First, thank you for such a detailed, thoughtful criticism of CEA’s projects. It’s really valuable to hear from people about how we can improve our programs. This is also timely: we’ve recently hired a permanent Executive Director and we’re thinking through our strategy for this upcoming year.
CEA’s work, and CEA’s staff, have historically been mostly based in and focused on community building work in the US and the UK. We think that it may sometimes be legitimate to focus on the US, UK, and Europe more heavily, as these are areas that have a lot of EAs and a lot of global influence, and therefore may have lots of good EA grantmaking opportunities for high impact projects. At the same time, there are good grantmaking opportunities for EA in other parts of the world. Thus, we see two possible good goals for community building and grantmaking going forward: we’d like to see grantmakers actively building relationships and seeking out valuable grantmaking opportunities in more areas. But we don’t want to discourage people from giving “too many” grants to great projects in any one location. Getting this balance right requires careful analysis of trade offs and strategic goals. This post’s analysis is helpful as we evaluate our current programs and think through future strategy.
The importance of EA community building outside the Bay and UK:
We agree with the author that there are good reasons to think that community-building opportunities exist outside of the locations where we’ve historically granted. For example, there are cities with strong finance industries which could be promising for earning to give. Individuals with cultural context in Sub Saharan Africa and Asia are important contributors in efforts to reduce global poverty. There’s growing need for animal welfare work in Asia and other areas where meat consumption is rising. 80,000 Hours has emphasized the importance of China specialist roles.
How CEA’s funding compares to where EA groups are located:
Currently, the majority of EAs appear to be based in the US, UK, or Europe by a significant margin The 2018 EA survey says, “the majority of respondents reported being located in the United States (36%), followed by the UK (16%), Germany (7%), and Australia (6%). In total, there were responses from 74 different nations and 21 nations had 10 or more responses.” An EA local groups survey conducted by Rethink in March 2019 (Forum post forthcoming), analyzes responses from 146 groups. It finds that 79% of groups are based in Europe, the US, and Canada (53% in Europe, 25% in the USA and Canada, 7% in Asia, 10% in Australia / New Zealand, 2% in Latin America, and 3% in Africa).
Although there are obviously important factors beyond geographic representativeness in making funding decisions, we can check how we’re doing on representativeness by comparing where groups are located with which groups have received funding, according to the author. [as a note: we haven’t checked the author’s categorization of numbers, and based on a quick skim think that in some cases we would categorize funding allocations by geographies differently.] This analysis shows that:
Europe is over-represented (85% funding received as categorized by the author vs. 53% proportion of local groups)
The locations in the US / Canada other than the San Francisco Bay are underrepresented (7% funding received vs. 25% proportion of local groups),
Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Africa are underrepresented (9% funding received vs. 22% proportion of local groups).
Reasons for the current concentration of funding:
In addition to EA groups and individuals being concentrated in specific locations, some of the highest-performing groups are also concentrated in the UK and Europe. Two of the largest and most active groups are EA Oxford and EA London. These groups seemed especially strong when we assessed them for community-building grants, particularly on the number of members who took careers in priority roles. Most, although not all, of the most established national groups are in Europe (e.g. Czech Association for Effective Altruism, EA Norway, EA Sweden). Partly this is due to historical founder effects—the current EA community was started by people mostly in the US and UK, and these locations are more tightly connected with each other and Europe than with other regions of the world, so the ideas spread through the US and Europe first.
Another part of the reason for this seems to be the concentration of EA-affiliated organizations in certain locations (like FHI, GPI, 80,000 Hours, Effective Giving, Effective Altruism Foundation, Founders Pledge, GFI Europe, and Charity Entrepreneurship, among others in London and Oxford). We know it’s possible for people anywhere in the world to delve into EA ideas, or create useful projects, or commit to taking significant action to do good. We also recognize that individuals who live in the same locations and interact in person may find it easier to discuss new ideas, generate internship opportunities, learn from skilled researchers, identify opportunities to incubate new initiatives, etc. These factors, along with the geographic clustering of top global universities, means that the quantity of granting opportunities may be higher in certain geographic areas.
Some comments on grantmaking with specific CEA programs:
A claim within this post is that community building grantmakers are exhibiting bias in their network. This is an important thing to keep an eye out for. Bias could occur in two ways: i) the individuals that know about opportunities or ii) the way in which funding is allocated. Below we’ll reflect on these for each of the programs that CEA runs.
EA Funds: As the author notes, most of the Meta Fund team is based in London. On previous recruitment rounds, the Meta Fund has taken steps to seek Fund managers from a wider set of locations, and will continue to do so in the future. Of course, the decision to appoint Fund managers is contingent on finding suitable candidates, and the location was one of a number of factors under consideration. In terms of individuals knowing about opportunities i), the note about broadcasting applications more widely is well-taken – our understanding is that the Meta Fund team would welcome applications from a wider pool. We’ll take steps to ensure that when applications open, it’s broadcast more widely in the future, including adding the link to the Fund page, and potentially other places such as the EA Facebook group. In terms of ii), Fund management teams make individual grant recommendations independent of CEA, so we don’t think we’re best placed to comment on how individual grants are assessed or distributed by the Funds management teams.
EA Grants: We’ve recently written about some historical challenges and capacity constraints in our EA Grants post here. We agree that previous closed-round versions of EA Grants over-relied on the grantmakers’ network, which was geographically clustered, to source grantmaking opportunities.
