AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
Summary
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EA Finland's annual report 2024 offers a rather comprehensive overview of our activities and impact. This post highlights parts of the report that I believe are most interesting for other community builders.
This post has 3 sections:
Reflection (copy-pasted from the end of the report)
Picks from the report (additional facts that help build an understanding of our community)
Briefly about 2025 (a bonus section on how 2025 has been going for EA Finland until May)
Context for the reflection below: EA Finland had 2.4 full-time employees (FTEs) until mid-February 2024. Due to funding cuts, we reduced to 0.6 FTE. Therefore, our overall objective in 2024 was to maintain the level of impact we had in 2023.
1. Reflection
Challenges with resource allocation
During all of 2024, I found it challenging to find a balance between strategy and execution. It was clear from the start that we had to cut our activities, but how? Slowness in strategic decision-making was likely a major contributor to the shortfalls in our results.
I spent more than 100 hours planning projects and applying for funding for projects that were not implemented due to the lack of funding. In retrospect, it was wasted time that could have been spent, e.g., on events. On expectation, I think most applications were reasonable bets given the information I had at the time.
Shortfalls
The primary goals for our core activities were to maintain the same numbers in 2024 as in 2023, despite funding cuts. We fell short of the goal both for intro program graduates (-34%) and career advising sessions (-18%).
The number of volunteer projects fell from 9 to 0.
The number of newsletter subscribers stayed constant.
Wins
EA Finland’s annual retreat had over 30 participants for the first time and received overwhelmingly positive feedback.
The community survey showed that the satisfaction with the EA community increased from an average of 7.1 to 8.0.
We hosted a non-military civil servant for the first time, which boosted AI safety field building in Finland.
While the target numbers for goals were not reached, we shouldn’t forget that our activities still reached and influenced tens of individuals.
Based on case studies from highly engaged EAs in the Finnish EA community, the infrastructure and activities that EA Finland maintains and runs have had a significant positive impact on their careers and actions.
A couple of people decided to make career changes based on discussions in the retreat.
Having spaces where you can meet other EAs, has motivated members to pursue non-traditional impactful careers.
While it is hard to determine the correlation between funding EA Finland and outcomes such as a member landing a high-impact job, the interviews suggest that EA Finland’s activities have made a difference, and I’m confident that the quality and quantity of our activities would be lower without any employees.
2. Picks from the report
Local groups
If interested in a particular group or what the university and local groups do in Finland in general, you can find sections for each group in the report.
Community survey results
The purposes of the survey were to (1) get direct feedback from members, (2) measure the impact of EA Finland and the local groups, and (3) get a temperature check on the community's wellbeing.
(n=41)
Positives that recurred in multiple free-form responses:
Appreciation for the community (5 mentions).
Professionality and/or transparency of the organisation (4)
Events, e.g., “The events are fun, things run smoothly. Retreat was very fun and inspiring” (4)
Intro program (4)
Communications working well (3)
Wishes and improvement suggestions:
Event-related wishes (4)
Better or more public-facing strategy communication (1)
Clearer steps forward [likely to support participants’ engagement] (1)
Demographic data was similar to the previous year:
The majority of respondents live in the capital region
64% are men
58 are in the STEM field (Science, tech, engineering, math)
92% study at university or have a university degree.
Career advising
The total number of career advising sessions by EA Finland was lower in 2024 compared to previous years. The career advising was the first point of contact with EA for 60% of our 33 advisees.
Intro programs
Between 2021 and 2024, 204 people have completed Finnish EA intro programs. Yay! The intro program (aka fellowships) is a 4 to 8-week-long reading group with content similar to the EA Handbook. Out of 33 accepted participants, 27 finished the 5-week course we organised in the fall.
Communications
We published more blog posts on our website altruismi.fi, many in Finnish. That might have been a driver for the increased visits compared to 2023. (+61% unique visitors. Total 10,400. But the vast majority exit our website after visiting just one page, so that could be worked on.)
Generally, we didn't make any major changes in our communications, but continued with occasional social media posts, monthly newsletters and maintaining Telegram chats. (We have 389 members in the main chat.)
Finances
You can find an overview of funding received and expenses per category at the end of the report.
As I'm writing this, we're already 40% through 2025, so I thought it would make sense to share something about how the ongoing year is going.
EA Finland received continued general funding for February-August from the EA infrastructure fund.
It first seemed like the career advising project in late 2024 paid off, as we had 13 career advising calls in February alone, but in the past months, it has levelled off, and we are now on the same trajectory as in 2024 for the total number of calls.
We tried weekend-long crash courses in the spring instead of the multi-week intro program, primarily to see if it's more scalable. (Forum post to be published.)
Small local groups have gotten a new push, which is a joy to see. I'm curious to see how that plays out.
We'll start a project improving the marketing and outreach of EA Finland, and contract a local marketing agency to work with us on that. As it's in its very beginning, I don't have much to say yet about it.
We are organising our annual retreat again in August, hoping to once again get a new record in participants and create a high-impact event for our members.
I'm stepping down from leading EA Finland in August, and I'm excited to share that @Xylix Pelttari will take over as the next executive director.
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PS. Here's a list of past Forum posts related to EA Finland in chronological-ish order.