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We, on behalf of the EV US and EV UK boards, are very glad to share that [Zach Robinson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zyrobinson/) has been selected as the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).

We can personally attest to his exceptional leadership, judgement, and dedication from having worked with him at Effective Ventures US. These experiences are part of why we unanimously agreed with the hiring committee’s recommendation to offer him the position. We think Zach has the skills and the drive to lead CEA’s very important work.

We are grateful to the search committee (Max Dalton, Claire Zabel, and Michelle Hutchinson) for their thorough process in making the recommendation. They considered hundreds of potential internal and external candidates, including through dozens of blinded work tests. For further details on the search process, please see [this Forum post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bg6qxLGhsn7pQzHGX/progress-report-on-cea-s-search-for-a-new-ceo). 

As we look forward, we are excited about CEA's future with Zach at the helm, and the future of the EA community.

Zach adds: “I’m thrilled to be joining CEA! I think CEA has an impressive track record of success when it comes to helping others address the world’s most important problems, and I’m excited to build on the foundations created by Max, Ben, and the rest of CEA’s team. I’m looking forward to diving in in 2024 and look forward to sharing more updates with the EA community.”

*You can read the [original version](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R6qu7LhcLKLob7t9r/zach-robinson-will-be-cea-s-next-ceo) of this post on the EA Forum.*

Zach Robinson will be CEA’s next CEO

### The basic case for CEA
Community building is sometimes motivated by the following: suppose you spent a year telling everyone you know about EA and getting them excited. Probably you could get at least one person excited. Then this means that you will have doubled your lifetime impact, as both you and this other person will go on to do good things. That’s a pretty good ROI for one year of work!

This story is overly simplistic, but is roughly my motivation for working on (and donating to) community building: it's a leveraged way to do good in the world.

And it does seem to be the case that many people whose work seems impactful attribute some of their impact to CEA:

1. [The Open Philanthropy longtermist survey](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3vMLkWHy5m3xvLrdk/open-phil-ea-lt-survey-2020-what-helped-and-hindered-our%23Influence_Tiers__by_impact_) in 2020 identified CEA among the top tier of important influences on people’s journey towards work improving the long-term future, with about half of CEA's demonstrated value coming through events (EA Global and EAGx conferences) and half through our other programs.
2. [The 80,000 Hours user survey](https://docs.google.com/document/d/18UqC_mX1h3HfbqeWGEChjZBiSbdqLJyb1uCEikkxUXc/edit?usp%3Dsharing) in 2022 identified CEA as the EA-related resource which has influenced the most people’s career plans (in addition to 80k itself), with 64% citing the EA Forum as influential and 44% citing EAG.
3. [This selection of impact stories](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vn4StPK5j9AhZ12ucIih4SXFUCUVkdVatb34PoKtkGI/edit?usp%3Dsharing) illustrates some of the ways we’ve helped people increase their impact by providing high-quality discussion spaces to consider their ideas, values and options for and about making impact, and connecting them to advisors, experts and employers.

Our [public dashboard](https://data.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/) includes key metrics for some of our core programs. You can read more about [our strategy](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/strategy) (but it’s worth reiterating that being in an interim period pending the appointment of a new CEO means we’re more uncertain about our strategy in 2024 and beyond than we typically would be).

### Specific asks
Our financial runway currently extends until June 2024 (based on our current reserves, existing funding commitments, and budgeted spending). We have an expected 2024 funding gap of $3.6m.

We expect that Open Philanthropy’s [GCR Capacity Building program](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks-capacity-building/) will fund us at roughly similar levels in 2024 as they did in 2023, meaning that where marginal funding on top of OP goes today is likely to be fairly similar to where it would go next year.

Therefore, we expect marginal funding that we raise from other donors to most likely go to the following:

- Community Building Grants: We would be interested in funding an organizer in Boston but currently don't have the budget. (Approx cost: $110,000).
- Travel grants for EA conference attendees. Many of the people we would like to attend our conferences are financially unable to do so; giving them some money to cover travel and accommodation ($350 average for EAGx, $1,100 on average for EAG) can result in them attending. We estimate that we could spend an additional $295,000/year here before hitting diminishing returns (from people for whom the grant wasn't actually counterfactual, or whose impact we feel will be influenced less by our events).

