Sam Anschell

• Sam Anschell 8 Sep 2026 13:44 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Brittney Nial’s comment on: 14 High-Im­pact Pro­jects for Am­bi­tious Students

  Thanks for flagging that, Brittney—does this invite work without a CEA email?

• Sam Anschell 6 Sep 2026 19:47 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Brittney Nial’s comment on: Build­ing a Cam­pus EA Group in No Time (Re­sources for Stu­dents!)

  Thank you, Brittney—absolutely! I’m not sure if there’s a writeup on this tabling strategy, but the idea is to run mini giving games to help passersby engage in a fun activity and learn about effective giving.

  In practice, this could look like:

  • Tablers invite students to answer 5 trivia questions related to EA. For every question that a student’s answer is within an order of magnitude of the true answer, the student can allocate $10 in donations (using group funds) to an effective charity from a provided list of options.

    • An example question could be “on average, how many lives does the research organization GiveWell estimate the world’s most cost-effective global health charities can save for a million dollars?” If the answer is 200, then students who provide an answer between 20 and 2,000 have provided a “correct” answer within the margin of error.
      

  • After a student answers each question, the tabler tells them how many they got correct, and what the true answer is. Hopefully students have a “Woah” reaction, like in this GWWC video! The tabler asks student to allocate their “budget” (i.e, if they get four correct, they have $40 to allocate across a menu of effective charities). The tabler logs the donation and asks the student to sign up for the group’s email list so that they receive an email with receipts of every student’s allocated donations across effective charities.
    

  • Finally, the tablers make the donations and send a followup email to everyone who participated celebrating the impact of the gift. This helps new joiners be a part of something unique and exciting, and hopefully motivates them to attend group meetings.

  Brown EA got 165 on signups at their admitted students day by running a similar giving game! One last note is that I think this idea is a better fit for tabling outside of the club fair; the club fair usually has so much foot traffic that you may be able to secure more signups by giving passersby a 30 second intro on the group and asking if they’re interested in adding their email to the listserv (rather than running a 3 minute trivia game for each person).

  Wishing your group all the best, thank you so much for organizing!

14 High-Im­pact Pro­jects for Am­bi­tious Students

Build­ing a Cam­pus EA Group in No Time (Re­sources for Stu­dents!)

Reach­ing Out to Formerly En­gaged EAs

• Sam Anschell 13 Jul 2026 22:31 UTC

  23 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: My TED Talk on end­ing child­hood lead poi­son­ing is live

  This is one of my favorite talks ever. Clear, gripping, heartbreaking, and uplifting all in ten minutes; not a word wasted.
  
  Thank you to everyone at Pure Earth for the work you do on this incredibly important issue, I’m excited to send this talk to friends and family.

• Sam Anschell 12 Jul 2026 21:03 UTC

  6 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: MacKen­zie Scott’s $26 billion, in QALYs: an in­ter­ac­tive, ev­i­dence-weighted CEA

  Thank you for doing this work, I really appreciate how transparent and easy to interact with this is (especially for someone like me who doesn’t have a technical or econometric background).

  If you or anyone else reading this is up for it, I would love to see followup writing and analysis on the most impactful gifts from Yield Giving across each of its focus areas. It would be wonderful to incorporate a plurality of values in addition to QALYs (e.g, LAYS for education, income gains for financial security, WELLBYs for mental health, a combination of innovation, redistribution, carbon, and earnings gains for individuals & cities for housing, etc).

  I think that independent analysis can be an incredibly valuable resource for a philanthropist, particularly one giving with the scale and trust of Mackenzie Scott (I loved GiveWell’s change our mind contest!) By highlighting “best buys” from Yield Giving’s portfolio and providing examples of other impactful organizations that might fit their strategy, this type of impartial and rigorous work can celebrate effective giving and provide a public good to the broader philanthropic ecosystem.

• Sam Anschell 24 Jun 2026 22:02 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Aaron Bergman’s comment on: aaronb50′s Shortform

  Agree with the spirit of this, but I’d flag that I think it’s very important to be mindful of reputational/​downside risks for the EA movement. In my view, with more money (realized and prospective), the value of community integrity becomes even higher.

  An example of post-IPO retail philanthropy I’m excited about is giving a friend $5k to take time off and apply to high-impact jobs. As Aaron writes, individuals know about opportunities that large funders don’t!
  
  An example of post-IPO retail philanthropy I worry about is paying for an antagonistic media campaign against [X factory farm owner or public figure], which institutional funders could have chosen to fund but decided against due to reputational risk. If the funding is traced back to you, the movement’s reputation could be damaged by association. Even if it isn’t, new large funders may be dissuaded from getting involved if they see antagonistic or risky actions being funded in areas related to EA.

• Sam Anschell 18 Jun 2026 22:03 UTC

  14 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ariel Simnegar 🔸’s comment on: Pre­dictable Up­dat­ing About Fund­ing In EA

  Great point, thanks Ariel. I wouldn’t say earning to give is necessarily suboptimal (for any cause), just that directionally more money will flow across and within major EA focus areas.
  
  My best guess is that there will be an increase in funding to animal welfare, though likely not to the extent of the funding increase to AI safety. I’m less confident in the funding landscape for digital minds, but I would guess that this field will get a boost as well (e.g, because Longview may receive more donations).

Pre­dictable Up­dat­ing About Fund­ing In EA

Giv­ing Based on Com­par­a­tive Advantage

• Sam Anschell 4 Jun 2026 23:13 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Adrian Spierling🔸’s comment on: The Most Im­por­tant De­ci­sion For An­i­mals in Amer­i­can His­tory

  *Responding in a personal capacity*
  
  Hi Adrian, thanks for asking! My understanding is that Europeans (who are not US citizens) cannot make 501c4 donations.

