CEA update, September 2016

Posted 1 September, 2016 (updated 14 January, 2021)
It’s been a great month for growth at CEA. In September, we got 106 new Giving What We Can members and 1,748 new EA Newsletter signups; in both cases that’s nearly double the previous three month average.
For membership and newsletter reports, and updates from the different teams within CEA, please see below.
Best Wishes,
Will

Metrics

New members per month over the last year

The final spike on the right is the 106 new members in September. This is the highest number of pledges in any month outside of giving season (the highest ever is 129 in December 2014).
(The dip after September 2016 is because we’ve yet to have the full month of October).

New newsletter subscribers by month

Growth in number of newsletter subscribers has also been strong; it’s been the best month ever outside of October (when we import newsletter subscribers from University Freshers’ fairs).

Community and Outreach Division

Online Marketing

This month we’ve been experimenting with multiple strategies designed to get Giving What We Can Pledges and signups for the EA Newsletter. This has been very successful and as a result we’re considering focusing more on Facebook promotion, email follow up to people considering the pledge, and Twitter promotion. The top three last click conversion sources for pledges were 80,000 Hours, Facebook and effectivealtruism.org.

Community, Chapters and Events

We’ve begun planning EA Global 2017 and we’ll be opening applications for EAGx 2017 shortly. We’ve also launched a new high-touch chapters program, providing more in-depth support to a pilot group of student chapters. Chapter leaders interested in knowing more should contact chapters@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. Julia has been working on developing strategies designed to foster cooperative and friendly behaviour in the EA community.

Networking and Media

We met with several major philanthropists to advise them on their giving, including Sir Tom Hunter, Scotland’s first billionaire, who is donating almost all his wealth to projects in Rwanda and Scotland.
Will discussed effective altruism on Sam Harris’s podcast, which so far as been listened to over 350,000 times. He also appeared in Swedish national media.

Y Combinator

We applied to Y Combinator, the leading startup incubator, based in Silicon Valley, which has produced the likes of AirBnB, Dropbox and Reddit. 80,000 Hours went through the program in summer of 2015 and found it exceptionally useful in improving the focus of the organisation and helping the organisation grow, and we’re hoping it will help us in the same way. On the 28th October we’ll hear about whether we’ve got an interview, which would take place in early November. We think that our chances are about 50/50.

Special Projects Division

Philanthropic Advising

The philanthropic advising team has focused on exploring new funding opportunities, including in mental health, tobacco regulation, and research funding.

Policy

Sebastian Farquhar has put the finishing touches on a forthcoming report on the international community’s possible responses to existential risk in Helsinki for the Finnish Government, and with Toby Ord, has been advising UK government officials on a variety of areas.

Research

The research team have begun working through the list of high-priority projects they had compiled and are working on a new research webpage, which we hope to unveil by the end of the year.

EA Institute

We submitted our first grant proposal, to the John Templeton Foundation, in collaboration with the University of York and the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at St Andrews.