Thanks! 

I don't know much about LW/ESPR/SPARC but I suspect a lot of their impact flows through convincing people of important ideas and/or the social aspect rather than their impact on community epistemics/integrity?

Some of the sorts of outcomes I have in mind are just things like altered cause prioritisation, different projects getting funded, generally better decision-making.

Similarly, if the goal is to help people think about cause prioritisation, I think fairly standard EA retreats / fellowships are quite good at this? I'm not sure we need some intermediary step like "improve community epistemics".

Appreciate you responding and tracking this concern though!

• EA is vulnerable to groupthink, echo chambers, and excessive deference to authority.
• A bunch of big EA mistakes and failures were perhaps (partly) due to these things.
• A lot of external criticism of EA stems back to this.

I'm a bit skeptical that funding small projects that try to tackle this are really stronger than other community-building work on the margin. Is there an example of a small project focused on epistemics that had a really meaningful impact? Perhaps by steering an important decision or helping someone (re)consider pursuing high-impact work? 

I'm worried there's not a strong track record here. Maybe you want to do some exploratory funding here, but I'm still interested in what you think the outcomes might be.

This year, 216 people cancelled their ticket (~30% of cancellations) because they couldn't afford to attend, though this might have meant ticket costs rather than travel support. There were 360 people from BA and London (sorry, I don't have Boston data to hand) who had travel support rejected who didn't attend, though they might not have attended for other reasons. So, I'd guess in the hundreds.

If more attendees opted to buy a higher-priced ticket, we could spend more on the event beyond what we fundraise. We don't directly allocate marginal revenue to a specific line item though travel support is something we would likely consider spending more on if we had more funding available. Note though that ticket revenue makes up a small % of our budget (~16% in 2024).

 

I do think the situation is significantly more complicated with orgs that receive substantial institutional funding so I think the original post applies a bit less to orgs like CEA, and more to specific EA groups or small-scale projects (including projects that the EAIF funds).

Agree

I suggested to various regional EA groups that they should try and cover some fraction of their costs from members, but there was quite a lot of negative push back (e.g. fundraising distracting them from their main jobs).^[1]

That's a shame. I think we're in a strange situation if non-profits / charitable projects don't think fundraising should be at least a non-trivial portion of their time. I also think fundraising forces projects to more clearly define their vision, goals, funding needs etc.

Perhaps I'd feel differently if they were several funders fighting over who gets to fund each EA Group, but that doesn't seem to be the case (at least not any more).

Hm, this strikes me as worrying about drought during a flood (is that a saying? It should be).

Currently, I'm pretty worried about funding diversity. A large number of EA groups rely on funding from a very small number of donors and, as covered in the post, it's hard for those funders to allocate funds efficiently. This pot also doesn't seem to be growing.

Moving a bit more in the direction of my post will help with this situation, but I'm not yet worried about a scenario where EA groups have costs (incl. several full-time staff and large events in many cases) covered by membership fees.^[1] So, I still expect funders tracking impact to retain strong influence over the group's impact.

Also, as mentioned in my reply to Angelina, I don't think we should assume that members/alumni/smaller donors won't also care a lot about outcomes.

1. ^{^}

   Unless my post is so wildly persuasive that it changes the culture of the entire ecosystem overnight and brings in millions of dollars. Disastrous.

Reading again though, maybe what you mean is "the group that helped you might not be the best group to support any more". Yeah, that makes sense.

Thanks!

There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of "EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won't".

I don't think that's correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn't have the capacity to invest in and support a group.

We're really excited to announce the following sessions for EA Global: Boston, which kicks off in just two weeks time:

- Fireside chat with Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of JPAL. 
- Rachel Silverman Bonnifield, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, on the current state of the global movement to eliminate childhood lead poisoning.
- A workshop on Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy, led by Zac Hatfield-Dodds, Technical Staff at Anthropic.

Applications close Sunday! More info and how to apply on our website.

Thanks, Austin :)

Results from the survey we conducted at the event (similar to the one you linked to) are still to come. Rethink Priorities led on that this year, and are still gathering data / putting it together.