I'll embrace the awkwardness of doing this (and this is more than the past month):

1) I printed and distributed about 1050 EA Handbooks to about a dozen different countries.

2) I believe I am the but-for cause of about five new EAs, one of whom is a professional poker player with a significant social media following who has been donating a percentage of her major tournament wins.

3) I donated $195k this calendar year.

I work at GiveWell as a 'regular' employee, and I think there's a good chance that if I didn't work there, we would not have made the commitment we have made to a cause area which I believe is exceptionally high impact. I think I had a substantial influence on the key decision makers in this area, and even if I'm only responsible for a small portion of that grant decision, it seems like a tremendous impact!

This is a great idea, Gleb!

1) I published a blog on the Life You Can Save about the Reach Every Mother and Child Act, a bill many EAs should love. I also coordinated with students in North Carolina to write several letters about the bill, which I'm delivering to Senator Burr's office. A staffer for Burr, who I spoke to over the phone, said he was considering the bill.

2) I became an adviser to Charity Entrepreneurship, helping Joey Savoie and their team pick which intervention they should focus on in India.

3) I used Charity Science gift cards to spread ideas about effective giving to my friends/family, gave a significant amount of money to a ton of great EA organizations, convinced my family to donate to the Humane League, and wrote a year-end giving piece that exposed people who aren't Effective Altruists to the kinds of ideas we think about a lot.

4) Finally, I made personal progress in finishing and submitting all of my grad school apps! :)

I advised a wealthy donor with a complex tax situation on the most tax-efficient ways to give - it's worth looking out for opportunities to do so, as they can be incredibly easy ways to get a few extra % of their donation to effective charities! (Or they could even affect the whole donation, if tax-efficiency affects where they donate.)

EA hasn't been a major personal focus for me, yet, and my achievements are more modest.

I was one of the volunteers at the EA Global Summit in Melbourne. The summit would have gone on fine without me, but the things I helped with seemed to make people happy (and I enjoyed it). Creating positive experiences around EA seems valuable.

I've been posting a bit about the Giving What We Can pledge on Facebook, including in a group that I run (Self-Improvement for Nerds). That has led to some positive comments, including a friend saying that they really liked what I posted and that they want to be more deliberate about their giving this year. So I'm likely to have nudged at least one person in a positive direction.

Bigger plans this year, but I'm encouraged that even small efforts can have an impact. I really appreciated being able to post quality content from the EA community (articles, blog posts and the video showing changes in malaria rates) – I think that made it much more credible.

In 2015:

1) I met up with several EAs in person--once in Chicago and multiple times in NH.

2) I read Doing Good Better and The Life You Can Save and talked about them with friends and non-EAs online.

3) I donated 10% of my 2015 income to the Against Malaria Foundation.

Since starting my one-man IT Consultancy I've been giving 10% of turnover (not profit) to charitable causes, but never really talked about it with others. In the summer I read Doing Good Better, since then I've spent time since then discussing with colleagues, friends, strangers; anyone who will listen.

I've spent the past few months trying to streamline the time I give to different charities, identifying the places I can make the most difference and giving my time to them. One example is 'Blood Biking' - I deliver emergency blood overnight by motorbike. I'm an advanced rider, therefore good at getting places quickly (and safely) and I live near to the blood storage, in some of these cases a big difference can be made by getting the blood to the relevant hospitals quickly.

I'm now preparing our annual giving and it looks like it'll be a bigger pot than before. There will be new charities on the list and we'll be giving more to one of the more neglected causes.

I'm working through some ideas for sharing the EA approach with groups and being more public about the causes the company support.

Haven't done much, but here are a few highlights:

• I gave a talk at Rutgers to an Introduction to Ethics course (50 students) about effective giving (sharing various moral arguments including ones from Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, and Toby Ord).

• Gave 10% of my income to AMF and towards the Giving What We Can operations fundraiser.

• Continuously promoted EA stuff on Facebook through various pages (several GWWC & EA chapters) and personal posts.

Suggestion: Let people talk about any accomplishments, without special emphasis on the month level, or the name of the month.

Some of the moments when people most need to brag is when they need to recover a sense of identity with a self that is more than a month old, that did awesome stuff.

Example: Once upon a time 12 years ago I thought the most good I could do was fixing aging, so I found Aubrey, worked for them for a bit, and won a prize!

A thing I'm proud off is that a few days ago I gave an impromptu speech at Sproul Hall (where free speech started) at Berkeley, about technological improvement and EA, and several people came after to thank me for it.

I weighed up the pros and cons for an EA PR agency.

What do you think?

Effective public relations (PR) agency?

Pros:

• Avoids duplication of effort
• Facilitates relationships between the community and aligned journalists and thought leaders
• Consistent branding
• ?

Cons:

• Systemic risk
• ?