We are raising unrestricted funds, but if one of these projects (or something else) seems substantially more cost-effective to you than the others, we would be interested to [hear that](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/contact). Also please note that these are illustrative of our current cost-effectiveness bar (as opposed to a commitment that the next dollar we receive will go to one of these things).

__You can [read the full version of this post on the EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4wNDqRPJWhoe8SnoG/cea-is-fundraising-and-funding-constrained)__, including more details about our funding picture and some illustrative assessments of the relative impact of donating to CEA rather than comparable alternatives.

__You can [donate to CEA here](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en-US/charities/centre-for-effective-altruism)__.

CEA is fundraising, and funding constrained

### Catherine Low
I took the [Giving What We Can pledge](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/) in 2015. Between 2015-2022, I’ve donated 10-15% of my income. This year is the first year where I’m not planning to donate my usual pledge amount; instead I’ve chosen to donate extra next year to make up for this. 

__2015-2022__
- Initially I focussed on Animal Charity Evaluators top charities (and to whatever charity won the [Giving Game](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en-US/events/guides/giving-games) I was running).
- Then I started thinking more like a meta micro-funder - donating to projects/people I could donate to more easily (because of my knowledge or lack of constraints) than institutional donors could
  - Helping get ideas to the “applying for funding” stage
  - Helping through financially tricky situations - e.g. tiding them over between jobs or grants 

__2023__

I began conserving my donations for potentially vulnerable initiatives I'm familiar with and really like, which might need support as a result of the drop in EA meta funding. While none of these have required funding thus far (thanks wonderful institutional donors!) I think I might see opportunities like this in 2024, and I have a couple of projects in mind that I’m ready to leap in and support.

Aside: Separately to my pledge I also “offset” my carbon emissions. I currently donate this to [Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund](https://www.founderspledge.com/funds/climate-change-fund). I feel pretty mixed about this. I’m more worried about other risks and other current issues, so it’s not a particularly “[EA thing to do](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Yix7BzSQLJ9TYaodG/ethical-offsetting-is-antithetical-to-ea)”. My motivations are “try not to be part of the problem” guilt reduction reasons plus social reasons (many of my friends and family are “flightless kiwis” and enthusiastic climate advocates, so I feel better about flying when I can say “I offset! Here’s how!”).

### Shakeel Hashim
I took the Giving What We Can pledge at the end of last year, so this was my first “proper” year of donating 10% (though I ended up donating about 10% last year too). After taking the pledge, I made a [template](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_EjNhVvGkSkYXRouoCq-ZACNGjQJymY5BE8iLsThQ1c/edit#gid=0) for deciding how to allocate my donations to cause areas. The idea was that I want to take a portfolio approach (giving some to global health, some to existential security, and some to animal welfare), and also want to consider the overall resources I “donate”, which includes my time. This led me to realise that because most of my work time recently has been spent on existential security stuff, and because I think my work time is much more valuable than the amount of money I donate, my donations should all go to global health stuff.

I’m also a big fan of encouraging new global health projects to appear, as I expect we might be able to find better projects than the current top-rated charities. That said, it’s difficult to target donations to such projects. In practice, I donate 95% to the GiveWell All Charities Fund, and 5% to the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubated Charities Fund.

## Angelina Li
I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2016, when I was in college. In terms of how much I donate: From ~2018-2021, I was earning to give at a consulting firm, and gave somewhere between 20-40% of my income every year, mostly to effective animal advocacy charities.

Last year, I joined CEA, and it looks like I barely made my 10% threshold last year (mostly based on one large donation to the [animal welfare EA Fund](https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare) in January). At the time, I think decreasing my donations was a reaction to a more cash-flush funding landscape, thinking my labour was now more valuable than my money, and wanting to save more after heading into a less lucrative career path. I regret this somewhat, looking back: I think I let my expenses ramp up too quickly and wish I had saved more to donate later. A smarter me would also have considered the benefits of preserving diverse funding options on a rainy day. Plus selfishly, having more to donate would mean that a greater chunk of my impact portfolio isn’t dependent on my day to day work performance, which I really value emotionally.