CBGs (Community Building Grants): This program is young (~18 months), and as a program we are still learning / experimenting.
i) In terms of access to opportunities, the first round of CBGs applications was announced on the Forum in early 2018. The 2018 European Community Building Retreat occured in April, after the CBG applications were due in March. Invitations to the European Community Building retreat may have prompted some individuals to apply that wouldn’t otherwise have, although it’s hard to know this counterfactually. It is true that the networks of the project lead and CEA are largest in the UK, and have grown to include more locations in Europe. Over the history of the program we haven’t spent much time proactively encouraging specific groups (or groups from specific locations) to apply. The program lead anticipates that proactive outreach for the program to be counterfactually responsible for fewer than 5 applications. It is likely that our networks influenced the original batch of CBG applications. In addition to program lead networks, one additional explanation is that we’ve seen a larger concentration of national groups (i.e. groups that support multiple city / university groups within their country) in Europe than other regions of the world. These groups may have been in a more primed position to apply for CBGs (e.g. already had strategic plans in place).
In the early stage of this program, we have been focusing on questions whether the program should continue, what the evaluation process should look like, as opposed to focusing on increasing the number of applications to the program.
ii) In terms of funding allocation once we receive an application, below are the total number of CBG applications accepted vs. submitted by geography. UK − 80% acceptance, Rest of Europe − 60%, Bay − 50%, US excluding the Bay − 80%, Rest of the World − 65-70%*. (*One application we referred to another funder. This group received funding and is included in our total) Applications from European groups have typically been for a larger amount of funding than for groups in other locations, as it is more likely for ‘national groups’ with multiple staff to apply for grants.
Of applications to the program, the program lead estimates that he had previous interaction with (eg. at least a 10 minute conversation or similar ) half of applicants. 70% of the applicants he’d had prior interaction with were accepted, whereas 50% of the applicants he hadn’t had prior interaction with were accepted. One potential explanation of this is that individuals that speak with our program lead have a better sense of the program and whether they are a good fit. We’ve moved from a full application to an expression of interest form to try to decrease barriers for individuals to have these conversations. We’ve written about the process to assess CBG applications in our recent update here.
We have a conflict of interest policy within CEA. For example, in one recent round this summer, our CBG lead identified that he had spent time socially with one of the applicants to a level that it might be considered a conflict of interest. As a result, the CBG application was assessed by other individuals in the organization.
As we’re in the midst of strategic planning for 2020, we’re don’t have specifics about the program next year. We would be excited to see expression of interest from a wide variety of locations in the future.
Additional groups funding: In addition to CBGs, which fund community builders to work on groups on a part-time or full-time basis, we also provide group funding to groups to run specific projects (such as retreats or fellowships) or to cover running expenses, which has totaled to ~$83,000 this year. In terms of our groups funding this year 21% went to Europe, 53% went to the US, 6% went to Australia and New Zealand, and 20% went to Asia.
Some errors CEA has made:
While we think that there are some legitimate reasons for the current concentration of funding, we also think it’s true that CEA could have done a better job and could have benefited from building networks outside the San Francisco Bay area and the UK. We think that CEA previously tried to run too many programs, and that this spread our staff too thin. At times, we limited the scope of our projects given staff capacity or organizational priorities, but we didn’t communicate clearly enough about our limitations. Our lack of capacity contributed to us not investing more in creating networks across a wider variety of locations, which meant that we missed out on opportunities to support useful work outside of the areas and networks we were most familiar with.
We’ve also heard feedback that groups that are geographically father away from from ‘EA Hubs’ (the Bay, London/Oxford) find it harder to connect with CEA.
Recognizing these problems, we’ve tried to build networks this year:
Hosting a US community-building retreat in January to build networks with US organizers The vast majority of participants were from outside the San Francisco Bay Area
Our EA Grants staff person (who is based in the US) visited the Czech Republic and Sweden to expand her network
We sent one staff member to attend EAGx Australia and two staff members to the Doing Good Better conference in Singapore
We are also considering:
Increasing the amount that our groups team travels to different locations to build their networks and understanding of issues that community members face
Proactively reaching out to specific locations to encourage CBG applications [if we choose to expand the program]
Building stronger relationships with groups at top universities worldwide
Taking into account whether someone is an organizer from a more distant location for EA Global admissions decisions
Other suggestions generated by stakeholders or community members (please feel free to share thoughts!)
[note: these will depend on other capacity, funding, and other competing priorities and should not be viewed as commitments]
The following would be signals that we are making progress on this problem:
Grant information for EA Grants, EA Funds, and community-building grants is up to date on our websites
The EA Meta Fund has an application link on it’s webpage and broadcasts opportunities widely
Calls for applicants to open grant rounds are posted in more locations, with more advanced notice
The percentage of Community Building Grants going to non-European locations increases. This may include locations in the US, which are currently under-represented in CBGs.
Updates from the groups team (for example in CEA’s annual report or updates on the EA Forum) mention in-person visits to non-Bay/ non-UK locations and meetings or other engagement with organizers from non-Bay/ non-UK locations.
We welcome feedback and ideas for how we could do this better, for instance via this feedback form. We continue to encourage applications to EA Global, EA Funds, and Community Building Grants from a wider variety of locations, and appreciate the work that organizers are doing outside of the Bay and UK.
I agree that your list of “signals that we are making progress on this problem” would all be positive developments. And I recognize that since CEA is resetting some of its strategy, it’s a difficult time to make firm commitments, especially around short-term priorities.
However, there’s one near-term step that I think would be relatively easy and particularly high impact. I’d love to see CEA publish how much money it has regranted through EA Grants and CBG in 2018 and 2019, and a rough estimated range for how much it expects to grant through those programs in 2020. As I commented on the recent writeup on EA Grants, the public communication around these programs has indicated that they’d grant significantly more money than they appear to have granted in practice. For instance, CEA’s end of 2018 fundraising post referred to “a regranting budget of $3.7M for EA Grants and EA Community Building Grants, which we use to fund other organizations, projects, individuals, and groups” but the grants that have been announced from those programs don’t even come close to that figure.
