100% agree—EA organisations should say EXACTLY what they are doing, why they are doing it and how they are doing it and make active efforts to publicise this. In my limited experience EA charities themselves (with the exception perhaps of AI orgs) are pretty good at doing this especially compared with other charites.
In general as well, I think that Orgs should do ONE thing only (wrote a blog about it a couple of years ago) with the vast majority of their time, and maybe do a few other smaller, relevant things on the side. Their scope should NOT be large. For example CE incubate and fund new effective orgs as their one thing, with side projects of a foundation program and helping support CE founders
In terms of clear scope transpency which is communicated well, below I have put my my low confidence personal opinion as to which sectors within EA are better and worse at transparency. There might be good reasons for this—its far harder for AI orgs to communicate clearly what their scope is compared to us basic global health normys ;). In saying that though, public health orgs and animal advocacy orgs often post and communicate their scope on the forum, but how often do you get one of these hugely funded AI orgs writing a short and nice post telling us what the are up to?
For EA leadership orgs though I think its easier to do better, so its clear to us all why buying a castle is a great idea and within their scope (cheap shot :p). The CEA front page doesn’t even make it clear what exactly they do and their scope is, although their What is CEA page is quite good if perhaps a little broad.
Global Health Orgs > Animal rights org > Community building orgs / EA leadership >AI orgs (Low confidence, keen to hear other thoughts)
I would go further than you, in that I don’t agree with hedging for future flexibility at all. Better to do something clearly defined now, go hard and do it well ,then if you pivot at some stagechange your scope clearly and very publicly when it becomes necessary.
On CEA (where I’m Chief of Staff) and its website specifically:
I’m glad that you think the What is CEA page is quite good, thanks!
The site is in a slightly weird position because it appears very high in searches for “effective altruism”, so the front page needs to cater to that audience, as well as people who land there because they’re actually interested in CEA itself. We expect the interested-in-CEA crowd to be more likely to stick around, so the page is designed to prioritize the new-to-EA crowd (i.e. redirect them to EffectiveAltruism.org).
On CEA, I think a chart like the one I outlined in the post would be super useful, as I pretty constantly hear very different perspectives on what CEA does or does not do. I understand this might change with, e.g., a new ED, but even understanding ‘what CEA was like in 2022’ I think could provide a lot of value.
Love it man thanks so much for the reply, appreciate it a lot! Never considered that as an issue for the website so that makes a lot of sense. Still think having somthing like this at the top of your front page wouldn’t hurt
”The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) builds and nutures a global community who think carefully about the world’s biggest problems and takes high impact action to solve them”
Your ordering of who has struggled with this in the past matches my sense, although I would add that I think it’s particularly important for community building, meta, and EA leadership organizations. These are both the least naturally definitionally clear in what they do and have the most engagement with a counterfactually sensitive community.
100% agree—EA organisations should say EXACTLY what they are doing, why they are doing it and how they are doing it and make active efforts to publicise this. In my limited experience EA charities themselves (with the exception perhaps of AI orgs) are pretty good at doing this especially compared with other charites.
In general as well, I think that Orgs should do ONE thing only (wrote a blog about it a couple of years ago) with the vast majority of their time, and maybe do a few other smaller, relevant things on the side. Their scope should NOT be large. For example CE incubate and fund new effective orgs as their one thing, with side projects of a foundation program and helping support CE founders
In terms of clear scope transpency which is communicated well, below I have put my my low confidence personal opinion as to which sectors within EA are better and worse at transparency. There might be good reasons for this—its far harder for AI orgs to communicate clearly what their scope is compared to us basic global health normys ;). In saying that though, public health orgs and animal advocacy orgs often post and communicate their scope on the forum, but how often do you get one of these hugely funded AI orgs writing a short and nice post telling us what the are up to?
For EA leadership orgs though I think its easier to do better, so its clear to us all why buying a castle is a great idea and within their scope (cheap shot :p). The CEA front page doesn’t even make it clear what exactly they do and their scope is, although their What is CEA page is quite good if perhaps a little broad.
Global Health Orgs > Animal rights org > Community building orgs / EA leadership >AI orgs
(Low confidence, keen to hear other thoughts)
I would go further than you, in that I don’t agree with hedging for future flexibility at all. Better to do something clearly defined now, go hard and do it well ,then if you pivot at some stage change your scope clearly and very publicly when it becomes necessary.
Nice post, love it!
On CEA (where I’m Chief of Staff) and its website specifically:
I’m glad that you think the What is CEA page is quite good, thanks!
The site is in a slightly weird position because it appears very high in searches for “effective altruism”, so the front page needs to cater to that audience, as well as people who land there because they’re actually interested in CEA itself. We expect the interested-in-CEA crowd to be more likely to stick around, so the page is designed to prioritize the new-to-EA crowd (i.e. redirect them to EffectiveAltruism.org).
We were in the process of commissioning a redesign of the site a few months ago, but that is now on hold pending us finding a new Exec Director and potentially pursuing a new strategy.
On CEA, I think a chart like the one I outlined in the post would be super useful, as I pretty constantly hear very different perspectives on what CEA does or does not do. I understand this might change with, e.g., a new ED, but even understanding ‘what CEA was like in 2022’ I think could provide a lot of value.
Love it man thanks so much for the reply, appreciate it a lot! Never considered that as an issue for the website so that makes a lot of sense. Still think having somthing like this at the top of your front page wouldn’t hurt
”The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) builds and nutures a global community who think carefully about the world’s biggest problems and takes high impact action to solve them”
Perhaps I took too much artistic license ;).
Your ordering of who has struggled with this in the past matches my sense, although I would add that I think it’s particularly important for community building, meta, and EA leadership organizations. These are both the least naturally definitionally clear in what they do and have the most engagement with a counterfactually sensitive community.