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Last month, CEA started Y Combinator. This has already had a very positive impact on the team. We’re getting a lot of advice and attention from the partners, and we’re feeling excited about building CEA.

January has been our best month ever in terms of growth of Giving What We Can pledgers, in significant part because of the pledge drive, with 199 members.

We wrapped up our fundraising drive, raising $2 million. We are also in the process of applying for a grant from Open Philanthropy, and some donors are waiting until we hear from them before deciding where to donate.

This month we also had some significant criticism, confusion and discussion about effective altruism in general, and Giving What We Can Pledge in particular. In response, we’re going to try to be more communicative and transparent with the effective altruism community. Julia Wise has written a post [clarifying the Giving What We Can Pledge](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/16t/clarifying_the_giving_what_we_can_pledge/); I’ve written a little about what CEA’s next big product will be [on the forum](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/174/introducing_the_ea_funds/). I intend to write more to explain what CEA does and why in the future.  

Best Wishes,

Will

* * *

# CEA METRICS

| Metric                                  | Score |
|-----------------------------------------|-------|
| Total new members this month (January)  | 199   |
| Total new members January 2016          | 113   |
| Total new members last month (December) | 171   |
| Total new members December 2015         | 115   |

New members per month since 2009:

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/4oZGd_2XxT-QqwJ7V7CemWjgup-ZUNMwCDG04cPtIJaqIL2UzRPHRBqO8M4v2YYfFsjVmPKRuBuVuOIZ5QCLuDQmpN39VO2I_XEBjqUrCaZHVIz4ysCRSLQd9nsKuwSbxoI3s74T)

Cumulative membership total since 2009

![](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/w8rULDCLO1SP7btdyYZMbGXlceIuFAkKCFc-sMQBx7l1YHvy_kpdCKihUGCtZRQCHgjOM-WkIBSDjw0NQjpn0MNmXVp_msH6mYC09qvUy291O9nRONZvsh23EVjdW4MXMtI1WF--)

# CEA Financials

We’re currently moving over to a new accounting system and are in the process of applying for a grant from the Open Philanthropy Project so we’ll be able to share more financial data in the next few months.

# CEA Division Updates:

Below are brief descriptions of the work from the different teams within CEA over the past month.

## Community and Outreach Division

### Online Infrastructure and Marketing Team

The Online Infrastructure and Marketing Team are all in the US for Y Combinator. They are are focusing on money pledged in the first year as their main metric (as suggested by Y Combinator) as well as continuing to support the community. For this reason, they’ve focussed on the pledge drive (resulting in 318 new members), conversations and interviews with the community and significant work to improve our website infrastructure (including, for example, the pledge sign up form). We hope these improvements will create a better user experience for the community and give us better access to data on our different activities.

### Community, Chapters and Events Team

#### EA Global

EA Global conferences are one of the main ways we support collaboration in the community. For this reason we published [this short update](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/16h/eag_2017_boston_update_moved_to_june/) to let the community know we are moving the EAG 2017 Boston event from May to June to ensure as much participation as possible.

As a reminder, this makes our current plans:

*   Boston conference in June (including topics in science, technology, and policy)
*   The Bay Area conference in July/August (primarily community-driven event)
*   UK conference in October/November (“EA Fundamentals” event, with an academic focus)

We’re conducting site visits over the next week and so expect to have more concrete dates before next month’s update.

#### EAGx

EAGx events remain an important way of not only connecting the community but also finding talented and promising members of the community to be the organisers. This month we have spent working on the remaining three conferences from the first application round (in Madison, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.), as well as restructuring EAGx based on the feedback we received throughout the inaugural year. Roxanne Heston has officially started working in the Executive Office, so EAGx will now be under the direction of the Events Team, allowing us to better integrate all of our events.

#### Chapters

Chapters proved important in getting new pledges during our pledge campaign, with 51 people citing Chapters as where they first heard about Giving What We Can. We are currently reviewing how best to support Chapters and have been evaluating their impact following on from the groups’ responses to the Winter Termly Review.

### Executive Office

The Executive Office is a new team dedicated to managing the office of the CEO. Will is not only the CEO at the Centre for Effective Altruism, but is recognised as a public intellectual and leading figure in the effective altruism movement. Due to his rapidly expanding profile and responsibilities our purpose is to facilitate communication between Will, CEA and the outside world, devise strategy to help maintain and grow his influence, and manage his schedule and social media presence.

In addition to Will, this team consists of Emma Gray, Executive Assistant, and Roxanne Heston, Press Officer. This month they have been mainly focused on setting up the processes for the new team and helping to devise strategies to help build Will’s influence and connections. They have also been focused on freeing up more of Will’s time so that he can dedicate more of it to writing.

### Special Projects Division

One of our top priorities this year is to narrow the focus of the research projects currently housed in this division. Over the past month, we’ve made progress in that direction. We are working closely with the Future of Humanity Institute to identify ways to better integrate its research with CEA’s and, soon, that of the Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism. Seb Farquhar, who led our policy advising work, is moving across the hall to the Future of Humanity Institute, where he will continue his work on existential and technological risk policy. We are also in discussion with Founders Pledge and GiveWell regarding whether some or all of our philanthropic advising team should move to those organizations.

