Yes, I think any increase in marcomm efforts should be spent on external-facing stuff; not spin, just constantly explaining what we're about so there isn't a comms vacuum and people first hear about EA from EA-aligned orgs, rather than people who dislike EA-aligned orgs. 

80k and others have been excellent at this for years. GWWC seem to be getting much better at it. EA Australia as well. 

For comparison, 80k has spent around $2–3M a year on marketing since 2022 (roughly 11–16% of its budget), and GWWC around $300k (roughly 13%), with plans to scale to millions. Both figures are from their recent job ads.

On hiring, from what I've heard from speaking to some people at CEA, the difficulty has been finding people who are good at comms and who fully understand EA. Honestly, this feels like letting perfection get in the way of good enough. But I can of course sympathise, hiring is hard, comms is hard, and a mess-up here has big implications. 

Not sure if it's yet the worst in its history but I agree this is serious. 

Based on publicly available info, CEA's marcomms spend in 2025 was about 4% of its total, so roughly $0.8–0.9M. That's about the same in absolute terms as its Communications budget in 2023 ($0.89M). The share has gone up mainly because the rest of the budget shrank. (The two teams may not be scoped identically, so treat this as approximate.)

My 2 cents: I think marcomms should be closer to 10% of spend, maybe 15%. On current numbers that's roughly $2–3M.

I'd take most of it from events. Events were about half of CEA's budget in 2023, the last year with a public breakdown, and they're largely internal-facing. EA is pretty well coordinated as a community. Our comms are not good. I think we could spend a bit less on coordination and a lot more on being understood.

CEA says the constraint is hiring, not money. That may well be true. But EAN brought in comms capacity and got results we're happy with, on a central budget of under €200k. So I'd like to understand more about what's making this hard at CEA's end, and whether there are routes around it, e.g. agencies, contractors, or funding comms capacity in national groups. Asked in the nicest possible way.

Thanks for the work you're doing Fran! 

I guess 'significant partisan gap' is too vague a phrasing. However, I think it's fair to say there is much more of a gap than there was.

Post Coxon-resignation, polls on the American general public suggest (1) more Americans than ever are prioritising AI harms and (2) there's an emerging partisan gap in concern about AI, though a gap is not new among 'very concerned' Americans. 

On (1), compared to the same survey two weeks BC (Before Coxon), there was a significant jump in the number of Americans saying “AI harms” should be a top priority for government: AI harms as a top priority increased from 36% to 43% (+7 points). Overall, 80% of Americans now say “AI harms” should be a priority for the government. 

On (2), for the first time since June, there’s a significant partisan gap in concern about AI, with 80% of Democrats saying they’re concerned and 63% of Republicans. The gap is driven largely by Democrats becoming more concerned, while Republicans' concern remains high (63%) and relatively unchanged.

Thanks!

Could you extend this back in time to pre-FTX? November 2022 and beyond? A lot of EA engagement metrics started declining around then. If the forum is the same, my guess would be this is due to a broader trend, rather than anything specific to do with the forum.  

Yes, partly. I want it visible that I think this is bad. A community with no formal membership has very little else. There's no board that can sanction Manifund and no membership to revoke, so what people say in public, under their own names, is close to the whole enforcement mechanism for community norms.

I certainly hope I could be convinced this is fine/none of my business! 

For example, if the media covers this and don't draw connections with EA, that would update me towards 'none of my business' (right now I think there is a reasonably strong connection, but if informed outside observers disagree with me on this I'd become less certain). Or if someone could present me with case studies of individuals who were convicted of fraud and then went on to have successful finance-y careers without further misconduct, that would update me towards 'this is fine'.  

I'm co-director of Effective Altruism Netherlands, writing in a personal capacity. I think this decision is clearly wrong.

Hiring someone with a recent fraud conviction into a finance role at a grantmaking organisation is what ordinary safeguards exist to prevent. Justifying the bypassing of ordinary safeguards because the people involved are smart and well-intentioned is a fair summary of how FTX happened.

I think if she really was overcompensating she wouldn't go for this role because a) the ethics of hiring her are clearly contestable (check out the number of comments on this post) and b) Manifund has made contestable decisions in the recent past.