Jeffrey Kursonis

Karma: 396

Jeffrey Kursonis built and co-built quite a number of non-profits in New York City, including The Haven, an arts and altruism collective with 300 people gathering weekly for ten years in Manhattan. A multicultural and altruistic faith community in Harlem, still going today. The New York City New Sanctuary Movement, one of two main hubs of the national network of faith communities giving sanctuary protection to undocumented families being pursued by Federal Immigration Law Enforcement. It’s a long list that formed a network of sorts.

After my work in NYC, a nascent national organization, Emergent Village, tapped me to lead their early growing network of local cohorts seeking to organize progressive religious leaders. I formed a team and we built it up to over 100 US cities, as well as many regional gatherings and other movement training and organizing (extremely similar to CEA). This “emerging church” movement changed the face of American religion by directly moving thousands of religious leaders and their congregations to the left, spawned a whole publishing genre, helped elect Obama, helped influence our Federal same sex marriage legal structure and sadly became a focal point of the conservative backlash unleashed by Trumpism. This is the second and biggest network I built.

My third network requires some discretion as it was built across a major authoritarian country and ended after a combination of Covid and government crackdowns.

As a side note, Jeffrey is no longer religious but still deeply appreciates the proven training ground religion provides. Here is a video we produced about the national cohort network, note my name as producer in the end credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-oaU29Z4dg

Jeffrey has been an active EA’er for over two years now, doing the Intro and Advanced Fellowships and working as a Meta-Moderator for Virtual Program trainings for new facilitators and actively posting on the forum. I recently applied to be on the CEA Virtual Programs new Advisory Board.

The very active EA Anywhere #role-film-and-tv group has been meeting weekly or biweekly with a number of subgroups working on various projects. It’s become something of a mini incubator already producing a number of new org’s and other smaller projects. Jeffrey has been an important organizer and momentum builder in the group. Expect to hear of a number of new inititatives arising out of the group.

Jeffrey Kursonis 6 Dec 2024 7:27 UTC
1 point
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on: Mapping the EA Psychology/Mental Health Space
This is fantastic. I’ve seen movements be greatly helped by this kind of central information mapping. It makes a huge difference...we will remember the times before this map and everything after will be different.

I encourage everyone to read Happier Lives Institute final report on lay therapy in LMICs recently released after a long wait.

Jeffrey Kursonis 16 Oct 2024 20:00 UTC
13 points
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on: Some reasons for not prioritising animal welfare very strongly
Engin, as an animal advocate to have this clear of thinking and publicly write it, when it might seem to go against your own people’s goals is astonishingly noble. The thoughtfulness is so strong, I look forward to following your thinking in all areas in the future. All the people and all the animals owe you a tribute.

Jeffrey Kursonis 22 Sep 2024 5:47 UTC
6 points
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on: A Neglected Crisis: Perinatal Mental Illness in LMICs
This is great work Stan, as a former religious network builder, now not religious and entering the space of scaling of lay-therapy in LMICs, I can see developing partnerships with religions and parachurch networks in LMICs to give use of their properties for community Mental Health Care (MHC), as well as helping them further their own versions, usually called spiritual counseling, in line with good science. In the USA this marriage is common and a significant percentage of the total MHC given the entire US population is done by religious org’s, a reality not well understood by secular professional communities. This won’t be my main modality, but leave no stone unturned.

I’m interested in many new therapeutic methods not even included in your report, that are just yet to be invented or perfected. I’m excited about the recent Australian BMJ Meta Analysis of Exercise interventions for depression that found dance to be more effective than any of the exercise types, as well as beating both SSRI’s and CBT...unfortunately a small sample size that needs more study, but still amazing. We will certainly run pilots on that in our new work.

Jeffrey Kursonis

Jeffrey Kursonis 17 Sep 2024 5:02 UTC
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on: Insights from a community builder in India on Effective Altruism in a Third World country
Wow Nayanika, great report from a person in the field. I guess the challenge is where are people in their mindsets with altruism...are they interested in it? I’m guessing some people who’s own income has recently gotten better might not yet be thinking about helping others...that is something I’d like to hear more about from you.

Most of the EA movement are in wealthy countries where people already have long traditions of philanthropy, and EA offers a new way of thinking about doing it more effectively. I know in other highly religious communities philanthropy often happens through the religious structures...how does EA fit into that and in the ways young people may be looking for new ways to express themselves socially outside of religion? Could EA ideas influence religious philanthropy?

