Latest posts from the Centre for Effective Altruism

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Hi everyone,

**_In summary:**_ _This month we re-launched the public EA Grants application, made progress on our plans for a new EA Forum and trialled candidates in our hiring round. Additionally, nearly 90% of tickets for EA Global: London (26-28 October) have been sold, and trustee Will MacAskill’s TED talk was released._

## CEA’s priorities this quarter

As we near the end of September, we are working hard to deliver on our Q3 priorities. Our 2018-2019 focus is on projects that will allow us to support the core of the EA community, while also building out infrastructure and programs for the broader community. This month, we focused primarily on re-opening EA Grants to the public, launching a closed beta for the EA forum and hiring to expand our capacity.

### EA Grants
We recently [announced](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1t9/ea_grants_applications_are_now_open/) the re-opening of EA Grants to the public. EA Grants allows CEA to connect people with promising ideas to the funding they need to develop projects. If you have a project that you think EA Grants should fund, you can[ ](https://cea-core.typeform.com/to/M1FttK?r=forum)[fill out our short application here](https://cea-core.typeform.com/to/M1FttK?r=forum). For more details about the EA Grants launch, read Kerry Vaughan’s [announcement](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1t9/ea_grants_applications_are_now_open/) on the EA Forum.

### EA Forum
We are working on launching a new and improved EA Forum, with the goal that it will become the central place for EA community members to engage with content and discussion. This month, we have been testing a closed beta version of the Forum in order to catch bugs and other problems early. We plan to launch a public beta version next month. Additionally, our tech and content teams have been working on additional features, such as monthly prizes, curated sequences and cross-posting from personal blogs. You can read more about the new Forum in posts from [Julia Wise](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1sp/additional_plans_for_the_new_ea_forum/) and [Marek Duda](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1qv/ea_forum_20_initial_announcement/). 

### Hiring
We have been impressed by the excellent calibre of applicants who have applied to work on our events, support local EA communities, run EA Grants and provide essential operations capacity. For some roles, we are in the later stages of in-person trials and making offers, and we are excited to announce new additions to the team soon.

## Events
### Effective Altruism Global
Nearly 90% tickets have been sold for EA Global: London, taking place from 26-28 October. Applications close at midnight BST on Sunday, 30th September, so if you want to attend, [apply now](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-london/).

## Other Updates

### Will MacAskill’s TED Talk
CEA trustee and co-founder Will MacAskill’s TED Talk, “What are the most important moral problems of our time?” has been [released](https://www.ted.com/talks/will_macaskill_how_can_we_do_the_most_good_for_the_world). The talk, which already has more than 700,000 views, discusses our unique position in history and how to prioritise among massive global challenges.

CEA update, September 2018

(This post was written by Kerry Vaughan and Larissa Hesketh-Rowe with contributions from other members of the CEA staff)

There has been discussion recently about how to approach building the EA community, in light of last weekend’s EA Summit and [this post](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2qGL7FoTEZTwp38ij/problems-with-ea-representativeness-and-how-to-solve-it) on problems with EA representativeness and how to solve it. We at CEA thought it would be helpful to share some of our thinking on community building and representativeness in EA.

This post comprises four sections:
1. **Why work to build the EA community?** - why we prioritize building the EA community and think this is a promising area for people to work in.
2. **The challenges of prioritization** - how prioritizing some activities can present challenges for community building and representativeness.
3. **CEA wants to support other community builders** - how we can do better by working with other organizations and individuals.
4. **Our views on representativeness in EA** - why we believe EA should be cause-impartial, but CEA’s work should be mostly cause-general, and involve more description of community priorities as they are.

## Why work to build the EA community?
Ultimately, CEA wants to improve the world as much as possible. This means we want to do things that evidence and reason suggest are particularly high impact.

In order to make progress on understanding the world, or in solving any of the world’s most pressing problems, we are going to need dedicated, altruistic people who are thinking carefully about how to act. Those people can have a much higher impact if they are guided by and can add to cutting-edge ideas, have access to the necessary resources (e.g. money) and can coordinate with one another.

Due to this need, we think one way we can have significant impact is by building a global community of people who have made helping others a core part of their lives, and who use evidence and reason to figure out how to do so as effectively as possible.

This is why we consider working on building the EA community a [priority path](https://80000hours.org/coaching/) for those looking to have an impact with their career. Work done to bring people or resources into the community, or to help build on our ideas and coordination capacity, can [multiply our impact several-fold](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-effective-altruism/) even if we change our minds about which problems are most pressing in the future.

(You can see some considerations against working on EA community building [here](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-effective-altruism/#why-not-to-work-on-this-area).)

## The challenge of prioritization
CEA’s challenge is prioritization. Given that we have a finite amount of money, staff and management capacity, we have to choose where to focus our efforts. CEA cannot do everything that the EA community needs alone.

