Celebrating Progress: Recent Highlights from the NYC EA Community
Inspired by EA NYC’s 10th birthday and the first-ever EAGxNYC, we wanted to share this unabashed brag post about New York City’s EA community and its accomplishments! Below, we’ll share highlights from EA NYC specifically, as well as the EA community in New York City more broadly.
While it’s true that living in New York sometimes instills a self-aggrandizing perspective, we unironically support all communities announcing their achievements and were inspired by the Spanish-Speaking Effective Altruist Community, the Dutch EA Community, and many others with success to report.
We hope our posts provide additional context for groups around the world and inspire others to share their stories as well as any feedback and comments! For example, in February we posted about our community health infrastructure, and we have been heartened to see EA Germany share similar information.[1] And, if this series inspires you to check out our little town, we’ve also recently published a guide to visiting NYC.
Quick note on the relationship between EA in NYC and EA NYC
Not to toot our own horn, but we consider EA NYC (the organization) to be a critical actor in the promotion and coordination of effective altruism in NYC.[2] Despite the size, significance, and potential of the EA (and non-EA!) community in NYC, EA NYC is currently the only meta EA resource based in NYC.[3]
As a result, EA NYC serves as a resource hub, connector, and platform for a wide variety of EA initiatives and individuals interested in EA within the NYC metropolitan area. This takes shape in a variety of ways and can look like anything from providing newcomers with educational programming, to creating a platform for motivated community members to deepen their volunteer engagement, to assisting EA organizations with boosting job openings or finding meeting spaces.
In short, EA NYC strives to not only execute our own community programming, but also to serve as a multiplier for other EA initiatives. So as we write this post, we are of course proud to describe the work our team has done and the progress we’ve made, but we also take pride in how far the community itself has come. We’re honored to serve the NYC EA community, and we’re thrilled to share some of the cool initiatives we’ve seen come out of our hometown!
Community highlights
Summary
The NYC EA community is large
The NYC EA community is active
The NYC EA community is cool
You’re missing out if you’re not here
Size
In the 2022 EA Survey, NYC had the largest US concentration of EAs outside of the Bay Area, consistent with the 2020 Survey results.
According to Brian Tan at the Centre for Effective Altruism, EA NYC has the highest number of “engaged EAs” out of any group based on CEA’s 2022 Group Census.
In 2022, the New York EA community had approximately 600 active members who attended EA NYC events, registered interest in utilizing a NY EA co-working space, joined EA NYC subgroups, spoke one-on-one with EA NYC leadership, and/or attended EAG/EAGx conferences.
In Q1 and Q2 2023, EA NYC saw 220 new event attendees (+49% relative to 2022).
Over 1,250 people are subscribed to the EA NYC monthly newsletter (with a 59% six-month, rolling average open rate) and over 1,100 people are members on the EA NYC Slack (with a 187-person 6-month, rolling average active usership).
EA NYC has 12 wonderful volunteer leaders who support the facilitation and coordination of events.
Action
Community Building Programming
“Standard” programming (though it’s anything but!)
EA NYC strives to hold a minimum of one unique public event per week. In the course of a typical month, EA NYC typically holds at least one speaker presentation, at least one social event, a monthly virtual reading group, and a monthly virtual discussion group on foundational topics in EA. The latter two are intentionally virtual to allow those based outside of NYC to easily access our content.
Excluding weekly virtual coworking and office hours, EA NYC hosted an average of ~6.5 subgroup events per month (45 total) and ~4.75 public events per month (34 total), totaling 79 events in Q1 and Q2 of 2023.
Excluding EAGxNYC conference attendees, EA NYC counted at least 754 attendees at events in 2023, with 541 in Q1 & Q2 alone.
Separately, in an effort to meet community demand in lieu of operating an office space, EA NYC staff has helped facilitate 11 in-person coworking sessions in Q1 and Q2 (and 11 more in Q3 so far).
Popular events include community lightning talks, picnics and walks, our monthly vegan dim sum lunches/dinners, and speaker presentations — particularly those covering topics that often receive less airtime within the global EA community. In-person speaker presentations typically run around 60 minutes (including Q&A), with attendees frequently staying an additional two or more hours afterward to chat and network.
In 2022, EA NYC staff had over 100 one-on-one conversations with community members, and the team is set to surpass that record in 2023.
Subgroups
EA NYC has recently supported eleven subgroups, and plans to support more groups in the near future. Six of these groups just came together in 2023!
Professional subgroups
Finance
Law & Policy
Academia
Consultancy
Creatives and Communicators
Data and Tech
Cause area subgroups
Effective Animal Advocacy
Effective Environmentalism
Artificial Intelligence
Global Health and Wellbeing
Affinity subgroups
Women and Nonbinary EAs of NY
EA NYC is also in the process of launching an LGBTQ+ group and considering other groups that could be sustainably run. We select subgroups through a mix of community interest, energized facilitators, and strategic significance.
