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It’s almost Giving Season[1]! In this post I’ll lay out our plans, so that you can start thinking about what weeks you’d like to get involved in.
| November 16 - 22 | November 23 - 29 | November 30 - December 6 | December 7 - 13 | December 14 - 20 | December 21-27 | December 28 - EOY |
| Marginal Funding Week | Funding Strategy Week | EA and AI: Debate Week | 'Why I Donate' Week | Donation Celebration |
Throughout Giving Season, alongside these scheduled events, I'll be looking for ways to kick of valuable conversations. That might be via AMAs, or debate posts, or discussion threads. If you have ideas, message me, or comment below.
Dates: November 16–22
What is it? During Marginal Funding Week, a range of EA organisations share their funding gaps, and what they could do with extra funding. The aim is to let donors know what their money could achieve this year. This is perhaps especially useful now, for (relatively) small donors who are wondering if their usual donation targets have funding gaps, as well as for donors with larger wallets looking for large projects to fund.
What can you do? If you run a charity or a fund which would like to post during the week, email us[2] and we'll send you the details. If you don’t have time to write a full post, there will be a thread for posting shorter pitches.
See last year's posts for inspiration.
Dates: November 23–29
What is it? A week to discuss cruxy questions for the EA movement, related to funding, managing our joint resources, and where marginal funding should be spent. More details will come in their own post, but here are some examples of posts I’ll be encouraging:
In general, I'd like this week to create high quality shared knowledge about the funding situation, and highlight key disagreements amongst the community related to resources and how they should be spent.
What can you do? Write something, crosspost something[3], or get a friend to write something. Or, if you have time to do none of those, log on during the week and vote and comment on some posts.
Dates: November 30–December 6
What is it? A week for debating the question “what % of EA resources should go to making AI go well?”[4]
This is a crucial question for many of us right now. It feels like every week I hear from a friend who is pivoting to working on making AI go well. And a lot more funding and talent is likely to be arriving soon. What should we spend it on? Are my friends right, or should they keep working on other effective causes? Is the EA movement, broadly construed, reacting with enough, or too much, urgency to our moment?
During the debate week, we’ll have a banner like this:
Where every logged-in user will be able to vote on the question (not the question in the screenshot), and leave a comment in a discussion thread.
We’ll also be eliciting posts on the topic from all Forum readers. Rethink Priorities, and @brentonmayer of 80,000 Hours, have both committed to sharing their perspectives.
80,000 Hours advisors have also offered their time to answer questions from Forum users about how to consider whether a switch to work helping AI go well is right for you. We'll run an AMA with them during the week.
What can you do? Write a post, and post it during the week. I’ll classify anything that provides some information or an argument that could change an impartial altruist’s mind about the issue as a debate post. You can also take part in the discussion threads, upvote posts, and vote on the banner.
Dates: December 14–20
“During the recent donation discussions, I experienced it as a notable surge in the Forum feeling like a warm, nice place to be. Like a temporary surge in the Forum strongly reflecting the extent to which EA is a community full of caring, dedicated people.”
After this comment from @Amrit Sidhu-Brar 🔸, I couldn’t resist running this week again.
What is it? During ‘Why I Donate’ Week, we share stories about what motivates us to keep donating to impactful charities.
What can you do? Again… write something! Check out last year’s for inspiration.
Dates: December 28–EOY
To round out the year, and Giving Season, we’ll have a banner like this one (but probably a little simpler, see FAQs) where you can place a heart, and comment, when you’ve made your last donation for the year.
For the last three years, we’ve run a Donation Election during Giving Season, where everyone can vote on which charities they’d like a pot of money to go to.
I’ve really enjoyed past Donation Elections, but they don’t line up with my current theory of change for the EA Forum (and also weren’t fantastic at achieving their goals).
My current aim with the Forum is to cause counterfactual conversations which update impartial altruists towards more correct beliefs (and therefore, more impactful actions)[5]. Donation Elections have been slightly disappointing for this — they lead to a lot of engagement, but not much in the way of quality discussions. In contrast, even the most half-baked theme week on the Forum leads to valuable posts and comments.
Donation-wise, we’ve always estimated that Marginal Funding Week drives the majority of the donations in Giving Season, and that the Donation Election merely increases the salience of Marginal Funding Week posts.
If anyone is particularly disappointed that they will not be getting their bad animal drawing this year — get 20+ karma for a post or comment as part of any Giving Season event this year, let me know, and I'll draw you one.
Okay, no one has asked this yet… But Agnes, our designer, is out right now on maternity leave, so Giving Season will likely not be quite as beautiful as it has been in the past.
I'll add to the FAQs as questions are in fact frequently asked. Please ask questions, share ideas, and give feedback, in the comments.
An American marketing term that refers to ~November and December, when most US donations happen. We use it on the Forum as an excuse a reason to run an annual suite of effecting giving related events.
For example, there are good posts on Substack that haven’t been discussed on the Forum. Please ask the author for permission before crossposting the full text (no permission needed for a link-post, where you write your own summary and link out to someone else's blog).
