Latest posts from the Centre for Effective Altruism

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Former staff: Sam worked as a developer on the EA Funds team. Until the end of 2020, he was CEA's Head of Tech. Before that, he worked in policy and communications roles for several high-profile Australian politicians, and was part of the team that won the 'unwinnable' 2014 South Australian state election. He studied Politics and History at the University of Adelaide, and has nearly a decade of experience as a web developer.

[sam@centreforeffectivealtruism.org](mailto:sam@centreforeffectivealtruism.org)

DSC03906 -Sam - 2880

Sam Deere

We recently published an [EA Forum post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9nHZZ83oWaNzaMi3F/effective-altruism-funds-project-updates) to summarize what [EA Funds](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/about) is and how it is organized, and to share a set of recent updates on the project's grantmaking, public data, and plans for 2020.

EA Funds: project updates (December 2019)

(See [this page](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/lotteries) for up-to-date information on any lotteries we are currently running.)

In advance of this year’s giving season, EA Funds will once again run a donor lottery.

Donor lotteries provide donors with a chance to guide a large amount of money to projects they believe will do the most good.

There will be two open lotteries, one with a block size of $100,000 and one with a block size of $500,000. Carl Shulman will provide backstop funding for the lotteries from his discretionary funds held at the Centre for Effective Altruism.

If you’d like to read more about the process, please have a look at the [EA Funds Donor Lotteries page](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/lotteries). The TL;DR is:

- You donate into one of the open lotteries
- Your odds of winning are proportional to the size of your donation relative to the lottery block size
- A winner is chosen at random
- The winner may recommend grants to charitable organisations or other projects aimed at improving the world (subject to certain limitations), up to the value of the lottery block size

Key dates (both lotteries):

- __Open date:__ Monday, 2 December 2019
- __Close date:__ Friday, 17 January 2020 *(date by which all entries must have been made through the EA Funds website)*
- __Lock date:__ Friday, 24 January 2020 *(date by which EA Funds must have confirmed receipt of money for entires to be valid)*
- __Draw date:__ Friday, 31 January 2020

*All dates are at 8pm UTC*

To enter the lottery, make a donation via the EA Funds Donor Lottery page for the block size of your choice:

[Enter the Donor Lottery](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/lotteries)

You can donate directly through the EA Funds interface. Donations are tax deductible in the United States and the United Kingdom (donors in the Netherlands can also make tax-deductible donations in £GBP by choosing the ‘UK’ option on the payment page). 

If you’d like to make a cryptocurrency donation worth over $1,000 (BTC or ETH) please contact __[funds@effectivealtruism.org](mailto:funds@effectivealtruism.org)__ for more details.

__Making recommendations__

Winners will have the option to make recommendations to the Centre for Effective Altruism, which is the legal entity backing EA Funds. However, CEA may face constraints in the particular organisations that it can make grants to, and is likely to be somewhat averse to approving riskier grants. To allow for more flexibility, we’ll also offer potential winners in the US or the UK the option of setting up a Donor Advised Fund that can handle the grantmaking instead (if a winner arises in another country we’ll explore options for setting up a similar system, but can’t guarantee that this will be possible).  If you win a lottery block, we’ll talk to you about your preferences. 

For more information, please see the [‘Caveats and Limitations’ section of the Donor Lottery page](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/lotteries#caveats-and-limitations).

__Previous donor lotteries:__

- __2017-18:__ a $100,000 lottery, won by Adam Gleave, who generously published [a report on his grant recommendations](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SYeJnv9vYzq9oQMbQ/2017-donor-lottery-report)
- __2018-19:__ a $100,000 lottery (no winners) and a $500,000 lottery won by an anonymous donor (grant decision in progress)

__Further reading:__

- [Announcement post for 2018-19 donor lottery](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nuzcbhk2JYMkALHke/donor-lottery-2018-is-live)
- [Announcement post for 2017-18 donor lottery](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3q3mPbrqZEWARjrgE/announcing-the-2017-donor-lottery)
- [Carl Shulman’s initial proposal for donor lotteries](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WvPEitTCM8ueYPeeH/donor-lotteries-demonstration-and-faq)

Announcing the 2019-20 Donor Lottery

Nicole leads the Community Health team, conducts analysis on broad community health questions, and provides internal consultation to other teams within CEA. Nicole has also coordinated with other EA organisations and projects across a broad range of areas, such as communications and politics. She was previously a trustee of EV US. Before joining CEA, Nicole worked at the Open Philanthropy Project, GiveWell, and the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Cedars-Sinai.