Most of these groups have wonderful volunteers (as shown below) helping to run them. Eleven of our twelve volunteers currently work on our subgroup programming, and we are tremendously grateful for the work that they do!
Large events
In May, EA NYC hosted our one-day Annual Picnic, an “unconference” that brought together 135 attendees and fostered collaboration and engagement.
EA NYC worked with CEA and several contractors on EAGxNYC, NYC’s first EA conference, which welcomed over 500 registrants in August 2023. The event was a big success (full retrospective to be published soon) and the team is already considering ways to create a similar event in future years.
As we enter Q4, EA NYC will host our Annual Giving Tuesday Celebration on—you guessed it! - Giving Tuesday.[5] We’ll also host our End-of-Year Party in mid-December.
Initiatives from within the community
A melting pot of activity
Among US cities with significant EA presence, there is a general sense that the Bay Area is largely focused on AI/tech, Boston is developing into a biosecurity hub, and DC is a hotspot for policy careers. Each city has exciting infrastructure that primarily caters to these focuses.
While NYC has one of the largest concentrations of active EAs, there is no one cause area that dominates. This applies both to organizations and to individual EAs. Though we think the lack of singular focus on a cause area has clear downsides (e.g. network effects are weaker), we believe the cause-agnosticism seen in NYC is also a strength; especially for a community as active as ours, it is useful to have cross-pollination of ideas and to reinforce the idea of EA pluralism.
Some examples of NYC organizations taking a cross-cause approach include:
The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy program investigates consciousness and strategies for promoting EA-aligned public policy from a perspective that values digital sentience, invertebrates, and other nonhuman minds.
The Global Risk Behavioral Research Group, based out of NYU, focuses on the question, “What psychological tendencies drive people to (accidentally) cause, or fail to prevent, enormous harm and global catastrophes?” with a special focus on harms caused through the use of advanced technology. The group is part of the broader EA Psychology Lab, which empirically studies the psychology of effective altruism, including effective giving, EA community building, animal welfare, and the psychology of improving the future.
Spencer Greenberg and the Clearer Thinking team produce both research-backed tools and a popular EA podcast covering a range of topics and frequently involve members of the local EA community in their experiments.
Organizations
As the US’s most populous city, NYC is a major draw for people from all backgrounds, including EAs who have the flexibility of remote work. As a result, the NYC EA community has members working at a vast number of EA organizations that support remote employees. A non-comprehensive sampling of EA-associated organizations we’re aware of with at least one team member based in the New York metropolitan area include:
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Vibes
Characteristics
Notable qualities of the NY EA community include:
Welcoming: Many kind and friendly individuals make up the EA NYC community, and there are numerous diverse niches for people to engage with. We consistently hear feedback that people find EA NYC particularly welcoming and accessible to newcomers, and those who have had a difficult time finding their groove in other locales feel right at home in NYC. Our own team includes people who felt put off by their interactions with EA until they found the warmth of EA NYC![7]
Down-to-earth: Many find it easy to relate to the NYC EA community! While there will always be some in-group dynamics in any community, we’ve anecdotally noticed that the EA NYC community seems to use less technical jargon in casual conversations than in other regions and, consequently, might be more welcoming to people without a PhD in epistemology.[8]
Diverse/transient: Individuals often come in and out of the city as life circumstances change, visitors may stop by for one-off trips, and some community members may technically live in other cities while remaining an EA NYer at heart. Due in part to this transience, EA NYC has a rich culture that is influenced by many parts of the world and is ever-evolving.
Fun: While work-life balance is largely personal/variable, there seems to be an underlying culture of “work hard, play hard” in the community. Though some in the community may put in additional time volunteering or doing direct work on evenings and weekends, EA NYC encourages individuals to have more than one goal. NYC EAs are known for running into each other on nights out dancing or afternoons bouldering, and through the EA NYC Slack, groups have coordinated on everything from movie nights to spectating Mets games![9]
Well-being-focused: EA NYC takes community health very seriously, and has focused over the past 18 months on not only proactively mitigating issues that risk the well-being of the community, but also resourcing community members with tools to engage in EA happily and sustainably. This includes, but is not limited to:
Having a dedicated community health coordinator, and spreading awareness that she is available as a point of contact for any concerns within the community.
Running a community health event on burnout.
Generally talking about and promoting healthy habits for a happy life and sustainable motivation.
Interdisciplinary/diverse in worldviews: While locals work on a range of causes, the NYC EA scene is historically known for its focus on animal welfare. While NYC remains home to many movers and shakers in animal advocacy, community members are making strides on many other issues as well. AI safety and governance is often a topic of conversation and many members are working on upskilling, supporting safer practices within for-profits, or doing research at leading universities/companies. Global health and wellbeing, mitigating global catastrophic risks, improving institutional decision making, and meta EA community building are all popular fields, both for direct work and for earning to give.
One particularly cool facet of the community is that causes intermingle: within social circles, within single projects, and within an individual’s interests and career journeys. We describe more of what this looks like below.
