How effective altruism has changed over time
The effective altruism (EA) movement came together around 2009–2012, as thinkers in different areas realized they shared related goals and ideas. All were exploring questions about how to use their resources to do more good.
- In Oxford, Giving What We Can members committed to donate 10% of their income to effective charities. 80,000 Hours began advising people how to find high-impact careers.
- In New York, GiveWell was digging into cost-effectiveness data to recommend top charities in global health.
- Animal advocates were beginning a similar process, trying to identify the most cost-effective ways to help animals.
- In Oxford and the San Francisco Bay Area, writers argued that the future of humanity needs more attention, and that catastrophic risks like AI gone wrong could threaten all of humankind.
These areas cross-pollinated one another, spreading across geographies. Effective altruism has never had a single governing organization, but various organizations have played roles in building and supporting the movement. The Centre for Effective Altruism has been one such key organization, providing conferences and other infrastructure for the community.
As the movement has grown and matured, key organizations have undergone significant changes in governance, structure, and the way work is organized and coordinated.
Early efforts were often volunteer-run and low-budget, and early advice sometimes focused on how to earn more money in order to donate it (sometimes called “earning to give”). Around 2015, Good Ventures began routing significantly more donations to projects like GiveWell’s top charities and grantmaking by Coefficient Giving (then called Open Philanthropy). The community’s focus shifted toward finding directly impactful work rather than earning to give, because more charities in the space now had money to hire staff, whereas before they may have relied on small volunteer teams.
In 2021–2022, FTX’s foundation briefly became a significant funder in the effective altruism space. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and some of his colleagues, such as Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, had been active in the effective altruism movement. In 2024, Bankman-Fried and Ellison were sentenced to prison on charges relating to fraud. The FTX fraud shook the EA community; as a result, individuals and organizations did a lot of soul-searching during this period, examining what needed to change to reduce the chance that EA ideas would be misused for harmful projects. One output was this work on organizational reform.
Effective altruism asks a question: how can you do the most good in the world, given the resources you have? People in the movement apply that same question to EA itself. Just as EA projects and organizations change their methods when new evidence shows what works and what doesn't, the movement often examines its own ideas and practices to find ways to improve and do more good.
Effective altruism continues to inspire projects across a range of areas, using a variety of methods. Community members are:
- Founding new evidence-based charities via Charity Entrepreneurship, such as the Lead Exposure Elimination Project and Fortify Health.
- Working at AI safety and governance organizations.
- Pushing companies to implement more humane conditions in factory farms.
- Researching effective charities via evaluators like GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Giving Green.
- Offering career advising for those who want to do more good with their careers, such as via 80,000 Hours, High Impact Professionals, and Probably Good.
- Working at research organizations like Rethink Priorities.
- Promoting effective giving through Giving What We Can.
- Using the ideas of effective altruism to shape their career choices and donations.
Changes at the Centre for Effective Altruism and Effective Ventures
Giving What We Can was founded in 2009, and 80,000 Hours in 2011. The Centre for Effective Altruism was established as a project in 2012 in the UK, and was fiscally sponsored by a legal entity in the UK, which was also named “the Centre for Effective Altruism.” Over time, more effective altruist projects were also sponsored by this legal entity.
By early 2023, CEA’s original fiscal sponsor had changed its name to “Effective Ventures Foundation (UK),” and it was collaborating together with Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. to jointly fiscally sponsor the CEA project and a dozen other EA projects. In 2023, the boards of both of the EV entities announced that they intended to spin out the projects into separate entities, to better meet the needs of the individual projects. Each of the projects (except for a few which were discontinued) is now governed by its own legal structure and its own board. The Centre for Effective Altruism is one of those projects.
Last updated: October 2026