You can contact Nicole via [this form](https://forms.gle/iyjNKXgvVeV13BxQ7) (you'll be anonymous by default).

nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org

Head of Community Health and Special Projects

Nicole Ross

CEA's Nicole Ross recently published an [EA Forum post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BwzKCiw3rn6tx3Lrw/update-on-cea-s-ea-grants-program) on our EA Grants program.

An excerpt:

> When I joined CEA, the EA Grants program had been running since 2017. Upon my initial review, it had a mixed track record. Some grants seemed quite exciting, some seemed promising, others lacked the information I needed to make an impact judgment, and others raised some concerns. 
> 
> Additionally, the program had a history of operational and strategic challenges. I've spent the majority of the last nine months working to improve the overall functioning of the program. I'm now planning the future of EA Grants, and trying to determine whether some version of the program ought to exist moving forward.
> 
> In this brief update, I’ll describe some of the program’s past challenges, a few things I’ve worked on, and some preliminary thoughts about the future of the program. I’ll also request feedback on the current EA funding landscape, and what value EA Grants might be able to add if we decide to maintain the program going forward.



Update on CEA's EA Grants program

Ben previously worked at CEA and left in 2024.

Ben West Headshot

Ben West

We recently published [an EA Forum post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wL6nzXsHQEAZ2WJcR/summary-of-core-feedback-collected-by-cea-in-spring-summer) summarizing feedback we collected in the spring and summer of 2019 (both on our work and on the EA movement as a whole).

An excerpt from the post:

> CEA has, historically, been much better at collecting feedback than at publishing the results of what we collect. This post is part of our attempt to address that shortcoming and publish more feedback, but, until more can be published, we want to share more details about the types of feedback we collect.
> 
> As some examples of other sources of feedback CEA has collected this year:
> 
> - We have received about 2,000 questions, comments and suggestions via Intercom (a chat widget on many of CEA’s websites) so far this year
> - We hosted a group leaders retreat (27 attendees), a community builders retreat (33 attendees), and had calls with organizers from 20 EA groups asking about what’s currently going on in their groups and how CEA can be helpful
> - Calls with 18 of our most prolific EA Forum users, to ask how the Forum can be made better.
> - A “medium-term events” survey, where we asked everyone who had attended an Individual Outreach retreat how the retreat impacted them 6-12 months later. (53 responses)
> - EA Global has an advisory board of ~25 people who are asked for opinions about content, conference size, format, etc., and we receive 200-400 responses to the EA Global survey from attendees each time.
> 
> The feedback summarized in this document sometimes agrees with other feedback we have received, and sometimes disagrees. This document generally presents feedback “as is” in an attempt to give an accurate summary of people’s responses, even if the feedback here disagreed with opinions we have gotten from other data sources.

Summary of core feedback collected by CEA in spring/summer 2019

Katie previously worked at CEA and left in 2022.

Katie Glass Headshot

Katie Glass

We recently published [an update on the EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8ht6dQbNrcQ224fBK/an-update-on-plans-for-eagx-2020) about our plans for supporting EAGx conferences in 2020.

An excerpt from the post:

> In 2020, I expect that our overall strategy for EAGx will remain largely the same and that we will likely fund a total of four EAGx conferences throughout the year across the following locations:
> 
> - USA (East Coast)
> - Australia
> - Europe
> - Asia
> 
> These locations have been prioritised as they have established and active EA populations, though we’re also open to considering applications from locations other than those listed above.
> 
> In 2020, we also intend to increase our investment (in terms of budget and staff time) in EAGx organiser support. This will be provided by CEA’s Events team, as they have substantial knowledge and experience to share from producing EA Global conferences.
> 
> For example, in addition to the support we already provide (such as monthly one-on-one calls with organisers), we expect to add:
> 
> - A new EAGx ‘playbook’ with best practices for organisers
> - An event planning retreat for organisers in early to mid January 2020
> - Access to a single event tech platform which includes ticketing, website and event app
> 
> Organising an EAGx conference can be a pivotal experience for EAs considering careers in event production, operations, and communications. I’m excited for these improvements to ensure a better experience for organisers, and to increase the overall quality of event production.

