Jamie is the Courses Project Lead at the Centre for Effective Altruism, leading a team running online programmes that inspire and empower talented people to explore the best ways that they can help others. These courses and fellowships provide structured guidance, information, and support to help people take tailored next steps that set them up for high impact.
He also spend a few hours a week as a Fund Manager at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund, which aims to increase the impact of projects that use the principles of effective altruism, by increasing their access to talent, capital, and knowledge.
Lastly, Jamie is President of Leaf, an independent nonprofit that supports exceptional teenagers to explore how they can best save lives, help others, or change the course of history. (Most of the hard work is being done by the wonderful Jonah Boucher though!)
Jamie previously worked as a teacher, as a researcher at the think tank Sentience Institute, as co-founder and researcher at Animal Advocacy Careers (which helps people to maximise their positive impact for animals), and as a Program Associate at Macroscopic Ventures (grantmaking focused on s-risks).
I agree with other comments that the 80k article is the place to go.
But I also want to specifically praise and thank the original poster for (1) noticing an important seeming empirical claim being bandied around (2) noticing that the evidence being used seemed insufficient (3) sharing that potentially important discovery.
(For what it's worth, before the 80k article, I also worried that people in the EA community were excessively confident in similar claims.)
Also, even if charities differ significantly on a specific, narrow metric, they may differ less substantially in terms of various indirect and knock on effects (which also matter). See https://reducing-suffering.org/why-charities-dont-differ-astronomically-in-cost-effectiveness/
I don't think our capacity has been as stretched as LTFF. We get fewer applications.
Id guess the median application wait time is around 4 weeks.
It feels somewhat uninformative to share a mean, because sometimes there are substantial delays due to:
I haven't looked these things up though; let me know if you're keen for a more precise answer.
As for applicant questions: likewise, I personally don't get many of these. I answer them when I do, even if sometimes more briefly than I'd like to be able to. I haven't asked Harri his experience though.
(I'm intrigued to see these things described as "the value proposition to funding applicants". I would have seen the value proposition more as like 'funding for EA infrastructure projects, even for small amounts', with these other elements more as secondary parts of the 'experience'. Of course, this still matters though.)
Sounds exciting!
It’s really about exploring what kinds of hurdles might come up in this 80/20 approach — for example, getting a clearer picture of where enough high-quality videos already exist and where important content is still missing. But also more generally: what else might turn out to be more complicated than expected? The other key question is: do people like and actually use the platform?
Makes sense to me. But this one...
And ideally, does it help move people from ambition to action — for example, by inspiring them to donate, explore new career paths, or volunteer their time to help solve the problems discussed?
...seems very hard to notice/track in a pilot. (I'd be very interested if you have ideas how to do this!)
Happy to keep you in the loop on which videos I find or plan to include — I’d really appreciate your thoughts or suggestions at that stage!
Sounds great, thank you! Feel free to DM me on the EA Forum or email jamie.a.harris94 [at] gmail.com
And also: if you’ve created any content yourself that might be a good fit, feel free to share!
I'm afraid it's a bit too bespoke to the exact narrative/experience of the course to be worth sharing more widely. (Usually 2-8 minute videos summarising key concepts or insights and explaining them in the context of a subject-specific course for 15-18 year olds, e.g. this one.)
Sounds very cool! I think video courses is a great idea, since I expect that a lot of people (myself included) at least sometimes find it a lot easier and more fun to watch videos than to read things.
Quite intrigued which videos you intend to use; when I've created EA-relevant online courses in the past, a dearth of high-quality, relevant videos has been a bottleneck. I ended up creating my own content/videos. (There are sometimes things like EA Global talks, but they often aren't sufficiently introductory and broad, e.g. they'll be about a specific intervention, org, or argument rather than about a cause area or topic.)
What uncertainties are you testing with the pilot? Is it mainly about demand/sign ups/views?
This was very cool. Extremely creative! And emotive. 168k views is impressive. Thanks for putting in the work into this in your spare time!
I'd be so curious to know if (m)any people donated to ACE as a result! (You could maybe ask ACE if they had recent donations citing your channel name or 'Youtube video's or some such as how they heard). Also wondering if you got (m)any new Patreon subscribers as a result
Core concepts: Shared identity formation, in-group solidarity, boundary maintenance
Key findings:
Evidence strength: Strong. Multiple longitudinal studies across diverse movements consistently show correlation between identity strength and participation persistence.
Notable research:
Core concepts: Organizational infrastructure, resource acquisition, professional vs. grassroots structures
Key findings:
Evidence strength: Moderate to strong. Comparative organizational studies show clear patterns, though causal mechanisms remain debated.
Notable research:
Core concepts: Diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing; frame resonance; frame alignment
Key findings:
Evidence strength: Moderate. Experimental and observational studies show consistent effects, though context-specific factors introduce variability.
Notable research:
Core concepts: Social ties, movement socialization, biographical constraints
Key findings:
Evidence strength: Very strong. Consistent findings across movements, methodologies, and time periods.
Notable research:
Core concepts: Moral shock, collective emotions, emotional energy, affective commitment
Key findings:
Evidence strength: Strong and growing. Initially understudied, emotional factors now recognized as crucial through both qualitative and quantitative research.
Notable research:
Your colleague's observations align with several empirical findings:
Seems important, thanks for raising! Your first suggestion seems very plausible to me, your second seems somewhat plausible but less likely/important.
My first reaction is that animal advocacy orgs should consider optimising for community building and mobilisation (as an interim goal). My impression (which may be wrong) from my involvement with the movement was roughly that orgs were usually optimising for mobilisation around specific objectives rather than actually trying to set up a long-term community and strong activist base. I expect a simple mindset shift from "my job is to generate progress on our campaigns" to "my job is to grow a community of sustained and dedicated activists" would unlock a bunch of options. E.g. it probably means more things like meetups, reading groups, etc.
Second reaction: I believe there's a rich academic literature on mobilising supporters and sustaining engagement in social movements. So I asked Claude for a summary which I'll post as a reply to this comment. There's some empirical support for your suggestions!
Since you requested responses: I agree with something like: 'conditional upon AI killing us all and then going on to do things that have zero moral (dis)value, it then matters little who was most responsible for that having happened'. But this seems like an odd framing to me:
(Ironically, I suppose the title -- "We don't have evidence that the best charities are over 1000x more cost effective than the average" -- is also an overly confident claim, where a question might have been better, unless the original poster had carried out an exhaustive search for relevant evidence)