I think it’s critical for the EA community to get a more accurate understanding of how much funding has been/will be available, so that other funders and potential grantees can make informed decisions. As SiebeRozendalwrites: “I’m afraid there is a dynamic where CB-efforts have trouble finding non-CEA funding because alternative funders believe CEA has got all the good opportunities covered.”
If CEA will be granting large amounts next year, that’s great: I think past grantees have mostly been good projects to fund, and as I argued in OP I think there are plenty more good opportunities out there. If CEA will only be making small grants, or doesn’t really know how much it will grant (due to uncertainty around the future of EA Grants, for example) other donors can adjust their behavior accordingly. But for that to happen, they need to be informed about CEA’s plans.
We’ll be releasing a write up of our 2019 review and 2020 plans in the near future, and will include historic spending for EA Grants and CBGs in 2019, as well as our projected spending in 2020. We spent $688,875 on CBGs in 2018. Because we didn’t have a separate accounting line item for EA Grants in 2018 and did not have consolidated internal documentation, it would take some time to come up with a specific amount. From our quick estimates, it is unlikely our EA grants spending was more than $1M, which would indicate we spent significantly less on EA Grants and CBGs in 2018 than the $3.7M announced in the 2018 fundraising post. We believe we were overly optimistic about the speed in which we could launch new programs historically and now are more conservative with our expectations related to launching new programs.
Thanks for this Joan! I may have some followup questions related to this, but will wait to see if they’re addressed by the forthcoming writeup as I want to be respectful of your time. I look forward to reading it!
The Local Group Organizers Survey is now out here.
I will add that looking at the % of groups in each region somewhat understates Europe’s size as a proportion of the community. 50% (88/176) of groups are in Europe, but European groups account for somewhat higher percentages of individuals who engaged with an EA group (62.25%), new attendees (71.94%), and group members considered “highly engaged in the EA community” (56.56%). As such the amount of funding that we might expect to see going to Europe were things proportionate, might well be higher than 50%.
The 2018 EA Survey’s post on geographic differences also has some more detailed information than the early demographics post. I think this map from that post highlights the concentration of EAs in Europe and a small number of locations in the US quite well. In the 2019 EA Survey post on geography we’ll be repeating these analyses while also looking at different levels of engagement across regions.
Re: information being up to date on websites being a signal that CEA is making progress on this problem...
I was glad to see that the Meta Fund page was updated to include a link where people can apply. And more generally, I’m happy CEA is working to improve EA Funds and expect the recent design changes to the EA Funds pages to improve users’ experience.
However, I’m quite frustrated that the new “Grantmaking and Impact” section is written in a way that’s likely to be confusing or misleading for donors. In the OP, I noted concerns about concentration in the Meta Fund’s grantmaking. The two largest grantees (by a wide margin) are Founders Pledge and 80K, which have each received roughly half a million in grants.
But the Grantmaking and Impact section doesn’t mention this, instead referring to grants of “$250k+ to 80,000 Hours” and “$120k+ to Founders Pledge”. It may be technically accurate to describe ~$500k grants as “$250k+” or “$120k+”, but it’s hard to expect people to read those descriptions and get an accurate sense of how much money the largest grantees have received or how concentrated the Meta Fund’s grant history has been historically. If one reads only the Grantmaking and Impact section, they’d get the impression that the largest grants were a few hundred thousand out of a total of “several million” granted, when the reality is that Founders Pledge and 80K together account for about half of the $2.05 million the Meta Fund has granted to date.
The Grantmaking and Impact section is problematic for all the funds, not just the Meta Fund, and generally appears to give a distorted picture of what the largest grantees have been (and no information on “impact”):
The Animal Fund describes “$250k+ to support research related to improving animal welfare”. ACE and Rethink Priorities both focus on this type of research, and have received grants of $500k and $475k respectively which aren’t mentioned.
The Long-term Future Fund lists “$440k+ to support researchers working on relevant topics” as its largest category, and the copy clarifies that these grants “support individual researchers – both those working in academia, and alongside it – to skill up, and to work on key problems.” There’s no mention of MIRI (~$580k in grants) or CFAR (~$325k in grants, plus another $150k that was recommended but not granted since another funder stepped in before the grant was made).
The Global Development Fund mentions “$3m+ to malaria prevention”. This significantly overstates (by ~$1 million) the amount the fund has actually granted to malaria prevention ($1.7 million to Malaria Consortium and $330k to AMF).
I support the intention of trying to give donors more clarity on the types of grants each EA Fund makes, but the current implementation of the Grantmaking and Impact section doesn’t really achieve that. It will also likely be hard to keep up to date.
I suggest creating a google sheet with: a list of all grants, the fund the grant came from, the date, a categorization (which would vary by fund but could be similar to the categories used in the Grantmaking and Impact section), and a subtotal for each category. That would make it easy to see all grants in one place (rather than clicking through each payout report), the categorization would be transparent, and the subtotals would update automatically as new grants were made.
I suggest creating a google sheet with: a list of all grants, the fund the grant came from, the date, a categorization (which would vary by fund but could be similar to the categories used in the Grantmaking and Impact section), and a subtotal for each category. That would make it easy to see all grants in one place (rather than clicking through each payout report), the categorization would be transparent, and the subtotals would update automatically as new grants were made.
+1, this seems like a good idea & quick to implement.
The Long-term Future Fund lists “$440k+ to support researchers working on relevant topics” as its largest category, and the copy clarifies that these grants “support individual researchers – both those working in academia, and alongside it – to skill up, and to work on key problems.” There’s no mention of MIRI (~$580k in grants) or CFAR (~$325k in grants, plus another $150k that was recommended but not granted since another funder stepped in before the grant was made).
The $440k section is intended to refer to funding for individual researchers, so not mentioning MIRI is intentional there. The title should probably be adjusted to say “$440k+ to support individual researchers and small organizations working on relevant topics”.
