Overview With Marginal Funding Week, we want to share key updates on the EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF). We'll cover what we've accomplished so far in 2024, our impact this year, recent changes, and where we're headed next - including current constraints to our impact. We think this info will be helpful for anyone considering year-end donations. Sinc…

I work for CEA, but this post isn’t intended as a fundraising post for CEA. The main beneficiaries I want to direct readers to are e.g. EA groups and EA communicators who might not have capacity for fundraising. I expect similar arguments apply to e.g. AIS, rationality and animal welfare community-building efforts but I know those spaces less well.…

Key Takeaways Optimizing your giving's effect on "EA's portfolio” implies you should fund the causes your value system thinks are most underfunded by EA's largest allocators (e.g. Open Phil and SFF). These causes aren't necessarily your value system's most preferred causes. ("Preferred" = the ones you'd allocate the plurality of EA's resources to.)…

TLDR: The shortest version of this argument is very simple: your expectations for an organization should be higher where their budget and staff size are higher. In other words, we should have different expectations for a 20-person organization with a $1 million budget than a 2-person $100,000 budget organization. While this seems pretty clear in th…

Warning: This post discusses statistics about extreme pain that may be distressing. While cluster headaches are a neglected, high-impact issue, understanding their true burden requires appreciating the intensity of suffering involved. The pain often reaches levels far beyond typical human experience, making subjective accounts a valuable datapoint …

The failure rate is not 0 The base rate of failure for startups is not 0: Of the 6000 companies Y Combinator has funded, only ~16 are public. This is the wrong reference class for FTX at a $32b valuation, but even amongst extremely valuable companies, failures are not uncommon: WeWork had a peak valuation of $47b Theranos had a peak valuation of $1…

Summary The written word dominates EA discourse but visuals have a unique power in communicating ideas that seems quite underleveraged in this community. As a designer and communicator in the space, I wanted to share some of the presentations and visualizations I’ve created over the years in hopes that they might be helpful to others. My goal isn't…

I became the CEO of EV US in January 2023. I worked alongside the EV US and UK teams, former EV UK CEO Howie Lempel, and current EV UK CEO Rob Gledhill to recover and reform Effective Ventures and improve the robustness of the EA ecosystem in the aftermath of FTX's collapse. Amidst these efforts, I and others learned or fortified lessons that I thi…

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the lives of chickens raised for food in the UK. Tomorrow, The Humane League UK (THL UK) will be heading to the High Court to challenge the legality of fast-growing breeds of chicken- Frankenchickens. At stake are the lives of one billion animals. Our small team will be demonstrating outside the…

I'd like to thank Derek Shiller from Rethink priorities for extensive discussions and looking over this post. Introduction I've been following the "animal welfare" debate this week on the EA forum, and noticed that a key crux for a lot of people was that calculations showed that animal welfare campaigns (specifically the "caged chicken corporate ca…

EA Nigeria Summit was the first EA-related conference in Nigeria, and it took place from September 6th to 7th, 2024. The event saw a higher level of interest than we (the organisers) expected. We received applications from individuals across Nigeria and the international community, especially Africans. We accepted 170 applicants for the summit, and…

Foreword Sadly, it looks like the debate week will end without many of the stronger[1] arguments for Global Health being raised, at least at the post level. I don't have time to write them all up, and in many cases they would be better written by someone with more expertise, but one issue is firmly in my comfort zone: the maths! The point I raise h…

I really loved this quick take from Lizka, especially this part: At the same time, trying to actually do anything is really hard.[4] Appreciation for doers is often undersupplied. Being in leadership positions or engaging in public discussions is a valuable service, but opens you up to a lot of (often stressful) criticism, which acts as a disincent…

For many years, I devoted myself to improving human health and wellbeing. But then I shifted to working to prevent suffering for animals. In this post, I will briefly share some considerations that pushed me to make this change. Violence The phrase ‘animal welfare’ can sound pretty calm and gentle. But when we talk about ‘animal welfare’, we are us…

In summary, there are two important reasons why I believe it's more important to direct additional resources towards animal welfare over global health: Global health and human welfare are generally improving whilst animal suffering is getting worse at a worrying (and potentially accelerating) rate. For factory farming, the default is it gets worse …

Intro Suppose you have $100M to give away. You are drawn to the many important opportunities to reduce animal suffering or address pressing issues in global health and development. Your choice about how to allocate the funds could depend on considerations like these: Moral values: How much moral weight do you assign to various non-human species? Ar…