This year, we’ve been primarily focusing on people who have already engaged a lot with the ideas and community associated with effective altruism, so that we can better understand what those people need and help them put their knowledge and dedication to good use. We think of this as analogous to focusing at the bottom of a [marketing funnel](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-funnel-model) and getting to know our “core users”.

In practice, this has meant focusing on projects like running smaller retreats for people who are already highly engaged with EA and putting more attention on a smaller number of local groups, rather than trying to provide broad support to many.

Our plan has been to get these projects up and running and reliably doing valuable work before expanding our support [further up the funnel](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-funnel-model). At this point, however, we are starting preparations to get more done higher in the funnel. Some valuable actions we’d like to take up the funnel soon include running a broader range of events, funding more projects, and supporting more local groups. To achieve these new goals, we’ve recently been looking to hire community specialists, events specialists, and an EA Grants Evaluator.

Inevitably, focusing on one area usually means deprioritizing other things that would also add a lot of value to the EA community. We try to mitigate some of the costs of prioritization by helping other groups provide support instead.

## CEA supports other community builders
We generally encourage members of the EA community to get involved in building the EA community, especially in areas that are valuable but currently not prioritized by CEA. Because CEA is currently management and staff-constrained, the easiest way for us to support others is with funding, branding, and expertise.

Some actions we’ve taken (or plan to take) to support the work of others include:
* [Providing more than $650,000](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6kFcr6L2jZhcsZnao/announcing-effective-altruism-community-building-grants) to groups and individuals doing local community building (in progress).
* Re-launching EA Grant applications to the public with a £2,000,000 budget and a rolling application process (to be launched by the end of October 2018).
* Helping groups run [EAGx conferences](https://www.eaglobal.org/eagx/) in their local areas by providing the brand, funding (both for the event and a stipend to organizers), and advice (this year we supported events in [Australia](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-australia-2018/), [Boston](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-boston-2018/), and [the Netherlands](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-netherlands/)).
* Supporting Rethink Charity’s work on LEAN with a $50,000 grant (grant provided).
* Supporting Charity Entrepreneurship’s work to build new EA charities with a $100,000 grant (grant currently being finalized).
* Supporting the LessWrong 2.0 team with a $75,000 grant.
* Supporting the EA Summit with a $10,000 grant.

There’s certainly more we can do to support the work others are doing, and we’ll be on the lookout for more opportunities in the future.

## The EA Summit
A recent example of one of the ways we’re trying to support non-CEA community building efforts is by supporting the [EA Summit](https://www.easummit2018.com/), which took place last weekend. The EA Summit was a small conference for EA community builders, incubated by Paradigm Academy with participation from CEA, Charity Science, and the Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN), a project of Rethink Charity.

In late June, Peter Buckley and Mindy McTeigue approached Kerry and Larissa to discuss their concerns around a growing bias towards inaction in the EA community and a slowdown in efforts to build a robust, thriving EA community. We decided that these were important problems and that the EA Summit was a good mechanism for addressing them, so we were happy to support the project.

The largest consideration against support was based on the concern that the Summit was incubated by Paradigm Academy, which is closely connected to Leverage Research. We concluded that this was not a compelling reason to avoid supporting the conference. The EA Summit was a transparent project of clear value to the EA community.

Three CEA staff members attended the conference with Kerry providing the closing keynote. Our impression was that the conference was a success. Despite being organized on short notice, the event had over 100 attendees, was well run, and ended with an excellent party. Attendees seemed to come away with the message that there are useful projects they can work on that CEA would support, and overall had overwhelmingly positive things to say about the conference.

However, the fact that Paradigm incubated the Summit and Paradigm is connected to Leverage led some members of the community to express concern or confusion about the relationship between Leverage and the EA community. We will address this in a separate post in the near future. *(Edit: We decided not to work on this post at this time.)*

## EA and Representativeness
One area the EA Summit aimed to address was concern about [representativeness](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2qGL7FoTEZTwp38ij/problems-with-ea-representativeness-and-how-to-solve-it) in EA, most recently raised by Joey Savoie. The question of how CEA should represent the EA community is one we’ve thought about and discussed internally for some time. We plan to write a separate post on this, but here is an outline of our thinking so far. We believe the EA Forum should be a place for everyone to share and build upon ideas and models, so we’d love to see discussion of this here.

On representativeness, our current view is that:
1. The EA community should be [cause-impartial](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#1-cause-impartiality), but not [cause-agnostic](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#2-cause-agnosticism).
2. CEA’s work should be broadly [cause-general](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#4-cause-generality).
3. Some of CEA’s work should be descriptive of what is happening in the community, but some of our work should also be prescriptive, meaning that it is based on our best guess as to what will have the largest impact.
4. We’re unsure who our work should be representative of.
5. While we took some steps to address representativeness prior to Joey’s post, we welcome suggestions on how we can improve.