A few specific highlights from the past month:

*   Seb published his investigation into [changes in AI safety funding](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/changes-in-funding-in-the-ai-safety-field).
*   Seb organized and attended a launch event at the Finnish embassy in London for his report “Existential Risks - Diplomacy and Governance”, which he wrote for the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
*   The Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism was awarded a grant by the Oxford John Fell Fund, which will pay Michelle Hutchinson’s salary for two years.
*   Owen Cotton-Barratt, Seb, and Will MacAskill attended the Future of Life Institute’s artificial intelligence conference in Asilomar, California.
*   Alwaleed Philanthropies, a $25 billion foundation for which CEA’s philanthropic advising team has provided advice, has [publicly committed](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hrh-princess-lamia-bin-majed-alsaud/tackling-ntds-our-commitm_b_14285956.html) $3 million to the END Fund and, more generally, has embraced evidence-based philanthropy.

CEA update, January 2017

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

CEA staff donation decisions 2016

## Overview
The CEA team has started planning the EAG 2017 conferences. After considering the [lessons from EA Global 2016](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ea/11x/review_of_ea_global_2016/), as well as community feedback and survey results, we are planning to have three EA Global Events this year. The locations will be:

1. Boston / Cambridge, MA - in May (Edit: June)
2. SF Bay Area - in July or August
3. London / Oxford - in October or November

We are publishing these plans now so that people in the EA community can provide feedback and can start thinking about travel plans. While we expect most of this year’s attendees to come to only one of the three conferences, each will have its own distinct and complementary content, so we encourage people to consider attending more than one.

## Why Three Conferences?
Last year we found that a surprisingly small percentage of attendees travelled to attend the single main conference. Survey data and participant feedback indicate that having several conferences that are easily accessible from different geographic regions will substantially increase the number of people who can attend an EAG event, and we think this is a good thing. Conference sizes will be partly determined by community interest and venue capacity, but we expect at least 400-500 attendees at each event.

## Program
While this year’s conferences will all have programming that attendees of past EAGs will recognize, each will have its own distinct focus. The EAG team will look for speakers, panels, and workshops that fit with these themes as much as possible.

Boston: EAG Frontiers. The Frontiers conference will be about new, upcoming, and  speculative causes and interventions. Likely talk tracks include:

- Society - law, government, policy, coordination
- Technology - recent developments, predicting important advances, novel applications
- Science - recent and ongoing research, improving the practice of Science

There will be a particular emphasis on figuring out how to think about important, difficult, and speculative causes. Talks and workshops will try to answer the question, “what could be the next [Cause X](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/moral-progress-and-cause-x/)?”

SF Bay Area: EAG Summit. This event will be a less curated, more community-driven event. There will be some large main-stage talks, but the primary source of content will be workshops and side room talks in the style of an “unconference”. The main audience for this event will be EA Global alumni, though attendance at a previous event will not be a requirement for admission. Programming will focus on the EA community itself, with potential tracks including:

Finding Cause X - how can the EA community find new causes and projects to support? How has this happened in the past?

- More “E” - how can we make people and projects in the EA community more effective?
- More “A” - can EA’s become more altruistic? Can we help others become more altruistic? What makes people motivated to do good?
- We hope to solicit the majority of the Summit’s programming from members of the EA community in the form of talks, workshops, facilitated discussions, and other specialized events.

London: EAG Fundamentals. This event will focus on discussion of the core philosophical and technical principles of Effective Altruism. It will build on the work of CEA’s Research Team and that of the new EA Institute, and will include discussions of cause prioritization, ethics, and philosophy. There will also be an event similar to the EA Global 2016 [Research Meeting](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ea/z0/effective_altruism_global_research_meeting_call/), and we will look for submissions from a variety of disciplines, including economics, data science, and philosophy.  We expect this event will have many attendees with specialized knowledge in their fields who are fairly new to effective altruism, so we plan to include sessions focused on the fundamental ideas of effective altruism as well as ways that specific disciplines can further EA causes.

## EA Community Input
Very little of the program has been finalized for any of the three events. If you have any ideas about the overall structure and themes of the conferences, we would love to hear them! Please use [this input form](https://eaglobal.typeform.com/to/ZCj1Kx) as many times as you like. We will post regular updates as the planning process continues, so there will be multiple opportunities to give feedback.

We also need your help finding excellent speakers and other content. Please use [this form](https://eaglobal.typeform.com/to/dg3OxS) to nominate a speaker, workshop, or topic area that you think would be a good fit at any of the conferences.

We are looking for more help with this year’s events, particularly from people local to each of Boston, the Bay, and London. If you are interested in joining the EAG 2017 team as a volunteer, please [let us know here](https://eaglobal.typeform.com/to/j5OjDa)!

We will continue to provide updates as the programs come together both on the Forum and at [eaglobal.org](https://www.eaglobal.org/).

Update on EA Global 2017

*Posted on behalf of the research team at the Centre for Effective Altruism*

The effective altruism community has surfaced a number of important ideas, identified existing research which is relevant to decisions, and in some cases pursued its own valuable research. Although there is a vast amount yet to learn, we’ve come a long way from a position of ignorance about how to help the world. At the same time, as the body of knowledge grows, it poses a number of challenges:

- There isn’t always an easy reference for some important concepts or ideas.
- It’s not obvious to someone coming into the area what to start reading, or where to find information on a given topic.
- It can be obscure how the different branches of research are supposed to fit into the same overarching intellectual project.

Over the last month or two, the research team at the Centre for Effective Altruism has been working on [a resource which attempts to address these challenges](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/). The current version is somewhere between a reading list, an encyclopedia, and a textbook.
- It is like a reading list in that we started with some of the highest-quality external material we know of, and wanted to provide readers a guide for this material.
- It is like an encyclopedia in that it has separate short articles for different ideas, so users can dip into a part of it and browse.
- It is like a textbook in that we provide a conceptual map of the space, which may help people orient their idea of how different concepts or pieces of work relate to others. This also gives people a natural place to start reading.

