Could you say more about why you decided to have separate CEOs for EVF UK and EVF US, instead of one CEO handling both? You gave the examples of Alphabet and Meta, but they don’t have country-specific CEOs.
Side point: The Alphabet and Meta analogies work better for the relationship between EVF (either / both of US and UK) and the projects hosted within it rather than the relationship between EVF UK and EVF US. That is to say, Google rebranded to Alphabet to avoid confusion between the parent company (Alphabet) and the well-known subsidiary company (Google). Similarly, CEA rebranded to EVF to avoid confusion between the legal entities (EVF) and the well-known subsidiary project (CEA).
Why two CEOs? While the projects are hosted within the broader EVF legal entities, neither EVF UK nor EVF US subsumes the other entity. As distinct nonprofits operating in distinct countries, they need distinct leadership; consequently the boards appointed separate Interim CEOs. Similarly, as is typical for nonprofits, each charity has its own board, which is responsible for providing governance oversight (EVF UK used to be a member of EVF US but isn’t any more). There’s a lot in flux, the interim CEO appointments are new, and various things may change over time. We’re still exploring how this best works, and what the right long-term structure will be.
No inside knowledge, but I can think of some solid legal reasons you might want some separation here. They are legally separate organizations that may have different and/or inconsistent legal and other interests. For instance, one of the two may have much greater clawback exposure than the other. Or, the US org might not want the UK charity regulator in its business, and that’s a really hard boundary to police with a dual-hatted CEO.
Right, but they may be more pronounced in the current situation than in your average abstract multinational corporation situation. I didn’t read anything that necessarily committed to the CEOs being different people in the long run, although I could have missed it.
In the classic multinational corporation, all of the corporate entities are under common ownership—often the non-main corporations are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the main corporation. So having a dual-hatted for-profit CEO doesn’t raise as many concerns about conflicting roles because everything is ultimately owned by / for the benefit of the same group of shareholders. Both CEOs have a duty toward that same group.
Here, you have something I think is a bit more akin to two separate corporations with different (albeit somewhat overlapping) stockholders. I know EVF UK is a member of EVF USA, but as a non-profit 501(c)(3), EVF USA’s board has legal duties to the public interest that are wholly independent of EVF UK. Those duties are absent in your classic multinational corporation, where the main corporation owns the subsidiaries. Moreover, in order to keep its 501(c)(3) status, EVF USA has to maintain discretion and contol over its own funds, so giving the impression that the two EVFs are basically the same organization might backfire.
I’m sure this response is simplified/imprecise, and I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for the two organizations to hire the same individual as CEO. But I think complications of nonprofit corporate structure—at least where the nonprofits are not in the same country—likely make it less likely to be the correct answer for a non-profit than for a for-profit.
It seems unlikely the particular legal issues you mentioned are a great reason to have 2 CEOs?
I would find a functional/structural reason more convincing—e.g. if there were separate orgs under EVF with ops/admin/funding needs that have require distinct attention. But this seems unlikely?
My guess is that the choice behind the duo CEO involves bandwidth and resilience if things go poorly. Other factors might be really mundane, such as idiosyncratic personal considerations that are benign and normal (e.g. Howie has duties at 80,000 hours still).
“Multinational” corporations are usually not actually multinational in the sense of having independent entities in different countries, they generally have one main entity (with one CEO) based in one country that owns various subentities in other countries (the details of this are often of course quite complicated). This is different for EVF which has two independent entities.
My understand is this mainly has to do with charity law in the US and UK forbidding foreign entities from fully controlling organizations with tax exempt status.
Could you say more about why you decided to have separate CEOs for EVF UK and EVF US, instead of one CEO handling both? You gave the examples of Alphabet and Meta, but they don’t have country-specific CEOs.
Hi Jeff —
Side point: The Alphabet and Meta analogies work better for the relationship between EVF (either / both of US and UK) and the projects hosted within it rather than the relationship between EVF UK and EVF US. That is to say, Google rebranded to Alphabet to avoid confusion between the parent company (Alphabet) and the well-known subsidiary company (Google). Similarly, CEA rebranded to EVF to avoid confusion between the legal entities (EVF) and the well-known subsidiary project (CEA).
Why two CEOs? While the projects are hosted within the broader EVF legal entities, neither EVF UK nor EVF US subsumes the other entity. As distinct nonprofits operating in distinct countries, they need distinct leadership; consequently the boards appointed separate Interim CEOs. Similarly, as is typical for nonprofits, each charity has its own board, which is responsible for providing governance oversight (EVF UK used to be a member of EVF US but isn’t any more). There’s a lot in flux, the interim CEO appointments are new, and various things may change over time. We’re still exploring how this best works, and what the right long-term structure will be.
No inside knowledge, but I can think of some solid legal reasons you might want some separation here. They are legally separate organizations that may have different and/or inconsistent legal and other interests. For instance, one of the two may have much greater clawback exposure than the other. Or, the US org might not want the UK charity regulator in its business, and that’s a really hard boundary to police with a dual-hatted CEO.
Sure, though all of those factors also apply to multinational corporations, which generally have one CEO.
Right, but they may be more pronounced in the current situation than in your average abstract multinational corporation situation. I didn’t read anything that necessarily committed to the CEOs being different people in the long run, although I could have missed it.
In the classic multinational corporation, all of the corporate entities are under common ownership—often the non-main corporations are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the main corporation. So having a dual-hatted for-profit CEO doesn’t raise as many concerns about conflicting roles because everything is ultimately owned by / for the benefit of the same group of shareholders. Both CEOs have a duty toward that same group.
Here, you have something I think is a bit more akin to two separate corporations with different (albeit somewhat overlapping) stockholders. I know EVF UK is a member of EVF USA, but as a non-profit 501(c)(3), EVF USA’s board has legal duties to the public interest that are wholly independent of EVF UK. Those duties are absent in your classic multinational corporation, where the main corporation owns the subsidiaries. Moreover, in order to keep its 501(c)(3) status, EVF USA has to maintain discretion and contol over its own funds, so giving the impression that the two EVFs are basically the same organization might backfire.
I’m sure this response is simplified/imprecise, and I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for the two organizations to hire the same individual as CEO. But I think complications of nonprofit corporate structure—at least where the nonprofits are not in the same country—likely make it less likely to be the correct answer for a non-profit than for a for-profit.
It seems unlikely the particular legal issues you mentioned are a great reason to have 2 CEOs?
I would find a functional/structural reason more convincing—e.g. if there were separate orgs under EVF with ops/admin/funding needs that have require distinct attention. But this seems unlikely?
My guess is that the choice behind the duo CEO involves bandwidth and resilience if things go poorly. Other factors might be really mundane, such as idiosyncratic personal considerations that are benign and normal (e.g. Howie has duties at 80,000 hours still).
“Multinational” corporations are usually not actually multinational in the sense of having independent entities in different countries, they generally have one main entity (with one CEO) based in one country that owns various subentities in other countries (the details of this are often of course quite complicated). This is different for EVF which has two independent entities.
My understand is this mainly has to do with charity law in the US and UK forbidding foreign entities from fully controlling organizations with tax exempt status.