This year, I’m not sure how much I want to give — I’d like to at least hit my 10% threshold, and the funding landscape is very different than in 2022, but I still think my labour hours are more valuable than my money. For reasons similar to Shakeel, I’m interested in diversifying the cause areas I impact, and so will likely give the majority of my donations to effective animal charities, especially ones doing work on [small](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RDcoEmLJGiCGqyEYm/postdocs-and-phd-ms-positions-in-farmed-insect-welfare-for) [animals](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vq5pHzrxLgABAwkhD/shrimp-paste-might-cause-more-animal-deaths-than-any-other). But this isn’t set in stone yet, so I’m open to being pitched!

## Oscar Howie
My route into EA was hearing podcast adverts for GiveWell, thinking that sounded like a better thing to do with my money than what I was doing with it otherwise (London-centric consumerism), and deciding that the Global Health and Development Fund at EA Funds made more sense as the recipient than GiveWell for tax efficiency reasons. I set up a direct debit and didn’t think much more about it for a while.

When I did get around to thinking about the “EA” in EA Funds (prompted, I think, by [Holden on the Ezra Klein Show](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-holden-karnofsky.html)), I fell down the familiar reading rabbit hole and almost immediately applied for a job at CEA. After landing here in April 2022, a combination of status quo bias and a vague sense that existential risk wasn’t short of cash meant my GHD direct debit rolled on. Then the funding landscape changed, and in July of this year I adapted to that with a total and complete shutdown of my donations until I can figure out what is going on.

My plan is to spend some time before the year is out figuring - as best I can! basically for the first time! - where my pounds should go. I’m really glad we did this post, because I didn’t know about Shakeel’s [template](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_EjNhVvGkSkYXRouoCq-ZACNGjQJymY5BE8iLsThQ1c/edit#gid=0), and I expect I’ll use that.

### Amy Labenz
- $1k to a campaign
- $5k value-driven investment in Elicit (plan to donate any returns from the investment, though returns weren’t the primary motivation)
- $10k to LTFF
- ~$20k to sponsor someone to move to the US to study (I don’t consider this charitable giving towards my pledge but we might count some portion)

Overall I’m behind on my pledge and was hoping to make up for more donations this year. In some previous years I took a lower salary and counted that towards my pledge. Later, when I started growing my family, I opted to take more salary. At the same time, I got behind on donations (I was not prioritizing donations while EA assets were particularly high, though I did make some). I’m not sure exactly how to calculate my remaining deficit and I’d hoped to make more progress this year, which has involved a secondment to EV during crisis time, a newborn baby and my partner earning less for impact reasons. I now plan to spend more time on this next year.

### JP Addison
I’m a long-time Giving What We Can member. For the last few years, I’ve viewed the way that I should spend my altruistic budget is on projects that would be unlikely to have been funded by institutional funders for reasons unrelated to their expected value. E.g. political campaigns, which have spending limits.

This year I changed course and decided to fulfill my pledge via [salary sacrifice](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/un3fHR8azykyCoCui/passing-up-pay). It is regrettable how much money gets lost in taxes for my 10% to go from CEA to me to my donation target. Potentially 50% given some assumptions. In previous years I viewed this as worth it for the purpose of getting money to these places where the money was needed and the major foundations could not send it. However, this year, I observed worthwhile full nonprofit projects struggling to get funded. This includes a funding gap at CEA. I felt it hard to justify the overhead.

I also have some feeling of: I’m asking donors for money to fund the EA Forum. I genuinely think given the altruistic portfolio or EA spending at the moment, the Forum is a good bet. If I think that, I want to make that obvious by putting my money where my mouth is.

### Emma Richter
I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2022. I’ve donated 10-15% of my income since then, though this hasn’t on net been a large sum since I made relatively little money when I first pledged.

