Donor Briefing 09/2018

Thanks for getting current with RC.

Project Headlines – Rethink Charity kicks off the 2018 EA Summit with the opening keynote, RC Forward passes through another >$1M donation, SHIC releases a mid-year update on the Vancouver workshop experiment, Rethink Priorities gets press, LEAN hires new team members, and the 2018 EA Survey begins publishing results this month.  

Full RC Briefing

Project Updates

Rethink Charity Overview

RC is building out the infrastructure for long-term operation after seeing encouraging performance across several fronts. Our projects appear to be growing in community relevance, thanks in no small part to being better resourced than ever. LEAN was an active participant in the (un)precedented 2018 EA Summit, where several RC staff members delivered talks on SHIC, the 2018 EA Survey, local EA groups, and the opening keynote that doubled as a commentary on the shifting memetic landscape of EA. We should be seeing even tighter associations with other movement building organizations.

Flashback – In the June edition, we wrote, “Rethink Charity projects are attracting interest from major institutional funders. Watch this space for more developments.” This has thus far materialized into an $85,000 grant to RP from Lewis Bollard at EA Funds and an $50,000 grant to LEAN from CEA.

Reversal – In June we also mentioned, “Current [SHIC] plans include training an educator in Toronto to deliver the workshop in the fall.” SHIC chose instead to double down on demonstrating continued engagement from workshop students in Vancouver.

RC Forward

– Within the next week or so, RC Forward will be releasing our Mid-2018 Update detailing the $3.6m CAD we have disbursed to high impact charities in 2018.

– Completed “the largest single donation by an individual in MIRI’s history” of $1.33m CAD.

Crypto for good – We also referred a second cryptocurrency donation, totaling nearly $1.6m CAD, to the Against Malaria Foundation. This is RC Forward’s single largest donation to date.

Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)

– SHIC published early results on the first semester of 2018’s workshop experiment that reached 855 students across 16 schools in the Vancouver area.

– The analysis of the student pre- and post-workshop surveys showed significant improvements in knowledge, attitudes and values about high-impact charity.

– The primary focus for the fall term is to test ways of further engaging interested students through advanced workshops, community building and coaching.

The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)

– LEAN welcomed new staff members to the project.

– Development work is now being undertaken on the new EA Hub.

Rethink Priorities (RP)

– The RP cause prioritization wiki, PriortyWiki, was featured in a Fast Company article.  

– The project is currently investigating the potential for consciousness-indicating features of invertebrates.– RP will be hiring researchers soon and a job ad will be up in early September.

What’s Next

Our current organizational model is trending toward increased project-level autonomy and further consolidation of supporting administrative systems. For example, Rethink Priorities launched early this year, requiring very little from RC beyond administrative assistance, eventually producing quality research that attracted substantial funding. The latest LEAN hiring round could be seen as an attempt to replicate this approach, with the expectation that the project will carve out its own identity as a largely autonomous movement building organization.

It was great to catch up with you again.

Donor Briefing 06/2018

It’s been awhile. Thanks for having a look at this special edition of the Briefing before Effective Altruism Global 2018 in San Francisco.

One-sentence RC breakdown – In summary, RC Forward has passed through ~$2M CAD (~1.5M USD) for effective charities thus far, Rethink Priorities launched publicly, the EA survey team broke the survey submissions record, LEAN is hiring, and SHIC will soon report on the workshop results collected from ~850 students.

Your full RC Briefing
Read time: 3 minutes

Project Updates

Rethink Charity Overview

RC threw the brakes on expansionary efforts across all of the projects, electing instead to await the results of performance indicators as Q2 of 2018 draws to a close. Among the projects considered for expansion in the second half of 2018 and early 2019, SHIC is the most viable candidate based on early indicators. Current plans include training an educator in Toronto to deliver the workshop in the fall. (See workshop overview)

Results and analysis on the EA survey will begin coming out in the next couple of months on the ~3,500 submissions mustered by the community, which is roughly 1,000 more submissions than the previous record set in 2015.

Situational Awareness – Rethink Charity projects are attracting interest from major institutional funders. Watch this space for more developments.

RC Forward

– A $1.35M CAD donation to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) was recently processed, bringing the total amount passed through to effective charities at roughly $2M CAD.