We think it’s important for the success of a project that it be *useful* from the outset, so we’ve put work into making sure that we have reasonable content across the entire space. However, we regard this as very much a starting point. We’re interested in finding out whether and how people use it. We’re interested in continuing to develop and improve the content. And we’re interested in whether we are missing important features, and how such a tool should work and accept contributions going forwards.

We've tried to do a good job of presenting a balanced view of important topics. We are confident some errors (of comission and omission) remain. The fault for these is all ours, but if you spot them please let us know. For broad discussion of the project, please use the comment thread here on the forum. For specific suggestions or feedback, or if you want to make a private comment, please see the [feedback page](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/feedback/).

We hope you find it interesting!

[Effective Altruism Concepts](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/)

A new reference site: Effective Altruism Concepts

On Monday, we began our Winter Fundraiser.  You can read a full review of 2016, our goals for 2017 and the details of our fundraising in the [full annual review here](https://assets.ctfassets.net/es8pp29e1wp8/heqArICf2SuEuMQmygEug/1051221345880fdcfc7562d3291b3b76/Centre_for_Effective_Altruism_____Fundraising_Prospectus_Winter_2017.pdf). If you’d like to donate to CEA you can do so [here](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/donate/).

Below I’ve included our usual metrics for November and some of the big updates from our divisions such as:

*   The launch of the [Giving What We Can pledge campaign](https://www.facebook.com/events/177675359369053/).
*   The success of our [Doing Good Better giveaway](http://e-a.io/doinggoodbetter).
*   The launch of the [Effective Altruism Concepts project](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/14m/a_new_reference_site_effective_altruism_concepts/).

Best Wishes,

Will

* * *

# CEA Metrics

| Metric                                  | Score |
|-----------------------------------------|-------|
| Total new members this month (November) | 89    |
| Total new members November 2015         | 52    |
| Total new members last month (October)  | 105   |
| Total new members October 2015          | 54    |

## New members per month since 2009:

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3lFluA9xTcODD7iY8dlNQjCcMOqsiBiI8OXb0JYG7XTiAC_9-MmryvY2VTbe-RN9XTmPswvxUNU38hUmQwZ3DAwz6j4VYTZuaL9YbZaPiuYXtKHMq5olaBB7Xl7iLIIHt73JXu51)

## Cumulative membership total since 2009

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/j-gdjp58Tx2bxbKLC7zQvn74-jRHw98cuMdfhugO9r04-xVPWyefZYsAkODDsdTzShIDwx0izCo1W8waR5eRR7stFQOlFHK7S4qGsDiXUqUUlPkleTbsY8AWRQw7aicMR1VPXSVz)

## New newsletter subscribers by month

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/NsBLC0v1pFN8AJHXcUQaqyBUuNlFQtoeN1_IyPD4LFS5bRuuYLZmg834bJQv1IOgXThtwp81h_b_n3iGelsE32uUrUCxgCEIse9YbH6lkdWiI1S5nz8950ahWc7FzzGhUFwWWbfI)

There were 4,615 new subscribers in November.

# CEA Financials

We’ve been working on an updated budget since our merger. You can read more detail about our 2016 spending and 2017 budget in our [fundraising prospectus](https://assets.ctfassets.net/es8pp29e1wp8/heqArICf2SuEuMQmygEug/1051221345880fdcfc7562d3291b3b76/Centre_for_Effective_Altruism_____Fundraising_Prospectus_Winter_2017.pdf).

This month I’ve included here a brief overview of some preliminary figures for CEA UK.

|    | **Figure at end Nov 2016** | **Notes** |
|---|---|---|
| **Reserves** | 6 months | As at end December |
| **Income in November** | £7,434.75 |   |
| **Costs in November** | £70,246.04 | Overspend due to high demand for Doing Good Better Giveaway |
| **October projection of November spending** | £63,168.67 |    |
| **Projection for December spending** | £60,793.69 | We are likely to update this as we think significant extra funds to the Doing Good Better giveaway is a valuable investment. |
| **Number of salaried employees** | 23 |   |

Below are brief descriptions of the work from the different teams within CEA over the past month. For more-detailed information, please see CEA’s [winter fundraising prospectus](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/fundraising).

# Community and Outreach Division

## Online Infrastructure and Marketing Team

We set up the [Effective Altruism concepts website](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/) in conjunction with the Special Projects Division and have updated our payments system to make it more user friendly.

We released the [Doing Good Better podcast](https://podcast.effectivealtruism.org/) and launched a [Doing Good Better book giveaway](http://e-a.io/doinggoodbetter) allowing newsletter subscribers to nominate friends to receive free copies of the book as gifts. At time of writing we’ve had 2,464 requests for the book and 2,090 nominations. We sold out Amazon’s US, UK and Canada book reserves so we’re now exploring alternative suppliers.

At the end of November we launched the [Giving What We Can pledge campaign](https://www.facebook.com/events/177675359369053/) with a small team of volunteers. If you’d like to support the campaign you can find simple actions to take in [this group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/530016320541323/).

## Community, Chapters and Events Team

### EA Global

As we mentioned last month, we will be holding three EA Global conferences next year. We’ve been narrowing down the focus of these conferences. The Boston/Cambridge MA conference in May will focus on more speculative causes and interventions with likely tracks including topics in science, technology, and policy. The Bay Area conference in July/August will be a primarily community-driven event with the EA community shaping the agenda. Finally, the UK conference in October/November will be our “EA Fundamentals” event, with an academic focus that builds on the 2016 Research Meeting. You can read more on our plans here.

