We’re looking for applications to the board of trustees of the Centre for Effective Altruist Learning and Research (CEEALAR), informally the EA Hotel. To apply please fill out this short form. Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis, with a deadline of 18th October.

CEEALAR is a registered charity in England and Wales that supports people to develop high impact careers by providing free and subsidised accommodation, a productive workspace, and support with networking and learning.

The current trustees of CEEALAR are Greg Colbourn, Florent Berthet, and Sasha Cooper.

Who are we looking for?

We’re particularly looking for people who:

• Have a good understanding of effective altruism
• Have a track record of integrity and good judgement, and who more broadly embody these guiding principles of effective altruism
• (Ideally) have experience in one or more of the following areas:
  • HR, accounting, law, finance, risk management or service management
  • Management or trusteeship or similar role in a non-profit
• Are able to work collaboratively under uncertainty

We think the role will require significant time and attention, though we expect it to vary depending on the needs of the organisation. Trustees should be ready to commit ~2hrs/wk to the role on a regular basis, though they should also be prepared to scale up their involvement from time to time in the case of urgent decisions requiring board response.

We especially encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply, and we especially encourage applications from people of colour, self-identified women, and non-binary individuals who are excited about contributing to our mission. 

The role is remote, though we strongly prefer someone who is able to make meetings in times that are reasonable hours in the UK. 

The role is unpaid. 

What does a CEEALAR trustee do?

As a member of the board, you have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the charity fulfils its charitable objectives as best it can. Ideally, most strategic and programmatic decision-making is delegated to the managers or to the ED, with the trustees attending a monthly meeting for a high level summary and 6-weekly check-ins with the managers to help ensure their welfare and development.

During business as usual times, we expect the primary activities of a trustee to be:

• Assessing grant applications (from people requesting to stay at CEEALAR)
• Assessing the performance of managers and hiring managers where appropriate (funding permitting, we intend to hire a paid Executive Director within the next 6 months). 
• Evaluating and deciding on high-level issues that impact the organisation as a whole.
• Reviewing budgets and broad strategic plans for the organisation.
• Evaluating the performance of the board and whether its composition could be improved (e.g. by adding in a trustee with underrepresented skills or experiences).

Why should you apply?

CEEALAR has navigated many challenges, and had very little bandwidth to evaluate our impact, but our best guess is that at least 10% of our grantees go on to very high value work, with the majority estimating substantial counterfactual improvement to where they’d have been without it. This is very much in line with the hits-based-giving philosophy it was founded on – but we expect those proportions to continue to increase over time as we field-test various productivity increases and measurement of impact, and for our cost-effectiveness to improve. We’ve recently hired three highly driven operations managers and feel that, given time and enough support, they could turn the project into something exceptional even within the EA movement.

Yet our future isn’t and has never been certain; a persistent lack of funding security has limited the bandwidth of our staff and a lack of time and domain-specific experience has limited the bandwidth of our trustees. 

We think that adding the right trustee would substantially increase our capacity to deal with these problems, and improve our resilience to further force majeures. This means your help could shape the project immensely, and help to ensure CEEALAR can continue to exist in its current form, and fulfil its future potential.

How can you apply? 

If you would like to sit on the CEEALAR board of trustees, please fill out this form. Applications will close on 18th October and will be assessed on a rolling basis. 

Following the initial application, promising candidates will be invited to interview with current trustees and managers and we will undertake a series of background and reference checks on them. We may also add a work test or other additional steps if we feel it’s necessary to select the best candidate, though we don’t currently plan to.