An update on plans for EAGx 2020

We are delighted to announce that CEA’s trustees have appointed Max Dalton — who has been serving as Interim Executive Director — as Executive Director of CEA.

Max joined CEA as a researcher after earning a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Economics from the University of York. In 2017, he was promoted to head the content team. In this role, he led major redesigns for [effectivealtruism.org](https://effectivealtruism.org), the EA Forum, and the EA Handbook, among other projects. In January, he was appointed as CEA’s Interim Executive Director. For the past nine months, he’s managed CEA’s core teams, while overseeing substantial process improvements across our grantmaking and community outreach programs.

The committee, CEA’s trustees, and CEA staff have been impressed by Max’s work during a challenging interim period. Under Max’s leadership, CEA has been more consistently meeting its external commitments, providing clear and informative updates to donors and the board, and setting a culture that has resulted in high staff morale. Max has demonstrated humility, clear communication, good judgment, and unwavering dedication to CEA’s mission. 

Max’s appointment draws the leadership search, which started in January, to a close. This process was conducted on behalf of the board by a search committee, which consisted of [Owen Cotton-Barratt](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/owen-cotton-barratt/), [Julia Wise](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/julia-wise/), [Nick Beckstead](http://www.nickbeckstead.com/), [Will MacAskill](http://www.williammacaskill.com/), and [Jenna Peters](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenna-c-peters/), with Owen leading the search and Jenna serving as the project manager. [Holden Karnofsky](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/holden-karnofsky) provided extensive advice to the committee, and [Claire Zabel](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/claire-zabel) (who is a trustee of CEA) participated in some committee discussions. Both Holden and Claire contributed to the final recommendation to the board of trustees. 

The committee solicited recommendations for possible candidates from over 70 stakeholders and performed tailored investigations into roughly a dozen recommended people, including Max. The committee would like to thank staff, stakeholders, and community members for their input, and the candidates for their time and patience during this process.

Historically, CEA has faced significant challenges, and its execution on projects has not consistently been at the standard we would like. Max and the board are happy about the progress CEA has made on this over 2019, and hopeful about continued improvements over the next months. In the near future, Max is planning to write more about some of the mistakes that CEA has made in the past, as well as the ways they’ve been working to address those mistakes.  Max also aims to share more information about CEA’s thinking and plans, in order to receive feedback from the community. ([CEA’s recent post on community building grants](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ekoK6j3DZKeThdQDR/ea-community-building-grants-recent-grants-made-and-changes) is an example of what this might look like.)

Looking forward, we are excited about CEA’s potential. We have a great deal of trust in Max. With his leadership, and input from the community, we are optimistic that the organization will thrive in the coming year and beyond.


__CEA leadership search committee, October 2019__

Owen Cotton-Barratt
Julia Wise
Nick Beckstead
Will MacAskill
Jenna Peters


__Note (14 November 2019):__ We tried to be very straightforward in our announcement post, including with our acknowledgement of CEA's past mistakes, because we think this is a good epistemic virtue for EA organizations and community members to uphold. However, we’ve heard from some people who read between the lines and thought we had more major concerns than we had intended to convey! 

As a result, we've made some small edits to try to better indicate that we're genuinely pleased and optimistic about the direction CEA has been moving in this year.


Max Dalton appointed as CEA's Executive Director

JP previously worked on the team as an engineer and Engineering Manager. He joined CEA from an aerospace startup where he wrote data processing code. He also co-founded the South Bay Effective Altruism meetup group. Before that, he was a research assistant writing code for simulations of quantum computers. He holds a BS in physics from Georgia Tech.

jp.addison@centreforeffectivealtruism.org

Head of Online & Interim Executive Program Manager

JP-Addison

JP Addison

Aaron worked at CEA through December 2021.