**The EA community should be cause-impartial:**
EA is about figuring out how to do the most good and then doing it. This means we don’t favor any particular beneficiaries, approaches or cause areas from the start, but instead select causes based on an impartial calculation of impact ([cause-impartiality](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#1-cause-impartiality)). This in turn means we should be both seeking to reduce our uncertainty about the relevant impact of different causes and seeking to find new areas that could potentially be even more important (see [Three Heuristics for Finding Cause X](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/three-heuristics-for-finding-cause-x/) for some ideas on how this might be done).

Success for the EA community should include a strong possibility that we learn more, change our minds, and therefore no longer work on causes that we once thought were important.

**CEA’s work should be broadly cause-general:**
The reason we have an EA community instead of individual communities focused on specific causes is:
1. We don’t know for certain what causes are most important and we may discover a new Cause X in the future.
2. We don’t know for certain which approaches to existing causes are most important and we may discover new approaches in the future.
3. Despite our uncertainty, we can take actions that are useful across many causes.

CEA’s work should be broadly beneficial regardless of one’s views on the relative importance of different causes. This is why our mission is to build the EA community. We believe our comparative advantage lies in finding and coordinating with people who can work on important problems.

**CEA’s work as both descriptive and prescriptive:**
While most of our work is cause-general, there will be cases where we have opportunities to support work in particular cause areas that we currently believe are likely to have the highest impact.

We think it is therefore helpful to make a distinction between aspects of CEA’s work that are descriptive and those that are more prescriptive.

Descriptive work aims to reflect what is actually happening in the EA community; the kinds of projects people are working on and issues people are thinking about. The [EA Newsletter](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-newsletter-archives/) is a clear example of this because it includes updates from around the community and from a variety of EA and EA-adjacent organizations.

Other aspects of CEA’s work should be prescriptive, meaning that they involve taking a view on where the community should be headed or on what causes are likely to be most important. For example, CEA’s Individual Outreach team does things like help connect members of the community with jobs we consider high-impact.

In forums where CEA is providing a resource to the entire EA community (for example, the EA Forum, [Effective Altruism Funds](https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds), or events like EA Global), our work should tend towards being more descriptive.

**We’re unsure who our work should be representative of:**
One challenge in making our work more representative is that it’s unclear what reference class we should be using when making our work more representative.

On one extreme, we could use all self-identifying EAs as the reference class. This has the downside of potentially requiring that our work address issues that expert consensus indicates are not particularly important.

On another extreme, we could use the consensus of community leaders as the relevant reference class. This has the downside of potentially requiring that our work not address the issues that the overwhelming number of community members actually care about.

The best solution is likely some hybrid approach, but it’s unclear precisely how such an approach might work.

**Soliciting a wider range of viewpoints:**
Although we think we should do more to address representativeness concerns, we had already taken some steps to address this concern prior to Joey’s post on this issue.

These included:
* Consulting ~25 advisors from different fields about EA Global content (already in place).
* Changing the EA handbook to be more representative (in progress).
* Selecting new managers of the Long-Term Future and EA Community EA Funds (in progress).

We do, however, recognize that when consulting others it’s easy to end up selecting for people with similar views, and that this can leave us with blind spots in particular areas. We are thinking about how to expand the range of people we get advice from. While we cannot promise to enact all suggestions, we would like to hear suggestions from forum users about what else they might like to see from CEA in this area.

CEA on community building, representativeness, and the EA Summit

Hi everyone,

__*In summary:*__ _This month we shared our thinking on community building and representativeness. We made progress on our Q3 priorities by announcing plans for the new EA Forum and evaluating candidates in our hiring round. Additionally, more than half of the tickets for EA Global: London (26-28 October) have been sold:_ _[apply now](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-london/)._

### Our thinking on community building and representativeness

We shared our thinking [on the EA Forum](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1s0/cea_on_community_building_representativeness_and/) about community building, representativeness, and the EA Summit. We emphasized, among other things, the reasons we feel it is important that the EA community be [cause-impartial](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#1-cause-impartiality) and why it seems likely that CEA’s work should be broadly [cause-general](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/understanding-cause-neutrality/#4-cause-generality). We are interested in feedback on this, and we encourage you to read our post and contribute to the discussion in the comments.

### CEA’s priorities this quarter

As described in last month’s email, our aim is to continue to deeply understand and support [contributors and core members](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-concentric-circles-model) of the EA community, while expanding CEA’s support to a broader group of people. To work towards this aim this quarter, we are focusing on the following:

1.  Launching a new EA Forum
2.  Building infrastructure for a public EA Grants release to allow us to accept more applicants*
3.  Hiring to expand our capacity
4.  Finalizing metrics to help us evaluate and prioritize projects

This month, we focused on building the EA Forum and evaluating candidates in our hiring round.