### EAGx

The recent EAGx in Oxford had over 400 attendees making it the largest ever EA event in Europe. This coming weekend we have EAGx Prague and then EAGx in Madison, DC, and Philadelphia in the first half of next year.

We will be opening a new application round for EAGx soon, part of the new quarterly application system (rather than annual, as we did this year).

### Chapters

Our main focus for Chapters has been on launching the [GWWC Pledge Campaign](https://www.facebook.com/events/177675359369053/) with student groups.

# Special Projects Division

## Philanthropic Advising and Policy Consulting

The philanthropic advising team continued to focus primarily on their research into potential new funding opportunities, focusing on mental health, evidenced-based policy in low-income countries, and meta research. In addition, we advised the Noorda Foundation on its grantmaking strategy; published a commentary in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the evidence around mass deworming; and advised a Giving Pledge member on where to donate (they are now considering a sizable $1,000,000 yearly donation to a GiveWell charity).

## Policy

We completed the report “Existential Risks - Diplomacy and Governance” with over 50 collaborators on behalf of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and authored a forthcoming paper on biosafety pandemic insurance. Seb chaired a panel at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank, on the topic of global catastrophic risk reduction and presented his work at the EAGx Oxford conference.

## Fundamentals Research

We launched the [Effective Altruism Concepts](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/) project, which summarizes nearly 200 effective altruism concepts and organizes them in a rough conceptual map of the research space. In addition, several members of the team gave talks at EAGx Oxford on their ongoing research.

The fundamentals research team is accepting applications for a [Summer Research Fellowship](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/summer-research-fellow/).

## EA institute

The Institute team prepared a grant application for The Leverhulme Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In addition, Rossa O’Keeffe-O’Donovan was awarded a 3 year Nuffield Postdoc in Economics. He has already been assisting with the Institute team’s economics grant applications and plans to spend a portion of his time while at Oxford working with the Institute.

* * *

# About the emails/Q&A

## What are the CEA supporters emails?

These are emails we are sending monthly to key supporters of CEA (e.g. major donors, current and some past staff, advisors etc). This to keep people in the loop about our work and demonstrate transparency.  They include things like our progress on our key metrics and the state of our finances.  

This is different from things like the EA newsletters or the GWWC members newsletter which are both quite public facing and aiming to get people more involved in EA. The CEA supporters updates have a more internal feel and are for people already strongly invested in our work.

## Who are they sent to?

Everyone on this list. If you think there’s anyone missing please add them.

## What is the process for creating the CEA supporter emails/How do you decide what content to include?

Using this document we collect updates from all of you, across CEA, and use this to provide highlights in the email. This does mean that we don’t guarantee your update will be included. If you do not have anything to include, please leave your team’s section blank.

## What do you need from me?

If your team has any updates you think our key stakeholders should know about please add that here. Please keep it to a **couple of sentences** only.

## Can I see an example of a past one to give me ideas of what to write?

Yes, you can find past versions in [this folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-wqk5ANh5S-YVIxdHRkT2pKUWs?usp=sharing).

CEA update, November 2016

In October, we gained 105 new Giving What We Can pledges, more than double the number for October 2015, and gained 6,863 newsletter subscribers (including the remaining Student Freshers’ Fair imports).

We ran a week-long retreat in Barcelona to bring everyone together in one place. This was a valuable space to think big about future strategy, work on intra-divisional projects and build relationships.

We’ve also been invited to interview in mid December with Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup incubator, which has produced companies including AirBnB, Dropbox and Reddit. We’ll soon begin our fundraising round, and have begun preparing.

As a result of the election, the last week has been tough for many members of staff. We took a couple of days to reflect on what happened, discuss how the new presidency affects strategy for CEA and the EA movement, and spend time together as a team. Many members of the team had taken some time off to campaign for Hillary, and their phone banking team was in the top five teams worldwide for calls. Ultimately, the result and our worries about the impact of the result on foreign aid spending, farm animal welfare, global catastrophic risks and the nature of democratic institutions, just make our resolve to make the world better even stronger.

For more details on the projects we’re working on, positions we’re hiring for and and our metrics dashboard please see below.

Best Wishes,

Will

# CEA Metrics

## New members per month over the last 12 months

This month we got 105 pledges, one short of our September number but still very strong for any month outside giving season, and more than double the number of members for October 2015.

![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/VECDSYIFC7bbDhbw0v2Mc0F1VgBjDLWbZpqWj9KAhoV_0Vnsx5D2tST0Fb5wBdguNz7QcuiuoghBFtSLk2qkTjhmQoIRbS2Eveaq1FoVS1MCE-nv61z2u9_8kBji5J1l3D3sUxLD)

## New newsletter subscribers by month

We continued to benefit from the automations and adverts we’ve set up as the last imports of the over 5,000 subscriptions from university chapter events.

![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/NpfMMisOZsPqJceR9D7S2oIHinuaXXFuXxi-kGZ4golFrMRLXDmztQ52EP3XE47gcTg6OvNXan0sJUaVWFArxwqrNMo3fKTu0WJyYjI_xE4d2FaYfoCEa2A5DqDyQET7o7TH16ro)

Unfortunately, we are experiencing some discrepancies in the dates associated with subscriptions and the total numbers reported which Mailchimp (our email marketing software) acknowledge is an outstanding issue their end. This is why the growth is incorrectly associated with November.

