Contact our team

If you’d like to report a concern, the easiest way is via this form (with the option to remain anonymous):

Please have a low bar for getting in touch. We welcome small pieces of information, even if you’re not sure they warrant us taking action. Often people are worried that their issue is too minor to tell us, but we’re glad they shared it. We can likely still be helpful, and it’s useful information that could help us spot patterns of problems in the community.

You might contact us:

To discuss something you experienced in the EA community that made you uncomfortable
To let us know about harmful behavior in the EA community (harassment, mean behavior, dishonesty, etc.)
To get advice about a difficult community or interpersonal problem you (or your project/group/organization) are facing
To ask for our advice about reducing or mitigating risks for your project
To ask for our advice on improving organizational health or culture in your project/group/organization
To ask us to pass on feedback to an organization or organizational leader on your behalf

Learn more about contacting our team

Confidentiality and Anonymity →

What kinds of situations we handle →

What might happen if you contact our team →

Confidentiality and Anonymity

We know people who bring us sensitive situations care a lot about what happens with the information. It’s important to us that we don’t use the information in a way they don’t want or intend. If you get in touch, please tell us what level of confidentiality you want. We might ask your permission to share information so that we or others can take steps to address or prevent a problem, and will do our best to respect your wishes if you don’t want that. Occasionally, there are some cases where we are required to share some information about a situation, like risks of serious danger or misconduct by staff at our parent organization (EV). We encourage you to ask us any questions you have about confidentiality before you share sensitive information with us, so you can make an informed decision about what to share. Our team’s full confidentiality policy is here.

If you wish to stay anonymous, it is very useful for us to have some way of contacting you (like a burner email address) so we can ask any clarifying questions or share relevant information with you. Without this, we might be limited in the types of action we can take on the information that you share.

Reaching (or avoiding) a specific staff member

The form is the main way to contact our team. You can request specific team members there, but if you prefer, you can also reach out to any of our team members individually using the forms and email addresses listed here. You can let them know you’d like us to handle something without including a specific person (for example, if you’re concerned about a conflict of interest).

Other people and services

Sometimes, we’ll be a good fit for what you need, but sometimes, another institution or resource will be a better fit.

Read about some other options here →

Example situations we can help with

Here are some (fictionalized) examples based on real situations:

A situation that we acted on

Marc had a meeting with Christopher at an EA conference. He felt Christopher’s criticism of his career choice was needlessly harsh, and Marc came away from the meeting feeling pretty upset. Afterwards, Marc contacted us about this. Marc didn’t want to talk directly with Christopher about the conversation but was okay with us passing on general feedback to Christopher. One of our team members emailed Christopher, asking him to use more care when giving criticism. Christopher said this was likely about his conversation with Marc; he said he hadn’t meant to be so discouraging and asked us to pass on an apology to Marc.

Note that CEA’s conferences and many other EA events have a community contact person on-site who can also help with this kind of thing during an event.

A situation that we didn’t act on but were glad to hear about

Aisha contacted us saying she’d been at an EA-related program with James and found some of his comments came off as sexist. She thought this was likely “clueless” rather than deliberately offensive on his part. She did not want any steps taken unless there were further complaints. As we never heard more about James, we didn’t do anything in response.

A situation where we provided advice but didn’t take any actions ourselves

Suresh, an organizer of a cause-specific group, told us that Saskia, a new group member, was planning on reaching out to politicians to advocate for policies. Suresh was worried that Saskia didn’t have the knowledge or skills to do this well yet. We discussed with Suresh ideas for communicating with Saskia about the risks and ways to help them get involved in lower-stakes projects and upskilling opportunities.

Situations where you are welcome to reach out to us, but others may have more ability to help

Two colleagues working at the same organization had a disagreement.

Ideally this would be handled internally within their organization.
However, if you’re worried that the organization handled it poorly, you can reach out to our team.
If the disagreement included behavior that’s particularly concerning and might put people in the broader EA community at risk, you can also let our team know.

An attendee at an EA group regularly dominates the conversation in a way that bothers other attendees.

The group organizer would often be a good first point of contact here, but you can contact our team.
We’re happy to advise the organizer if they want help planning how to give feedback, if feedback doesn’t improve the situation, or if the attendee reacts very poorly to the feedback.
You can also contact us if you have concerns about how a group organizer is handling a situation.

A person in the EA community is struggling with mental health problems.

We can’t provide mental health services.
However, we have sometimes advised community members and people supporting them about how to access services.
We can also help group organizers think through what to do when someone in their group is struggling.

If you’d like to read about more situations we’ve handled, Julia wrote about anonymized versions of cases the team handled over a 12 month period.

If you contact us, here’s what might happen next

These are common responses, rather than a complete list or what will definitely happen.

If you have questions about confidentiality or what kinds of steps we might take, we’ll aim to answer those first.
If you send us information but don’t have any requests, we might just acknowledge your message, or we might follow up with questions.
We’ll listen to the concern you want to share. It’s okay if your thoughts are unstructured or if you’re not sure what should happen next!
We may have questions for you or others who have context to help us better understand the situation.
We may ask if it’s okay for us to reach out to others who were directly involved and get their perspective on what happened.
We might help you brainstorm ways you or your group/organization can manage the problem.
We might share considerations that might be important for your decision-making, like:
- Different perspectives on the concern
- Possible positive and negative consequences of different actions
- How similar concerns have played out in the past in our experience
We’ll talk through possible steps like:
- Us talking to the person about how to improve their behavior
- Informing others like EA group organizers or projects, about the problem
- Steps CEA might take in its own programs, like not admitting someone to our conferences
- Referring you to other people or services that could provide help, like HR departments, legal resources, or law enforcement
Sometimes, after discussing the situation, people decide they don’t want any steps taken now but might want steps if more problems arise.
We’ll discuss any other steps we need to take, e.g., if we think someone is at serious risk (see our confidentiality policy).