London GWWC group co-lead: https://ââwww.givingwhatwecan.org/ââlondon
Organiser of the EY Effective Altruism workplace group and EA London Quarterly Review coworking sessions.
Original EA Taskmaster https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââ9qcnrRD3ZHSwibtBC/ââea-taskmaster-game
In my day job, Iâm an accountant turned product person in tax technology.
Hi folksâlooking forward to doing some reflective /â impact focussed poms with you all!!
If you canât make it in the morning, please arrive during one of the breaks at 11:50, 12:50, 13:50, 14:50, 15:50 and I can come down and let you in.
At the 11am pom, Iâll be doing my quarterly review pom so can provide some structure/âhelp those whoâve never done one before.
As usual, youâre welcome to use the poms as generic coworking session to read about/âwork on/âapply to EA stuff.
(Reminder that the LEAH office has moved to another unit in the building)
+1 on negotiating higher salariesâfelt easier to do after taking the pledge.
Hereâs a good book summary of Never Split the Difference for those who donât want to buy the book.
Ah glad the link worked. Not sure why it looked like it didnât.
Let me know if you do end up interested in doing an editing eventâhappy to host an in person coworking session for it in London.
UK specific posts about Personal Finance for EAs, Personal Tax advice for donations and Payroll Giving in the UK.
Tyve is a UK based payroll giving provider that aims to promote effective giving â more info here
Thereâs been various efforts to organise people who care about EA principles to submit for consultations and/âor email their MPs about policy issues
* Upcoming workshops to submit responses to a UK aid consultation
* UK Voters for Animals
SoGive is currently re-evaluating their strategy but initially they started out with the very ambitious goal of evaluating the impact of every UK charityâall 200,000!!!
I personally found it very helpful when having conversations with UK folks about effective giving as people were very emotionally attached to the charities they liked so it is very useful to have comparitive high-level benchmarks for how much more effective charities can achieve.
Have the forum team considered running an online event to collaborate on improving wikis? I think wikis are a deeply underrated forum feature and a fantastic way for people who arenât new but arenât working in EA to directly contribute to the EA project.
I wrote a quick take a while ago about how itâs probably too hard for people to edit wikis atmâI actually canât link to it but here are my quick takes: Gemma Patersonâs Quick takes â EA Forum (effectivealtruism.org)
Thanks for pulling this together Ben! Have been impressed with your organisation and drive to make it happen.
Great opportunity for those based in the UK to engage and learn about our governments aid policy.
I enjoyed this post!
In professions, Epistemic Responsibility is described as Professional Judgement which is a key virtue in addition to your expertise required to gain entry to membership. ICAS (my membership body) just added Moral Courage to their list of ethical principles
I donât think it is protected enough in society more generally (and tbh within professions these days)
Yes thatâd be my sense.
Capital expenditure is money spent on an asset which can reasonably be assumed to generate future value for the entity either by increasing productivity or reducing costs. Expenses (including both cost of program/âoutcome and overhead costs) wouldnât really be an investment, itâd be a cost for something that doesnât have the ability to generate future returns or reduce the future marginal expenditure needed to generate the outcome again.
High quality assets like content, software and infrastructure can generate passive impact with minimal maintenance. Eg. 80k and Scott Alexanderâs content are still cited as the most common sources for new GWWC pledges.
Employees arenât usually considered assets for external financial reporting purposes because they are not owned by the shareholders and are free to leave. However, for a movement of people who all share ownership of EA and are not tied to any one cause area or charity, I think they can reasonably be defined as assets and a key insight from 80k is that for those with a motivation to do good effectively, there is a clear incentive to invest in your own career capital (as well as positive sum to invest time multiplying the impact of others).
The highest value assets IMO are EAs that can demonstrate a strong ability to apply the core skills (ie. cause prioritisation, impact evaluation and reasoning about evidence) AND can independently contribute. Iâve been somewhat concerned about the reduction in opportunities for low investment contribution since I donât think passive consumption of content is as effective for building EA knowledge that can be applied on high impact projects. The purpose of providing these opportunities (like wiki contributing, encouraging running events, volunteering etc) is more about investing in future capacity of EAs than the direct impact.
