EA Organization Updates: September 2022

Lizka14 Sep 2022 15:50 UTC
40 points
3 comments10 min readEA link

These monthly posts originated as the “Updates” section of the EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity.

Job listings that these organizations highlighted are at the top of this post. Some of the jobs have extremely pressing deadlines.

You can see previous updates on the “EA Organization Updates (monthly series)” topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series.

The organizations are in alphabetical order, starting with L this month.

Job listings

Consider also exploring jobs listed on “Job listing (open).”

Applications closing soon

80,000 Hours:

Centre for Effective Altruism:

Effective Ventures Operations

Forethought Foundation:

Other roles

Against Malaria Foundation:

Alignment Research Center:

GiveWell

Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute (QURI)

Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative:

Rethink Priorities:

Organizational updates

The Legal Priorities Project ran its Legal Priorities Summer Institute from Sep 3–8 in Oxford. 35 talented law students and graduates from 18 different countries and all 5 continents gathered to discuss issues related to future generations and existential risk. Participants with various degrees of familiarity with longtermism participated in workshops, talks, and group discussions with invited experts on issues relating to legal longtermism.

LPP also announced the winning submissions from their Cost–Benefit Analysis Writing Competition. The winning submissions can be found here.

LPP funded two student reading groups at ITAM, with curricula centering on The Precipice and the Introduction to EA Program, respectively.

Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute

QURI released Squiggle, a free new web–based programming language for probabilistic estimation. Squiggle is made especially for effective altruist cost–effectiveness estimation. Squiggle is currently in public “Early Access”, but should be usable for many effective altruist use cases.

Rethink Priorities (RP)

Research:

  • Epoch – an AI research initiative that RP is incubating – did a deep–dive investigation of machine learning model size trends and hypothesized reasons for these patterns.

  • Academic collaborator Meghan Barrett posted a summary on the EA Forum of her and her colleagues’ research on black soldier flies. The team also published an article on welfare considerations for farming this species in a peer–reviewed, industry–influencing journal.

News:

EA movement building:

  • One of the special projects that RP is fiscally sponsoring – Condor Camp – held its first EA training retreat with ten highly talented Brazilian university students. Associate Researcher Renan Araújo is now working on keeping the alumni engaged, gathering lessons learned, and strategizing how to maintain the momentum in building the EA movement in Latin America.

Training for Good

TFG has opened applications for the Tarbell Fellowship, a one–year program for early–career journalists intent on improving the world.

The Tarbell Fellowship is a one–year program for early–career journalists interested in covering important topics such as global poverty and existential risks (March 1st 2023 → February 29th 2024). Fellows receive a stipend of up to $50,000, mentorship from experienced journalists and access to a two–week journalism summit in Oxford.

The fellowship is designed to support those early in their journalism career, i.e. with 0–5 years relevant experience. You can find out more about the fellowship and apply here by October 9th.

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours has released its longest and most in–depth problem profile to date: Preventing an AI–related catastrophe by Benjamin Hilton (with feedback and input from more than 30 experts). Benjamin Todd also wrote a blog post on AI: Do recent breakthroughs mean transformative AI is coming sooner than we thought?

This month on The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob Wiblin spoke with Will MacAskill on what we owe the future and Andreas Mogensen on whether effective altruism is just for consequentialists. On 80k After Hours, Rob spoke with Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project.

ALLFED – Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters

News – Read in Science the recent coverage on the most up–to–date nuclear winter food impacts model, with commentary by David Denkenberger and Morgan Rivers. Read also how humanity could respond and survive in How to eat in a nuclear war: what our food system would look like post–apocalypse.

Research – Juan García Martínez led a new scientific article on producing high–quality single cell protein from methane to secure a global protein supply against catastrophes, highlighting the power of fermentation to feed the world sustainably and effectively even in the most extreme scenarios.

  • Protein requirements for the entire global population could be fulfilled in 2.5–4.5 years.

  • Marginal gas reserves could cover most of these requirements.

  • The expected retail cost is as low as US$3–5/​kg (dry).

Read here for free: Methane Single Cell Protein: Potential to Secure a Global Protein Supply Against Catastrophic Food Shocks

Anima International

Anima International organized the first ever hybrid (in–person and online) Conference on Animal Rights in Europe, welcoming participants and speakers from all over the world, including keynote speaker Peter Singer, to discuss effective ways to make change for animals.

In Denmark, the AI team is happy to share that the gas station brand OK Plus, which has 69 convenience stores in the country, recently committed to the European Chicken Commitment. It will meet the requirements by 2024 with an ambition to be already fully implemented in 2023. This progress was achieved after almost a year of positive negotiations and means that the majority of convenience stores in Denmark are now committed to the ECC, including 7–Eleven, Shell and Circle K. Anima International’s team in Denmark are now planning to focus on the remaining companies.