I feel a bit confused about how to list the $580k in grants to MIRI, since most of that was under the previous management of the fund (by Nick Beckstead) and the new fund team has given proportionally much less money to MIRI and other established organizations, and has instead focused more on funding smaller projects and individuals, since we think that area has larger room for funding, and higher expected value.
I think the current list is designed to help people get a sense of where their money is likely to go in the future, and so is mostly restricted to grants that were made under the current management. It seems good to make that more clear.
Listing the $300k recommended to CFAR under the current fund management seems reasonable to me.
I support having a spreadsheet with all the fund payouts. I actually would have found that useful myself a few times.
Distinguishing between grants made by the current management team and previous management makes sense (though it’d be good to state this methodology explicitly). If a spreadsheet does get built, the management regime would be a good piece of info to capture.
FWIW, for the Meta Fund “120k+ to Founders Pledge” looks quite reasonable if we only look at grants from the management team, but “250k+ to 80K” still seems like a poor way to describe the $415k granted to 80k by the team.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comments. I agree that the numbers should have been higher; that was an oversight (and perhaps speaks to the difficulty of keeping these numbers accurate longer term). I’m not sure how I missed the extra 80K and Founders Pledge grants (I think they came from an earlier payout report that I forgot to include in my calculations). I’m sorry that this wasn’t done correctly the first time around.
I’ve since removed the grant amounts (leaving just the grantees/grant categories), and I might re-title the field to just be called ‘Past Grantmaking’ or something similar. We’ve also created a public spreadsheet of all of the EA Funds grants, so they’re accessible in once place.
I added the ‘Grantmaking and Impact’ section to the Funds pages in response to feedback that it was hard to get a feel for what each Fund did in a tangible way, especially for newer donors who hadn’t been following the Funds over time and hadn’t yet dived into the payout reports. The idea here was to give a flavour of the kinds of things that each Fund had granted to, rather than to provide an exhaustive list (that’s what the payout reports are for). I still think that this is valuable, but I agree that keeping the numbers accurate has some problems, so for now we’ll remove them.
Thanks for cleaning up this data Sam! I also appreciate your putting together that spreadsheet. It’d be great if the fund pages could link to it to make that info more easily accessible. And over time, I’d love to see that file evolve to include additional data about each funds’ grants with corresponding subtotals. I think that would be a big aid for donors trying to understand what types of grants each fund makes.
I agree with your “Reasons for the current concentration of funding” directionally, but I’m somewhat skeptical about how much of the concentration they explain.
Some of the reasons you provide for concentration in London (founders effects, concentration of EA organizations) would also apply to the Bay, and some of your explanations for concentration in Europe-ex-London (long established groups, prevalence of elite schools) would also apply to the east coast of the US.
I think the application data you provided (thank you!) offers another explanation. The acceptance rates across regions are pretty similar. This suggests that high proportion of CBGs going to European groups relative to non-European groups is largely explained by a much larger number of European applicants. I think it’s very important to understand this application dynamic, and whether it’s driven by networks, publicity strategy around CBG, national groups being more likely to apply than regional/university groups, or something else.
In terms of funding allocation once we receive an application, below are the total number of CBG applications accepted vs. submitted by geography. UK − 80% acceptance, Rest of Europe − 60%, Bay − 50%, US excluding the Bay − 80%, Rest of the World − 65-70%*. (*One application we referred to another funder. This group received funding and is included in our total)
(I’m the project lead of EA Community Building Grants at CEA) At the moment we don’t have a good understanding of the cause of the distribution of the applications across regions. If for example this is due to an inappropriate publicity strategy or strong network effects this could mean that we’re unnecessarily missing out on promising opportunities, so I agree with you that this is important to understand.
Thank you Harri! As mentioned in the OP, I think a publicity strategy that promotes CBGs in more places and has longer (or rolling) application windows would help attract more applicants.
To understand the geographical distribution of applications better, I suggest asking some of the better established groups in places that didn’t see many applications why they didn’t apply. And it might be worth reviewing early communications with attendees/applicants to the European Group Retreat to see if they encouraged CBG applications, as this could explain why there were so many applications from Europe relative to everywhere else (though I take Joan’s point about the retreat itself happening after CBG applications closed).
As the author notes, most of the Meta Fund team is based in London. On previous recruitment rounds, the Meta Fund has taken steps to seek Fund managers from a wider set of locations, and will continue to do so in the future. Of course, the decision to appoint Fund managers is contingent on finding suitable candidates, and the location was one of a number of factors under consideration.
The management team system has been in place for over a year, so I think it’s pretty problematic that the Meta Fund’s team remains so concentrated geographically. Could you explain some of the specific steps that have been (or will be) taken to find managers from a wider set of locations?
I’m not really clear on how the manager selection process actually works, and how much of a role CEA takes relative to the Chair and other managers. And while I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, I’d be happy to set up a form where community members can nominate potential managers from a different location.
Fund managers are appointed by CEA on the recommendation of the Fund Committee (in the case of the Meta Fund, my understanding is that currently all committee members have input on the decision, with equally-weighted votes, though this is not the case on all Fund teams). My understanding from conversations with members of the Meta Fund team is that the last recruitment round considered candidates from several locations, with an emphasis on trying to find someone from the Bay Area. At least two promising candidates (both based in the Bay) were approached, but were ultimately unable to take the position. While the appointee (Peter McIntyre) does live in London, he’s originally from Australia, and has recently moved back from living in the Bay, and maintains strong connections there.
As an aside, I’d note that the team is somewhat more geographically diverse than is being presented here. While the plurality of the team currently lives in London, with a member in Hong Kong and an advisor in the Bay, they also come from five different countries, and as far as I know most have lived in several different cities.
I’m happy to forward nominations for Fund managers (for any of the Funds) on to their respective Chairs. The best thing to do is send me an email at sam[at]centreforeffectivealtruism[dot]org.