I try to balance my resource impact across donations and my career, so I’ve adjusted where I donate based on what I’m working on in my full-time job. One more significant shift has been my increase in donations to animal welfare organizations. I’ve been persuaded that this work might be more neglected than some other cause areas, and donating helps me offset my consumption of some animal products (mostly cheese and eggs since I’m vegetarian but not vegan).

I’ll also be transparent that I’ve donated to one global health organization regularly this year because I’ve had closer experiences with their work—and I deeply admire their transparency, communications, and approach to the people they help. They are considered highly cost-effective, so I think there’s good evidence to donate, but I also think my reasoning here includes some warm fuzzies around how they do their cost-effective work.

I’ve hit my pledge donation goal for this year so I’m not sure if I’ll donate more during giving season (seems likely, but not sure how much). I might try to fundraise from friends and family for a charity I’ve donated to this year and introduce some kernels of effective giving ideas to people that way. I tend to donate to some smaller, local nonprofits during giving season as well.

### Eli Nathan
I took the Giving What We Can pledge back in 2016 and have been donating 10% since I started my first full-time job in 2019.

When EA was less funding constrained (i.e. a little over a year ago) I put large chunks of my donations towards political candidates and EA-relevant lobbying groups, as these groups have spending limits and can’t easily have their funding gaps filled by large donors. With EA being more funding constrained it seems like my donations might have more impact if directed on non-political projects, so I’m planning to shift in that direction (though I don’t have strong confidence in this).

This year I’m planning to put most of my donations towards the Long Term Future Fund, though I’ve already donated some money to some EA political candidates, and I might donate a bit to Labour for the Long Term.

### Lizka Vaintrob
- I donated to the [Donation Election Fund](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/fundraisers/ea-forum-donation-election-fund-2023) — I endorse [what I said about it here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hAzhyikPnLnMXweXG/participate-in-the-donation-election-and-the-first-weekly#Why_donate_to_the_Donation_Election_Fund___And_why_not_donate__) (note that I’m involved with this project). 
- I also donated to a political campaign. I was quite unsure about it, but I tried comparing the value of donating to the campaign vs. the value of donating to an EA Funds fund, and I ended up going for the campaign in part because I have an unusual ability to donate to political campaigns as a U.S. citizen (vs. foundations or non-citizens). 
- In assorted cases, I was supposed to get compensated for something like a one-off task for an organization that I’d happily donate to and just didn’t request the compensation. (I think this can cause complicated dynamics for reasons discussed [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rPj6Fh4ZTEpRah3uf/problems-with-free-services-for-ea-projects) and [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/un3fHR8azykyCoCui/passing-up-pay), but I also think the overhead on $500 payments can be quite high.) 

### Ben West
*(Note: I decided on some of these contributions last year, but they didn’t actually happen until the 2023 tax year, so I’m including them here.)*

- I choose a lower salary than CEA's formula would state that I should have (I semi-arbitrarily chose the smallest amount which makes me exempt from overtime pay in California); if you consider that a donation, it would be 49% of my donations this year
- 3% of my donations went to an entity which has not yet received 501(c)(3) status (so, like the previous one, does not count as a "donation" for tax purposes)
- 32% went to the Center on Long-term Risk. I think my motivation is slightly different from many CLR staff, but broadly I am worried that a future with aligned AI might not be that great, and would like to have more research on how to make it so. I’m also personally glad they’ve started doing [more intro/field building stuff](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MymQqnT8gZ2yjmeYX/beginner-s-guide-to-reducing-s-risks-link-post).
- 16% went to Animal Charity Evaluators. I continue to think that their recommended charities are a good guess as to the most effective places to donate in animal advocacy, and a dollar donated to ACE [seems to](https://animalcharityevaluators.org/about/impact/giving-metrics/) generate >$1 towards these charities. I’m also personally glad about their [increased interest](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CZJ93Y7hinjvqt87j/introducing-new-leadership-in-animal-charity-evaluators) in engaging with EA.