#### EA Forum

We believe that for EA to succeed intellectually, we need to have ideas shared publicly and in a way that people can build on. We want a forum that can serve as a place for top thinkers to get feedback on novel ideas, for users to begin to contribute to the community, and for all of the community, including newer members, to engage with up-to-date content. To achieve this goal, we announced [plans](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1qv/ea_forum_20_initial_announcement/) for a new EA Forum, which will have better ways to sort content and a more appealing design. We are basing the new Forum on the successful redesign of LessWrong, and we're very grateful for help from the LessWrong team. Our Tech and Content teams are collaborating to create features like curated content and new moderation policies to improve the experience of people at all [different levels of involvement with EA](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-concentric-circles-model). Currently, CEA staff are testing a closed beta version of the Forum, and a semi-public beta version for key Forum contributors will be up in the next month.

If there are pieces you’ve been thinking of writing, we’d love to see them when the new Forum launches!

#### Hiring

In order to expand the support we provide to the EA community, we need additional staff capacity. In addition to [US](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/us-operations-specialist/) and [UK](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/uk-operations-specialist/) Operations Specialists, who will be essential to our day-to-day operations, we are working to hire a full-time [EA Grants Evaluator](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/ea-grants-evaluator-full-time/) to be able to review and fund promising proposals, a [Community Specialist](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/community-specialist/) to provide support outside the [core](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-concentric-circles-model) EA community and an [Events Specialist](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/events-specialist/) to help run EA Global and expand our outreach events.

Applications for our current hiring round closed on 16th July, and we are now evaluating candidates. If you would like your application to be considered for future hiring rounds at CEA, you can submit your information using our [“open application” option.](https://cea-core.typeform.com/to/sCnC5c)

\* __*On EA Grants:*__ _We currently have a referral-only process that allows us to make a small number of grants while we don’t have a person working on this project full time. If you know any especially promising grants candidates, please contact Kerry Vaughan at_ _[kerry@centreforeffectivealtruism.org](mailto:kerry@centreforeffectivealtruism.org)_._ We plan to re-launch the public application by the end of October 2018._

### Events

#### Effective Altruism Global

We released William MacAskill’s [opening talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo7B7W4QJMc) from EA Global: San Francisco on how effective altruism can ‘stay curious’. We believe that staying curious is critical to our work and to the success of the EA community, and we encourage you to watch the talk if you weren’t able to attend in person. More videos from the conference are being released over the next few months via our [Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEfASxwPxzsHlG5Rf1-4K9w).

In the meantime, more than half of tickets have already been sold for EA Global: London, taking place from 26-28 October 2018\. So if you’re thinking about attending, [apply now](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-london/)! If you’re interested in gaining some operations experience and accessing the conference for free, you can learn more about volunteering on [our website](https://www.eaglobal.org/faqs/).

#### EA Summit

CEA decided to make a grant to support the [EA Summit](https://www.easummit2018.com/) organized by Paradigm Academy with participation from Rethink Charity and Charity Science. Three CEA staff members attended the conference, and our impression was that the conference was a success. The focus of the conference was building the EA community, and attendees seemed to come away with the impression that there are important projects they can work on in this space.

CEA update, August 2018

Last week the [Open Philanthropy Project](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/) [announced a renewed grant of £2 million to the Centre for Effective Altruism](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/centre-effective-altruism-general-support-2018).

We are extremely grateful to the Open Philanthropy Project for continuing to support our work, as well as the work of many other organizations in the effective altruism community. This grant will support all of our work: events, individual outreach, local group support, and online. In particular it will support our more capital-intensive projects, EA Grants and community building grants. It will also help us to increase our salaries to levels that are more in line with comparables in the Bay area.

If you want to read more about our strategy, please see the strategy tab of our website. You might also be interested in this [December summary of our plans for 2018](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/cea-s-2017-review-and-2018-plans/). 

Please note that the grant investigator, Nick Beckstead, is also a Trustee of CEA.


Open Philanthropy Project grant renewal

Marek worked for CEA until 2019. 

During his time at CEA, he was responsible for the EA Funds platform as well as improving and expanding the software products CEA develops for the community. He previously worked at investment banks as an analyst and more recently as a Product Manager, after completing a data science bootcamp.

DSC04189 -Marek - 2880

Marek Duda

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

On Monday we learnt that Typeform, a popular service we’ve used to create some of our online forms, has suffered a significant data security breach.

Many users of the Centre For Effective Altruism’s online services (or projects of CEA, such as [Effective Altruism Global](https://www.eaglobal.org/)) submitted personal data, which was among the information that was stolen from Typeform.