Thanks for this background info Sam! Glad to hear that people from more places were considered in the last recruitment round. Were there any candidates from the US-excluding-Bay (which has more EAs than the UK, Bay Area, and Australia combined)? Did the candidates from the Bay who were approached give any reasons for why they couldn’t/wouldn’t take the position (e.g. is the volunteer nature of the role a limiting factor)?
I’ll email you some nominations (and FWIW, if the fund managers agree this is a priority it’d be great to also solicit nominations in higher profile places like the EA newsletter).
I’m Joan Gass, the Managing Director at CEA.
First, thank you for such a detailed, thoughtful criticism of CEA’s projects. It’s really valuable to hear from people about how we can improve our programs. This is also timely: we’ve recently hired a permanent Executive Director and we’re thinking through our strategy for this upcoming year.
CEA’s work, and CEA’s staff, have historically been mostly based in and focused on community building work in the US and the UK. We think that it may sometimes be legitimate to focus on the US, UK, and Europe more heavily, as these are areas that have a lot of EAs and a lot of global influence, and therefore may have lots of good EA grantmaking opportunities for high impact projects. At the same time, there are good grantmaking opportunities for EA in other parts of the world. Thus, we see two possible good goals for community building and grantmaking going forward: we’d like to see grantmakers actively building relationships and seeking out valuable grantmaking opportunities in more areas. But we don’t want to discourage people from giving “too many” grants to great projects in any one location. Getting this balance right requires careful analysis of trade offs and strategic goals. This post’s analysis is helpful as we evaluate our current programs and think through future strategy.
The importance of EA community building outside the Bay and UK:
We agree with the author that there are good reasons to think that community-building opportunities exist outside of the locations where we’ve historically granted. For example, there are cities with strong finance industries which could be promising for earning to give. Individuals with cultural context in Sub Saharan Africa and Asia are important contributors in efforts to reduce global poverty. There’s growing need for animal welfare work in Asia and other areas where meat consumption is rising. 80,000 Hours has emphasized the importance of China specialist roles.
How CEA’s funding compares to where EA groups are located:
Currently, the majority of EAs appear to be based in the US, UK, or Europe by a significant margin The 2018 EA survey says, “the majority of respondents reported being located in the United States (36%), followed by the UK (16%), Germany (7%), and Australia (6%). In total, there were responses from 74 different nations and 21 nations had 10 or more responses.” An EA local groups survey conducted by Rethink in March 2019 (Forum post forthcoming), analyzes responses from 146 groups. It finds that 79% of groups are based in Europe, the US, and Canada (53% in Europe, 25% in the USA and Canada, 7% in Asia, 10% in Australia / New Zealand, 2% in Latin America, and 3% in Africa).
Although there are obviously important factors beyond geographic representativeness in making funding decisions, we can check how we’re doing on representativeness by comparing where groups are located with which groups have received funding, according to the author. [as a note: we haven’t checked the author’s categorization of numbers, and based on a quick skim think that in some cases we would categorize funding allocations by geographies differently.] This analysis shows that:
Europe is over-represented (85% funding received as categorized by the author vs. 53% proportion of local groups)
The locations in the US / Canada other than the San Francisco Bay are underrepresented (7% funding received vs. 25% proportion of local groups),
Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Africa are underrepresented (9% funding received vs. 22% proportion of local groups).
Reasons for the current concentration of funding:
In addition to EA groups and individuals being concentrated in specific locations, some of the highest-performing groups are also concentrated in the UK and Europe. Two of the largest and most active groups are EA Oxford and EA London. These groups seemed especially strong when we assessed them for community-building grants, particularly on the number of members who took careers in priority roles. Most, although not all, of the most established national groups are in Europe (e.g. Czech Association for Effective Altruism, EA Norway, EA Sweden). Partly this is due to historical founder effects—the current EA community was started by people mostly in the US and UK, and these locations are more tightly connected with each other and Europe than with other regions of the world, so the ideas spread through the US and Europe first.
Another part of the reason for this seems to be the concentration of EA-affiliated organizations in certain locations (like FHI, GPI, 80,000 Hours, Effective Giving, Effective Altruism Foundation, Founders Pledge, GFI Europe, and Charity Entrepreneurship, among others in London and Oxford). We know it’s possible for people anywhere in the world to delve into EA ideas, or create useful projects, or commit to taking significant action to do good. We also recognize that individuals who live in the same locations and interact in person may find it easier to discuss new ideas, generate internship opportunities, learn from skilled researchers, identify opportunities to incubate new initiatives, etc. These factors, along with the geographic clustering of top global universities, means that the quantity of granting opportunities may be higher in certain geographic areas.
Some comments on grantmaking with specific CEA programs:
A claim within this post is that community building grantmakers are exhibiting bias in their network. This is an important thing to keep an eye out for. Bias could occur in two ways: i) the individuals that know about opportunities or ii) the way in which funding is allocated. Below we’ll reflect on these for each of the programs that CEA runs.
EA Funds: As the author notes, most of the Meta Fund team is based in London. On previous recruitment rounds, the Meta Fund has taken steps to seek Fund managers from a wider set of locations, and will continue to do so in the future. Of course, the decision to appoint Fund managers is contingent on finding suitable candidates, and the location was one of a number of factors under consideration. In terms of individuals knowing about opportunities i), the note about broadcasting applications more widely is well-taken – our understanding is that the Meta Fund team would welcome applications from a wider pool. We’ll take steps to ensure that when applications open, it’s broadcast more widely in the future, including adding the link to the Fund page, and potentially other places such as the EA Facebook group. In terms of ii), Fund management teams make individual grant recommendations independent of CEA, so we don’t think we’re best placed to comment on how individual grants are assessed or distributed by the Funds management teams.