I have watched India rise over 40 years, and it’s exciting how many are now influential in so many fields globally, and how incomes within India have risen dramatically...it would seem now is an important time to build an effective philanthropic mindset in India, and hope EA Kolkata can be more supported and engaged in conversation with other EA’s to continue pushing forward. Thanks.

ps. Nayanika and I know each other through our EA Anywhere Slack group that meets bi-weekly and has become an informal mini-incubator starting a number of new org’s.

Jeffrey Kursonis 1 Aug 2024 23:58 UTC
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on: My Experience as a Full-Time EA Community Builder in NYC
This is so good Alex! You know the journey went well because your home team that sent you forth decided to hire you and bring you “home”. An experienced field person will be of great value to them, and you’ll be able to help all the future younger versions of yourself flung into their new positions.

Always important to remember the great truth; You made it in New York and, “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere”!

Jeffrey Kursonis 31 Jul 2024 21:56 UTC
3 points
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on: Marketing 101 for EA Organizations
It seems quite simple. EA is:
Charity Evaluator/Fundraisers: need more donors
Research Think Tanks: need more readers
Charities: Need more donors
CEA/infrastructure: Need more people in local groups

All of these, like any kind of human org, simply “need more” to be worth existing and better to be effective.

Take think tanks as an example. They don’t charitably help a single soul, they don’t raise money, all they do is research&publish...the only end point is a human reading their reports and being influenced in a good way. That’s it. The reports don’t get in hands by magic, there is a creative human process of communication, networking, public awareness, industry group relationships...and marketing is one plank in that process. It’s org 101. But the only reason EA doesn’t have it is because philanthropic funding has allowed EA to not “live in the real world” and do what every org in the real world always does or it will go bankrupt.

I describe it this way: Compare EA to Tech a similar population of STEM minds. Tech has a backroom where the STEM’s make great stuff. Then it has a frontroom where arts & humanities creatives communicate the stuff to the world. That’s how it works. EA has only a backroom and no frontroom at all, leaving massive value on a table that never goes out into the world as the donors expected it to. It’s true good stuff will be found, EA has made an impact, but so much more could be made if they created frontrooms to communicate to the world.

Jeffrey Kursonis 29 Jul 2024 16:15 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Hamish McDoodles’s comment on: Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down
Hi Hamish,
Yes, that’s a creative literary sentence that would mean the same thing if you just removed the “non” and basically says you’re leaving massive value on the table that doesn’t get communicated (as you’ve said). By adding the little twist of saying leaving massive value on a non-table that never gets communicated you’re just pushing the idea into absurdity (what’s a non-table?) which artistically makes the point that to do so is absurd.

Jeffrey Kursonis 11 Jul 2024 3:30 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: IanDavidMoss’s comment on: Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down
Yeah those are both really good initiatives...now they need more creative media to win the broader public to their vision.

Jeffrey Kursonis 9 Jul 2024 5:53 UTC
57 points
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on: Center for Effective Aid Policy has shut down
It’s a great idea, glad you tried. Here’s a few thoughts from a 60 year old with many years overseas and 3 years in Washington, DC. Maybe they can help (given from a USA perspective).

The feeling many activists who really care get after spending any time adjacent to the DC development-industrial-complex is that so much of it is a big political scam...DC is not trying to help the world, they’re deploying taxpayers money to increase USA power and influence to the ends of benefiting USA (same for all wealthy countries). That’s the DC side, then living overseas for almost a decade of my life I saw the actual aid workers in the field and it’s like the newbies are actually there for good idealistic reasons, then as they age and go up the ladder you see them just realizing it’s all a scam but it’s my job so I just play along or they are just expat types who love living overseas and with a USA salary in a poor country you can live like a king.
All of that is going on, while your holding meetings with individual politicians who may care, but they don’t even see the whole big picture themselves because for example State Department priorities and strategies may be opaque to congress members.

The other issue that occurs to me. You are applying to aid what EA applied to charity so successfully...the idea of scientific method for evidence based impact...but the audience who responded so powerfully to EA’s charity changing idea was donors deciding what to do with money they control directly...individuals and foundations. But your audience was politicians who are seeking to get votes by doing what voters want, and by needing to follow their leadership. So even though they may be moved by “effective impact” as an idea, the audience they serve—their leaders and voters—are far removed from your efforts and don’t hear your ideas, ie. your energies spent at the wrong spot...the solution would be to not only influence politicians but influence the voting public by creative media campaigns in film, tv, youtube and substack and change the zeitgeist, and get the voters to demand a change in how our governments do aid, and start doing it this smarter evidence based way. Now your energies are hitting directly.