  There are 501c3 giving opportunities – for example, earmarking gifts to the Uproot Center within Earth Share – however I’ve heard that these c3 are less cost-effective than c4 opportunities (like the AMPA linked in this post) at causing the desired legislative change.

  I’m not sure about the extent to which c3 opportunities differ from c4 opportunities in cost-effectiveness. However, I’ve heard that c4 donations are recommended for US citizens even though they are not tax-deductible, which suggests the difference in cost-effectiveness could be at least 30%.
  
  I’ll also note that the EA Animal Welfare Fund (a 501c3) still represents a very strong donation option to help animals in my view. I’m not confident in which of the Uproot Center or EA AWF is more cost-effective at the current moment, but I am confident that the EA Animal Welfare Fund is incredibly cost-effective.
  

• Sam Anschell 3 Jun 2026 18:09 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Learn­ings from a ‘viral’ Linkedin post: What AI Safety means to tal­ent out­side the ecosys­tem

  This is awesome! There are a number of factors that make sharing AI safety career opportunities feel particularly valuable to me right now:

  • AI safety roles are more abundant and lucrative now than ever before.

  • Salience of AI risks are higher now than ever before.

  • Concreteness of what people can be doing to help feels higher now than ever before (see the latest Holden Karnofsky 80k episode)

  I think Jen’s approach is very impactful (and creative/​cool!) For anyone reading this post: I think that reaching out directly to CS/​ML people in your life (e.g, SWEs who have been laid off or are fearing layoffs) to make this case and share career infrastructure resources (80k, Bluedot, High Impact Professionals, ARENA, AI Safety Map etc) represents an enormously high-leverage opportunity for impact

Ste­ward­ship in EA’s Most Im­por­tant Era

• Sam Anschell 18 May 2026 23:25 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: sawyer🔸’s comment on: Prepar­ing for a Flush Fu­ture: Work, Giv­ing, and Conduct

  Sure thing, Sawyer:
  
  This comment on a 2022 EA Forum post referenced that Anthropic’s job board listed “Optional equity donation matching at a 3:1 ratio, up to 50% of your equity grant” at the time.
  
  This “Longterm Wiki” article suggests that the pledge rate was 3:1 for up to half an employee’s equity from 2021-2024, and reduced to 1:1 for up to 25% of an employee’s equity starting in 2025.
  
  My understanding is that Anthropic has maintained this match rate for employees who joined and pledged equity at the time a 3:1 match was offered. I.e, a staff member who joined in 2022 and pledged 50% of their equity at a 3:1 match did not have their employer match reduced when Anthropic changed the match rate for staff who joined after the terms changed.

• Sam Anschell 8 May 2026 17:14 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The EA case for an EA Group House + how to start one (its easy!)

  +1 that a great co-living space can be a huge quality of life improvement! My day-to-day sense of happiness and belonging in SF increased enormously once I moved into a place with friends.

  One other meaningful benefit of coordinating a housing group (at least in California) is that you can freeze your starting rent rate. E.g., a four-bedroom unit in the building I lived in was listing at $6,500/​month in 2022 when friends and I moved in. A group moved in, then vacated last year. The landlord then successfully re-listed the same unit at $9k/​month (a 38% increase). Meanwhile the rent in our unit has only increased by ~2% over the last four years because CA rent protections only allow a landlord to increase rent by a modest, state-set annual cost-of-living/​inflation rate.

  Had that 4-bedroom been able to Theseus’ ship the move-out transition—changing the names on the lease to other friends/​EAs gradually without fully vacating—they would be able to save $28,440 ($7,110 per resident) per year in perpetuity.

• Sam Anschell 6 May 2026 15:23 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: We ran the first West Coast EA Re­treat (a ret­ro­spec­tive)

  Huge props to the organizers of this retreat! Awesome to see this turnout, and the 1:1 scheduling app they created has the potential to add value across a number of future events.

  I asked the authors why they were concerned about the failure mode of with participants commuting to and from the venue each day. They helpfully sent the following:

  I think a lot of the value of these retreats comes from people spending a lot of time together and becoming friends. I’d worry that if participants commuted, they might not engage fully in the retreat (in particular, not hanging out at night, which is great for friendships, bonding, and a sense of belonging in the community).

  I wanted to share this here (with the authors’ permission) in case others had the same question.

• Sam Anschell 30 Apr 2026 17:19 UTC

  17 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: Book Re­view: All the Lives You Can Change

  Echoing praise for JD Bauman: he gave a talk for our university EA club and is an exceptional speaker. Compelling, warm, energizing, and great at fielding all sorts of questions. If any EA groups are looking for guest presenters (including for joint events with faith groups), I cannot recommend JD highly enough!

Cel­e­brat­ing the Dogged Search to Do Good

• Sam Anschell 9 Apr 2026 14:57 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Effec­tive Giv­ing for En­vi­ron­men­tal Causes

  I’m so happy you’re interested in effective climate giving! Here are a few of my favorite resource for learning about environmental/​climate giving opportunities:
  
  Giving Green’s top climate nonprofits and related research, such as Clean Air Task Force.

  Founders Pledge’s writing and recommendations around climate philanthropy.

  Coefficient Giving’s Air Quality and Lead Exposure Action funds and related reports (Air Quality, Lead exposure reduction).

  For a donor starting to explore small gifts to cost-effective climate work, I would recommend the Giving Green Fund.

  Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!