Flashback: Readers might recall our forecast for money moved in 2018 was only $1M USD (~1.3M CAD).

Rethink Priorities (RP)

– RP launched their official website in May.

– The project published analysis on both the benefits of vaccines and the cost-effectiveness of vaccines.

– Reanalysis of the Animal Equality video and virtual reality study will be published soon.

Go deeper: More on the RP research agenda here, and you can find a breakdown of articles published by cause area here.

The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)

– We’re currently hiring for the LEAN Manager position! Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, though priority will be given to those who submitted prior to May 28.

– A LEAN article on why local groups should consider direct work scored decent karma on the EA Forum.

Would you agree? From the latest LEAN article, “Available group actions may fall short of embodying the very highest impact intervention that humans could take, but might instead still constitute the highest impact intervention that the group in question could deliver.”

Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)

– An update on our current workshop experiment is slated for release in July after an initial analysis of our data. By that time, SHIC will have worked with approximately 850 students across 16 schools around Greater Vancouver.

– SHIC workshops will be continuing over summer, working with the University of British Columbia to deliver the SHIC program to elite high school students attending an academic summer school.

What’s Next

RC is currently fundraising for 2019! If you’d like to continue being a key part of our growth in EA community building, simply reply to this, or email Tee at [email protected] to chat about it! Most of the full-time RC staff will also be at EA Global, so please reach out if you’d like to connect!

Hope this was a good read. Thanks for taking the time.  

Donor Briefing 03/2018

Lots of exciting developments in this pacey edition of the Briefing. Thanks for staying up-to-date with us.

Two-sentence RC breakdown – We’ve announced the addition of a new research project to RC – Rethink Priorities (RP), dedicated to doing neglected foundational research on potential causes in a highly empirical and transparent manner. LEAN wrapped up their impact assessment, SHIC received full funding for 2018, and the annual EA survey preparations have begun.

Your full RC Briefing

Read time: 4 minutes

Project Updates

Rethink Charity Overview

– RC is moving forward with our growth-oriented plans across all projects. More on what this means for each project below. We’re also hiring for the 2018 EA survey, and most of the heavy lifting on that will begin this week. See our most popular EA survey post of 2017.

Situational Awareness: RC projects are taking a distinctly empirical approach to movement building. Rethink Priorities just launched, LEAN recently concluded a detailed analysis on EA local groups, and plans are in motion to provide even more data and analysis to the 2018 EA survey than years prior.

Rethink Priorities (New!)

– We’ve unveiled Rethink Priorities (RP), a new project dedicated to doing neglected foundational research, focusing initially on lessons that can be taken from analyzing vaccinations as an intervention in the developing world and animal welfare corporate campaigns.

Go deeper: Here’s the announcement detailing the research principles and agenda.

The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)

– LEAN just released the most comprehensive empirical investigation into EA local groups to date – currently the best available snapshot of EA movement building at the ground level.

– Over 20 users have created EA websites using the static site generator we launched in early 2018.

– The EA Hub redesign is under way, which will also include a new content tool that consolidates existing resources from the community.

Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)

– SHIC secured full Tier 2 funding for 2018 (thank you!).

– The workshop experiment has already reached 285 students across eight schools in the Greater Vancouver Area.

– Our subjective sense is that student engagement has been high during the workshops, with one or two students in each class very eager to learn more and who indicate that they are interested in pursuing a career with positive impact. Teachers have also been bullish about the program.

The fun stuff: See the latest promotional clip with class footage.

RC Forward

– RC Forward will be adding charities that widen the breadth of cause areas supported by the platform, including Innovations for Poverty Action, StrongMinds, The Coalition for Rainforest Nations, and the Clean Air Task Force.

What’s Next

– The EA Survey 2018 is making preparations and assembling a volunteer team. Volunteers and referrals can be directed to [email protected].

– RP is expected to publish further analysis of vaccines and animal welfare in March.

– LEAN will soon publish the methodology portion of the LEAN Impact Assessment and begin revamping the EA Hub. Get the full overview of what LEAN plans to change.

– SHIC is implementing new post-program survey data collection methods to boost response rates.

– RC Forward is holding off on hiring pending strategic revisions to the project. More on this soon.

Thanks again for taking the time. Your involvement is crucial to us.