But of course, this is not a methodology EA really understands since they don’t invite creative media people to the table. They should and more of us are on the peripheries stating the importance of creative media to everything EA does and pointing out EA’s blindspot on this. Nobody in lobbying or advocacy would ever imagine effecting a change without creative media to influence the public as a significant part of it...you gotta hit ’em on both sides...inside lobbying, outside changing of minds/votes.
Perhaps another attempt with a combination of more experienced development lobbyists paired with a creative media team also would have a better chance...but of course it would require a much bigger budget.

EA needs to learn from Tech...Tech is a bunch of STEM people like EA...but Tech has a backroom of STEM talent making stuff, and a frontroom of arts & humanities creatives communicating that stuff to the world. EA on the other hand only has a backroom of STEM people and no frontroom at all, leaving massive value on a non-table that never gets communicated to the world it was for. Philanthropic funding artificially enables EA to perpetuate this misunderstanding of how the world works, Tech lives in the real world.

Jeffrey Kursonis 19 May 2024 4:52 UTC
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on: Why not socialism?
In the USA anybody with center leaning tendencies thinks of “socialism” as all the bad things that happened under communism, but democratic socialism is more palatable since it has private property and voting. I understand this is partly a problem of the right using those words to instill fear based on remaining cold war feelings, but still the challenge here is to educate to show how democratic socialists governments are not Soviet style communists. I personally prefer the hybrid of democratic and some capitalistic aspects being mixed in. I don’t think communism can ever work based on the massive experiment we’ve already had with it that failed. If China is doing well it’s clearly because of the capitalism mixed in.
If I were to evangelize for socialism within EA I would definitely stay on using “democratic socialist” language, or it’ll get slammed harder. And I’d educate on the private property and voting aspects.

I’d personally like to see EA be less Utilitarian and be able to meet more in the middle with social movement interventions rather than just individuals...that might help democratic socialism to more accept EA also, and for EA to accept it.

Jeffrey Kursonis 3 Dec 2023 23:21 UTC
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in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Visuals for EA-aligned Research
Oh and for the poster, there is a group called “All in Awe” that helps place graphic artists with EA org’s...maybe they could place you in some jobs.

Jeffrey Kursonis 3 Dec 2023 23:19 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Visuals for EA-aligned Research
Yes they are mostly in EA Anywhere under #role-artists and #role-film-and-tv. There is also an in real life gathering of marketers and creatives in EA NYC. Artists of Impact is an early stage org drawing professional artists toward effective giving similar to how others have done that with athletes.

Jeffrey Kursonis 22 Nov 2023 21:01 UTC
4 points
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on: Visuals for EA-aligned Research
This is fantastic, a perfect example of how the arts amplify EA ideas making them more palatable and available to non experts. That’s why we have EA Artists & Creatives group, as well as EA Creatives & Communicators and Artists of Impact and more.

Jeffrey Kursonis 4 Oct 2023 20:22 UTC
31 points
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on: Talk: The future of effective altruism relies on effective giving
I think this is a great perspective on the future of EA and as SBF’s trial is about to explode across world media and bring a new wave of negative mentions of EA, people I know who are building effective giving org’s while considering themselves within EA are also choosing to use the term Effective Giving more broadly in their communications because the term EA is facing an extended bad press cycle. I deeply regret this reality but it’s the nature of how things work these days.

The other thing this presentation touches on and I will discuss it with my own twist is that we’ve somewhat abandoned our fundraising core…and I think many EA’s have failed to grasp how big fundraising is to our core essence and place in the world. Early EA full of STEM people did the remarkable job of pushing evidence based impact to the fore of the whole philanthropic world. If you read outside of EA in other philanthropic circles all you hear about is effective impact. It’s a classic success story of a small movement changing the bigger narrative in its field. And one of the proofs of this is how so many people decided to rely upon EA charity evaluators for their donations and we built up a massive amount of funds spread over 50+ fundraising organizations.

One of the things that always amazes me about EA is how many take this massive success for granted. It is almost without precedent that a small group of philosophy and STEM activists build up billions of dollars of funds. That just doesn’t happen. Most movements struggle for years. Having 25-50 million dollars is considered a hugely successful movement. Many EA’ers making 100K plus as altruists have no clue that is not how altruists in the past got paid…a career in altruism meant you made very little money, it was like you were choosing to donate the huge portion you weren’t getting paid as your sacrifice for doing good.

