CFAR’s annual update [link]

[RyanCarey]

Here’s the 2014 update from the Center for Applied Rationality, an organisation who among its other goals, aims to improve the capabilities of effective altruists.

On the 2014 costs, their Executive Director Anna says:

Our total expenditures in 2014 came up about $840k… We ran 9 workshops in 2014, which generated about $435k in revenue, but also $210k in non-staff costs… Our basic operating expenses from 2014 were fairly similar to 2013: a total of about $42k/​month… SPARC 2014’s non-staff costs came to $62k, and were covered by Dropbox, Quixey, and MIRI… Alumni reunion: $34k income; $38k non-staff costs (for ~100 participants)...Hamming: $3.6k revenue; $3k non-staff costs… Assisting thinking: $2.1k revenue; $3.2k non-staff costs… Attention: $3.3k revenue; $2.7k non-staff costs… Epistemic Rationality for Effective Altruists: $5k revenue; $3k costs

On achivements:

“Our brand perception improved significantly in 2014, which matters because it leads to companies being willing to pay for workshop attendance. We were covered in Fast Company—twice—the Wall Street Journal, and The Reasoner. Other mentions include Forbes, Big Think, Boing Boing, and Lifehacker. We’ve also had some interest in potential training for tech companies. Our curriculum is gaining a second tier in the form of alumni workshops.

On ongoing aims:

“CFAR seems to many of us to be among the efforts most worth investing in. This isn’t because our present workshops are all that great. Rather, it is because, in terms of “saving throws” one can buy for a humanity that may be navigating tricky situations in an unknown future, improvements to thinking skill seem to be one of the strongest and most robust. And we suspect that CFAR is a promising kernel from which to help with that effort.

As noted, we aim in 2015 to get all the way to a “full prototype” -- a point from which we are actually visibly helping in the aimed-for way. This will be a tricky spot to get to. Our experience slowly coming to grips with epistemic rationality is probably more rule than the exception, and I suspect we’ll run into a number of curve balls on path to the prototype.”

All of these are covered in a bunch more detail in the full article.