During his tenure, he ran the [EA Newsletter](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-newsletter-archives/ "Effective Altruism Newsletter Archives") and [EA Forum](http://forum.effectivealtruism.org), and helped with a wide range of other content projects. Before joining CEA, he worked in freelance positions throughout the EA community and spent a year earning-to-give at a software company. He holds a BA in cognitive science from Yale University, where he wrote a thesis on how charities can improve their communication with donors.

Content Specialist

Aaron Gertler (Headshot)

Aaron Gertler

This is the second post out of two in a series about how the Forum gets made. In the [last post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pLQw2ikeC9sBaAQoy/who-runs-the-forum), we introduced ourselves. In this post, we’ll try to lay out the models that guide our work and the plans we have for the future.

## Models

The Forum is not a program executing a single plan; it’s a distributed ecosystem of many people trying to achieve many goals. The impacts are as numerous as the aims of every post and comment. Still, we can classify them using a few broad categories:

- Sharing of existing ideas
  - Including producing [common knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge)
- Development and refinement of new ideas
- Talent discovery
- Public accountability
- Spreading of norms
- Encouraging coordination

*(Credit to [Oliver Habryka](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/habryka) for an initial list upon which we built to produce the above.)*

To achieve those goals (or really, a much broader class of goals), we think the Forum needs both of the following intermediate goals::

- People reading good content
- Good content for people to read (this includes both posts and comments)

We’ve developed a metric we use to figure out whether this is happening (and thus, whether we’re doing a good job). We evaluate our plans largely based on how we think they’ll impact the number of good posts [1] and the amount of views those posts receive. [2]

Don’t read too much confidence into this section. We view it as a better-than-nothing operating framework. In an ideal world, we’d have much more empirical data backing up our model. We’ve also had an actual, updating graph of the metric for all of a few weeks. Finally, we also track other metrics (from “time on site” to “mentions on popular blogs”) to get a better picture of the Forum’s impact.

## Plans

I know the title of the section is “Plans,” but first, here are some things we’ve already done that we think of as aiming towards the “views on good posts” metric:

- Built the timeframe feature into the All Posts page to enable easier post discovery
- Since that page was hard to discover, we ported (and refactored) an improved sidebar from LW
- Ported and modified the Community Favorites section and added it to the homepage
- If you wanted, you could think of the Forum Prize as assisting with this metric, although it predates the theory
- Posted an [open offer for Forum editing](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZeXqBEvABvrdyvMzf/editing-available-for-ea-forum-drafts) from Aaron, which has substantially increased the number of people seeking feedback on posts, and hopefully the counterfactual quality of those posts (we had done this on an ad-hoc basis before the posting)

### Quarterly goals for Q4

A lot of our goals aren’t explicit features. They’re things like “merge in LW with maximum 4 weeks delay” or “meet these goals every two-week sprint”. Our main relevant feature-goals are:

- Creating a “Best posts since you last visited” section
  - Would allow users who visit infrequently to see the top-rated posts they haven’t been around for.
- Porting the sequences feature
  - We’d build this feature to support the work on the [EA Handbook 3.0](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JG6FSimuL35tZuohq/ea-handbook-3-0-what-content-should-i-include). We probably won’t finish the Handbook this quarter, so this will remain hidden for a while.

There are other goals that aren’t large enough to quite be “quarterly goals” in the [OKR](https://felipecastro.com/en/okr/what-is-okr/) system we use, but will likely be a sprint goal, such as fixing our (currently LessWrong-green) emails, adding an option to hide karma, and improving our error reporting.

The content side (aka Aaron), also has some goals pertaining to the Forum:

- Encourage more people to do AMAs (like [this one](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oPGJrqohDqT8GZieA/ask-me-anything))
- Get more blogs and orgs to crosspost their content
- Write a few posts himself, and continue to encourage others to write up their ideas (e.g. from [this thread](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TFnQTehEkmwjahm6X/what-posts-you-are-planning-on-writing))
- Write / curate the first sections of a new version of the EA Handbook (though these may not appear on the Forum until they’ve been subject to feedback from a small group of advisors)

### Later goals

We might do these, but not this quarter.