This isn’t just a case of an older generation perspective being jealous of a younger generations success…this lack of awareness of the actual core accomplishment of EA in the world leads to mistakes because when you are not operating in reality you are guaranteed to make choices that won’t work.

When you have billions of dollars under your management in todays world it gives you a weight in public forums that is not based in your philosophical work, but based in your clout. This allowed the philosophers who did great things in building EA to go back to their roots and spin out new esoteric concepts totally shifting EA in its second wave toward Longtermism and X-risk and away from charity and fundraising. This was a mistake because it was built on clout and not a long career building the philosophical foundations. Which lead to problems.

I believe the third wave of EA should be to now build upon its true foundation of fundraising leadership and to take it out to a bigger and broader audience. The new EA cannot continue as a mostly STEM elite group. That doesn’t fit the mission. A broader more mature effective giving movement reaching all the millions of wealthy donors has to have a culture that is more welcoming to those donors.

I have been in movements that have had to change from their early core culture to a broader more mature culture as they’ve grown and it’s a painful thing for many who bemoan the loss of the little tight knit community they loved. And I’m sympathetic, but it’s the same sympathy you feel for a sad teenager having to leave their friends and school because their parents got an important new job far away. It’s a painful loss but it’s just life.

As a non STEM person I will tell you this forum is not a welcoming place. This is not new information, I’ve read here and spoken to people who all know it. It’s time to open EA up to more arts and humanities people, to more mid and later career people and as I’ve argued elsewhere to probably guffaws from EA readers, to more average people that are not elite. This is the kind of balance that will change the culture and make EA more welcoming to all the people it needs to draw in to go where it needs to go.

We will surely always need a STEM core to do charity evaluations and to continue a healthy subsection of philosophical thinking about X-risk and Longtermism or whatever it evolves into. I love and value that work, but it’s not what EA actually is in the world.

What EA actually is, is the network of local groups CEA supports, the charity evaluation work and the many funds relying on their work, the various think tank research org’s, the efforts to help people work in effective impact jobs and both the charities EA supports and the new ones it starts. That’s what EA is and we now need to get a whole bunch of new people involved in and supporting all that…and to get those people we have to do some new things like more creative marketing, make documentary films and other creative media to spread the vision and inspire imaginations, and change the culture to make it more welcoming to non-STEM people. To do all that we need more artists and creatives and more average people and more mid and senior career people.

Jeffrey Kursonis 8 Sep 2023 19:50 UTC
1 point
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on: Empowering Numbers: FEM since 2021
Wow, you guys are doing so great. I’m curious how you do the creative content? How do you find the people and manage the process using local writers and actors? I would also love to see any information on why you do radio instead of say TikTok?

Jeffrey Kursonis 5 Sep 2023 21:10 UTC
23 points
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on: Learning from our mistakes: how HLI plans to improve
This post is why EA is so great. The broader take home is that human life and social systems are infinitely complex and all of EA needs to continue to trend humble regarding our ability to figure things out in the specific window/perspective we have. And since our funding advice goes to the wealthiest and most willing to give humans on earth, we hold a significant sway on which interventions get funded, so if we are off or wrong, we do harm. Thanks for continuing to iterate humbly.

Jeffrey Kursonis 24 Aug 2023 23:14 UTC
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on: The cost of (not) taking marketing seriously
This is fantastic. Those of us who believe EA needs more art come from virtually an identical motivation—it communicates and amplifies all the great stuff that EA has spent so much time and sweat and money creating...why leave so much impact on the table when you can amplify it to a waiting world? There’s more of course with art, but that’s a big part of it.

As another commenter said, this should stand as an EA Marketing reference for all of us...and with so much data, James proves he knows how to speak to his audience! Now we also have to speak to those other audiences that don’t want data but want emotion and intellectual inspiration, people just waiting to send in a donation or join a local EA group or move overseas with one of our charities.

And speaking of inspiration, wait until you see what we’ve got in store for the “ea-X-hibition” art exhibit at EAGx Berlin in September...the piece we are putting up will blow everyone away and other conferences are already asking for it. Tell your friends in Europe.

Jeffrey Kursonis 6 Aug 2023 0:19 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Call for Art submissions—EAGxBerlin
Based on based evidence of our excitement, of course!

Jeffrey Kursonis 6 Aug 2023 0:18 UTC
4 points
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on: Call for Art submissions—EAGxBerlin
I love this and I and my friends are going to run over to Manifund and put our money where our beliefs get excited!

Claude 2 on Art and EA

Jeffrey Kursonis12 Jul 2023 23:31 UTC

2 points

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