CNBC reported on 30/11/22 that the Centre for Effective Altruism had filed a '“serious incident report” tied to “the collapse of FTX”' with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It says reasons for this could include 'the “loss of your charity’s money or assets” or “harm to your charity’s work or reputation”'. Here is more information about serious incident reporting.
I have not seen any comment about this from CEA or anywhere else. Whilst the FTX fallout is serious, I wasn't aware of clear direct implications for CEA, so this seems like new information. Readers of the Forum may be donors to CEA and CEA is still soliciting donations through its website, so I think it's important to get a clear public picture of any problems. Clarifying that there is no problem relevant for the public would also be helpful if that's the case. Does anybody have knowledge about this that they could share?
Given that CEA writ large includes Giving What We Can, EA Funds and the Donor Lottery, this would be a pretty big deal in terms of people's giving this month. If I need to avoid donating through CEA, my life as a donor gets a lot harder.
Given this, and given how many members of the community will be making big charitable donations around this time of year, some clarification from CEA on this front seems pretty valuable.
Right -- and I totally get why organizations are hesitant to share certain information right now.
If CEA is in a precarious situation and/or cannot disclose enough information to reassure donors, it may at least be in a position to demonstrate that EA Funds and the Donor Lottery are either already safe from the claims of CEA's general creditors or will be made safe, at least on a going forward basis by Dec 31.
This is because, in many jurisdictions, certain donations can be restricted by the donor in ways neither the charity nor general creditors can breach. But it's possible for the charity to intend to provide this protection yet screw it up . . . and has happened in at least one non-EA case I can think of.
(all this is summarized from cell phone while out of town...I have some broader thoughts about risk containment in draft form on my home computer)