From all of us at RC, we hope the new year has been treating you well.
Project Headlines – The EA survey delivers big, SHIC is rebranding, RC Forward greenlights expansion, LEAN launches the new EA Hub next week, RP makes hires and makes research progress, and Rethink launches a new grant making program.
Full RC Briefing
Project Updates
Rethink Charity Overview
Rethink is finding success in providing varying levels of support for each of our associated projects. The allocation of administrative, technical and strategic assistance largely depends on the needs and maturity of the project. For example, RC serves more of an incubation function for Rethink Priorities, jump starting the project by offering legal and administrative support while minimizing managerial oversight. RC Forward, in contrast, was built out from RC core operations as an experiment in moving money to effective charities from Canada, which required more oversight and involvement from senior leadership and administrative staff. RC projects will continue trending in the direction of becoming more autonomous, as staff get trained and administrative capacities grow. As a concrete instantiation of this, RC Forward and LEAN are now fundraising semi-autonomously, while RP exclusively owns their fundraising efforts.
Community footprint – The EA survey released five articles since the last donor briefing. Donation Data became the most popular article in the history of the series. Further analysis on the survey data conducted by RP included Community Demographics & Characteristics, Distribution & Analysis Methodology, How do people get involved in EA?, Subscribers & Identifiers, and Cause Selections.
Flashback – In the September edition, we wrote, “RC is building out the infrastructure for long-term operation after seeing encouraging performance across several fronts.” This approach continues, though most projects remain funding constrained. Feel free to reach out to Tee at [email protected] to learn more about contributing.
Rethink Grants (RG)
– RC has soft-launched an analysis-driven grantmaking and evaluation project call Rethink Grants that is a collaboration between the Rethink Priorities (RP) research team and the Rethink Charity senior leadership.
– RG works individually with project leads to produce tailored cost-effectiveness models, often assisting in early-stage planning, sourcing funding, facilitating networking opportunities, and other as-needed efforts traditionally subsumed under project incubation.
– RG is currently on a trial run of the evaluation process with our first applicant project, which is scheduled to conclude in mid-April.
RC Forward
– RC Forward published on progress made since the platform’s launch and upcoming plans for 2019. While the exact figures will be expanded upon in a forthcoming annual report, RC Forward has raised over $4.4M CAD for high-impact charities in 2018. This is ~4x our initial forecast.
– In January, RC Forward added ALLFED to our list of partner charities. This makes two dozen charities in total now featured on the platform.
– We are preparing to complete a thorough impact assessment of RC Forward in 2019 after the closing of Q4. Plans are to release this update by the end of the first fiscal quarter.
Rethink Priorities (RP)
– RP published on philosophical considerations when assessing invertebrate sentience and have drafted another post outlining their approach to tackling this issue.
– Upcoming posts include a table of sentience-indicating features for invertebrates, analysis on corporate campaign commitments, and an initial post reviewing past instances of ballot initiatives for animal welfare.
– RP also published a report on whether corporations are likely to keep their animal welfare pledges, drawing on results so far, historical results from other movements, and conversations with animal advocacy orgs.
– RP concluded a hiring round that resulted in the addition of seven new researchers: Kim Cuddington, Derek Foster, Luisa Rodriguez, Saulius Šimčikas, Neil Dullaghan, Jason Schukraft, and Daniela R. Waldhorn. See more of their plans here.
The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)
– The new EA Hub will have a soft launch this week, with an official public launch next week.
– The new Hub will include personal and group profiles, resources, donation swap, links to the Priorities Wiki, the EA Forum, the eawork.club and the Effective Thesis Project.
– In the months to follow, we will focus on increasing the platform’s functionality, including a page for independent projects, cross-platform search, and a survey section.
Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)
– In light of a strategic expansion toward careers and post-high school audiences, SHIC’s current name no longer suits. The process has begun for selecting a new name for the project.
– SHIC is developing a careers workshop, which will run in addition to our existing workshops. SHIC will also expand our target audience to include university students and some adult groups.
– The project brought on a new instructor, Callum Hinchcliffe, who will be giving SHIC presentations throughout the greater London area starting in February.
What’s Next
Look for RC projects to carve out their own space in 2019 as stand-alone brands. Most will still enjoy at least some of the benefits from our consolidated operations infrastructure, but you can expect the Rethink Charity brand to take on more of a supporting role.
Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us.