Effective Altruism Forum
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GIVING SEASON 2024
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by Toby Tremlett🔹, Dane Valerie
10 min read 1

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Career choiceOpportunities to take actionEA Organization Updates (monthly series)Announcements and updatesFunding opportunitiesJob listing (open)
Frontpage

If you would like to see EA Organization Updates as soon as they come out, consider subscribing to this tag.

Some of the opportunities and job listings we feature in this update have (very) pressing deadlines (see EAGx Austin, the Existential Risk Laboratory’s Summer Research Fellowship, and roles at 80 000 Hours).

Opportunities and jobs

Opportunities

Consider also checking opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board, and the Opportunities to Take Action tag.

Conferences, seminars, fellowships, and grants with open applications

  • Upcoming EA conferences
    • EA Global: London | (May 31-June 2) | Intercontinental London (the O2) — applications close May 19th
    • EA Global: Boston | (November 1-3) | Hynes Convention Center — applications close October 20th
    • EAGxAustin | (April 13-14) | University of Texas, Austin — applications close March 31st
    • EAGxNordics | (April 26-28) | CPH Conference, Copenhagen — applications close April 7th
    • EAGxUtrecht | (July 5-7) | Jaarbeurs, Utrecht
    • EAGxBerlin | (September 13-15) | Urania, Berlin
  • Applications for ILINA Program’s seminar and fellowship are now open. The seminar will run from mid-June to late August 2024 and the fellowship will take place between early September and late November. The program is designed for undergrads and recent graduates from Africa who are interested in learning and working on questions around animal welfare and global catastrophic risk, especially those posed by AI and developments in the bio space. Applications close on April 12th.
  • The Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab) at the University of Chicago is accepting applications for their 2024 Summer Research Fellowship, a 10-week in-person program providing undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to conduct high-impact research on global catastrophic and existential risks. Fellows will undertake independent or team research projects with mentorship support, participate in workshops and social events, and receive a $7,500 stipend with optional housing and dining plans. Applications are due March 22nd. Promising applicants will be invited for interviews, with decisions expected in early April.
  • On April 30th Scarlet Spark is launching Cohort 2 of People Skills for Animal People (PSAP), a leadership skills program designed for executive leaders at animal welfare organizations. The program aims to enhance participants' ability to save more animals by creating a great workplace for humans, resulting in short-term improvements in leadership skills, employee performance, and productivity, as well as long-term benefits for organizational sustainability and impact. The virtual workshops will be held every other Tuesday at 7pm - 9pm ET. Executive leaders at animal welfare nonprofits are encouraged to apply by March 29th. Visit the website for more information and to apply.
  • Ambitious Impact (Charity Entrepreneurship) has launched its new program: Founding to Give, a pre-incubator program that will help entrepreneurs launch a high-growth company to donate to high-impact charities. AIM offers a 4-week cost-covered program that will help participants find a value-aligned co-founder, identify and test an exceptional business idea, build a strong business pitch, and create a plan for your next steps. They provide two additional months of funding to cover living and office costs. Apply to the program via this joint application form by April 14th. AIM is also still accepting applications for its Incubation Program and Research Program, and apply by April 14th on the same form.
  • Magnify Mentoring is running a pilot mentorship round for people from underrepresented groups! Applications for mentees are open now! You can apply here and learn more here.  On average, mentees and mentors meet once a month for 60-90 minutes with a series of optional prompt questions prepared by our team. Applications will close on the April 5th.