*Everyone who’s contributed here is a member of [staff at CEA](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team), but not everyone who’s a member of staff at CEA has contributed here, because trade-offs are a thing! Your regular reminder that CEA is an [Effective Ventures](https://ev.org/) project.*

Here’s where CEA staff are donating in 2023

It’s been a turbulent few months, but amidst [losing](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/99tnp7Jpts7Gssq7J/transitioning-to-an-advisory-role) an Executive Director, [gaining](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3wBCKM3D2dXkXnpWY/announcing-cea-s-interim-managing-director) an Interim Managing Director, and [searching](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GcvEdYJADH3vMqk3F/suggest-candidates-for-cea-s-next-executive-director) for a CEO, CEA has done lots of cool stuff so far in 2023.

__The headline numbers__

- 4,336 conference attendees (2,695 EA Global, 1,641 EAGx)
- 133,041 hours of engagement on the Forum, including 60,507 hours of engagement with non-Community posts (60% of total engagement on posts)
- 26 university groups and 33 organizers in UGAP
- 622 participants in Virtual Programs

There’s much more, including historical data and a wider range of metrics, in our new and improved [public dashboard](https://data.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/).

And you can read the [full update](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xSvTArtzxBcnrD6tk/cea-still-doing-cea-things) on the EA Forum.

Midyear update

Ben West has been appointed as Interim Managing Director of CEA.

Ben writes:

This is a cruxy time for EA and I am honored to lead CEA as we try to navigate it.

My position doesn't have a firm end date but will last until a new Executive Director of CEA starts. Our internal CEA prediction market currently estimates that this will be between 6 months and a year from now (depending on the framing).

I attended my first EA conference in 2014. I remember discussing animal welfare with people who said things like “The modern farmed animal welfare movement has existed for 40 years and hasn’t accomplished much. The March for the Animals was arguably the most popular animal rights demonstration in history, and it was in 1990. The movement for vegetarianism might be dying.”

Since then, meat alternatives have entered the mainstream, with Beyond and Impossible products being available at almost every chain restaurant. Chicken Watch lists over 3,000 corporate commitments for chicken welfare, and Metaculus currently predicts a 61% chance that the EU will ban all types of caged housing for egg laying hens in the next 18 months.

What’s more remarkable is that the random 23-year-olds in my small EA group directly contributed to this. There were only ~10 core members, but some of them have gone on to:

- Work directly on corporate welfare campaigns at Mercy for Animals
- Work on meat alternatives at Impossible and Rethink Priorities
- Work for funders like OpenPhil and ACE

EA seems to have gathered an impressive set of talented, mostly young people who genuinely want to make the world a better place, and provided an alternative to traditional templates of doing good. The people in my EA group weren’t “thinking globally and acting locally” — they were engaging with global problems as though they could actually solve them, and, remarkably, they seem to be doing so.

I think CEA should have an executive director who can commit to being in the position for 4+ years, and I don’t currently feel like I could make that commitment. But I’m excited about the EA community, and honored to help support CEA until we can find that long-term ED.

You can read Ben's [full post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3wBCKM3D2dXkXnpWY/announcing-cea-s-interim-managing-director) on the EA Forum.

Ben West appointed as Interim Managing Director

Max Dalton has resigned from his role as CEA’s Executive Director, and will be transitioning to an advisory role.

Max writes:

Basically, my mental health has been bad for the last 3 months. Starting in November, my role changed from one that I love - building a team and a product, building close working relationships with people, executing - to one that I find really stressful: dealing with media attention, stakeholders, and lawyers at long unpredictable hours and wrestling with strategic uncertainty.* I think I’m also not so good at the latter sort of work, relative to the former.

I've been getting lots of advice, therapy, and support, but recently I've been close to a crisis – struggling to get out of bed, feeling terror at the idea of sitting at my desk. I really wish that I were strong enough to keep doing this job, especially right now – I care so much about CEA’s work to help more people tackle the important problems we face, and I care deeply about the team we’ve built. 