## What personal information is affected?

We have analysed a copy of the data that was stolen. We believe that a maximum of 1497 individuals were affected by the breach. A summary of the personal data affected is below:

| Type of data                                                   | Maximum Individuals Affected |
|----------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------|
| Name                                                           | 1484                         |
| Email                                                          | 1497                         |
| Phone number                                                   | 89                           |
| Skype Handle                                                   | 66                           |
| Physical/Postal Address                                        | 10                           |
| General geographical information (City/University/Local group) | 542                          |
| Job title/details of employment                                | 1216                         |
| Career plans/biography/other long-form personal answer         | 445                          |

The stolen data did not include: financial data (e.g. credit card information); any file attachments you may have uploaded (e.g. curriculum vitae / résumé); or any form responses submitted after May 3rd 2018\.

Also, please note that in many cases the information affected is from 2015 and 2016 and thus may no longer be up to date.

## This happened because attackers found a weakness in Typeform’s security

Attackers managed to gain access to data backups for a subset of Typeform submissions that were collected before May 3rd 2018\. Those backups contained the information that people submitted via these forms, including the data we mentioned above.

## The Typeform data breach affects many organisations

Typeform is a widely used service, and it [seems like](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=typeform+data+breach&oq=typeform+data+breach&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l2j69i61l3.3218j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) this data breach affects thousands of organisations and millions of individuals. So you may see similar notices from other organisations in the coming days.

## CEA’s response

We take protecting personal data extremely seriously, and we are very sorry that you have been affected by this incident.

When we discovered this incident, we immediately began a thorough investigation. Since then we have notified relevant authorities including the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which is now investigating the breach. Today (July 5th 2018), we notified everyone who was affected by email.

Typeform have assured us that they have now secured their systems and taken steps to avoid similar incidents in the future. Nonetheless, we are now reviewing whether to continue using Typeform into the future.

If you have any questions about this incident, please send an email to [privacy@centreforeffectivealtruism.org](mailto:privacy@centreforeffectivealtruism.org).

CEA's Response to the Typeform data breach

Hi everyone,

***In summary:*** *June was a hectic month for CEA due to _[Effective Altruism Global: San Francisco](https://sf.eaglobal.org/)_ and other events, so we’ve skipped our June update in favour of an earlier July email. This month, we set our priorities for Q3, received a £2 million grant from Open Phil and advertised some _[open roles](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/)_ — if you know anyone who might be a good fit for CEA, please get in touch, or direct them to the application process. Applications close on Monday 16 July.  *

__CEA priorities this quarter__
We’re now halfway through the year, so at our recent team retreat, we looked ahead to what we need to achieve for the rest of 2018\. So far this year we’ve been focusing more at the bottom of [the marketing funnel](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-funnel-model) and on [contributors and core members](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-concentric-circles-model) of the EA community. We want to understand what people in the community need and how we can help individuals have an impact. At our team retreat, we started to think about what we need to get done community-organised expand our support to a broader group of people coming into the EA community.

For this reason in the next quarter we will be focusing on:

- Launching a new EA Forum which is the central hub for discussion and content in the community 
- Building our infrastructure such that we can provide EA Grants to a lot more people

We will also be building our capacity internally by hiring new people onto the team and finalising the metrics for a lot of our projects.

__Open roles at CEA__
CEA is hiring! We’re looking for people who care deeply about improving the world and are excited to be part an organisation that is building a community of people to do just that.

We’re looking for candidates to help us run events to build collaboration in EA, support the local EA groups across the world, discover promising projects to fund as a Grant Evaluator and help us manage and grow CEA itself as operations specialists in the UK and US.

We would also love to hear from candidates that are excited by our mission and feel like they would be an excellent fit for our team but are unsure about any of the current positions. You can apply using our [“open application” option](https://cea-core.typeform.com/to/sCnC5c). Read more about the roles and apply [here](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/).

__Grant from Open Philanthropy Project__
Last week the [Open Philanthropy Project](http://www.openphilanthropy.org/) announced a [renewed grant of £2 million](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/centre-effective-altruism-general-support-2018) to CEA. We are incredibly grateful to the Open Philanthropy Project for continuing to support our work, as well as the work of many other organisations in the effective altruism community.

This grant will support all of our work: events, individual outreach, local group support, and online. In particular, it will support our more capital-intensive projects, EA Grants and community building grants. It will also help us to increase our salaries to levels that are more in line with comparable organisations in the Bay area.

If you want to read more about our strategy, please see the strategy tab of our website. You might also be interested in this [December summary of our plans for 2018](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/cea-s-2017-review-and-2018-plans/). (Please note that the grant investigator, Nick Beckstead, is also a Trustee of CEA).