- Technical SEO
  - We’re currently probably underperforming in Google search results relative to where we could be if we put effort into optimizing the site to match the whims of the great judge Google.
- Category tagging
  - We definitely want to be [cautious here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8r4Z2fXQxwJYhuaWT/the-ea-forum-is-a-news-feed#My2QBTDA8WCkGpuXX), but we’re interested in investigating ways where people who are interested in a particular sub-field of EA can find the content they’re interested in more easily, and it’s possible that we could develop something around category tags to do this.
- Recommendation algorithm
  - Currently the new Community Favorites section give you recommendations for posts to read that a) are popular, and b) you haven’t read. That’s not a very complicated algorithm. We could make it much smarter; think of the Netflix recommendation algorithm. I’d guess it could really increase the amount of good posts people read, but it would be a lot of work.

## Final thoughts

We hope that, after reading this, you have a good sense of the actual dynamics that shape this Forum. Don’t be shy to ask questions! We’re especially interested in reactions to the proposed features.

## Footnotes

[1] What’s a “good post”? Currently, we mark certain posts as representing the kind of content we most want on the Forum (this corresponds to roughly 20% of posts). We also include posts that sparked lively/productive conversations, even if the posts themselves were very brief/just asking a question. This doesn’t mean we don’t value lots of other content — we do! A lot! — but tracking views to all posts seems less informative than watching views on the posts we think offer the most value to those who read them. (This evaluation is cause-impartial and does not affect the visibility of posts in any way.)

[2] Currently, we’re focusing on views from logged-in users. This has several good properties:

- We’re less tempted to [Goodhart](https://towardsdatascience.com/unintended-consequences-and-goodharts-law-68d60a94705c) the metric by sharing our favorite posts as widely as possible, even if we don’t think it will be all that helpful to a broad audience
- We can use our own database to measure views, rather than relying on Google Analytics (which works well, but doesn’t see users who have an ad-blocker turned on)
- We get a better sense of how well posts are inspiring people to vote and comment, because every view we track is (in theory) someone who could do those things

How we think about the EA Forum

*One of the CEA's projects is the [EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org), an online forum where more than a thousand people discuss promising causes, new research, and the EA community. This post was [originally published](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pLQw2ikeC9sBaAQoy/who-runs-the-forum) on the Forum.*

Hello! We’re the team behind the EA Forum. The EA Forum is a platform for open discussion, and we’d like to be open about the way we make it. 

This is the first of a two-post series. Today, we’ll talk about who we are and how we work. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how we think about the Forum, what we’ve done, and what we plan to do next.

## Team
[JP Addison](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/jp-addison/) is basically the only developer on the project. [Sam Deere](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/sam-deere/) and [Ben West](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/ben-west/) occasionally review EA Forum-specific code or help through pair programming. Most of the code (including most new changes) is developed by [the LessWrong team](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aG74jJkiPccqdkK3c/the-lesswrong-team-page-under-construction), after which JP ports it over to the EA Forum. We are grateful to the team for supporting some of our modifications and answering our questions.

[Aaron Gertler](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/aaron-gertler/) is the other half of the Forum duumvirate. He’s concerned with the part of the Forum you’re actually here for: the content. That includes running the [Forum Prize](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6K9XuiitDMrTpaseG/ea-forum-prize-winners-for-august-2019), heading the moderation team, commenting on lots and lots of posts, editing posts before publication, and helping people and organizations cross-post their content. Aaron and JP both report to Ben West.

CEA gives a lot of discretion to project leads, so we end up making most of the calls about what to prioritize.

## Moderation Team
The Forum’s moderation team consists of Aaron Gertler and [Julia Wise](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/julia-wise/). Aaron is the de facto head of it by virtue of the amount of attentiveness he gives it. The moderation team very rarely uses any moderation powers against users (unless they only signed up so they could share links to pirated movies). The karma system does most of that work. You can sometimes see Aaron expressing disapproval to users, but it’s generally done publicly and without his "mod hat" on. Most of the moderation workload comes from [categorizing posts](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5TAwep4tohN7SGp3P/the-frontpage-community-distinction) and approving new users (or banning them if, you know, pirated movies).

JP occasionally contributes by banning spammers or categorizing clear-cut posts, because he is a morning lark while Aaron is a night owl.