Animal Advocacy Careers

Animal Advocacy Careers launched a new website page that summarizes their impact to date. It includes a breakdown of the impact they achieved via the following programs:

For those who don’t know: Animal Advocacy Careers (AAC) is an organization that seeks to address the career and talent bottlenecks in the animal advocacy movement, especially the farmed animal welfare movement.

AAC has room for funding and is funding–constrained. If you would like to support them, please donate here or reach out to them at lauren@animaladvocacycareers.org.

Animal Charity Evaluators

Reassessment of Recommended Charity Categories and Re–Evaluations Frequency. ACE strives to improve its Charity Evaluations program every year. One of its 2022 goals for this program was to reassess its Top and Standout Charity categories and the frequency of re–evaluating recommended charities. After brainstorming various ideas and scenarios, ACE made some modifications, and the main benefits and drawbacks of these changes are discussed in their latest blog post.

Menu of Outcomes Series: Five Ways Charities Are Increasing the Availability of Animal–Free Products. ACE’s Menu of Outcomes blog post highlights some of the ways animal advocacy groups are transforming the food system and other industries by increasing the availability of animal–free products. ACE’s goal is not to examine or compare the effectiveness of different interventions, but rather to showcase the diversity of approaches animal advocates can use to achieve similar goals. ACE hopes that the programs and interventions mentioned inspire organizations and individuals to broaden their awareness of ways to approach their work.

Recommended Charity Fund: Six–Month Update. In January, thanks to generous donor support of ACE’s Recommended Charity Fund, it was able to award $2,019,702 to its Top Charities and Standout Charities – ACE’s largest distribution to date! Each organization has provided ACE with an update on how they’ve used their grant to help animals.

Roundtable: How Can Charities Effectively Communicate With Their Audience? How you communicate with your audience makes a significant difference for nonprofit organizations and is key to building solid connections. Defining your language, tone of voice, and brand personality allow your followers to get to know you, relate to you, and trust you over time. You must also ensure that the content you’re putting out engages and resonates with your audience. To help guide you in this area, ACE asked four communications professionals in the animal advocacy movement to share their advice.

Centre for Effective Altruism

Community Health

The Community Health team published a forum post about their work on interpersonal harm in the community.

Events

The CEA events team are supporting 3 EA conferences this month: EAGxSingapore, EAGxBerlin and EA Global: Washington D.C.

Applications are open for the following upcoming conferences, all via the same link.

  • EAGxRotterdam (4–6 November)

  • EAGxVirtual (21–23 October)

Online

The Online Team published a Forum post sharing a number of new features.

Charity Entrepreneurship

Over the coming months, Charity Entrepreneurship will be hosting an Online Speakers Series. You can now sign up for three upcoming talks: How to get your project funded with Joey Savoie (September 13, 6pm UK, 10am SF, 1pm. NYC), Our Top Charity Ideas for Early 2023 with Vicky Cox (September 27, 6pm UK), and What’s the most effective way to help as many animals as possible? with Karolina Sarek and Lauren Mee from Animal Advocacy Careers (October 6, 6pm UK). CE has also just finished their 2022 Incubation Program and will soon introduce the new charities started. In the meantime, you can meet the participants of the program via the CE video. If you’re interested in working at or building a nonprofit startup, you might want to consider applying to CE’s one–on–one career coaching sessions or taking CE’s quiz to check if nonprofit entrepreneurship is a good fit for you.

Faunalytics

Faunalytics’ newest report is the third of a three-part series on how to help new vegans and vegetarians maintain their change of lifestyle. This longitudinal study specifically looked at the roadblocks to diet change, as well as the best strategies to help make a person’s diet change successful.

The organization’s latest Faunalytics Explains video covers the evolution of the dairy industry. They’ve also launched a Research Glossary which provides easy–to–understand definitions for a range of terms that will help advocates understand social science research. Additionally, Faunalytics has updated their research library with several articles on topics including reasons to be optimistic about animal welfare in China and using behavior change research to turn others vegan.

Fish Welfare Initiative

Fish Welfare Initiative recently held India’s first ever corporate roundtable event on fish welfare. Two of the corporate attendees, Fipola and Captain Fresh, have since signed MOUs with FWI to conduct trial runs of higher welfare fish in their supply chains. FWI expects to share more information on these developments later.

FWI also recently published their China 1 and 3 year plans.

