We’re Community Health and Special Projects
Our team aims to strengthen the effective altruism community’s ability to fulfill its potential for impact, and to address problems that could prevent that.
Our scope is broad and we work on a wide range of projects.
Reducing risks related to sensitive projects, like work in policy and politics
Supporting community members who are dealing with personal or interpersonal problems
Finding specialists to work on specific problems, for example, improving public communications around EA or risk-reduction in areas with high geopolitical risk
Fostering better norms and practices in the community
More about what we do, and why
When we refer to community health, we’re referring to the state of the community’s ability to achieve its potential for positive impact. For example, the community’s health might be at risk if people who would make great contributions to the community are repelled by its culture, or if leaders don’t get important feedback about effects of their work.
Some examples of our proactive projects to improve the community’s health
- Supporting and assessing risks involved in high school outreach projects
- Jump-starting a coordinated EA communications effort where there was previously something of a vacuum
- Trying to shore up community epistemics (how we form beliefs about the world)
Some examples of our reactive projects to improve the community’s health
- Someone feels they were treated unfairly by an EA organization they worked at but isn’t sure they want to pass on feedback to the organization. They’re not sure what to do and want to talk over the situation with someone neutral.
- Management at a small, new EA organization just learned of an accusation of bad behavior made against one of their staff, and they want advice ASAP before speaking to the different people involved.
- An EA group organizer is supporting an EA friend who’s undergoing a mental health crisis, but the organizer can’t continue this level of support indefinitely and isn’t sure how to move forward.
Our Goals and Methods
Impact
Our goal is to help the EA community and related communities have more positive impact, because we want a radically better world.
Look for thin spots
We keep an eye out for important aspects of the community’s infrastructure that seem neglected and try to find someone to take ownership of them (or if needed, take ownership ourselves).
Dealing with messy realities
We know there’s often more to a situation than meets the eye (conflicting incentives, feelings).
Sustainability for individuals and organizations
We want to help find practices that will work over the longer term, informed by predictions about what that longer term looks like. What will allow people to do impactful work over the next five to ten years, or the span of their career, and not just the next year?
Risk assessment
We pay attention to what might go wrong and weigh those things against potential positive outcomes. We don’t want the mere existence of risks to hold a project back unnecessarily; we’d rather the risks be mitigated or at least thoughtfully weighed so the project can move forward.
We want to help
If you’ve experienced a problem in the community, we really want to help. We know it can be intimidating to discuss something bad that’s happened. We will take your story seriously. More about our approach here.