## How the Forum collaborates with LessWrong
On the technical side, the code for the EA Forum is a fork (a copy of the code with some modifications) of the LessWrong codebase. The LessWrong team has more developers than we do (2.5-3.5 vs. 1, depending on how you count). They develop many features we want, and we keep our fork of the codebase (relatively) up to date with their changes.

We sometimes make changes to our fork that we don’t submit upstream. This was really common during the initial setup and is the easiest way to get our features to behave exactly how we want them to. However, it’s really time-consuming to maintain these changes. Every time we merge in the new changes to the LW codebase, differences between the Forum and LessWrong are the bane of JP’s existence.

Thus, we prefer to make changes that are also useful to LW. That way, their changes are built on top of ours.

You can see us collaborate by looking at the open source codebases. Here’s the [EA Forum fork](https://github.com/centre-for-effective-altruism/Lesswrong2) and the [LessWrong original](https://github.com/LessWrong2/Lesswrong2). The [closed Pull Requests](https://github.com/LessWrong2/Lesswrong2/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed) on the LW codebase are where you’ll find a record of our changes that we push upstream.

## Who’s really behind the Forum
It’s a little silly to say this, but we should emphasize that the Forum is a community effort. Aaron and I account for a very small percentage of the total number of posts on the Forum. A well-made but empty Forum would be a boring Forum. If you remember an interesting post you liked, consider leaving a comment to thank the author!

Meet the team behind the EA Forum

Harri previously worked at CEA and left in 2021.

DSC03755 -Harri - 2880

Harri Besceli

*This post originally appeared on the [EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ekoK6j3DZKeThdQDR/ea-community-building-grants-recent-grants-made-and-changes).*

Effective Altruism Community Building Grants, a project run by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), made its first round of grants in 2018. It provides grants to individuals and groups doing local effective altruism community building, which typically range from $5,000 to $100,000. The programme has a particular emphasis on funding groups that aim to transition from being run by volunteers to being run by full-time, paid organisers.

Many of the initial grants we made in 2018 ended recently and we've just finished assessing applications for renewed funding for these grants. Overall, we've been very pleased by the progress our grant recipients have made.

This post lists the most recent grants we’ve made and covers updates on the application process and the bar we expect for successful applications. The Community Building Grants programme is still young, and we’re still figuring out how best to run it; because of this, we expect both our views and our approach to change significantly over time.

## Recent Grants

Many of the first one-year grants made in 2018 have just ended, and we’ve been assessing applications from these groups for renewed funding. The following groups have received and accepted offers for renewed funding, though the grants are dependent on the successful completion of due diligence:

EA Cambridge: 1.5 FTE for 1 year
EA Czechia: 1.9 FTE for 12 months and funding for a community space
EA Sweden: 0.6 FTE for 3 months
EA Geneva: 1 FTE for 6 months
EA Oxford: 1.6 FTE for 1 year
Student Career Planning Project: 1 FTE for 1 year
EA Geneva and EA Sweden also received renewed grant funding earlier in 2019: 2 FTE for 12 months and 1 FTE for 12 months, respectively. The Student Career Planning Project is a project that has spun out of the EA Oxford group. Unlike the other groups listed, it hasn’t previously received community grant funding.

## Changes to the application process

Based on what we’ve learned so far, we are making a few updates to the application process for EA Community Building Grants. This applies only to new applications for funding, and not applications for renewed funding from groups with existing grants.

__Rolling Applications:__ We’ll be evaluating applications on an ongoing basis, rather than having discrete application rounds with an application deadline.

__Expression of Interest Form:__ We now have an ‘expression of interest’ form for prospective applicants to complete. This means we can start communicating as soon as you begin thinking about applying for a grant, and allows us to give early-stage input on your plans. You don’t need to be confident that you will end up applying for a grant in order to fill out the form. After receiving this form, we’ll work with you to figure out whether applying makes sense, then organise your application process and timeline on a case-by-case basis. We expect the full application process to take 8-12 weeks, though this may take longer depending on the application.