But I’m just not able to keep going in my current role, and I don't think that pretending to be stronger or struggling on will be good for CEA or for me, because I’m not able to perform as well as I would like and there’s a risk that I’ll burn out with no handover. So I think it’s best to move into an advisory role and allow someone else to direct CEA.

The boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US, which govern CEA, will appoint an interim Executive Director soon. Once they’re appointed I plan to continue advising and working with them and the CEA team to ensure a smooth transition and help find a new permanent ED. I hope that moving from an executive to advisory role will help alleviate some of the pressure and allow me to contribute more productively to our shared work going forward.

For a while now I've been trying to build up the leadership team as the body running CEA, with me as one member. I think that the leadership team is very strong: people disagree with each other directly but with care, have complementary strengths, and show strong leadership for their own programs. I think that they will be able to do a great job leading CEA together with the interim ED and the new permanent ED.

Of course, FTX and subsequent events have highlighted some important issues in EA. I’ve been working with the team to reflect on how this might impact our work and necessitate changes, and I hope that they’ll be able to share more on these conversations and plans in the future. Although I’m very sad not to be able to see through that work in my current role with CEA, I think that the work we’ve done so far will set the new leadership team up well. I also plan to continue to reflect, will discuss my thinking with new leadership, and may publish some of my personal reflections.

Despite the setbacks of these last few months, I'm very proud of what we've achieved together over the last four years. Compared to 2019, the number of new connections we’re making at events is 5x higher, and people are spending 10x time engaging with the Forum (which also has a lot more interesting content). Overall, I think that we’ve helped hundreds of people to reflect on how they can best contribute to making the world a better place, and begin to work on these critical problems.

I’m also incredibly grateful to have been a part of this team: CEA staff are incredibly talented, caring, and dedicated. I’ve loved to be a part of a culture where staff are valued and empowered to do things.

I look forward to seeing the impact which they continue to have over the coming months and years under new leadership.

*This has been true for many people, especially EV board members and some staff who have jumped in to help. I’ve got a lot of admiration and gratitude for the work they’ve done, and I regret that I don’t have their stamina on this particular type of work right now.

Max Dalton transitioning to an advisory role

In the first two weeks of January, we had the first EA conferences to take place in Latin America and India: EAGxLatAm in Mexico City and EAGxIndia in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Lots of EAGx events happen every year, and we don’t usually post about each one. But these events are particularly special as two of the largest EA conferences to take place in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) and the first ever in each region.

EAGxLatAm was organised by community builders from the [Spanish-speaking EA community](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XYdLTKZLQwTr337zM/the-spanish-speaking-effective-altruism-community-is-awesome) with support from CEA. Over 200 people attended, around one-third of them from Mexico and 5% or more from the US, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Spain.

EAGxIndia was organised by community builders based in India with support from CEA. 163 people attended: ~70% of attendees came from within India, ~9% from the UK and ~9% from the US.

We were already excited about supporting more events outside of EA hubs, especially in LMICs. These events make us even more excited that such events can produce a lot of value, and we’re looking forward to sharing more about our work supporting EA communities in LMICs.

You can read more about how these events went in our [EA Forum post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JAKmTnrJWP5fGbaGk/celebrating-eagxlatam-and-eagxindia).

EAGLatAm group photo

Our first conferences in Latin America and India

CEA and the EA community have both grown and changed a lot in the year since our last org-wide [update](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LoSojczPKA5kMchFA/cea-grew-a-lot-in-the-past-year). We (the CEA Executive Office team) have written this post to update the community on the work CEA has done in 2022.

This post is mostly focused on the progress of our core work in 2022, not on reflections on anything related to FTX's collapse (though we touch on these issues in the final sections of the full post).

*This is a summary of our review published on the EA Forum. You can read the full post [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DajpFcaMrHv4fPLTy/cea-s-work-in-2022).*

# 2022 in summary
2022 was a year of continued growth for CEA and our programs.
## What went well?
### Growth of our key public-facing programs
Many of our programs scaled up very rapidly, while maintaining (in our opinion) roughly constant quality.

