To continue our commitment to transparency with our supporters, we are pledging to set a fundraising cap for this year beyond which we will no longer accept donations to ACE. For 2019, our fundraising cap for unrestricted donations to ACE will be $1.5 million. As in previous years, our goal is to meet this amount early enough in the year to permit us to focus entirely on fundraising for our recommended charities and Effective Animal Advocacy Fund during the giving season. The sooner we meet our own needs, the sooner we can focus exclusively on helping others.
This year’s fundraising cap is 20% higher than our 2018 cap and includes the amount that we think we could raise and spend efficiently. Here are some of the additions that we’ve made to our 2019 budget:
New Staff Members
Building the management capacity of our research team
As our research team has grown, we’ve identified the need to grow its management capacity. To that end, we’ve already added one part-time research position with management responsibilities and plan to hire one additional full-time Senior Researcher with management capacity before the end of 2019.
Effective Animal Advocacy Fund Program Officer1
Due to the overwhelming support we received while launching our first round of grants through the Effective Animal Advocacy Fund, we identified the need for a Program Officer to manage the Fund going forward. This position will focus on promoting the Fund to potential grantees, managing the administrative aspects of the Fund, improving ACE’s capacity to evaluate and identify high-impact granting opportunities, and determine high-impact future strategic directions for the Fund.
Field Research Associate
Through each of the five years that ACE has conducted charity evaluations and intervention research, we have strived to continually improve and refine our process. This year, we’re adding to our capacity to verify and more deeply investigate empirical information that we consider in our research. We hope that this additional position will improve ACE’s decision making by allowing us to rely less on theory and value judgement.
Philanthropy Officer
Because of the role that ACE plays in the animal advocacy movement, we are in a uniquely advantageous position to inspire new support for high-impact animal charities. Our philanthropy department has an outstanding track record of influencing gifts towards effective animal charities, and we wish to add a second position to this department to further improve our ability to attract new support to our cause.
Managing Director
ACE’s team has grown considerably over the last several years, and we place a high value on management best practices. In order to sustainably support our team’s growing people- and project-management needs, we’ve hired a Managing Director. This new position will allow us to further professionalize our internal operations while freeing up our Executive Director to focus more energy on strategic planning and connecting with ACE’s broader community.
Internship Program
Over the last couple of years, our internship program has transitioned from an unpaid program to a needs-based stipend program. In order to better achieve our goal of making this program accessible to candidates of all backgrounds, we would like to formalize a standard stipend offered to all internship program participants without requiring negotiation.
Contractors
Copy Editor
Each year, charity evaluation season is our busiest period. To partially alleviate the high workload placed on our staff during that time, we are planning to hire a part-time Copy Editor as a contractor to assist with preparing the large amount of written material that we produce for publication.
Organizational Development Consultant
In order to ensure that ACE’s internal processes are professionalized to support our growing team, we’ve hired an Organizational Development Consultant. We have been working together to identify areas for improvement and develop solutions to help ACE meet our goal of running our organization as effectively as possible. We’ve completed the discovery phase of this consultancy and will continue with the implementation of recommendations in collaboration with our Managing Director.
Operations
Developing and retaining talent
In order to invest in further developing our team’s management skills, we have increased the professional development budgets for our staff members with management responsibilities. We are also continuing our commitment to increase staff salaries in order to provide more sustainable living wages and hence attract and retain high-performing team members.
Ensuring legal compliance
We are providing our full international staff with legally-compliant and custom training on identifying and navigating harassment issues in the workplace. Additionally, we are working with legal consultants to ensure that our policies are legally compliant in every country in which we operate.
Improving project management infrastructure
As a part of our efforts to streamline our workflow, we are planning to research and implement a standard project management software across all of ACE’s departments. We hope that this new platform will allow us to improve our coordination and internal communication.
Communications
Attending events and public speaking
We have found conference and event attendance to be an impactful way to make progress towards many of our goals: better understanding the needs of the animal advocacy movement and how we can best support it, communicating our research findings, attracting new donors to the movement, identifying and attracting top talent to ACE and to the movement, and informing organizations about the tools and grants that we offer. To that end, we’ve made an effort to attend and present more frequently at key events. So far this year, ACE has attended or presented at nine events and we will participate in at least five more before the end of 2019.
It is the generosity of our supporters that makes ACE’s work possible. We hope that you appreciate what we have accomplished so far this year, and that you are inspired by our plans for growth that will increase our capacity to impact the animal advocacy movement. By helping us meet our ambitious ACE fundraising cap, you will allow us to shift our focus to supporting our recommended charities and our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund during this important giving season. Please consider making a gift today so that we can achieve even more for animals in 2020!
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