__Event updates__

*Effective Altruism Global*
On 8-10 June we hosted 550 people at [EA Global: San Francisco](https://www.facebook.com/pg/effectivealtruismglobal/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2104164433160794). We will be releasing videos from the sessions over the next few months, so please subscribe to our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEfASxwPxzsHlG5Rf1-4K9w) or like the [EA Global page](https://www.facebook.com/effectivealtruismglobal/) on Facebook for updates. The next EA Global takes place in London between 26-28 October. [Apply now.](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-london/)

*Leaders Forum*
The Leaders Forum, hosted by CEA immediately after EA Global, was the third annual event aimed at building collaboration and connections between EA organisations. We discussed key challenges facing effective altruism community such as how to avoid groupthink. We also shared best practices between organisations, for instance on hiring and metrics, and looked for ways to help each other out with talent gaps and other bottlenecks that organisations faced.

*EA Global X*
Effective Altruism Netherlands hosted their first [EAGx Netherlands](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-netherlands/) between 29 June — 1 July featuring keynotes from William MacAskill, Natalie Cargill and Michael Plant. The next EAGx takes place in Melbourne this weekend (13—15 July). [EAGx Australia](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-australia-2018/) is the final community-organised Effective Altruism Global conference of 2018, so in Q3 we will assess the impact of this year’s programme.

__EA Handbook__
After helpful feedback from the community, we're making some changes to our [Effective Altruism Handbook](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/). We've already made some design changes, and we plan to add [80,000 Hours' Problem Framework](https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/), a forthcoming piece from 80,000 Hours on coordination as a community (including the portfolio approach), Sentience Institute's [foundational question summaries](https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/foundational-questions-summaries), and David Roodman's [research for GiveWell](https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/06/why-i-mostly-believe-in-worms/) on the worm wars.

We've reached out to some of the original commenters, and some of the leading research/community building organisations in the space, asking for further comments. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to share their feedback and suggestions to improve the handbook.

CEA update, July 2018

We are excited to announce that Larissa Hesketh-Rowe has moved from COO to CEO of CEA. 

The recent changes in Larissa’s titles -- including her promotion to COO in February and now to CEO -- have been lagging behind her responsibilities and ability. In significant part, this is because Larissa has taken on additional responsibilities at an unusually rapid pace. In August of last year, Larissa was promoted from Marketing and Communications Manager to Head of Community with managing the team responsible for for EA Global, EAGx, community health and local groups. 

Six months later, Larissa became COO. For a long time Larissa has been taking on more and more of the responsibilities: managing team retreats, helping with recruitment and setting company-wide priorities. Similarly, Larissa has been operating as de facto CEO for several months as Tara has steadily decreased the number of hours she devotes to CEA. 

Tara Mac Aulay will be stepping down to work on a new EA project. She will continue to actively support CEA’s work and will continue to advise Larissa as needed. Unfortunately, we can’t release many details of her new project. What we can say is that the work she is doing has an unusual combination of urgency and upside potential. It is also highly speculative and may not pan out. Tara discussed this decision with CEA’s trustees, key staff members and advisors, and the consensus opinion was that she should work on the new project. We want to thank Tara for all the amazing work she has done within the EA community in general and at CEA in particular.

Tara joined CEA in 2015 to manage our operations, and quickly began improving many of our processes. From there she quickly progressed to managing the Community and Outreach team at CEA in 2016, and then to running all of CEA. 

This rapid progression is testament to Tara’s incredible focus and problem solving ability and to her dedication to doing whatever needs to be done. Her recent decision is a clear example of her seeing an opportunity to do more good and seizing it even though it was a difficult choice and involves an incredible amount of hard work.  We are excited to see what she does next, and wish her all the best.

We have several exciting things planned for the rest of Q2. Some examples include the [Operations Forum](https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/) (May 24-28), [EA Global](https://sf.eaglobal.org/) (Jun 8-10), the EA Leaders Forum (June 11-14), a redesign of the EA Forum and the release of a new edition of the [EA Handbook](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/). We’re also scaling up our work in coaching and mentoring individual EAs to help them make the best use of their skills and so that we can gain an in-depth understanding of what support the community needs from us. This will then inform all the work we do, from supporting local communities to running our EA Global conferences.

If you’d like to find out more about what CEA is currently prioritizing, please see our [current thinking](/ceas-current-thinking) or read our [annual review](/blog/cea-s-2017-review-and-2018-plans/). 

Boston team photo

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe is the new CEO of CEA 

Max previously worked at CEA and left in 2023.”

DSC03690 -Max - 2880

Max Dalton

Today CEA is releasing the second edition of our Effective Altruism Handbook.

You can get the pdf version [here](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/), and we also have [epub](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ohf186sfn6di/7DDPxvH9csYAka4iG08AwM/849d05f1dd2671084c9e6f59f259e89c/Effective_Altruism_Handbook.epub)/[mobi](https://efctv.org/eahandbookmobi) versions for people who prefer e-readers.