Some examples of this:
- __Events__: The number of connections made at our events grew by around 5x this year, which should help many more people find a way to contribute to important problems.
- __Online__: Engagement on the EA Forum grew by around 2.9x, helping the spread of important new ideas and richness of discussion.
- __Groups__: 208 organizers went through our University Groups Accelerator Program (10x growth for a new program starting from a low base), receiving 8 weeks of mentorship designed to accelerate EA journeys for organizers and their groups.
![dashboard trio](//images.ctfassets.net/es8pp29e1wp8/1qWTNYZ46Pn1n6KglbuOl7/c6e5339e338cd27692f24a26dc21e9cb/dashboard_trio.png)

Our top-of-funnel metrics (e.g. for EA.org and Virtual Programs) were more steady, partly (but not entirely) because we focused less on growing them (and more on the other programs and on quality improvements).

You can see a public dashboard with some of our key metrics [here](https://data.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/).
### Expanding community health and communications work
The community health and special projects team has made some extremely strong hires who have taken on important new strands of work. While we continue our work on [interpersonal harm](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NbkxLDECvdGuB95gW/the-community-health-team-s-work-on-interpersonal-harm-in), the [team’s mandate is now much broader than this](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/community-health), aiming to address important (and potentially trajectory-changing) issues in EA that are receiving insufficient attention.

We helped with media and communications work throughout the year, including spearheading an update to [EffectiveAltruism.org](http://effectivealtruism.org/), with a new intro essay which we think is a much better representation of EA. In September we [hired](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g9gj6AtesiTMwNETi/some-updates-in-ea-communications) a head of communications to lead this work, with a focus on communicating EA ideas and related work to the outside world (rather than on CEA’s brand).
### Team
The CEA team has roughly doubled in size, while maintaining high retention and morale. People Operations have been focused on helping the team to grow in a healthy way: assisting in hiring rounds and improving onboarding (which now gets very positive feedback). We’ve added many people with crucial new skills (e.g. in product, communications, design), or who add to our existing strengths (e.g. in engineering and event production).

I think that our leadership team has developed especially well over the course of the year, and we’ve begun to train up a strong set of new(er) managers.
## What went badly?
As discussed in the conclusion of the full post, we're still reflecting on the FTX collapse, and what (if anything) we should change based on that. So for now, this focuses on non-FTX-related mistakes.

__We were too slow to get started on communications__
- We were too deferential to other organizations here, and this meant that we started seriously leading and hiring for communications work for EA later than we otherwise would have. 
- This lost us vital time, and probably set discussion about EA on a worse trajectory than if we had begun preparing when we initially wanted to.
__Cost control__
- In particular, we could have reduced EAG spending without much reduction in impact if we had focused more on contract negotiation early in the year. (Though we had a smaller and newer team at the time, so we’re not sure whether focusing heavily on this would have sacrificed our focus on growing EAG.)
- Overall, this still meant that we came in at our “expansion” budget – but we could and should have come in lower than this.
__Product failures__
- We allowed the EA Forum homepage to be “too meta” for too long in the middle of the year, which promoted lower-quality posts and community drama rather than interesting and productive discussion about how to improve the world. (We addressed the visibility issue by changing the frontpage algorithm, though there isn’t a clear sign that this affected total engagement time with these posts.)
- Our attempts in late 2021 and early 2022 to support top uni groups didn’t pay off as we hoped, and we passed on this strand of work to Open Philanthropy in early 2022.
- Although these were failures, and we should have changed more quickly, we’re still pleased that we changed our plans within a few months in both cases (and in similar less important cases).
(This isn't an exhaustive list, but covers some of the high-level issues.)

# Closing thoughts
In an effort to make CEA’s work more legible to the community, we’ve created a [dashboard](https://data.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/) of key metrics from some of our programs. In the spirit of [our values](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team-values#perpetual-beta), we are publishing this prototype now rather than waiting until we have a perfect product. We’ll monitor community feedback to decide whether to continue, drop, or improve this dashboard, so if you have feedback on what you’d like to see next, we’d welcome comments either on this post or via our anonymous [feedback form](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3jrkgEshwxJGzSrJi/please-give-cea-anonymous-feedback)!

