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Giving What We Can & EA Funds now operate independently of CEA

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2020·EA Forum·forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZdeL8jzg3PAzjimik/givin...

Authors

MaxDalton·Jonas_

Credibility Rating

3/5
Good(3)

Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.

Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum

This post is primarily relevant to EA organizational history rather than AI safety; it documents a structural change in how CEA manages its donation-focused subsidiaries, with limited direct relevance to AI safety research or policy.

Forum Post Details

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99
Comments
2
Forum
eaforum
Forum Tags
CommunityCentre for Effective AltruismEffective Altruism FundsGiving What We CanOrganization updates

Metadata

Importance: 22/100blog postnews

Summary

CEA announced in December 2020 that Giving What We Can and EA Funds transitioned to independent operations under new leadership (Luke and Jonas respectively), modeled after 80,000 Hours' relationship with CEA. Both organizations showed significant growth: GWWC tripled new pledges and reached 5,000 members, while EA Funds improved grantmaking capacity and donor satisfaction.

Key Points

  • •GWWC and EA Funds now operate independently of CEA's Executive Director, while retaining CEA operational support and board oversight.
  • •GWWC tripled its rate of new pledges under new director Luke and reached 5,000 total members in 2020.
  • •EA Funds improved grantmaking capacity and donor satisfaction under new leader Jonas.
  • •EA Grants was closed and applicants redirected to EA Funds as part of this restructuring.
  • •CEA narrowed its focus to community engagement and discussion spaces, allowing donation-focused projects greater autonomy.

Cited by 1 page

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Centre for Effective AltruismOrganization78.0

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Giving What We Can & EA Funds now operate independently of CEA — EA Forum 
 
 This website requires javascript to properly function. Consider activating javascript to get access to all site functionality. Hide table of contents Giving What We Can & EA Funds now operate independently of CEA 

 by MaxDalton , Jonas_ Dec 22 2020 9 min read 2 99

 Community Centre for Effective Altruism Effective Altruism Funds Giving What We Can Organization updates Frontpage Giving What We Can & EA Funds now operate independently of CEA Our 2020 plans Giving What We Can Hiring Luke Growth Retention Content Other 2021 EA Funds Hiring Jonas Donor satisfaction Donations New donor signups, year on year Grantmaking 2021 EA Grants Reflections 2 comments This is a linkpost for https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/giving-what-we-can-and-ea-funds-now-operate-independently-of-cea/ In 2020, the Centre for Effective Altruism hired Luke to run Giving What We Can (GWWC), and Jonas to lead EA Funds .

 We think that they have both made strong progress in the past year. For instance, Luke revamped GWWC’s website and saw the number of new pledges triple compared to the same period in 2019. Meanwhile Jonas improved EA Funds’ capacity to make more effective grants and addressed some issues affecting donor satisfaction. [1] In addition to the above, we closed EA Grants, redirecting applicants to EA Funds.

 As planned, both EA Funds and GWWC now operate independently of my supervision as Executive Director of CEA, while continuing to receive operational support from CEA and oversight from our board. This is similar to 80,000 Hours’ position relative to CEA: they make decisions independently and have their own leadership, but CEA provides operational support and they are legally part of the same entity.

 We are delighted that these projects now have the freedom to grow independently, while CEA is able to focus on nurturing the community’s discussion spaces.

 Our 2020 plans

 As mentioned in our public plans for 2020 :

 
 In 2019, Giving What We Can members logged over $20m in donations to the charities that they believe to be most effective, and 528 people took a 10% lifetime pledge, bringing the year-end total to 4,454 members. EA Funds facilitated grantmaking of $8.5m through the four main funds, as well as $3.4m to other effective charities.

 I think that both of these programs are important for EA because:

 
 They direct a significant amount of money to effective charities.

 They provide an opportunity for individuals to take important, concrete actions based on EA principles.

 
 However, these projects have a fairly different focus from CEA’s other projects (which focus on community engagement rather than charitable donations), and we think that with more focus and staff time they could achieve more.

 We'd like to move towards a state where these projects have the latitude and resources to accomplish more, and where CEA can focus on a narrower range of proj

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