### What is CEA's EA Handbook?
It’s an introduction to some of the core concepts in effective altruism.

If you’re new to effective altruism, it should give you an overview of the key ideas and problems that we’ve found so far. But if you have already engaged with effective altruism, there should be some new insights amongst the familiar ideas.

The pieces are a mix of essays and adaptations of conference talks. We’ve tried to put them in an order that makes sense. Together we think they cover some of the key ideas in the effective altruism community.

### Why a new edition?
The [first edition of CEA's EA Handbook](http://www.careyryan.com/files/EA_Handbook.pdf) is now 3 years old. As a community, we’ve changed a lot in those three years, and learnt a lot. In fact, comparing the new handbook with the old is a good way to get a sense of just how much intellectual progress we’ve made.

After consulting with Ryan Carey, the editor of the old handbook, we agreed it was time for something new, and for a slightly more polished design. Stefan Schubert and I compiled a list of talks and articles, and the authors were gracious enough to give us permission. With the help of a small army of transcribers and copy-editors, and Laura Pomarius’ design skills, we brought it together.

### What next?
We hope that this becomes a reference point for people who are new to effective altruism, and a summary that local groups can share with their members.

We are not currently planning to make a physical version of CEA's EA Handbook: we think that the articles and design are high quality for an online pdf. However, we worry that it might damage the brand of effective altruism to distribute or sell physical copies of a resource which remains only a collection of articles and talks, rather than a polished book.

We’d welcome feedback on any aspect of the new edition.

Here are the links again if you want to get reading or sharing:

[https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/)
[Epub](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ohf186sfn6di/7DDPxvH9csYAka4iG08AwM/849d05f1dd2671084c9e6f59f259e89c/Effective_Altruism_Handbook.epub)
[Mobi](https://assets.ctfassets.net/ohf186sfn6di/5mQTz7ADRY2iwyeSi84sO0/6161f8bef73ce8c2cf4aaccb70cd6c3f/Effective_Altruism_Handbook.mobi)

***

(Edited the body of the post to reflect changes made to the contents on 23 May 2018, and change links.)

Announcing the Effective Altruism Handbook, 2nd edition

Hi everyone,

**In summary:** We recently had a change in leadership at CEA and have published our [models of community building](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/models-of-community-building/). The Boston community hosted an [EAGx conference](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-boston-2018/), and tickets sold out for [EA Global: San Francisco](https://sf.eaglobal.org/).

**CEO Update**

I recently sent an email to this mailing list announcing that I am taking over from Tara Mac Aulay as CEO of CEA, as Tara is stepping down to work on a new EA project. In case you missed it, you can read the update in full [here](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/larissa-hesketh-rowe-is-the-new-ceo-of-cea/). This quarter, I’ll be focusing mostly on connecting with our key stakeholders. Feel free to email me directly if you have comments or questions.

**Models of Community Building**

This month, we’ve continued to publish more content related to our current thinking. CEA has lots of simple models of how the effective altruism community works. [In this post](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/models-of-community-building/), we set out the models, and discuss how they relate. Each model captures some facet of things and hides other important issues, which is why we find it useful to have multiple models; each highlights a different aspect of our work.

**Concentric Circles Model**

For example, when describing the target audience of our projects, it is useful to have labels for different parts of the EA movement. In our [Concentric Circles Model](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-concentric-circles-model), we have segmented the community into varying levels of engagement as a series of concentric circles, where the smaller, inner circles are made up of people who are most engaged. Of course, in reality, these circles aren’t so neat, but this common language serves as a shorthand and can help us communicate better internally, and make better decisions.

**Funnel Model**

Using the language of the Concentric Circles model, we can then use a [Funnel Model](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/the-funnel-model) to help us think about what to focus on. A standard approach in business is to think of a sales funnel, with new customers at the top and moving down through sales to repeat business at the bottom. While CEA is not in the business of selling products, we are trying to build a community, and one aspect of this is encouraging people to become more deeply engaged. The funnel metaphor, therefore, helps us think about the appropriate goals and audience for our projects, and ensure that we’re not missing anything significant.

**Events**

**EA Global**

We have released the [agenda](https://sf.eaglobal.org/agenda) for EA Global: San Francisco taking place on 8-10 June. General admission applications have now closed, and we are at full capacity for the conference. If you missed out on a ticket, you might wish to consider applying as a [volunteer](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEsauZhxmonB-WG3W3w3YzlayT-TUBG7yeg2od0DEmMWzQCA/viewform) or [academic poster session participant](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XCAon669Z0MaKSTHPIrRu8fhCIhzCzWUIRRkTIiWLrs). Applications for [EA Global: London](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-london/) (end of October 2018) will open soon.