Opportunities to take action

  • Astral Codex Ten (ACX) has launched ACX Grants 2024, a program that funds charitable and scientific projects. This year, some applicants received direct grants, while others were given the option to participate in an impact market. In this market, investors can purchase "impact certificates" to fund projects, with the potential to receive a share of prize money awarded by philanthropic funders. These funders, including ACX Grants 2025, the Long-Term Future Fund, the EA Infrastructure Fund, and the Survival and Flourishing Fund, will review the projects after a year to determine which ones have had the highest impact. Investing in impact certificates offers advantages such as better feedback, improved modeling of grant-makers, and the potential to earn charitable funds to donate to impactful causes. Interested in investing, donating directly, or discussing? Email saul@manifund.org or book a call.
  • Emma Cameron, an ultramarathon runner, is running the 200-mile Tahoe 200 from June 14-18 to fundraise for New Incentives. Her goal is to raise $10,036 to support 650 children in New Incentives’ vaccination program. Emma invites everyone to support her fundraising efforts by donating and sharing her PledgeIt page.

Job listings

​​Consider also exploring jobs listed on the Job listing (open) tag. For even more roles, check the 80,000 Hours Job Board and our Who’s Hiring? thread.

80,000 Hours

Ambitious Impact

Anthropic

Center for AI Risk Management & Alignment

Family Empowerment Media

Founders Pledge

GiveWell

FAR AI

Insect Institute

Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)

Magnify Mentoring

METR (formerly ARC Evals)

Organization Updates

The organisation updates are in alphabetical order (F-Z, 0-A-E).

Faunalytics

Faunalytics published a research paper that investigates how research is used by farmed animal advocacy organizations. The report illuminates advocates’ research needs — such as more accessible material, summaries, and reports on how to effect change — and provides key findings and recommendations for advocates, researchers, and funders.

The organization also updated their research library with articles on a variety of animal advocacy topics including whether cultured meat will be widely available by 2050, the language of speciesism, and using choice architecture to drive vegan food sales.

Fish Welfare Initiative

Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) recently launched a new study designed to assess whether assessments made from satellite imagery are sufficiently accurate to predict fish farm water quality. If the study resolves positively, it could significantly improve the cost effectiveness and scalability of FWI’s farmer program in India.

They also completed a literature review of Chinese papers with topics relating to fish welfare.

GiveWell

GiveWell recently recommended a $1.4 million grant to Malaria Consortium to deliver vitamin A supplementation (VAS) alongside seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) campaigns in two states in Nigeria. GiveWell expects that Malaria Consortium will be able to deliver VAS at a low cost by leveraging its existing SMC platform, thus increasing the number of children receiving VAS and, in turn, averting a higher number of child deaths.

GiveWell also made a $3.3 million grant to Suvita, an organization that aims to increase childhood vaccination rates in India through SMS text message reminders and immunization ambassadors who share vaccine information in local communities. GiveWell thinks these low-cost activities could lead to a small but meaningful increase in vaccination rates, which in turn will mean fewer children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases.

GiveWell also recently published the grant page for a $9.2 million grant to Evidence Action to provide technical assistance to the Indian government in distributing iron and folic acid supplements to children in five states. IFA supplementation seems to be effective at reducing iron deficiency and anemia; GiveWell estimates that receiving IFA supplementation reduces iron deficiency by about 70%.

Magnify Mentoring

Magnify Mentoring is hiring a Project Manager who will primarily focus on building a productive and fun Magnify Mentoring community and identifying opportunities to support their members in their professional and personal journeys. Please apply by the 5th April. Find out more here.  

Lead Exposure Elimination Project

LEEP recently published their 2023 Annual Review. The Review summarises LEEP’s work in 2023 and sets forth their goals for the year ahead. Read the full review.

METR (formerly ARC Evals)

METR recently published their 2023 Year in Review post.

Currently, they are looking for diverse hard tasks for LLM agents.

  • They are offering bounties for task ideas, specifications, and implementations, paying out at $20, $200, and ~$2,000-10,000 respectively, and are interested in exploring full-time roles with individuals who submit particularly impressive tasks.
  • They are also looking for past exams/coursework from STEM and STEM-related classes.
    • Requirements: straightforward to grade (i.e. comes with a rubric or autograder; OK if requires a human to grade) and solutions cannot be found online (i.e. does not make it into training data). Note: Ask professors for permission before sharing.
    • Feel free to adapt these into implemented tasks or submit the original exams/coursework as task ideas/specs. Bounties will depend on how well the tasks fit the desiderata.

