Grants program and our latest grant recipients.

Recommended Charity Fund

• $243,681: 68% of the fund balance
• Since our Recommended Charities still have significant room for more funding in 2026, we directed the remaining balance to the Recommended Charity Fund.
• Learn about our Recommended Charity Fund and our latest distribution.

Our reasoning

We weighed five criteria when deciding how to disburse the fund:

1. Marginal cost-effectiveness
2. Room for more funding
3. Counterfactual impact
4. Organizational health
5. Pipeline considerations

Marginal cost-effectiveness was the primary criterion. We asked: Based on the best available information, would funds do more good through the Recommended Charity Fund or Movement Grants?

Pipeline considerations for the latest Movement Grants Round were particularly important for this first distribution decision. This is because this Round’s timing overlapped with our Greatest Need Fund decision, so we had unusually current information about who would or would not normally be awarded a grant. In comparison, our last distribution from the Recommended Charity Fund was several months ago, in February, so our information about the plans and room for more funding of our Recommended Charities was less current. In future distribution decisions, this relative information asymmetry might be reversed.

For ACE’s operational allocation, we chose a specific purpose rather than general, unrestricted funds, as this shows donors exactly where their money goes. In future distributions, ACE may take 0%, or up to 10% when it genuinely supports our capacity to deliver better programming for animals.

Eleanor McAree, Movement Grants Manager, “This round, the amount raised for Movement Grants would not have been enough to support four strong applicants on our list. An additional $110,000 from the Greatest Need Fund made those grants possible, supporting organizations we think can do excellent work for animals.”

Donate to the Greatest Need Fund

Uncertainties

We have a number of uncertainties about our decision methodology, particularly as this was the first distribution from the Greatest Need Fund, which may be updated by the evolution of the fund over time.

Alongside differences in how current our funding information was across programs during this distribution cycle, we think it will always be difficult to decide a specific allocation to ACE, since we currently lack good estimates about our own room for more funding. Both for the Greatest Need Fund and more broadly, we are continuing to better understand how much more money our growing team can absorb without leading to diminishing returns for animals.

We lack data on how these Movement Grant recipients will perform relative to their stated goals, or how they compare to grantees funded without Greatest Need Fund support. We are also moderately uncertain whether the Recommended Charity Fund vs. Movement Grants split is the right framework. Regular quarterly disbursements and ongoing monitoring will help sharpen our understanding.

Future distributions

We plan to make distribution decisions quarterly, beginning with the quarter running from April through June 2026, updating our methodology as the fund evolves.

Next steps:

• Our next quarterly distribution will happen mid-August to early September.
• We plan to schedule future quarterly distributions around six weeks after the close of a given fiscal quarter.
• We will incorporate more robust ACE revenue forecasting to better understand our own room for more funding.
• For the Movement Grants vs. Recommended Charity Fund split, we will reassess each quarter as more current information becomes available.
• Incorporate your feedback. Share your thoughts on this post and our decision-making process with development@animalcharityevaluators.org!

Donate to the Greatest Need Fund

Thank you to everyone who donated to the Greatest Need Fund since its December launch. Your gift is going where it does the most good for animals. If you haven’t yet donated, we hope this inspires you! Your action today can help reduce animal suffering tomorrow.

About Emma Cameron

Emma joined ACE in September 2025. She is a lifelong supporter of animals with a focus on effective advocacy since moving to Wisconsin in 2015. Emma loves walks with her rescue dog, Sophie, and getting outside in every season. In her free time, she directs a trail running business.

ACE is dedicated to creating a world where all animals can thrive, regardless of their species. We take the guesswork out of supporting animal advocacy by directing funds toward the most impactful charities and programs, based on evidence and research.