# In depth updates from across CEA

## Y Combinator

We are excited to have an interview with Y Combinator in mid December. We will find out on the day of the interview whether or not we will be accepted into their three month startup incubator programme starting in January 2017\.

## Networking and Media

We have had a number of meetings with very high net worth individuals who are interested in using a significant proportion or most of their wealth on philanthropy; this included two philanthropy salons in London. Our opportunities in this area have increased significantly since the launch of Doing Good Better; it’s an area we may focus more on in the future.

## We’re hiring

We are advertising for four positions:

*   [Executive Assistant](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/executive-assistant/)
*   [Office Manager](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/office-manager/) for our UK office
*   [Director of US Operations](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/director-of-us-operations/)
*   [Assistant Producer](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/assistant-producer-events-team/) within our Events Team

Please think of anyone you know who might be interested, and encourage them to apply.

# Community and Outreach Division

The Community and Outreach Division is focussed on inspiring people to become actively involved in effective altruism. This means reaching out to new audiences as well as equipping the existing community with the knowledge, skills and motivation to do the most good. We work closely with the Special Projects Division to share new ideas in this space.

## Online Infrastructure and Marketing Team

The Online Infrastructure and Marketing team have been developing an introduction to effective altruism email series for new newsletter subscribers. We are currently testing different content that covers the core concepts in effective altruism. We have also set up [an archive](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-newsletter-archives/) of all previous newsletters as a community resource. The most recent newsletter included [new content on Cause X](http://effectivealtruism.org/three-heuristics-for-finding-cause-x).

A third of charitable donations normally take place in December, so the team are working on content to help people think about where to donate, incentives for people to start conversations about effective altruism (including working with members on the Giving What We Can pledge drive), and key improvements to our websites to make donations and pledges easier. 

## Community, Chapters and Events Team

### Giving What We Can Trust

The Giving What We Can Trust, set up and managed by staff at CEA, collected £380,000 in donations during the previous quarter, and is preparing to regrant these to effective charities.

### Events

Learning the lessons from the [review of EA Global 2016](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/11x/review_of_ea_global_2016/) and our location survey we are leaning towards having three distinct events, tentatively located across Boston or Cambridge, London, and the Bay Area, likely spread out across May, July / August, and October 2017.

We’re also improving our [EAGx](https://www.eaglobal.org/eagx/) process using feedback from participants and organisers of successful events in Flanders, Belgium and Germany. We plan to encourage groups to run day-long events by default, offer grants upfront and we will make conference resources publicly available on the [eaglobal.org](https://www.eaglobal.org/eagx/) website for the whole community to use.

### Chapters

Student Activities Fairs generated over 5,000 Newsletter signups in total and we’re solidifying our back office support with help of intern Harri Besceli.

### Community

I [wrote recently](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/132/setting_community_norms_and_values_a_response_to/) about the importance of setting norms and values in the community following  the [post about Intentional Insights](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/12z/concerns_with_intentional_insights/) that documented some ways in which they acted out of line with EA values. In the post I proposed creating both a set of EA guiding values and a community panel that investigates and makes recommendations on potential egregious violations of those principles. This is an area that seems crucially important as EA grows, but also poses significant risks, depending on implementation. Julia Wise and I have been speaking to members of the community about whether and how to take this forward, and would  appreciate any thoughts that you have.

# Special Projects Division

The Special Projects Division’s mission is to improve our understanding of how to do the most good in the world and to bring those ideas to the people best-positioned to implement them. Below are a few highlights from the individual teams over the past month.

## Research Fundamentals

The research fundamentals team has collectively focused on developing a conceptual map of the key ideas in effective altruism, which will be available on [effectivealtruism.org](https://www.effectivealtruism.org) later this year.

Max Dalton also joined us this month. Max received a first class degree from Oxford in philosophy, politics, and economics and a masters in economics from the University of York. He’ll work on several projects, including with Owen Cotton-Barratt on creating quantitative cause prioritisation models.

## Philanthropic Advising

The philanthropic advising team continued researching potentially promising funding opportunities in suicide prevention, science funding, and evidence-based policy in low-income countries. They also advised Alwaleed Philanthropies, a $30 billion foundation focused on global humanitarianism, on its grantmaking and introduced it to potential partners.  

## Policy

Sebastian Farquhar and Toby Ord have continued consulting for the UK government in a variety of areas. Sebastian has also been working with researchers from the Future of Humanity Institute on a biosafety policy paper.

## Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism

Jon Courtney joined Michelle Hutchinson this month to help set up an academic institute at Oxford to focus on effective altruism. The team submitted a grant application to Oxford University, which, if successful, would fund Michelle’s salary for two years. The application was very well received by the Oxford faculty.

* * *

* * *

# About the emails/Q&A

## What are the CEA supporters emails?

These are emails we are sending monthly to key supporters of CEA (e.g. major donors, current and some past staff, advisors etc). This to keep people in the loop about our work and demonstrate transparency.  They include things like our progress on our key metrics and the state of our finances.  

This is different from things like the EA newsletters or the GWWC members newsletter which are both quite public facing and aiming to get people more involved in EA. The CEA supporters updates have a more internal feel and are for people already strongly invested in our work.

## Who are they sent to?

Everyone on this list. If you think there’s anyone missing please add them.

## What is the process for creating the CEA supporter emails/How do you decide what content to include?

Using this document we collect updates from all of you, across CEA, and use this to provide highlights in the email. This does mean that we don’t guarantee your update will be included. If you do not have anything to include, please leave your team’s section blank.

## What do you need from me?

If your team has any updates you think our key stakeholders should know about please add that here. Please keep it to a **couple of sentences** only.

