Hi, I’m Jessica, and I lead the growth pillar of CEA’s strategy. I’m excited about the potential for the EA community to grow and for EA ideas to reach more people, and I wanted to share how we’re thinking about that growth.
Our main goal is the same as EA’s: to help others as effectively as possible. We believe that growing the EA community can help us achieve more of the good we want to see in the world. While the community isn’t perfect, I’m proud of its accomplishments. I believe it can help many more people increase their impact—while the EA community can benefit from new perspectives, experiences, and domain knowledge..
That said, we’re very aware that growth comes with risks. As the post mentions, we’re not trying to grow EA at all costs. Growth isn’t our only goal, and we’ve put internal principles in place to avoid compromising our core values in pursuit of scale. I feel pretty good about where we are on that.
Other concerns are harder to track, like increased risk from risky actors joining our community, scandals, or undesired change in community culture, ambition, or epistemics leading us to be less effective overall. There’s also the concern that our strategies could lead to many people getting involved in EA, but their involvement is not overall positive (either for them or the world, e.g., if they feel they don’t have good ways to contribute immediately).
These are real concerns, and we’re actively tracking them. I used to be more skeptical about EA growth myself. But overall, I’m excited about aiming for moderate, sustainable growth at the current margin—moving the trajectory upward while managing risks carefully. We want and need the community’s help in spotting those risks early.
I also lead the Groups Team, and I want to briefly speak to group organizers: I could imagine someone reading this update and making major changes to their group strategy based on CEA’s growth focus. Please don’t over-update based on this. We continue to advocate for advertising your programs broadly at the start of the semester (and specific points in the year for non-uni groups) and then focusing on a smaller group of people who are taking the ideas most seriously. If our advice changes, we’ll share that clearly through our usual channels (Slack, newsletter, advising calls, etc.).
The guidance in our existing materials—like this advice post, my EAG talk on common pitfalls in community building, and our Resource Center —still stands. We think groups trying to grow too much can be counterproductive to their goals. We care deeply about more than just numbers, that hasn’t changed under our new strategy.
Finally, I may not have time to engage much in comments, but please do reach out to groups@centreforeffectivealtruism.org with any questions or concerns.
Hi, I’m Jessica, and I lead the growth pillar of CEA’s strategy. I’m excited about the potential for the EA community to grow and for EA ideas to reach more people, and I wanted to share how we’re thinking about that growth.
Our main goal is the same as EA’s: to help others as effectively as possible. We believe that growing the EA community can help us achieve more of the good we want to see in the world. While the community isn’t perfect, I’m proud of its accomplishments. I believe it can help many more people increase their impact—while the EA community can benefit from new perspectives, experiences, and domain knowledge..
That said, we’re very aware that growth comes with risks. As the post mentions, we’re not trying to grow EA at all costs. Growth isn’t our only goal, and we’ve put internal principles in place to avoid compromising our core values in pursuit of scale. I feel pretty good about where we are on that.
Other concerns are harder to track, like increased risk from risky actors joining our community, scandals, or undesired change in community culture, ambition, or epistemics leading us to be less effective overall. There’s also the concern that our strategies could lead to many people getting involved in EA, but their involvement is not overall positive (either for them or the world, e.g., if they feel they don’t have good ways to contribute immediately).
These are real concerns, and we’re actively tracking them. I used to be more skeptical about EA growth myself. But overall, I’m excited about aiming for moderate, sustainable growth at the current margin—moving the trajectory upward while managing risks carefully. We want and need the community’s help in spotting those risks early.
I also lead the Groups Team, and I want to briefly speak to group organizers: I could imagine someone reading this update and making major changes to their group strategy based on CEA’s growth focus. Please don’t over-update based on this. We continue to advocate for advertising your programs broadly at the start of the semester (and specific points in the year for non-uni groups) and then focusing on a smaller group of people who are taking the ideas most seriously. If our advice changes, we’ll share that clearly through our usual channels (Slack, newsletter, advising calls, etc.).
The guidance in our existing materials—like this advice post, my EAG talk on common pitfalls in community building, and our Resource Center —still stands. We think groups trying to grow too much can be counterproductive to their goals. We care deeply about more than just numbers, that hasn’t changed under our new strategy.
Finally, I may not have time to engage much in comments, but please do reach out to groups@centreforeffectivealtruism.org with any questions or concerns.