GV 🔸

• GV 🔸 26 Apr 2026 16:29 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Ap­ply­ing Digi­tal Mar­ket­ing and Growth Hack­ing to EA Outreach: Op­por­tu­ni­ties and Risks

  Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  On “Is it generally recommended for someone with my skill set to pursue “Earning to Give” (maximizing my income in the corporate marketing world and donating) rather than trying to do direct work for EA orgs?”: it’s been said a lot, in the past years, that we need more talented, “high-context” communicators. I encourage you to explore direct work opportunities and think deeply about what could, or couldn’t, work in the context of EA.

• GV 🔸 3 Feb 2026 12:18 UTC

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: The re­al­ity of long-term EA com­mu­nity build­ing: Les­sons from 3 years of EA Barcelona

  Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, @Melanie Brennan 🔹 and @Anthony L ! It must have been difficult at this time of turmoil.

  First, congratulations on all you (and past CBers) have accomplished in Barcelona and in Spain more generally. Your recap in this post clearly shows that much was done, and I think your sustained work has probably created a lot of positive impact.
  
  Second, I think this post is important for reminding all of us that EA community building is at a strange place: it is clearly important, but it is also very hard to get funding for. Like many other roles in EA, we (counting myself) are precarious workers, relying on yearly renewals and decent-if-you-can-live-frugally salaries. Off the top of my head, I’d say with confidence that fewer than 50 people in the world do principles-first EA community building as their main source of income. And I think perhaps fewer than 30 have been at it for more than 2 years.

  Good luck to both of you, and looking forward to see the switch to a community/​volunteering-led system works out!

• GV 🔸 19 Dec 2025 9:20 UTC

  10 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Brian4’s comment on: Against (most) com­mu­nity re­treats (FBB #12)

  Agreed.

  One data point: in the recent EA community retreat I organized for 65 people in France in 2025 (not a “premium” retreat), the cost per participant was 156€. This includes my time as well as financial support from participants.

  I tend to see these types of events as complementary. I think we should not treat their various outcomes as fungible. You get results of different, non-tradeable kinds. In particular:

  • Differents types of participants

  • Different types of impact.

• GV 🔸 17 Dec 2025 15:38 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Why I donate

  I love number 4! :D

• GV 🔸 17 Dec 2025 15:29 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Front-Load Giv­ing Be­cause of An­thropic Donors?

  Yes. Another question is the geographical direction of the (potential) giving. I suppose we should expect a strong focus on US-centric actions, which might very suboptimal. Surely relying on funds will help coordinate intelligently.

  Therefore, one approach to preparing for the influx of many new donors could be to increase the EA Funds teams to facilitate grantmaking (afaik, they’re quite overworked anyway).

• GV 🔸 8 Nov 2025 20:37 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jo_🔸’s comment on: EA Sum­mit 2025: Paris—Retrospective

  Thanks for the kind words!

  To answer your question:
  - One person said it to me, and another wrote it in the feedback form: it can be hard to understand how an organization can amend their activities to be more effective, concretely. Another person found the event “too theorical”.
  - I personally think examples contribute a lot to making the ideas clearer and more convincing.

• GV 🔸 6 Sep 2025 21:27 UTC

  14 points

  7 ∶ 0

  on: My TED Talk: How to end fac­tory farming

  I’m really thrilled that you seized this opportunity to speak to many people (and become one of the relatively rare speakers to discuss a moral atrocity on that stage).
  With the Dwarkesh Patel podcast episode you recently did, this is very, very encouraging. Thank you so much.

• GV 🔸 16 Aug 2025 8:06 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Free vir­tual offices available on EA Gather Town

  Thanks a lot for maintaining this space! It’s been great coworking with you and others in GatherTown, I love how it creates a cozy, friendly atmosphere akin to that of a physical office.
  Strong reco for others to come (especially remote workers) and experiment with this solution.

• GV 🔸 14 Jul 2025 17:05 UTC

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Reflect­ing on One Year of Mieux Don­ner: Launch­ing the French Effec­tive Giv­ing Initiative

  Thank you for the write-up. It’s been quite impressive and very positive to see the development of Mieux Donner, kudos to the cofounders, the early hires, as well as Ambitious Impact who gave the push to most of the recently-launched effective giving initiatives!!

• GV 🔸 1 Jun 2025 16:03 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: New work­shops on how to have a more im­pact­ful career

  Great! I’m very interested in how this compares with the most beloved EA format: the “fellowship”. If this works well, it will present a number of advantages: more dense; less need for planning; basically no dropping out.

  Funny to notice that with my usual “funnel-based” thinking I’d have listed these workshops in the reverse order.

• GV 🔸 3 May 2025 16:36 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jo_🔸’s comment on: Pri­ori­tiz­ing Work

  Hey @JoA🔸 , I was considering having a translation (maybe adapted to our cultural context) on EA France’s website, if @Jeff Kaufman 🔸 is giving us his blessing :)

• GV 🔸 6 Feb 2025 10:11 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What is the ad­mis­sions bar for EA Global?