EA Grants: We’ve recently written about some historical challenges and capacity constraints in our EA Grants post here. We agree that previous closed-round versions of EA Grants over-relied on the grantmakers’ network, which was geographically clustered, to source grantmaking opportunities.
CBGs (Community Building Grants): This program is young (~18 months), and as a program we are still learning / experimenting.
i) In terms of access to opportunities, the first round of CBGs applications was announced on the Forum in early 2018. The 2018 European Community Building Retreat occured in April, after the CBG applications were due in March. Invitations to the European Community Building retreat may have prompted some individuals to apply that wouldn’t otherwise have, although it’s hard to know this counterfactually. It is true that the networks of the project lead and CEA are largest in the UK, and have grown to include more locations in Europe. Over the history of the program we haven’t spent much time proactively encouraging specific groups (or groups from specific locations) to apply. The program lead anticipates that proactive outreach for the program to be counterfactually responsible for fewer than 5 applications. It is likely that our networks influenced the original batch of CBG applications. In addition to program lead networks, one additional explanation is that we’ve seen a larger concentration of national groups (i.e. groups that support multiple city / university groups within their country) in Europe than other regions of the world. These groups may have been in a more primed position to apply for CBGs (e.g. already had strategic plans in place).
In the early stage of this program, we have been focusing on questions whether the program should continue, what the evaluation process should look like, as opposed to focusing on increasing the number of applications to the program.
ii) In terms of funding allocation once we receive an application, below are the total number of CBG applications accepted vs. submitted by geography. UK − 80% acceptance, Rest of Europe − 60%, Bay − 50%, US excluding the Bay − 80%, Rest of the World − 65-70%*. (*One application we referred to another funder. This group received funding and is included in our total) Applications from European groups have typically been for a larger amount of funding than for groups in other locations, as it is more likely for ‘national groups’ with multiple staff to apply for grants.
Of applications to the program, the program lead estimates that he had previous interaction with (eg. at least a 10 minute conversation or similar ) half of applicants. 70% of the applicants he’d had prior interaction with were accepted, whereas 50% of the applicants he hadn’t had prior interaction with were accepted. One potential explanation of this is that individuals that speak with our program lead have a better sense of the program and whether they are a good fit. We’ve moved from a full application to an expression of interest form to try to decrease barriers for individuals to have these conversations. We’ve written about the process to assess CBG applications in our recent update here.
We have a conflict of interest policy within CEA. For example, in one recent round this summer, our CBG lead identified that he had spent time socially with one of the applicants to a level that it might be considered a conflict of interest. As a result, the CBG application was assessed by other individuals in the organization.
As we’re in the midst of strategic planning for 2020, we’re don’t have specifics about the program next year. We would be excited to see expression of interest from a wide variety of locations in the future.
Additional groups funding: In addition to CBGs, which fund community builders to work on groups on a part-time or full-time basis, we also provide group funding to groups to run specific projects (such as retreats or fellowships) or to cover running expenses, which has totaled to ~$83,000 this year. In terms of our groups funding this year 21% went to Europe, 53% went to the US, 6% went to Australia and New Zealand, and 20% went to Asia.
Some errors CEA has made:
While we think that there are some legitimate reasons for the current concentration of funding, we also think it’s true that CEA could have done a better job and could have benefited from building networks outside the San Francisco Bay area and the UK. We think that CEA previously tried to run too many programs, and that this spread our staff too thin. At times, we limited the scope of our projects given staff capacity or organizational priorities, but we didn’t communicate clearly enough about our limitations. Our lack of capacity contributed to us not investing more in creating networks across a wider variety of locations, which meant that we missed out on opportunities to support useful work outside of the areas and networks we were most familiar with.
We’ve also heard feedback that groups that are geographically father away from from ‘EA Hubs’ (the Bay, London/Oxford) find it harder to connect with CEA.
Recognizing these problems, we’ve tried to build networks this year:
Hosting a US community-building retreat in January to build networks with US organizers The vast majority of participants were from outside the San Francisco Bay Area
Our EA Grants staff person (who is based in the US) visited the Czech Republic and Sweden to expand her network
We sent one staff member to attend EAGx Australia and two staff members to the Doing Good Better conference in Singapore
We are also considering:
Increasing the amount that our groups team travels to different locations to build their networks and understanding of issues that community members face
Proactively reaching out to specific locations to encourage CBG applications [if we choose to expand the program]
Building stronger relationships with groups at top universities worldwide
Taking into account whether someone is an organizer from a more distant location for EA Global admissions decisions
Other suggestions generated by stakeholders or community members (please feel free to share thoughts!)
[note: these will depend on other capacity, funding, and other competing priorities and should not be viewed as commitments]
The following would be signals that we are making progress on this problem:
Grant information for EA Grants, EA Funds, and community-building grants is up to date on our websites
The EA Meta Fund has an application link on it’s webpage and broadcasts opportunities widely
Calls for applicants to open grant rounds are posted in more locations, with more advanced notice
The percentage of Community Building Grants going to non-European locations increases. This may include locations in the US, which are currently under-represented in CBGs.
Updates from the groups team (for example in CEA’s annual report or updates on the EA Forum) mention in-person visits to non-Bay/ non-UK locations and meetings or other engagement with organizers from non-Bay/ non-UK locations.
We welcome feedback and ideas for how we could do this better, for instance via this feedback form. We continue to encourage applications to EA Global, EA Funds, and Community Building Grants from a wider variety of locations, and appreciate the work that organizers are doing outside of the Bay and UK.
I agree that your list of “signals that we are making progress on this problem” would all be positive developments. And I recognize that since CEA is resetting some of its strategy, it’s a difficult time to make firm commitments, especially around short-term priorities.