We think that this year was, in many ways, very successful for EA and for CEA. However, the events of the last month or so have cast a pall over some of those achievements. We’re actively reflecting on what this means for CEA and for EA, and making longer-term plans for CEA. We plan to share more of our reflections and plans in due course.

In some ways this is an odd time to post an annual review. But, while we’re reflecting on what we should do differently, we think it’s important to stay committed to our mission, and celebrate the growth we’ve seen in our core programs this year. We’re aware that only with a combination of reflection and hard work can we help the community to have the impact that we hope it can have.

*This is a summary of our review published on the EA Forum. You can read the full post [here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DajpFcaMrHv4fPLTy/cea-s-work-in-2022).*

eag ldn 1

CEA's work in 2022

Effective altruism requires integrity. It has always been a movement committed to tackling the world’s problems through reason, research, evidence and truth. Effective altruism is not about a single individual.

If Sam Bankman-Fried, and other FTX executives, were involved in lying to, or defrauding, customers then they were not acting in accordance with the principles of effective altruism. The alleged activity could not be further from our values as an organisation and has no place within our community.

We feel deepest sympathy for everyone affected by this, including FTX’s customers. Our staff are saddened and angry at the harm that has been done.

— Max, on behalf of the Centre for Effective Altruism

Statement on recent events

Max previously worked at CEA and left in 2023.”

DSC03690 -Max - 2880

Max Dalton

[from Max] I am writing to share that CEA’s Managing Director & Head of Groups Joan Gass will be leaving CEA this month to co-found a field-building organization that will help people pursue technology-related policy careers in Washington, DC. 

I feel bittersweet about this news. I’m sad to be losing the advice, thought-partnership, and energy that Joan brought to CEA over the last three years, but I’m thrilled that she will be doing critically important work in the policy sector.

One of the key signs of success for a manager is the ability to hire and support excellent people to carry forward work. I’m excited about the strong leaders, [Rob Gledhill](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/rob-gledhill), [Jesse Rothman](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/jesse-rothman), and [Jessica McCurdy](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/jessica-mccurdy) who will be carrying forward Joan’s work at CEA: Rob has increased satisfaction from a 4.7 to 6.1 (on a 7 point scale) for participants on the [City & National groups program](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/how-to-join-the-program), and helped to hire many excellent local organisers in key locations. Jesse and Jessica have received excellent feedback (>9/10) for the [University Groups Accelerator Program](https://centreforeffectivealtruism.notion.site/centreforeffectivealtruism/University-Group-Accelerator-Program-6df8c8fccf8b4ffbb6488d9dfa275282), and helped to seed over 30 groups (with many more planned later in the year). [Catherine Low](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/catherine-low) and [Brian Tan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianctan) have also played a critical role helping provide broad support and access to resources for [250+ university, city, national, workplace, and identity groups.](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/community) 

This transition embodies one of our values at CEA - an alliance mentality. We believe that the change we want to see in the world will come through a coalition, not a single organization. As a result, we support our staff to find the best way for them to contribute – even if that role is outside of CEA. I think Joan is helping set up a very important project, and I’m grateful for the work she did at CEA. We all wish Joan the best in her new role. 

_A short note from Joan:_

I'm incredibly grateful for the growth and learning opportunities I've had at CEA. It's been unparalleled in my career to date - both in terms of personal development and impact. It’s been gratifying to see the Groups team explore several areas and double down on high value programs that compliment other CEA programs, showcase skills on the team and build on positive feedback from group leaders. I believe the Groups team has strong leadership from [Rob Gledhill](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/rob-gledhill), [Jesse Rothman](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/jesse-rothman), and [Jessica McCurdy](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/jessica-mccurdy) with the support of [Catherine Low](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/catherine-low) and [Brian Tan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianctan). I’m particularly grateful for Max Dalton’s thought-partnership over the years, including during this transition, and his alliance mentality when this opportunity arose. I look forward to remaining involved as an active advisor and to seeing CEA continue to grow! 