TLDR: I’ve recently started as a “Research Fellow” at Forethought (focusing on how we should prepare for a potential period of explosive growth and related questions). I left my role on the CEA Online Team, but I still love the Forum (and the Forum/CEA/mod teams) and plan on continuing to be quite active here. I’m also staying on the moderation tea…

I recently had a conversation with a teammate that made me reflect on a possible cultural issue within the EA community. This teammate had expressed in a few meetings that they wanted to take on various new projects and expand their scope of responsibility. As their manager, I wanted to have Alliance Mentality to support them where possible. Howeve…

TLDR: Sign up here to join a six-month experiment to democratize effective giving. The experiment establishes a community who agree to allocate charitable gifts proportionally to member votes. You’ll help make EA donations more representative of the community's cause prioritization. Sign up and pledge by October 15th to participate in our first rou…

This is a link post. This WaPo piece announces the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a collaboration led by Open Philanthropy, USAID, and UNICEF. It was co-authored by Alexander Berger (Open Phil's CEO) and Samantha Power, head of USAID. Ten years ago, when residents of Flint, Mich., were exposed to toxic levels of lead in their drinking wa…

This is a link post. One of Open Philanthropy's goals for this year is to experiment with collaborating with other funders. Today, we’re excited to announce our biggest collaboration to date: the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF). Lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries is a devastating but highly neglected issue. The Global Burden of Dise…

Intro I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast is a great show. Despite the world of podcasts overflowing with content to choose from, it's reliably been a high-quality production that's been a regular part of my listening habits ever since I discovered it. It was also probably one of the first routes I become more aware of the EA community, which I suspec…

This is a link post. It's a rare privilege to lead an organisation that embodies the very ideals that shaped your life. I’ve been fortunate to have been given that opportunity for the last four years. My journey with Giving What We Can began long before I became its CEO. Like many members, I started as a curious onlooker, lurking for many years aft…

This is a link post. Summary During the last four years, our work for animals in Anima International faced several big challenges. I took on the role of Executive Director to help cement the foundations of the organization. Now that we want to build on these foundations to achieve even more impact for animals, we need different skills at the helm. …

I'm a big fan of small, underrated acts that can have outsized positive impact (both in terms EA and in life more generally). I'd like to share one such practice I've incorporated into my life this year that brings me joy and I think some others here would enjoy: redirecting money owed to me towards Givewell recommended charities. Whenever someone …

This is a link post. I wrote an article on California AI safety bill SB 1047 for The Nation and the reaction from the AI industry, investors, and the broader tech community. The story was informed by conversations with over a dozen relevant sources and comes shortly before the bill faces a floor vote in the California Assembly. I think it's useful …

Introduction I’m Zach, the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). As I step into my role, I want to explain the principles that I think make EA special and share how CEA will continue to promote them. In this post, I will: Highlight the principles that I think are core to EA, and explain why CEA will continue to promote them above and …

This is a link post. If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing to my Substack. My latest reporting went up in The Nation yesterday: It's about the tech industry's meltdown in response to SB 1047, a California bill that would be the country's first significant attempt to mandate safety measures from developers of AI models more powerful and exp…

This chart is so right. The local charity environment in Cameroon is probably helping much less people than you imagine. We ran an effectiveness contest that aligns with this research perfectly. In 2021 we created an EA group in Cameroon. We had multiple seminars covering the basics of Effective Altruism. By the end of 2022, the group got so excite…

Introduction In May 2024, Ambitious Impact (AIM) ran a program to incubate new effective giving initiatives (EGIs) in partnership with Giving What We Can. In short, EGIs focus on raising awareness and funneling public and philanthropic donations to the most cost-effective charities worldwide. In the last few years, several Effective Giving Initiati…

This is a link post. Manifund is hosting a $200k funding round for EA community projects, where the grant decisions are made by you. You can direct $100-$800 of funding towards the projects that have helped with your personal journey as an EA. Your choices then decide how $100k in matching will be allocated, via quadratic funding! Sign up here to g…

While the effective altruism movement has changed a lot over time, oneof the parts that makes me most disappointed is the steadycreep of donation matching. It's not that donation matching isobjectively very important, but the early EA movement'sprincipledrejection of a very effective fundraising strategy made it clearthat we were committed to helpi…

This is a link post. --- First published: August 9th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sLwP2D6WpLMFxjEK5/new-video-from-ali-abdaal-5-74m-yt-subscribers-why-i-m --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Our room for more funding is bigger and more urgent than ever before. Our organizational strategy will be responsive both to the total amount raised and to how many people donate, so smaller donors will have an especially high impact this year. Good Ventures recently decided to phase out funding for several areas (GV blog, EA Forum post), including…