## Can I see an example of a past one to give me ideas of what to write?

Yes, you can find past versions in [this folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-wqk5ANh5S-YVIxdHRkT2pKUWs?usp=sharing).

CEA update, October 2016

Amy manages a team of 11 people to put on a wide variety of highly-impactful events, ranging from large conferences to small, specialised retreats. Her role includes managing our three program leads, budgeting and fundraising, and stakeholder management. Previously, Amy was Chief Operating Officer of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, where she was also Executive Producer of The Singularity Summit. Amy earned a Juris Doctor degree from New York University after graduating summa cum laude from Alma College with a BA in foreign service.

amy@centreforeffectivealtruism.org

Director of Events

DSC04148 -Amy - 2880

Amy Willey Labenz

Review of EA Global 2016

This post is a summary of some of the most interesting findings from reviewing the marketing activities conducted by CEA to promote Effective Altruism Global 2016.

This is intended as a resource for others working to promote the effective altruism community, sharing what we found worked well and which activities we found to be less valuable.

For those short on time, the activities we recommend are: incentivizing nominations, retargeted ads, posting in EA Facebook groups and capitalizing on newsletter lists. We had little success with cold emails, trying to get coverage on EA aligned blogs or direct Facebook advertising and surprisingly giveaways didn’t seem to work. We also had a temporary unexpectedly low conversion rate from successful applications to ticket purchases and recommend monitoring this closely at similar events.

We tried more tactics than are covered here and learned more than is included below. This post includes just the best/worst activities and results we found surprising.

Please also note there is plenty of uncertainty in these findings, therefore we would appreciate supplementary comments and ideas, particularly from anyone who has tried similar methods. This would add to all of our collective knowledge on promoting effective altruism and EA Community events.
 

Our objectives in marketing EA Global

Our objectives were to:
1. Reach 2,000 applications
2. Have 1,000 attendees
3. Identify one “superhero” EA (someone like Will MacAskill, Nick Bostrom, Cari Tuna, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Jason Matheny, etc)
4. Gain a deeper understanding of the EA community and what messages are effective at spreading EA.

We succeeded at all goals except goal 3, although of course, it is early days.

Overall the results were:

Applications: 2,152
Nominations: 4,440
Total attendees: 1,052
Total revenue: $234,414

Most successful marketing activities

In terms of ticket sales the most successful activities we undertook were:

1. Creating a system for applicants to nominate others

This was our most successful activity and so we particularly recommend incentivizing nomination.

For us, this resulted in 32% of all applications (853 in total) with a further 26% of applicants applying because they heard about EAG from someone in EA.

2. Email marketing via newsletters (80k and EA Newsletters)

## EA Newsletter results
Average subscribers during campaign: 9,233
Total applications: 211
Net income: +$24,419

## 80K Newsletter results
Average subscribers during campaign: 44,450
Total applications: 185
Net income: +$10,905

The success of this is unsurprising as these are people who have already registered some substantial interest in EA. It does reinforce the value of investing in our newsletter lists, which is something we plan to prioritize over the next year.

3. Retargeting adverts via [Adroll](https://www.adroll.com/)

We used [Adroll](https://www.adroll.com/) to set up a retargeting campaign that would show ads on Facebook and around the web to anyone that visited the EA Global site. We tracked click-through-conversions (where someone clicked on the ad and applied on the same day) and view-through-conversions (where someone saw an ad and applied within 3 days). Since many view-through-conversions would have happened anyway, we counted view-through-conversions at 25% of the value of a click-through conversion.

## Results
Impressions: 1,418,383
Click Through Conversions: 40
View Through Conversions: 65.25
Total conversions: 105.25
Total cost: $5,219.60
Estimated revenue: $11,532
Estimated ROI: 2.21X
Estimated net income: +$6,312.40

 

Least successful marketing activities

The least successful activities when looking at return on investment (time and/or money) were:

1. Seeking coverage on EA aligned blogs

We reached out to EA aligned blogs (Wait But Why, Slate Star Codex, Overcoming Bias, etc.) and asked them to write something about EA Global. This had a high time cost (especially when optimizing copy for different audiences) with very few resultant applications.

Part of the reason that the Slate Star Codex post was unsuccessful was that it did not appear on the main page, only on a hidden thread by mistake. We saw that a post about the  Pareto Fellowship that did appear on their front page did much better and resulted in a noticeable increase in applications. This doesn’t explain why some of the other blogs posts did not work, however.

2. Cold emailing foundations and organizations in and around Berkeley

We used GuideStar and other tools to find lists of large, potentially EA-aligned foundations and then cold emailed staff about EA Global. We had expected the volume of emails we were able to send to result in a good number of applications even if the conversion rate was low. However, this turned out to be more time-consuming and result in fewer applications than we expected.

3. Direct Facebook marketing

In addition to retargeting ads via Adroll we used Facebook to target ads at:

* A “lookalike” audience that is similar to people who had already applied
* Stanford/Berkeley students
* Friends of people that like the EA Global Facebook page
* People who are interested in [utilitarianism](https://www.utilitarianism.net/) and/or [Peter Singer](https://www.utilitarianism.net/utilitarian-thinker/peter-singer)

However, this was nowhere near as successful as the retargeted ads. According to Facebook, we had 18 applications through these ads although we could only independently confirm that 3 applications resulted from Facebook.

I managed the Facebook advertising despite being new to Facebook marketing at the time. The results may have improved with more experience.

 

Most surprising results

Giveaways: not as promising as expected.

In addition to the above, we were surprised to find that T-shirt and Doing Good Better giveaways did not work well at all.

