I am not sure if anything was published officially but I remember being ‘interviewed’ at the time and views were sought from a number of EAs and there were dedicated resources from CEA, a bit like the governance review being conducted at the moment but on strategic focus.
The review’s remit was perhaps more on the future strategy of CEA but given the role played by CEA at the time which included 80,000 hours and GWWC, and other meta organisations were still quite young, quite significant. It led to the reorganisation of CEA and the rephrasing of GWWC pledge from health and poverty to more cause neutral as we have today. Others involved at the time will have more information.
CEA’s Feb 2017 update gives these reasons for their reorganization:
Consolidation to improve coordination
Discontinuing their philanthropic advising project because they moved less money through wealthy individuals and foundations than expected, their research was less valuable than expected and they were launching EA Funds
Moving their x-risk policy work to FHI
Moving their Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism fully into the university (which I guess became GPI?)
Allowing their fundamentals research team to operate independently
This doesn’t sound like a move towards prioritizing careers/talent, students, longtermism and different cities to me, but maybe you know more or perhaps were thinking of something else?
Yes I think the above is correct. Thanks for that. It is possible GWWC moved to cause neutrality before the review. I think perhaps the point I want to make is that there was a lot of strategic thinking at that time which led to a number of actions including those mentioned in the post.
Any links on the referenced strategic review? Thanks!
I am not sure if anything was published officially but I remember being ‘interviewed’ at the time and views were sought from a number of EAs and there were dedicated resources from CEA, a bit like the governance review being conducted at the moment but on strategic focus.
The review’s remit was perhaps more on the future strategy of CEA but given the role played by CEA at the time which included 80,000 hours and GWWC, and other meta organisations were still quite young, quite significant. It led to the reorganisation of CEA and the rephrasing of GWWC pledge from health and poverty to more cause neutral as we have today. Others involved at the time will have more information.
CEA’s Feb 2017 update gives these reasons for their reorganization:
Consolidation to improve coordination
Discontinuing their philanthropic advising project because they moved less money through wealthy individuals and foundations than expected, their research was less valuable than expected and they were launching EA Funds
Moving their x-risk policy work to FHI
Moving their Oxford Institute for Effective Altruism fully into the university (which I guess became GPI?)
Allowing their fundamentals research team to operate independently
This doesn’t sound like a move towards prioritizing careers/talent, students, longtermism and different cities to me, but maybe you know more or perhaps were thinking of something else?
And this Feb 2017 post from GWWC says that the pledge became cause-neutral in 2014.
Yes I think the above is correct. Thanks for that. It is possible GWWC moved to cause neutrality before the review. I think perhaps the point I want to make is that there was a lot of strategic thinking at that time which led to a number of actions including those mentioned in the post.