However, there’s one near-term step that I think would be relatively easy and particularly high impact. I’d love to see CEA publish how much money it has regranted through EA Grants and CBG in 2018 and 2019, and a rough estimated range for how much it expects to grant through those programs in 2020. As I commented on the recent writeup on EA Grants, the public communication around these programs has indicated that they’d grant significantly more money than they appear to have granted in practice. For instance, CEA’s end of 2018 fundraising post referred to “a regranting budget of $3.7M for EA Grants and EA Community Building Grants, which we use to fund other organizations, projects, individuals, and groups” but the grants that have been announced from those programs don’t even come close to that figure.
I think it’s critical for the EA community to get a more accurate understanding of how much funding has been/will be available, so that other funders and potential grantees can make informed decisions. As SiebeRozendal writes: “I’m afraid there is a dynamic where CB-efforts have trouble finding non-CEA funding because alternative funders believe CEA has got all the good opportunities covered.”
If CEA will be granting large amounts next year, that’s great: I think past grantees have mostly been good projects to fund, and as I argued in OP I think there are plenty more good opportunities out there. If CEA will only be making small grants, or doesn’t really know how much it will grant (due to uncertainty around the future of EA Grants, for example) other donors can adjust their behavior accordingly. But for that to happen, they need to be informed about CEA’s plans.
We’ll be releasing a write up of our 2019 review and 2020 plans in the near future, and will include historic spending for EA Grants and CBGs in 2019, as well as our projected spending in 2020. We spent $688,875 on CBGs in 2018. Because we didn’t have a separate accounting line item for EA Grants in 2018 and did not have consolidated internal documentation, it would take some time to come up with a specific amount. From our quick estimates, it is unlikely our EA grants spending was more than $1M, which would indicate we spent significantly less on EA Grants and CBGs in 2018 than the $3.7M announced in the 2018 fundraising post. We believe we were overly optimistic about the speed in which we could launch new programs historically and now are more conservative with our expectations related to launching new programs.
Thanks for this Joan! I may have some followup questions related to this, but will wait to see if they’re addressed by the forthcoming writeup as I want to be respectful of your time. I look forward to reading it!
The Local Group Organizers Survey is now out here.
I will add that looking at the % of groups in each region somewhat understates Europe’s size as a proportion of the community. 50% (88/176) of groups are in Europe, but European groups account for somewhat higher percentages of individuals who engaged with an EA group (62.25%), new attendees (71.94%), and group members considered “highly engaged in the EA community” (56.56%). As such the amount of funding that we might expect to see going to Europe were things proportionate, might well be higher than 50%.
The 2018 EA Survey’s post on geographic differences also has some more detailed information than the early demographics post. I think this map from that post highlights the concentration of EAs in Europe and a small number of locations in the US quite well. In the 2019 EA Survey post on geography we’ll be repeating these analyses while also looking at different levels of engagement across regions.
Re: information being up to date on websites being a signal that CEA is making progress on this problem...
I was glad to see that the Meta Fund page was updated to include a link where people can apply. And more generally, I’m happy CEA is working to improve EA Funds and expect the recent design changes to the EA Funds pages to improve users’ experience.
However, I’m quite frustrated that the new “Grantmaking and Impact” section is written in a way that’s likely to be confusing or misleading for donors. In the OP, I noted concerns about concentration in the Meta Fund’s grantmaking. The two largest grantees (by a wide margin) are Founders Pledge and 80K, which have each received roughly half a million in grants.
But the Grantmaking and Impact section doesn’t mention this, instead referring to grants of “$250k+ to 80,000 Hours” and “$120k+ to Founders Pledge”. It may be technically accurate to describe ~$500k grants as “$250k+” or “$120k+”, but it’s hard to expect people to read those descriptions and get an accurate sense of how much money the largest grantees have received or how concentrated the Meta Fund’s grant history has been historically. If one reads only the Grantmaking and Impact section, they’d get the impression that the largest grants were a few hundred thousand out of a total of “several million” granted, when the reality is that Founders Pledge and 80K together account for about half of the $2.05 million the Meta Fund has granted to date.
The Grantmaking and Impact section is problematic for all the funds, not just the Meta Fund, and generally appears to give a distorted picture of what the largest grantees have been (and no information on “impact”):
The Animal Fund describes “$250k+ to support research related to improving animal welfare”. ACE and Rethink Priorities both focus on this type of research, and have received grants of $500k and $475k respectively which aren’t mentioned.
The Long-term Future Fund lists “$440k+ to support researchers working on relevant topics” as its largest category, and the copy clarifies that these grants “support individual researchers – both those working in academia, and alongside it – to skill up, and to work on key problems.” There’s no mention of MIRI (~$580k in grants) or CFAR (~$325k in grants, plus another $150k that was recommended but not granted since another funder stepped in before the grant was made).
The Global Development Fund mentions “$3m+ to malaria prevention”. This significantly overstates (by ~$1 million) the amount the fund has actually granted to malaria prevention ($1.7 million to Malaria Consortium and $330k to AMF).
I support the intention of trying to give donors more clarity on the types of grants each EA Fund makes, but the current implementation of the Grantmaking and Impact section doesn’t really achieve that. It will also likely be hard to keep up to date.
I suggest creating a google sheet with: a list of all grants, the fund the grant came from, the date, a categorization (which would vary by fund but could be similar to the categories used in the Grantmaking and Impact section), and a subtotal for each category. That would make it easy to see all grants in one place (rather than clicking through each payout report), the categorization would be transparent, and the subtotals would update automatically as new grants were made.
+1, this seems like a good idea & quick to implement.
The $440k section is intended to refer to funding for individual researchers, so not mentioning MIRI is intentional there. The title should probably be adjusted to say “$440k+ to support individual researchers and small organizations working on relevant topics”.
I feel a bit confused about how to list the $580k in grants to MIRI, since most of that was under the previous management of the fund (by Nick Beckstead) and the new fund team has given proportionally much less money to MIRI and other established organizations, and has instead focused more on funding smaller projects and individuals, since we think that area has larger room for funding, and higher expected value.