The T-Shirt giveaway involved offering a free EA T-shirt to anyone that nominated 5 people for EA Global. While this generated more nominations these nominees were significantly less likely to claim a ticket than nominees from other sources (22.5% for T-shirts compared to around 60% for all accepted applications).

Surprisingly, the give away of Doing Good Better to nominees that applied was correlated with a drop in the application percentage compared to before the giveaway. However, as we offered the giveaway to all nominees and did not directly A/B test this and it is likely that other factors (such as the most promising or interested  nominees having already applied) influenced this.

 

Facebook groups: great for reaching the community

On the other hand posting in Facebook groups performed better than expected. Between July 20 and 24 we made a significant push on Facebook and posted in all EA-aligned groups that we knew of.

Total applications from Facebook: 58
Overall conversion rate: 1.69%
Applications from July 20-24: 41
Conversion rate from July 20-24: 4.22%
Estimated income from July 20-24: $4,492
Estimated total income: +$6,354

During our Facebook push, we saw both a large number of additional applications and a large increase in the percentage of visits from Facebook that resulted in an application.

Despite our success, we probably posted more on Facebook than was reasonable. We got several pieces of feedback that the large volume of posts was a bit annoying to the many EAs who were already aware of EA Global. We decided to post widely due to a lower-than-expected rate of ticket sales up until the week of the conference.

I think it would have been reasonable to post on a handful of the largest groups, but posting in all available groups was unnecessary. 


Main challenge: converting applications to tickets

The significant, unexpected challenge we faced was converting accepted applicants into actual ticket sales. Based on our experience in 2015 we expected around 90% of accepted applicants to claim a ticket. Yet, our final conversion rate was 62.5%, and even this was mostly due to a considerable push by the marketing team. In fact, around 85% of tickets were sold in the last month before the event.

 

Some of the reasons for this could include:
* Emails sent via MailChimp going into the Gmail Promotions folder
* Our initial acceptance emails did not include a deadline for claiming a ticket which likely incentivized procrastination. (Later emails did include a deadline).
* Holding the event in one central location meant those from further afield applied before calculating the flight costs and then could not attend.
* Promotions like copies of Doing Good Better led to applications by people who were not able to attend.

It seems likely that some combination of these factors was responsible. My guess is that issues with email deliverability and content had the largest effect size as the rate of ticket purchases increased substantially once we fixed these issues.

Other lessons learned

 

Transparency

I think I failed to be sufficiently transparent with the larger EA community about the state of EA Global marketing.

Two specific examples:

1. I should have linked to the emails that we planned to send if someone nominated someone for EA Global in the application itself.
  1. (We tried to do this and ran into some technical issues with Typeform, but I should have tried harder to find a workaround for this).
2. I should have been more transparent about the fact that the ticket claim rate was lower than expected.
  1. Failure to communicate this left many EAs confused when we did a large push just before the conference despite a large number of applications.

 

Misleading nomination emails

When someone was nominated for EA Global we sent them 3 emails (spaced over a week) to get them to apply. The emails stopped if the person clicked a link or if their email address was used in an application.

 

For part of our nomination campaign the third email listed the sender as the nominator’s first and last name “via EAG” (so if I nominated someone it would say from: “Kerry Vaughan via EAG”) instead of saying it was from CEA/someone at EA Global.

 

The email address for this email was from “Hello@eaglobal.org,” the email body used ”we” to imply that it was from EA Global, and the footer listed CEA’s address.

 

You can see an image of what this email looked like (with merge tags in) [here](http://imgur.com/a/1meXf).

We discussed this internally and thought that the change in “from” line might increase conversions, but that the other clues would make it clear that the email was not from the nominator.

However, after the discussion in [this thread](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ea/10i/ideas_for_future_effective_altruism_conferences/#comments), I think this was a mistake. One nominator, Kit, suggested the following guidelines which nicely represent my current views:

> My guess after public and private discussion is that the approach which captures the most total value would be something like aggressive marketing (including pushing known EAs hard to tell their friends, slightly-more-than-comfortable numbers of chaser emails to applicants, and focussing almost entirely on the positives of attending) while avoiding anyone feeling deliberately misled. Obviously CEA is better placed to make this call, and I hope the broad discussion will help guide future decisions.

Conclusion: actions for EA Global 2017

Based on our experiences this year, when marketing EA Global 2017 we will:

1. Use an emailing system like Reply for acceptance emails to avoid having emails missed in promotions folders
2. Ensure that ticket emails have deadlines (perhaps with discounts for earlier purchases)
3. Monitor ticket purchase rate as closely as we monitor the application rate and update our tactics accordingly.
4. Focus on activities that engage current EAs directly such as newsletters and nominations rather than areas that attract people who may not have heard of EA.
5. Be aggressive in marketing the event but also be very careful that none of the marketing is misleading.

Review of marketing for EA Global 2016

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).

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ndmfRxhsqSKbKp21_l_moNFpXwORMWM_tBQoyvro3HsKnljABiNIoXRx6Dn4h8rjOslx6Awe3fygnN6QGWIPQNXGdqvFzam1MRTcQb8pUNyb5l-g8qgc6BnpdRI6u9OEviiT33Ea)

_(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).

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hNBgUIU7-zb8A-jaQit0pTV8wMaj4iNzCi7axa2iY1RhqqpOcrY7Sma0AagXEKe502m0UzWmS9cpHcDALPjPfTyPzw77ZvDPOUQQWm9mwoOjZzTYW4v1ExFH2_3V2AoFTBCTxhii)

# 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](mailto: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](https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/being-good-and-doing-good), which so far as been listened to over 350,000 times. He also appeared in [Swedish national media](http://www.dn.se/insidan/sa-valjer-du-ratt-nar-du-vill-skanka-pengar/).

