CEA update, October/November 2018

Posted 1 November, 2018 (updated 14 January, 2021)
In summary: Since our last update, we’ve been focused on setting our Q4 priorities, launching the new EA Forum, running EA Global: London, and evaluating EA Grants applications. We are also wrapping up our hiring round and have six new staff to announce!

CEA priorities this quarter

At our October team retreat, we reviewed our progress on our two-year plan to:
  1. Solidify our support to core members of the EA community this year;
  2. Expand support up the funnel to contributors and participants in 2019.
In Q3, we made significant progress on our plan by hiring to expand our capacity and by advancing key projects like EA Grants and the EA Forum. Updates about those projects are below.
In Q4, our focus is “review and adjust.” Our goal is to learn from what we did in 2018 and apply that to improving projects in 2019, particularly with an eye toward moving up the funnel. Throughout the quarter, we will work on measuring impact, developing feedback loops, and identifying opportunities to improve and scale projects in 2019.

EA Forum

After months of preparation and beta testing, we launched the new EA Forum! We hope the new Forum will become the EA community’s online hub for figuring out how to do the most good. In recent posts, Max Dalton described how the Forum can foster the intellectual progress of the community, and Aaron Gertler laid out the new features designed to improve Forum users’ experiences. We encourage you to write, cross-post, and comment, and to contact the moderation team (forum@effectivealtruism.org) with questions or feedback.

EA Grants

Last quarter, we re-opened EA Grants to the public in order to find more people with promising ideas to fund. The most recent round of EA Grants applications closed in October. After our initial review, we asked a subset of applicants to complete more detailed proposals. CEA staff are reviewing these proposals and starting interviews this month. 
We’re excited to have Nicole Ross join our team in December to run EA Grants full-time. Nicole comes to CEA from the Open Philanthropy Project, where she is currently completing their Fall Research Analyst programme and gathering feedback on EA Grants. We’re looking forward to Nicole’s ideas for the programme.

Hiring at CEA

One of CEA’s main focuses last quarter was hiring. Whilst we are still wrapping up this process, we have six new staff joining us for three-month trials!
  • Aaron Gertler - Content Writer. Aaron is joining our Content Team to manage the EA Newsletter and write content for CEA’s websites and the EA Forum.
  • Alex Barry - Community Specialist. Alex is adding capacity to our Events, Groups, and Grants Team to allow us to support more EA groups and better measure our impact.
  • Ben West - Analyst, Executive Office. Ben is improving systems like our CRM, as well as providing advice to managers and helping with fundraising.
  • Davis Kingsley - Events Specialist. Davis is taking on managing our individual outreach retreats.
  • Josh Axford - UK Operations Specialist. Josh replaces our previous UK Operations Specialist and is working to improve CEA UK’s systems and day-to-day operations.
  • Nicole Ross - EA Grants Evaluator. Nicole will work on evaluating applications for EA Grants and managing the EA Grants programme.
We are excited about how each of these new team members can contribute to CEA’s work building and supporting the EA community. You can read more about our new staff on CEA’s Team page.

Events

EA Global: London More than 600 attendees, including 40+ speakers, gathered for EA Global: London, which had the theme “Doing Good Globally.” Will MacAskill, Kerry Vaughan, and I delivered the opening and closing talks about topics including the global reach of EA, coordinating the EA community, and improving community culture.