One for the World

One for the World is seeking their next Executive Director. The role offers an opportunity to lead a fast-growing organization, raising money for the world’s most cost-effective nonprofit organizations.

They aim to find an ambitious leader with a track record of high-level execution and a clear vision and strategic plan for both expanding One for the World's influence and quickly multiplying money moved to their nonprofit partners.

They also seek a leader who can galvanize their team, manage and deepen their relationship with donors, effectively fundraise in corporate environments, and have a strong personal commitment to addressing global poverty. Exceptional public speaking skills are a plus.

Salary: US$110k-$150k per annum, plus a 0-20% performance-related bonus each year.

Location: Strong preference for someone based in the mainland US, ideally on the Northeast/Acela corridor.

Access the application pack and application form for the role and email jobs@1fortheworld.org with any questions about the role or to recommend a candidate.

Open Philanthropy

Open Philanthropy announced a new grantmaking focus area: Forecasting. Led by Benjamin Tereick, the Forecasting team's main goal is to help realize the promise of forecasting as a way to improve high-stakes decisions.

Open Philanthropy also shared a list of social science research questions that the organization would like to see investigated more fully and announced new additions to their leadership team.

Rethink Priorities (RP)

Following their work on yellow mealworms and black soldier flies, the research team published a report on improving cricket welfare. The paper reviews the major welfare concerns on cricket farms, arising from disease, stocking density, lighting, feed, and more. See a brief summary with recommendations here.

The Insect Institute—which is fiscally sponsored by Rethink Priorities—is hiring a Program Coordinator/Officer.

The Humane League

The Humane League (THL) released Common Enemy, a new documentary that tells the story of Oklahomans protesting the animal agriculture industry. The full film is now available to view at commonenemyfilm.com.

THL’s Open Wing Alliance (OWA) published its 2024 Global Travel Report, the latest in a series of investigative reports offering a deep dive into corporate cage-free commitments—and their publicly reported progress. This report ranks global travel and hospitality companies on the status of their transitions to cage-free systems, pushing for greater transparency and accountability across the sector.

And in the US, the cage-free flock has climbed above the 40% mark. This is an increase of more than 25% since THL first started putting concentrated pressure on corporations to end cages back in 2015.

The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save has updated its charity evaluation framework to focus more intensively on the complexities of poverty, utilizing the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, acknowledges that poverty’s impact extends beyond financial scarcity to include health, education and living standards. The guiding framework retains a focus on robust evidence to drive decision-making. As part of their revised framework, they have updated some of their recommended funds and nonprofits.

The Life You Can Save appointed new leadership.  Former Silicon Valley executives, Jessica and Andrea La Mesa, will co-lead The Life You Can Save into its next decade.

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours published a new installment in their anonymous answers series, featuring experts answering this question: What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?

They also released blog posts about the case for taking your technical expertise to the AI policy field and why you might not want to work on nuclear disarmament (and what to work on instead).

On the The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob Wiblin interviewed:

And Luisa Rodriguez interviewed:

Animal Charity Evaluators

Last July, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) awarded $944,921 to their 2022 Recommended Charities through their Recommended Charity Fund. Learn how recipients used their grants to help animals.

Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI)

BERI has published their 2023 Annual Report.

Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI)

GovAI released a report, “Computing Power and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence”, that is a collaboration between nineteen researchers from academia, civil society, and industry. Read a summary.

GovAI also released a summary of a working paper:  “What Increasing Compute Efficiency Means for the Proliferation of Dangerous Capabilities” by Lennart Heim and Konstantin Pilz.

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Patrick Liu1
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Meta question - I volunteer with EA Data Science so this content is useful to me.  How does subscribing to a tag work exactly?  It seems like it just make posts more likely to appear on my frontpage or is there a more reliable way to check for updates?  I could just keep checking the tag or try wrestling with some RSS feed or similar, but I'd like to know if there is a more native way of getting updates.

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