I'm curious to compare the growth in funding to the growth in EA group size (uni, local, & regional/national groups). I suspect there was a lot of money put into community development with relatively muted response in growth.

It seems a lot of the community growth dollars went to students to organize on campuses or fly them to EA conferences. The students would have otherwise organized voluntarily and raised necessary funds through fundraisers, like most other university student groups. Many university groups have and continue to thrive without central EA funding support.

My local group got grant funding to pay for an organizer (not me) for roughly a year. We ran a few more events, but I haven't see an appreciably difference in growth or attendance a year later. We have several volunteer organizers that do the job just fine.

I'm skeptical that paid organizers are necessary for any (uni, local, & regional/national) group until the group size reliably reaches 50-100+ at events, which nearly all groups don't meet except in a few of the largest cities (NYC, London).

The community funding, particularly university groups and fellowships, is where a lot of the criticism of profligate spending in EA comes from. I suspect the harm in reputation is comparable or greater than the benefit from the funding. In hindsight it seems that those community growth dollars would have been much better spent on actual EA causes.

The alternatives also include people packing their own lunch, or having people pay for the lunches they buy on site (a small cafe for example). If the worksite is in a downtown area, there are excellent options within a few minutes walk, and people can pick exactly what food they want. If people are worried about the loss of a few minutes walking, or they are are far away from food, they can order food delivery. Free work lunches are not a necessary perk, and people can easily pay for it if they think it's worthwhile. The exception I'd make is someplace like a K-12 school where they are already giving kids (free) lunch, and marginal costs are minimal to extend the benefit to adults. Or if the work is in the food industry.

Thanks for writing this out and distinguishing between workplace perks and personal spending.

This movement is always going to have a cultural clash between the social pressures of class status and the demandingness of charity as explained by philosophers like Parfit, Singer, and Unger. Lifestyle creep is pernicious, and EAs are excellent at rationalizing luxury spending. SBF's billionaire lifestyle is an extreme example.

It seems that many EA orgs are modeling themselves after bay area tech companies which are peculiar elite workplaces with massive compensation packages that tend to wrap around and cater to the employee's entire life. That is not the norm in other high productivity analogous workplaces, like in academia, labs, or non-profits.

I like the proposal of having employees pay for any perks they enjoy beyond what is strictly necessary for job function (computer, workspace, healthcare/retirement in the U.S.). Maybe occasional lunches and a coffee machine. If people think an expensive perk makes them more productive - great! Buy it yourself, and if it really does make you more productive, you'll get rewarded for it at your performance review. It's not hard to have people pay for on site perks.

It's hard to think of an industry that has a larger gap between best practice and what is typical than HVAC. Thanks for highlighting this.

Possibly cheaper, and less ozone production.

This article hasn't been peer-reviewed, so don't read into the results too much. The CO2e/kg estimates are 10-100x higher than previous studies. And while the author doesn't claim a conflict of interest, all the authors are at UC Davis in the same college as the Clear Center, a beef-industry funded advocacy organization. I don't think academic work should be dismissed outright for an apparent unstated conflict of interest, but it does warrant extra scrutiny. I'd be much less skeptical if this came out of another university.

Here's a related comment from last year: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nopFhTtoiyGX8Bs7G/uvc-air-purifier-design-and-testing-strategy?commentId=ZywtAzPB2Ci5PLfPC

UV systems have been around for ~100 years. They work great in some specific applications. Newer UV-C technology is a marginal improvement, but doesn't significantly address the cost, design expertise, and maintenance challenges that have kept UV systems from widespread use. Air filters are generally better for most applications. I do expect we will see more UV-C systems in particular applications, but it is far from the one-technology-to-rule-them-all solution that the EA community seems to think it is. This follows a historic pattern of the EA community generally over-hyping singular technology solutions to major problems in other cause areas, probably because of the techno-optimist worldview that many EAs have.

See ASHRAE's guidance on filtration and air cleaning technologies for more details and comparisons: https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/filtration-disinfection

I agree with a succinct, workable change based on your recommendations:

(1) EVF board seat should be elected by GWWC members in good standing.

I'd be interested in a chart similar to "Proportion of GWWC Pledgers who record any donations by Pledge year (per cohort)", but with 4 versions (median / average donation in $) x (inclusive / exclusive of those that didn't record data, assuming no record is $0). From the data it seems that both things are true: "most people give less over time and stop giving" and "on average, pledge donations increase over time", driven entirely by ~5-10% of extremely wealthy donors that increase their pledge.