## 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.

CEA update, September 2016

Welcome to the new CEA supporters updates. We’ll be sending these out regularly to replace the GPP, GWWC and Core-CEA updates; they are designed for people who want to stay highly engaged with CEA’s activities. If you’d like to opt out of these updates, you can do so here.

If you want a quick overview you can just read the Quick Summary section which will contain key metrics, financials and a summary of our progress. For a breakdown of what our individual teams have been doing this month please continue to the full update section.

Best Wishes,

Tara and Will

# Quick Summary for August

## Metrics

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/P4TdgN61NFyZH_NK2g25RETeGK4DcBHAuf7oLAD7DDPmP8eDW1IynWPJCq9dhKwxuWsX0kq59RASPFk8WIpdM6FWSHvyQdmt_ggUo8AE7qEqp_KirNURfth2f77rBauQ4jZhChpT)

Our current core metric is number of new GWWC members.  We’re in the process of developing a broader set of metrics that can represent the work of the Community and Outreach Division as a whole, allowing us to monitor both the new people we get interested in the movement and the ways in which we support current EAs to do more. Once these are finalised we’ll add them to these updates.

## Progress in two sentences

The biggest events for the team, recently, were the team merger and EA Global.  We’ve felt that both have gone well. We’ve been really impressed with how well the CEA staff have adapted to new teams and priorities. The feedback from EA Global so far has been promising, with considerably better messaging and logistics than in previous years.  

Since the merger, EA Global has been the primary focus, giving an opportunity for new teams to work together. In the coming weeks, we’ll start to develop in more depth CEA’s strategy for the next six months, including a set of targets by which to assess progress.

## How you can help

We’re on the lookout for researchers to join our Fundamentals Research Team. If you have any ideas or recommendations please let me know.

# Full Update

## Effective Altruism Global

Our biggest event over the last month has been Effective Altruism Global which had  2,152 applications, 4,440 nominations and a 1,052 total attendees. If there’s anything you missed we’ll be sharing the photos and videos via the [EA Global Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/effectivealtruismglobal/) page next week. We’ll also be posting reviews of the conference and our marketing efforts on the [EA Forums](http://effective-altruism.com).

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/u55XhdAhj1tqNCRXJVIGnPNUXyaZSOYlQicvXtmwBfB7fb-cmJoJ3j3ss1yxvcgKyio42cUm-t0n7BJ3d170B5RxcvoaNxZDaal0I_P6Y3EQdHOb-40xixFBVvD55Yqv4QlAzB7-)

Below are updates from our two main divisions: Communications & Outreach and Special Projects. If you missed the update on our new structure you can read Will’s post [here](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/zn/some_organisational_changes_at_the_centre_for/).

## Community and Outreach Division

The online team launched [effectivealtruism.org](http://effectivealtruism.org), which we want to make a central repository for all EA knowledge. They have also been promoting EA Global, managing social media and video updates from the conference and now keeping the momentum up by sharing videos, quotes and planning follow up emails to applicants.

Our in-person team were behind the planning and execution of EA Global. Amy Labenz and Oliver Habryka are currently reviewing the process to see what we can learn for next year, and will post a full report shortly.

The Pareto Fellowship graduated its first 18 Fellows. For 10 weeks, the Fellows received professional development from organizations like Paradigm Academy, 80,000 Hours, and CFAR with the aim of making taking promising EAs and developing them to have stronger long term impact. The program created 14-15 significant plan changes (as defined by 80,000 Hours), and eight Fellows have already been contacted with potential job offers.

## Special Projects Division

Most of the staff in the special projects division spent the first half of August in California assisting with and attending EA Global and the smaller Leaders Forum event that immediately followed it. Both events were valuable opportunities to interact with future collaborators and potential recruits. Now back in Oxford, the teams are generally focused on two tasks: (i) completing projects that were begun before CEA’s restructuring, and (ii) crafting their team’s strategic plan going forward.

### Philanthropic Advising

The philanthropic advising team (Hauke Hillebrandt, Marinella Capriati, and James Snowden) has primarily focused on developing research reports for a couple preexisting clients, most notably Alwaleed Philanthropies, a $30 billion foundation focused on global humanitarianism. The team is also researching (with Michael Page) different business model experiments it can test through the end of the year.

### Policy

The policy team recently hosted a feedback workshop for a forthcoming report on the international community's possible responses to existential risk in Helsinki for the Finnish government. Sebastian and Michael are now meeting with external advisors and stakeholders about whether and how CEA should more aggressively enter the policy space.

### Research Fundamentals

The research fundamentals team (Stefan Schubert, Owen Cotton-Barratt (splitting time with FHI)) has been developing a research agenda and list of high-priority research projects. With part-time assistance from Pablo Stafforini, Amanda Askell, and Ben Garfinkel (who has been doing interesting work with Owen on modeling the rate of return on investments in research), the fundamentals team will formally kick-off its research in the coming weeks.

### EA Institute

Michelle Hutchinson is managing the operations preparations for the Institute (tentatively called The Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism) while Professor Hilary Greaves is leading its research aspects. Our hope is that the Institute will go live in 2017\. We received a lot of good feedback at EA Global and Michelle has recruited renowned philosophers [Peter Singer](https://www.utilitarianism.net/utilitarian-thinker/peter-singer) and Derek Parfit as advisors.