__More Tailored Process:__ We’ll be tailoring our evaluation process more to the specific applications we receive. In the past, the process has been fairly standardised, with applicants completing a standard application form and participating in an interview. We expect the process to be fairly similar going forward, but we also want to leave more scope for adapting our process to unique aspects of different applications. For example, different evaluation approaches might be suitable for groups which focus on a particular kind of project or groups in countries where effective altruism is newer.

These changes mean that we are not planning to hold a formal application round this year. (In a previous EA Forum update, we stated that we would be hosting an application round in the Summer of 2019, but we think this new process will work out better for applicants and for CEA.)

We want to try this approach because we think increasing the amount that we communicate with applicants, especially in the early stages, will give them a better understanding of what we’re looking for and help them improve their plans. We also think that a more flexible process will improve the quality of our assessment of applications.

We see these updates as somewhat experimental. If the approach works well, we’ll continue to use it going forward, but if not, we may go back to holding application rounds or try some other approach.

## Bar for Successful Applications

The bar for successful applications to EA Community Building Grants has risen since our first round of grants in 2018. This means that we expect to be making a smaller number of new grants and providing less total funding for new grants than previously. Our current best guess is that we’ll offer between $50,000 and $100,000 in new grants between now and the end of 2019, though these aren’t strict upper and lower bounds and it’s plausible that the amount we end up granting lies outside of this range. ‘New grants’ here does not include renewed funding for grants made during previous rounds.

There are a number of reasons that we’ve decided on a higher threshold for new grants:

__Increasing the focus on the best grantmaking opportunities:__ We think that there is a large amount of variance in the impact of individual grants that we’ve made. After evaluating the grants made over the course of 2018 we also think that we now have a better understanding of which kinds of grantmaking opportunities will be most impactful. We want to focus on those opportunities, rather than funding a wider set of grants, because we want to be confident that our grants are better uses of money than alternative options for donors interested in community building.

__Leaving room for future changes to the programme:__ CEA is currently in the process of hiring a new CEO. Because of this, and the newness of this programme, we want to ensure that the programme has the flexibility to make changes going forward, and we don’t want to allocate a lot of resources in advance.

__Limited available funding:__ In our last fundraising round for Community Building Grants, we received slightly less total funding than we expected, reducing the amount available for granting.

__Prioritising other aspects of the programme:__ We want to be able to spend more time on developing appropriate policies (eg. conflict of interest policy, salary policy) and providing support for existing grantees, as well as having more flexibility to determine which projects to focus on in the future. Currently, evaluating new applications and applications for renewed funding takes a significant amount of time. We expect that reducing the number of grants we make will free up capacity for these projects.

__Increasing financial reserves:__ We want to ensure that the programme has more financial reserves. We believe that higher reserves will allow us to provide more stability to current grantees by ensuring that we always have the option to fund renewals for existing grants. Additionally, this will mean that we have the ability to fund particularly promising opportunities not previously accounted for. Though the majority of the funding for the programme previously came from CEA, we are now moving towards having the programme raise most of its funds from external donors. Because of this, while we haven’t previously focused on ensuring that the project has significant financial reserves, we now think that this is appropriate going forward.

__Increased quality of granting opportunities:__ The quality of grant applications has risen over time, and the quality of recent applications to the programme exceeded our original expectations. We expect to have a similarly high calibre of applications going forwards and as a result we expect that we’ll have a higher bar to fund future applications. (One could argue that high-quality applications justify keeping the same bar and putting more funding into the program, but we think increasing the bar for successful applications is more appropriate given the other considerations for allocating less funding than previously.)



If you have any questions regarding Effective Altruism Community Building Grants, please contact [harri.besceli@centreforeffectivealtruism.org](mailto:harri.besceli@centreforeffectivealtruism.org)

You can see previous updates about the programme here [https://www.effectivealtruism.org/community-building-grants/](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/community-building-grants/)

EA Community Building Grants: recent grants and changes to the application process

*This post was originally published on the [EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wMs6zpJ28Ncq89tva/changes-to-ea-funds-management-teams-june-2019-2).*

We'd like to announce some upcoming changes to the management teams for [EA Funds](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds).