I think the current list is designed to help people get a sense of where their money is likely to go in the future, and so is mostly restricted to grants that were made under the current management. It seems good to make that more clear.
Listing the $300k recommended to CFAR under the current fund management seems reasonable to me.
I support having a spreadsheet with all the fund payouts. I actually would have found that useful myself a few times.
Distinguishing between grants made by the current management team and previous management makes sense (though it’d be good to state this methodology explicitly). If a spreadsheet does get built, the management regime would be a good piece of info to capture.
FWIW, for the Meta Fund “120k+ to Founders Pledge” looks quite reasonable if we only look at grants from the management team, but “250k+ to 80K” still seems like a poor way to describe the $415k granted to 80k by the team.
[meta: apologies for the belated response]
Thanks again for the thoughtful comments. I agree that the numbers should have been higher; that was an oversight (and perhaps speaks to the difficulty of keeping these numbers accurate longer term). I’m not sure how I missed the extra 80K and Founders Pledge grants (I think they came from an earlier payout report that I forgot to include in my calculations). I’m sorry that this wasn’t done correctly the first time around.
I’ve since removed the grant amounts (leaving just the grantees/grant categories), and I might re-title the field to just be called ‘Past Grantmaking’ or something similar. We’ve also created a public spreadsheet of all of the EA Funds grants, so they’re accessible in once place.
I added the ‘Grantmaking and Impact’ section to the Funds pages in response to feedback that it was hard to get a feel for what each Fund did in a tangible way, especially for newer donors who hadn’t been following the Funds over time and hadn’t yet dived into the payout reports. The idea here was to give a flavour of the kinds of things that each Fund had granted to, rather than to provide an exhaustive list (that’s what the payout reports are for). I still think that this is valuable, but I agree that keeping the numbers accurate has some problems, so for now we’ll remove them.
Thanks for cleaning up this data Sam! I also appreciate your putting together that spreadsheet. It’d be great if the fund pages could link to it to make that info more easily accessible. And over time, I’d love to see that file evolve to include additional data about each funds’ grants with corresponding subtotals. I think that would be a big aid for donors trying to understand what types of grants each fund makes.
I agree with your “Reasons for the current concentration of funding” directionally, but I’m somewhat skeptical about how much of the concentration they explain.
Some of the reasons you provide for concentration in London (founders effects, concentration of EA organizations) would also apply to the Bay, and some of your explanations for concentration in Europe-ex-London (long established groups, prevalence of elite schools) would also apply to the east coast of the US.
I think the application data you provided (thank you!) offers another explanation. The acceptance rates across regions are pretty similar. This suggests that high proportion of CBGs going to European groups relative to non-European groups is largely explained by a much larger number of European applicants. I think it’s very important to understand this application dynamic, and whether it’s driven by networks, publicity strategy around CBG, national groups being more likely to apply than regional/university groups, or something else.
(I’m the project lead of EA Community Building Grants at CEA) At the moment we don’t have a good understanding of the cause of the distribution of the applications across regions. If for example this is due to an inappropriate publicity strategy or strong network effects this could mean that we’re unnecessarily missing out on promising opportunities, so I agree with you that this is important to understand.
Thank you Harri! As mentioned in the OP, I think a publicity strategy that promotes CBGs in more places and has longer (or rolling) application windows would help attract more applicants.
To understand the geographical distribution of applications better, I suggest asking some of the better established groups in places that didn’t see many applications why they didn’t apply. And it might be worth reviewing early communications with attendees/applicants to the European Group Retreat to see if they encouraged CBG applications, as this could explain why there were so many applications from Europe relative to everywhere else (though I take Joan’s point about the retreat itself happening after CBG applications closed).
Thanks for this thoughtful reply Joan. I appreciate your willingness to engage with the issues I’ve raised.
I’ll respond separately to several of the specific points you made for easier threading.
The management team system has been in place for over a year, so I think it’s pretty problematic that the Meta Fund’s team remains so concentrated geographically. Could you explain some of the specific steps that have been (or will be) taken to find managers from a wider set of locations?
I’m not really clear on how the manager selection process actually works, and how much of a role CEA takes relative to the Chair and other managers. And while I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, I’d be happy to set up a form where community members can nominate potential managers from a different location.
Fund managers are appointed by CEA on the recommendation of the Fund Committee (in the case of the Meta Fund, my understanding is that currently all committee members have input on the decision, with equally-weighted votes, though this is not the case on all Fund teams). My understanding from conversations with members of the Meta Fund team is that the last recruitment round considered candidates from several locations, with an emphasis on trying to find someone from the Bay Area. At least two promising candidates (both based in the Bay) were approached, but were ultimately unable to take the position. While the appointee (Peter McIntyre) does live in London, he’s originally from Australia, and has recently moved back from living in the Bay, and maintains strong connections there.
As an aside, I’d note that the team is somewhat more geographically diverse than is being presented here. While the plurality of the team currently lives in London, with a member in Hong Kong and an advisor in the Bay, they also come from five different countries, and as far as I know most have lived in several different cities.
I’m happy to forward nominations for Fund managers (for any of the Funds) on to their respective Chairs. The best thing to do is send me an email at sam[at]centreforeffectivealtruism[dot]org.
Thanks for this background info Sam! Glad to hear that people from more places were considered in the last recruitment round. Were there any candidates from the US-excluding-Bay (which has more EAs than the UK, Bay Area, and Australia combined)? Did the candidates from the Bay who were approached give any reasons for why they couldn’t/wouldn’t take the position (e.g. is the volunteer nature of the role a limiting factor)?
I’ll email you some nominations (and FWIW, if the fund managers agree this is a priority it’d be great to also solicit nominations in higher profile places like the EA newsletter).