More detailed accounting answer you can skip đđť
Capex isnt an expense as it doesnât go through the income statement (AKA Profit and Loss statement ie. part of the accounts focused on annual finance performance). Capex creates an asset that sits on the statement of financial position (AKA balance sheet ie. part of the accounts focussed on the value of the business/âcharity).
Capex doesnât go through the income statement all at once, rather the costs go through incrementally as depreciation (where there is a clear useful life of the asset like machinery or equipment) or as amortization (this is less useful for charities as itâs mostly for tax purposes). The accounting problem this solves is that putting the full cost of the asset through the income statement all at once in the year of purchase is not a fair representation of the economic reality for the business since it isnât an expense for that one year.
Greater Change is a UK based org looking to run an RCT for the impact of cash transfers on homelessness
hmmmm Iâd disagree based on my experience running GWWC events and EA Taskmaster but Iâm probably not going in with the mindset of optimising for short term impact/âurgency based on recruitment into AI safety.
I think getting the ratio of newbies /â experienced EAs right can be hard so I try to think carefully about how to attract the âhard sideâ of the network (experienced EAs). My approach is more creating a fun environment where people who are currently doing direct work and/âor donating significantly and effectively want to hang out or find useful.
My model is that significant behaviour change requires multiple positive interactions and time in between for reflection.
Hell yeah! Iâve got a draft with something similar about the importance of judgement in the application of EA principles. I think this is underrated within EA.
Weird the bottom half of the table got cut off
Here it is
| Online | A place for people to post things when they feel like it, no active solicitation Engineers and product people who develop the Forum | Curated newsletter, highlights Paid Forum moderators Limited feature development |
| Communications | Create resources like lists of experts that journalists can contact Fund publications (e.g. Future Perfect) | People post stuff on Twitter, maybe occasionally a journalist will pick it up Pitching op-edâs/âstories to major publications |
This post was interestingâsorry Iâm replying so late. As a community builder on the side of my day-job where Iâm an accountant. I see your table above a bit differently and think it would be better to think of the costs being split into:
* Capital expenditure (ie. an investment into infrastructure that can be used over the long term but unlikely to see a large return in the short term eg. Assets like content that can be referenced at any point in time, infrastructure that people can use to productively contribute)
* Operating expenditure (ie. Recurring costs that do not create an asset that can be used at a later date. E.g. Marketing, event expenditure, salaries)
As standard you want to keep your operating expenses as low as you can while still growing and invest as much as you can in infrastructure that enables long term growth.
Curious about your thoughts @Ben_Westđ¸
| Program | Capital /â Infrastructure Investment | Operating Expenses |
| Events | Recorded talks | Bring your own food Venues in inconvenient locations Unconference/âself-organized picnic vibes Coffee/âdrinks/âsnacks |
| Groups | Paid organizers (I think you could argue this is an investment in a future EA leader but it would depend on if thereâs investment in their growth) One-on-one advice/âcareer coaching | Volunteer-organized meet ups Maybe some free pizza |
| Online | A place for people to post things when they feel like it, no active solicitation Engineers and product people who develop the Forum | Curated newsletter, highlights Paid Forum moderators Limited feature development |
| Communications | Create resources like lists of experts that journalists can contact Fund publications (e.g. Future Perfect) | People post stuff on Twitter, maybe occasionally a journalist will pick it up Pitching op-edâs/âstories to major publications |
I really liked the post on where CEA employee were donating
â¤ď¸â¤ď¸â¤ď¸ Thank you for everything youâve done for all these years! In awe of your commitment and drive to improve the world and make GWWC all it is today (Iâm sure the 7am video calls with volunteers on the other side of the world was just a taste đŽ).
Hope you enjoy the time off with your wee one! Excited to see what you do next!
Weâve got the back area booked outâIâm in all black with my pledge pin on my belt
Looking forward to seeing folks tonight! Donât forget your pledge pins!
This seems interesting generally (assuming youâve seen this post?)
Would you consider writing up a doc like this Submission Guide with some of the arguments you would make?
Also, this article about education in terms of global development might be relevant