Kind: Though New Yorkers have an undeserved reputation for being rude, city-goers often find locals to be quite kind-hearted, and people in the broader NY community (outside of EA) will often go out of their way to help strangers (though, drivers are not always nice, and actors might shout obscenities at you if you get in the way of their shots).
On top of this, the NYC EA community has the added benefit of being nice and kind. Meaning, not only would people let you know if you have something in your teeth, but they would likely do so gently and tactfully 🙂
Cool people
While it’s hard to capture all the cool, kind, and caring people in the NYC community, we think it’s worth nothing that there are some amazing people here. We invite you to check out our programming (mentioned above) to see how you can connect with interesting people online and in-person.
Fabulous volunteers
As part of expanding our programming, EA NYC’s subgroups and events are increasingly led by our team of stellar volunteer leaders:
 Global Health and Wellbeing Subgroup |  AI Subgroup |
 Academia Subgroup |  Women and Non-Binary EA’s of NY (WANBEANY) Subgroup[11] |
 EA NYC Monthly Reading Group[10] |  Creatives and Communicators Subgroup |
 Finance Subgroup |  AI Subgroup[12] |
 Creatives and Communicators Subgroup |  Law and Policy Subgroup |
Consultant Subgroup |  Data and Tech Subgroup |
Through their work, these volunteer community builders help tie EA NYC’s programming together and provide friendly and welcoming faces for many newcomers! We are glad we get help from these lovely individuals, and we are delighted to continue expanding our team with caring, compassionate, and thoughtful leaders pursuing the question of how to do good better. If you think you might be interested in volunteering for EA NYC, please fill out this expression of interest form to chat about how you can get involved. We are especially keen to hear from potential volunteers of backgrounds underrepresented in the EA community!
Conclusion
What are you doing? Come visit us! We hope this post has conveyed some of the reasons why we appreciate our community so dearly, and we hope to see you soon. Don’t be a stranger!
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Not that we are taking any credit for that—their initiatives are awesome, and we’re learning from them!
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Okay, actually, we are totally about to toot our own horn 😇
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We note that NYC is also home to several incredible university groups, though they serve their specific student populations.
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(Just kidding)
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Graph created by DC organizer, Andy Masley, and is meant as a joke; every city is actually nice and fun 😄
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The “people” are Megan and Rocky. Ask them about it sometime!
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Though people with PhDs in philosophy are still welcome of course 😅
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Yankees fans are also welcome.
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The reading group is a public event series, and anyone is welcome to sign up for any individual reading discussion event (including those outside of NYC!). The other volunteer groups are subgroups, which are currently based entirely in-person and operate through group sign-ups as opposed to one-off event sign-ups.
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Megan has also received some funding as part of her work with EA NYC.
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We couldn’t decide which headshot to use; here was our alternative candid of Derek.
Executive summary: The post highlights the growth, achievements, and vibrant diversity of the Effective Altruism (EA) community in New York City, emphasizing its thriving initiatives, active participation, and welcoming culture.
Key points:
NYC has one of the largest EA communities in the world, with around 600 active members in 2022. EA NYC events draw hundreds of attendees.
The community is active, hosting many events like speaker presentations, coworking sessions, reading groups, and social gatherings. 11 subgroups cater to specific causes and interests.
The NYC EA community is diverse and transient. It lacks a single dominant cause, leading to interdisciplinary thinking. The culture is fun and welcoming.
Many EA organizations have team members located in NYC. The community features cross-cause projects in AI, policy, psychology, animal welfare, and more.
Notable qualities of the NYC EA community highlighted include its warmth, down-to-earth nature, focus on well-being, and vibrant volunteer community.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
What object-level achievements has EA NYC had, in terms of money moved, talent found and placed in organizations, policy and technical achievements by those organizations, etc.? To be a bit blunt, the EA community and community members are not the point of EA, impact is the point.
Thanks for raising this, Thomas! I agree impact is the goal, rather than community for community’s sake. This particular Forum post was intended to focus on the community as a whole and its size, activity, and vibe, rather than on EA NYC as an organization. We plan to discuss EA NYC’s mission, strategy, and (object-level) achievements more in a future post. There’s a lot to say on that front and I don’t think I’ll do it justice here in a comment. If there are certain details you’d find especially interesting or useful to see in a future post about EA NYC, we’d love to know!
This is a reasonable question to ask, but it felt a bit unkind so I downvoted. I think it’s okay to post things that are clearly framed as “here’s the vibe of our community” and not “here’s why we’re impactful” and I wish you’d at least acknowledged that was the aim of the post before requesting more info.
When I wrote the comment, it wasn’t clear to me what the aim of the post was, and I thought Rockwell’s reply clarified this. I just misinterpreted “accomplishments” at the top as being about impact rather than community. So I’m now glad this post exists, though citing metrics still bothers me a bit.
That’s fair. I agree accomplishments probably wasn’t the right word for this kind of post.