- **Long-Term Future Fund:** Matthew Fallshaw will be stepping down from the team. Existing member Matt Wage will take on the position of Chair.
- **Animal Welfare Fund:** As Animal Charity Evaluators has now set up its own [Effective Animal Advocacy Fund](https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/effective-animal-advocacy-fund/), [Toni Adleberg](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/tonia) and [Jamie Spurgeon](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/jamie_spurgeon) (both of ACE) are stepping down, and three new Fund managers will join the team: Kieran Greig, Karolina Sarek, and Alexandria Beck. It's still possible to support ACE's endeavours via EA Funds (either via direct donation, or by donation to charities at ACE's discretion).
- **EA Infrastructure Fund:** Tara Mac Aulay will be stepping down to focus on her startup, and Peter McIntyre will join the team. Peter McIntyre is currently an employee of 80,000 Hours, which is legally part of the Centre for Effective Altruism --- both organizations are potential grantees of the EA Infrastructure Fund, and as such Peter will recuse himself from proposing, advocating for, or approving grants to 80,000 Hours and CEA (although he may still provide relevant information about 80,000 Hours to other grantmakers on the team if appropriate).
- **Global Health and Development Fund:** No personnel changes, but the Fund has recently [changed its regranting schedule](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F42BX8su2ZEquaicL/a-change-to-the-grantmaking-schedule-of-the-effective) to better reflect its strategic priorities.

The new appointments were made by agreement between the Fund management team chairs and CEA, in consultation with Fund management team members and external advisors.

We'd like to extend our sincere thanks to Matthew, Toni, Jamie, and Tara for their service to EA Funds. Working on an EA Funds management team entails a significant time commitment, and we're grateful for the efforts of all teams as they evaluate promising grant opportunities.

The writeups from past grant recommendations for each Fund can be found on their respective pages ([Animal Welfare Fund](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/animal-welfare), [Long-Term Future Fund](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future), [EA Infrastructure Fund](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/ea-community), [Global Health and Development Fund](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/global-development)). Biographies for the incoming Fund managers are below (and have been added to the respective pages of the EA Funds website).

### Kieran Greig

Kieran is the Analyst for Farmed Animal Funders, a group of large donors who each give over $250,000 annually to end factory farming. He previously worked as a researcher at Animal Charity Evaluators, and prior to that was a co-founder of Charity Entrepreneurship and Charity Science Health. He has written about topics like [improving the welfare of farmed fish](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t2iivX8TJarhhRjJf/link-farmed-fish-welfare-report) and [supporting plant-based alternatives to animal products](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eMMfBhAwrnCCxkJyz/farmed-animal-funders-custom-shallow-review-on-selecting). He has a BSc from Monash University and a Master's from La Trobe University.

### Karolina Sarek

Karolina is the senior research analyst at Charity Entrepreneurship and a board member at Charity Science. She leads the research team, aiming to find the most evidence-based, cost-effective and neglected interventions, and to train others in starting high impact charities to implement them.

Before joining Charity Entrepreneurship, she co-founded the Polish Foundation for Effective Altruism, working on improving the effectiveness of NGOs. Prior to that, she worked on measurement and evaluation for Charity Science Health and Open Cages, and as a researcher for IBM and the Jagiellonian University. During her Master's studies, she became the youngest university lecturer in her country. She has been volunteering for farm animals since she was 18.

### Alexandria Beck

Alexandria is the Director of the [Open Wing Alliance](http://openwingalliance.org/) (OWA) at The Humane League. She oversees a global coalition of more than 60 organizations working to end the abuse of chickens worldwide, with a focus on institutional campaigns to ban battery cages for egg-laying hens. Since 2017, Alexandria has led the coalition's growing [grant program](https://www.openwingalliance.org/grants)and distributed over 1.3 million dollars to support OWA groups' corporate cage-free and broiler welfare campaigns.

### Peter McIntyre

Peter is head of recruiting at 80,000 Hours, where he connects talented people with high-impact opportunities and leading organizations working on the world's most pressing problems. Previously, he was the director of philanthropy at a quantitative trading firm, worked in communications at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, and was a founding director of Effective Altruism Australia, a tax-deductible charity that has raised over $3 million for effective charities.

*This post was prepared by Sam Deere, Aaron Gertler, and Chloe Malone, in consultation with the EA Fund management teams.*