Founders Pledge

Founders Pledge recently published a report on Giving Multipliers, highly leveraged ways to drive donations to high–impact charity. A set of explicit giving opportunities produced by this work is forthcoming.

FP also posted a discussion of the first grant from its Patient Philanthropy Fund, which generated a research report on the state of philanthropy in the nuclear security sector, and is concluding several large methodological projects. These include work on interconvertibility between DALYs, WELLBYs, and income, as well as an overhaul of FP’s strategy for rating and recommending longtermist opportunities. In the next few months, FP will publish research covering these topics, as well as air pollution, maternal health, and hotlines between nuclear powers.

FP is still hiring for an Applied Researcher and a Senior Researcher to work on its climate team.

GiveWell

GiveWell has updated and added to its criteria for top charities so that they accurately reflect both GiveWell’s priorities and what most donors expect from these recommendations: high impact, plus a high degree of confidence. GiveWell’s current top charities are the Against Malaria Foundation, Helen Keller International’s vitamin A supplementation program, Malaria Consortium’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention program, and New Incentives. You can read more about the updated criteria and why these changes were made here. These updates do not affect GiveWell’s views of deworming or GiveDirectly, which have not changed, nor are they expected to change GiveWell’s allocation of funding to deworming programs or GiveDirectly.

GiveWell has changed the name of the Maximum Impact Fund, the fund that is allocated to high–impact funding gaps within its top charities, to the Top Charities Fund in order to more clearly reflect its function. They’ve also set up the All Grants Fund as its complement, a giving opportunity for donors who want to support grants that are expected to be very high–impact but whose implementing programs don’t currently qualify to be top charities. You can donate to the All Grants Fund here.

GiveWell has launched the Change Our Mind Contest to encourage critiques of their existing cost–effectiveness analyses that could improve their allocations. Cost–effectiveness is the single most important input into GiveWell’s grant decisions, and they want to incentivize feedback that will improve their work and enable the organization to do more good. GiveWell hopes you’ll consider participating! See here for complete contest guidelines.

Giving Green

Giving Green’s Dan Stein and Lucia Simonelli were interviewed for a piece in the MIT Technology Review about the pitfalls of corporate net–zero plans. Giving Green is looking to get in touch with businesses small and large that are interested in learning more about or providing feedback on this approach – please get in touch with the team at givinggreen@idinsight.org.

Giving Green’s Dan Stein was interviewed on the Just Another Mindset podcast and the Early Advantage podcast, discussing Giving Green’s philosophy on policy change as a cost–effective lever to fight climate change.

Giving What We Can

Giving What We Can launched their new Longtermism Fund in partnership with Longview Philanthropy. The Longtermism Fund directs funding to highly effective organizations working to safeguard the long–term future of humanity.

You can read more about the reasoning behind starting this fund and donate to it now.

Giving What We Can are seeking people to join their Ambassador Program; they’d love you to apply if you’d like to grow your advocacy for effective giving. A new tool to make volunteering with Giving What We Can easier has also been launched.

A new Director of Research, Sjir Hoeijmakers, joined Giving What We Can this month. Sjir previously worked at Founders Pledge as a Senior Researcher.

Content highlights:

Blog:

YouTube:

Find audio–only versions of our new YouTube content on the Giving What We Can podcast.

The Humane League

In August, following meetings with THL’s corporate engagement team, TORIDOLL Group – a Tokyo–based company that owns and operates several restaurant chains, including Pokeworks – committed to going 100% cage–free in all its stores across the globe by the end of 2030. It already uses 100% cage–free eggs in its stores in the US and UK. In Japan, it “will transition a minimum of ten (10) Marugame restaurants to use 100% cage–free eggs by the end of FY2022 and 5% of all restaurants by the end of FY2023, with further annual increases thereafter.” This is THL’s first commitment from a Japanese corporation.

Following pressure from THL, three national pharmacy chains CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreen’s have agreed to go 100% cage–free by the end of 2022, a full three years ahead of schedule. CVS made its decision first, after finding that, given the current supply chain issues, it was actually easier and only marginally more expensive to source cage–free eggs. THL leveraged CVS’ announcement to pressure its competitors Rite Aid and Walgreen’s to make the same commitment.

After a short campaign led by THL, BJ’s Wholesale has committed to transitioning to 100% cage–free eggs in its supply chain by 2025. BJ’s reported that 51% of the eggs sold in the first six months of FY22 were cage–free, and it aims to increase that number to 70% by 2023 and to 80% by 2024. It will report on its progress annually.

THL published its 2022 Q2 progress report, which details its full impact from April to June here.

Lizka14 Sep 2022 15:50 UTC
40 points
3 comments10 min readEA link