**EAGx**

On 21 April the Boston community hosted a successful [EAGx conference](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-boston-2018/), featuring speakers Bruce Friedrich, Max Tegmark, Julia Wise and others. The next event in the EAGx conference series takes place in [the Netherlands](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagx-netherlands/) on 29 June - 1 July with William MacAskill as keynote speaker.

CEA update, May 2018

Hi everyone,

**In summary:** This month we’ve shared our [current thinking about our strategy](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ceas-current-thinking) and how we understand [where the impact of the community comes from](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/a-three-factor-model-of-community-building). We just hosted an EA Community Building retreat, and have updates on our grants projects and an upcoming Operations Forum in May.

CEA’s current thinking

In the coming months, we plan to share more of our internal thinking. We hope that this will help others working in EA community building to learn about what work we think is valuable. We also encourage you to give us feedback, so that we can improve our strategy. Finally, creating this shared knowledge should make it easier for organizations working in this space to coordinate.

We have recently published a page setting out some of the [core hypotheses about our work](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ceas-current-thinking). It’s hard to summarize, so I recommend you click through and read it. We think that this is the best explainer of what we’re working on and why, as well as a good summary of some core assumptions held by many in the community. We explain how ultimately we’re aiming for an optimal world; the best possible world for everyone that we can reach. Since there’s so much uncertainty about how to get there, we’re trying to do things that seem likely to be positive in many scenarios, namely building a community of people committed to using reason and evidence to do the most good possible. As discussed in our last update, currently that means we’re prioritizing getting to know core members of the EA community so that we can both learn how to help them and better understand how best to bring more people into EA in future.

We’ve also just published an explanation of [how we’re currently thinking of understanding the impact of the community](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/a-three-factor-model-of-community-building), and how much this might vary. While it’s incredibly difficult to assess questions like this, we can think of the impact that individuals have as being a function of their dedication, resources, and realization (see the document for an explanation of what we mean by these terms). When you look at how much each of those factors appears to vary, it seems likely that there is a wide variation in impact.

CEA Grants Updates

**EA Grants**

Unfortunately, we have not reopened EA Grants to the public due to planning fallacy, being over ambitious about the number of projects one team could juggle. However, we are currently accepting applications for EA Grants on a referral basis. If you or someone you know seems like a promising candidate for EA Grants, please complete our [short application](https://cea-core.typeform.com/to/M1FttK?r=xxxxx). If the project seems like a good fit, we will email a link to complete a second, more detailed application and to conduct an interview with us over Skype before being awarded a grant. We plan to reopen EA Grants applications to the public by the end of Q2.

To help solve the capacity constraints we’re looking to hire a [part-time EA Grants Evaluator](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/ea-grants-evaluator/) as a contractor (although we will likely advertise for something full time later in the year). If you or someone you know seem suited for this role, please have them email their CV/resume and cover letter to Kerry Vaughan at Kerry@effectivealtruism.org. We intend to make a hiring decision as soon as we find a qualified applicant.

**Community Building Grants**

Applications for our Community Building Grants have now closed — we received over 30 independent applications, the majority being for full-time community building work. We are conducting interviews over the next month and making decisions on a rolling basis. We expect the grant round will be complete by the start of June. For further information, see the [announcement post](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1l3/announcing_effective_altruism_community_building/) on the EA Forum.

Recent & Upcoming Events

**EA Community Building Retreat**

One of our 2018 priorities is to improve how our projects help people become engaged community members, so we just finished hosting an EA Community Building retreat in the UK for organizers of European EA groups. Our goals were to increase the value that EA groups are capable of producing, and to empower individual attendees with robust plans.

**EA Global**

We recently announced the key idea for EA Global ahead of the [conference in San Francisco 8-10 June](https://sf.eaglobal.org/2018): Stay Curious. We chose this theme because the questions raised by effective altruism present difficult intellectual challenges and as such, we must be prepared to evolve continually. It might be the case that we’re still missing ‘cause X’, a major moral issue that will make future generations look back and wonder why we failed to act on it.

We've released the first round of speakers, and the tentative agenda will be online soon. We expect to sell out before the event, so if you want to attend, we encourage you to [apply ASAP](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/ea-global-2018-san-francisco/).

**Operations Forum**

As 80K points out in their [recent article](https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/), operations looks like the highest-impact role for many people in the effective altruism and existential risk communities right now, in part because of the significant bottleneck EA organizations face in hiring talented operations staff.

To help address this bottleneck, CEA is running an Operations Forum in San Leandro, CA from May 24-28th. If you think you might be a good fit because of your past work in operations or your interest in joining this field, please use [this form](https://80000hours.typeform.com/to/dQ7wGk?src=ops-post) to apply.