  Hi, thanks for the post!

  After discussing with other group organizers, 2 interesting ideas came up and I wanted to share them for CEA’s consideration—I hope I’m not repeating something written elsewhere:

  • Referral codes that group organizers might give some specific members to signal that they’re recommending these applicants.

  • Some kind of referral-rewarding program that encourages people to invite new people to apply to EAG(x) events.

  (both options might involve something called “referral codes” but they are very distinct things).

• GV 🔸 20 Jan 2025 15:58 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What comes af­ter the In­tro­duc­tion Fel­low­ship? A tool and ap­proach for com­mu­nity organizers

  This sounds like a nice, helpful tool that I intuitively think will be valuable to ensure people think clearly about how to make efforts in a concrete directions. I really like the 3 “paths” for this.

  I don’t understand this, though: how do you suggest tracking people’s answers to this tool? How is the data consolidated?

• GV 🔸 18 Jan 2025 10:55 UTC

  5 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing a new CEA-sup­ported lo­cal event series

  Really nice to make this a part of the EAG family framework!
  
  Regarding the naming: I guess it depends on the location, but for instance in France, a lot of people we’d like to participate still have not heard about EA. In such contexts, I think it’s probably a better idea to avoid calling the event “EA <something>” and to choose something like “Impact <summit? day? expo? ignition?>”, so that even people not familiar with the movement can have an idea about the theme as soon as they hear the title.

• GV 🔸 8 Jan 2025 22:20 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: In­tro­duc­ing The Field Build­ing Blog (FBB #0)

  Interesting topic ideas, thanks in advance Gergő!

  Quick question: why not write on the EA Forum? I am not convinced by “the most valuable conversations on field building are happening when people share their hot takes at conferences, retreats, or between staff members of fieldbuilding orgs that are just a bit too edgy to write up for the EA forum”. Is it just a better “writer experience”?

  To be clear, I am interested enough in your views that I went to Substack and subscribed to your newsletter! It seems to me that for your topics, there are much stronger reasons to stay on the forum than for leaving it: I suppose you’ll get more readers; it will be more convenient for said readers; there’s a good comments system; the audio transcription; there are previous of within-forum links; and probably other important things I’m forgetting.

  If you want people to take your writings less seriously, and to be able to write without spending hours reviewing your texts, maybe you could use the “quick takes”?
  
  (super interested to hear what was in favor of Substack! :) )

• GV 🔸 4 Dec 2024 19:20 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: T_W’s comment on: Tris­tan Willi­ams’s Quick takes

  The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think it’s important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on “more” rather than on “the most possible”… But with an emphasis on the fact that there are resources to help you and guide you towards options that are likely to be immensely more impactful than most actions.

• GV 🔸 26 Nov 2024 12:41 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Shar­ing in­sights from my mas­ter’s work on the Global Health Se­cu­rity In­dex: seek­ing feed­back and re­search directions

  I think it’s very valuable to post this like you did, for you probably but also for others (like me) to see what kind of methodological traps and limitations arise in this kind of effort. Thanks!
  
  You mentioned this “big question”: How effective is the GHSI at actually driving change in the biosecurity field?
  The GHSI is a really nice tool created by big orgs, so I think it’s necessary and useful to break this down into subquestions like you did. IMO it’s also good, while researcher these questions (who engages with the index, and how? Is this legible and actionable?) further, to take a step back to consider the limits of the whole approach, like the fact that analyzing at national-level raises some issues, given how international dynamics emerge during such times of crisis (Moeen mentioned this in the GDoc’s comments).

• GV 🔸 7 Nov 2024 20:38 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Rick Holland’s comment on: AMA: Rick Hol­land, Fundrais­ing ex­pert and Direc­tor of Con­fi­dent Philanthropy

  Your comments here and there make sense to me. I feel like it’s quite straightforward in theory, and harder to do in practice.

  I do observe that some orgs are leagues above others in communicating, and I feel like the two important reasons for this are
  - the org’s willingness to allocate resources to professional communication work
  - the extent to which the org’s activity lends itself to communication (eg most orgs working with cute animals have an advantage here).

• GV 🔸 7 Nov 2024 16:13 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AMA: Rick Hol­land, Fundrais­ing ex­pert and Direc­tor of Con­fi­dent Philanthropy

  Naive and broad question: what should EA and EA orgs do differently to interest non-EA donors?
  (are there things you feel are frequently under-appreciated by EA actors?)

• GV 🔸 21 Oct 2024 7:57 UTC

  1 point

  2 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing: biose­cu­rity.world

  Thanks a lot for the hard work! This will certainly be useful to people interested in biosecurity careers in our group!