Hey Vasco, I just joined CEA last month to start building out an internal monitoring and evaluation function. Getting into our impact in terms of things like career changes + donations is a top priority. For now, Iām still in learning mode, but I hope to have some defensible ideas on this soon!
Thanks Vasco! Hereās the graph of EA Newsletter subscribers over time. Weāre about to hit 64K subscribers :)
(Edit: replaced the tooltip to show our end-of-January totals, the last full month of data we have)
As a side note, the reason why we track actively engaged subscribers as our central growth metric is because many people who are subscribed never open the newsletter, and therefore we donāt think they get value from it. In general, we think āflowā metrics (like active engagement, attendance in a given year) are a better proxy for our present-day impact than āstockā metrics (like the number of people who have ever come to an EAG).
Iām glad the dashboard has been useful for you! Hearing about user demand is definitely valuable data for us. Unfortunately weāve had to deprioritize maintenance on this for a while, due to higher priority M&E and engineering projects taking precedence over the last few quarters.
Relatedly, we will soon be hiring for a software engineer to join the Online Team and work on engineering projects across CEA. Iām really excited that we are building out our technical and analytical capacity (hi @Rory Fenton!). If any software engineers reading want CEA to have more capacity to execute on projects like this, I encourage you to apply!
It is nice to see significant growth of the number of subscribers over 2025, especially considering the downwards trend over 2023 and 2024.
I agree āflowā metrics are a better proxy for current impact, and that the number of actively engaged subscribers is a better metric than the number of subscribers.
Iām glad the dashboard has been useful for you! Hearing about user demand is definitely valuable data for us. Unfortunately weāve had to deprioritize maintenance on this for a while, due to higher priority M&E and engineering projects taking precedence over the last few quarters.
To clarify, I do not know whether keeping an updated dashboard is a good use of time relative to other activities you could be doing. My overarching point is just that I personally find valuable the reporting of some clear metrics that seem reasonably correlated with impact, like the number of active subscribers to the EA Newsletter.
I like the dashboard because it is a way of quickly getting a rough sense of the impact of CEAās programs. The number of people engaging in each tier may well track progress better, but they cannot be so easily interpreted as concrete metrics like the number of subscribers of the EA newsletter.
I think it would also be helpful to see the number of people engaging in each tier across time. There are numbers in the post for 2024 and 2025, and the numbers for 2025 were better than for 2023 (āreversing the moderate decreases in engagement with our programs throughout 2023-2024ā). However, the meaning of this depends on the stability of past trends. Many past annual changes in engagement up or down of 10 % to 20 % would make a 25 % increase from 2024 to 2025 less impressive relative to a past downwards trend of a few years.
Responded on the dashboard above, but wanted to quickly say thanks @MHRšø and @Vasco Grilošø for letting us know you are invested in this project, that kind of feedback is useful for us.
I think it would also be helpful to see the number of people engaging in each tier across time. [...] Many past annual changes in engagement up or down of 10 % to 20 % would make a 25 % increase from 2024 to 2025 less impressive relative to a past downwards trend of a few years.
Thank you for the feedback, Vasco. As you have noted, we have some older data on growth trends (although not cost trends) in the dashboard. This is of course not formatted the same way, and plus how we think about growth (i.e. our funnel approach) has changed over time.
The team is presently busy preparing with EAG SF, but Iāll make a note of your feedback so we donāt lose it.
Thanks for the update.
Have you considered assessing your impact in terms of changing careers and increasing funding?
How did the number of subscribers of the EA newsletter change over 2025? CEAās dashboard only shows data up to February 2025.
Hey Vasco, I just joined CEA last month to start building out an internal monitoring and evaluation function. Getting into our impact in terms of things like career changes + donations is a top priority. For now, Iām still in learning mode, but I hope to have some defensible ideas on this soon!
Hi Rory. That is great to know. I am looking forward to what you come up with.
Thanks Vasco! Hereās the graph of EA Newsletter subscribers over time. Weāre about to hit 64K subscribers :)
(Edit: replaced the tooltip to show our end-of-January totals, the last full month of data we have)
As a side note, the reason why we track actively engaged subscribers as our central growth metric is because many people who are subscribed never open the newsletter, and therefore we donāt think they get value from it. In general, we think āflowā metrics (like active engagement, attendance in a given year) are a better proxy for our present-day impact than āstockā metrics (like the number of people who have ever come to an EAG).
Iām glad the dashboard has been useful for you! Hearing about user demand is definitely valuable data for us. Unfortunately weāve had to deprioritize maintenance on this for a while, due to higher priority M&E and engineering projects taking precedence over the last few quarters.
Relatedly, we will soon be hiring for a software engineer to join the Online Team and work on engineering projects across CEA. Iām really excited that we are building out our technical and analytical capacity (hi @Rory Fenton!). If any software engineers reading want CEA to have more capacity to execute on projects like this, I encourage you to apply!
Thanks for sharing, Angelina.
It is nice to see significant growth of the number of subscribers over 2025, especially considering the downwards trend over 2023 and 2024.
I agree āflowā metrics are a better proxy for current impact, and that the number of actively engaged subscribers is a better metric than the number of subscribers.
To clarify, I do not know whether keeping an updated dashboard is a good use of time relative to other activities you could be doing. My overarching point is just that I personally find valuable the reporting of some clear metrics that seem reasonably correlated with impact, like the number of active subscribers to the EA Newsletter.
I second Vascoās desire for the dashboard to be maintained again!
I like the dashboard because it is a way of quickly getting a rough sense of the impact of CEAās programs. The number of people engaging in each tier may well track progress better, but they cannot be so easily interpreted as concrete metrics like the number of subscribers of the EA newsletter.
I think it would also be helpful to see the number of people engaging in each tier across time. There are numbers in the post for 2024 and 2025, and the numbers for 2025 were better than for 2023 (āreversing the moderate decreases in engagement with our programs throughout 2023-2024ā). However, the meaning of this depends on the stability of past trends. Many past annual changes in engagement up or down of 10 % to 20 % would make a 25 % increase from 2024 to 2025 less impressive relative to a past downwards trend of a few years.
Responded on the dashboard above, but wanted to quickly say thanks @MHRšø and @Vasco Grilošø for letting us know you are invested in this project, that kind of feedback is useful for us.
Thank you for the feedback, Vasco. As you have noted, we have some older data on growth trends (although not cost trends) in the dashboard. This is of course not formatted the same way, and plus how we think about growth (i.e. our funnel approach) has changed over time.
The team is presently busy preparing with EAG SF, but Iāll make a note of your feedback so we donāt lose it.
Thanks, Angelina. Happy preparation of EAG SF.