Someone suggested I name this post "What We Owe The Community": I think it's a great title, but I didn't dare use it... Views and mistakes my own. What I believe I think owning our EA affiliation—how we are inspired by the movement and the community—is net positive for the world and our careers. If more people were more outspoken about their alignm…

TL;DR FarmKind is a new effective giving platform dedicated to tackling factory farming We’ve just launched - www.farmkind.giving There are many ways you can help us if you’re interested - details below FarmKind's aim Factory farming is one of the most neglected cause areas relative to the amount of suffering it causes. Globally, Farmed Animal Fund…

Prepared by James Fodor and Miles Tidmarsh EAGxAustralia 2023 Committee Abstract EAGx conferences are an important component of the effective altruism community, and have proven a popular method for engaging EAs and spreading EA ideas around the world. However, to date relatively little publicly available empirical evidence has been collected regar…

Summary Rebecca Kagan believes “EA needs an investigation, done externally and shared publicly, on mistakes made in the EA community's relationship with FTX.” She is far from the only person who has called for an independent investigation, but Kagan's experience and knowledge as a former board member of Effective Ventures makes her perspective part…

This is a link post. Folks in philanthropy and development definitely know that the Gates Foundation is the largest private player in that realm by far. Until recently it was likely to get even larger, as Warren Buffet had stated that the Foundation would receive the bulk of his assets when he died. A few weeks ago, Buffet announced that he had cha…

Link to tool: https://parliament.rethinkpriorities.org (1 min) Introductory Video (6 min) Basic Features Video Executive Summary This post introduces Rethink Priorities’ Moral Parliament Tool, which models ways an agent can make decisions about how to allocate goods in light of normative uncertainty. We treat normative uncertainty as uncertainty ov…

Highlights Destabilization could be the biggest setback for great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption. Polarization plays a role in nearly every causal pathway leading to destabilization of the United States, and there is no indication polarization will decrease. The United States fits the pattern of past democracies that have desc…

Summary/Introduction Aschenbrenner's ‘Situational Awareness’ (Aschenbrenner, 2024) promotes a dangerous narrative of national securitisation. This narrative is not, despite what Aschenbrenner suggests, descriptive, but rather, it is performative, constructing a particular notion of security that makes the dangerous world Aschenbrenner describes mor…

I'm often asked about how the existential risk landscape has changed in the years since I wrote The Precipice. Earlier this year, I gave a talk on exactly that, and I want to share it here. Here's a video of the talk and a full transcript. In the years since I wrote The Precipice, the question I’m asked most is how the risks have changed. It's now …

This is a link post. Introduction: The (highly interrelated) effective altruist and Rationalist communities are very small on a global scale. Therefore, in general, most intelligence, skill and expertise is outside of the community, not within it. I don’t think many people will disagree with this statement. But sometimes it's worth reminding people…

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes. Note: …

I haven't shared this post with other relevant parties – my experience has been that private discussion of this sort of thing is more paralyzing than helpful. I might change my mind in the resulting discussion, but, I prefer that discussion to be public. I think 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from its job board, and similar EA job placement serv…

This is a link post. The Giving What We Can Pledge is now the 🔸10% Pledge! We cover the why (along with our near-term plans and how you can help!) below. TL;DR: The name change will help us grow awareness of the pledge by reducing brand confusion and facilitating partnerships. We see it as an important part of reaching our goal of 10,000 pledgers b…

From Darren Margolias: I'm the Executive Director of Beast Philanthropy, the charity founded by the world's most popular YouTuber MrBeast. We recently collaborated with GiveDirectly on the video below. You can read background the project from our LinkedIn here and here (plus GiveDirectly's blog) On Thursday, July 18th I'll be recording a video AMA …

Audio is here if you prefer. Hope you like it. I got something to offer, all I ask is your time. And forgiveness for the form: a cheesy rhyme. You’re skeptical? Makes sense. But I know your type's vice. You strike me as a purveyor, of do-gooder advice. And it's pretty damn good, I don't mean to boast, This advice always fits. Well…sort of. Almost! …

May 2024 marked the last month of the Center for Effective Aid Policy. This post serves as the public post-mortem. I have strived for it to be interesting to the average forum reader, who may not know much about the cause area. For professionals in development, we have a few internal private write ups which we may be more interesting, such as an ov…