All of Nicole_Ross's Comments + Replies

Thanks to the boards for thinking through this and thinking about how Community Health can do better in the future.

I’m sorry for my mistakes here and the harms my mistakes have caused. In particular, I should have given more support to Julia’s decision-making by getting more details about the case, forming my own inside view and double-checking the actions taken in this case. I think that would likely have caused us to take different actions here and prevented some harms. Our changes, listed in more detail in Chana and Julia’s comments, make a mistake like... (read more)

Thanks for this post! I found it helpful to read.

I think this is totally within scope and I'd personally find it interesting to read!

I wanted to thank you for sharing. I think it can be hard or scary to raise concerns or feedback to a board like this, and I appreciate it.

(I can only speak for EVF US:) 

Since the beginning of all this, we’ve been thinking through board composition questions. In particular, we’ve been discussing what’s needed on the US board and what changes should be made. We’ve also explicitly discussed conflicts of interest and how we should think about that for board composition. 
 

There are a variety of different issues raised in the post and comments, b... (read more)

I'm very sympathetic and would like to figure out how to say more.

I'm also very excited about this. Let me know if I or the community health team can help support this get off the ground!

I'm pre-ordering a copy! And I want to strong +1 that I think the case for pre-ordering the book could be quite high impact.

I was able to read a draft, and I wanted to share that I really liked the intro and first chapter. I really wish I had read those when I was a first year in university. 

I'm excited about this! Thanks for working on it!

Interesting idea!!

If you have additional thoughts/ideas in the space or more detail on this idea, please do reach out! nicole . ross @ centreforeffectivealtruism.org

(I'm the manager of the com health team)

Does anyone know how I could get an audio version of this book?

Positives:

• I feel like I was able to create a role that played to my strengths, and I feel excited about the expected value of my career.
• I care a lot about my work.
• I really like my colleagues.

Negatives:

• It can be stressful. I feel like I'm working on important things, and care a lot about how they go. When things don't go well or there's something time-sensitive and important to get right, it can feel stressful. This might be particularly related to my role (I handle risky situations a lot).
• It can be hard to take my brain off of work. I'm a lot better

I have a lot of "life shit" that has happened (chronic health issues, I'm accident-prone, my mom died). In addition, my role can be inherently stressful sometimes (I do some risk mitigation work). CEA has been amazingly supportive. CEA has helped me figure out a schedule that feels sustainable and part of a thriving life for me. CEA has helped me orient towards my "life shit" in much healthier and constructive ways. I now have an automatic reminder (or "TAP") installed to talk to our people ops person whenever I feel angsty or stressed, or uncomfortable. She's so good at helping me identify what's going on and helping me figure out what to do about it.

What Amy said above! I've also been doing some thinking about how to improve the community's epistemics in a more targeted way. As part of this, I conducted a small test run of a project that I hope will help (the "EA Librarian" project mentioned in Max's link). I've also developed a few other ideas (e.g., a coaching program). Unfortunately, the work here has been pretty limited so far due to capacity constraints. Right now, I'm focusing on trying to hire to add more capacity. I've also been working on my project management skills to try to increase my ability to push things forward in this space.

I love this post. Thanks so much for sharing.

I'm very excited for this!

Thanks so much for writing this! Added a couple to my "to read" list.

Thanks for the links!

I think my professional and social spaces at this time both made this feeling worse (because others felt this too and there was feeding on each other's angst cycle) and enabled me to get out of it/provided a healthy path forward (because others had navigated this before and gave me thoughtful and insightful advice, and also supported me as I made steps in this direction). I also think it's a broader dynamic than my personal professional and social spaces -- I was mostly within EA at this time, but I've seen this dynamic play out in a lot of other "do-gooder" friends from college who were never involved at all with EA.

Thanks! This is an interesting point, and I'll mull on it.

Yay! Hope it helps them

Thanks for the link! I'm adding it to my to listen to list :)

A few rambly reactions/thoughts in response to your message in case they are helpful:

• I wonder if doing some experiments here would be useful. e.g. do you seem to have more impact if you assess your impact/usefulness daily, weekly, monthly, yearly? (or whatever intervals feel worth a test to you) What happens if you experiment with just leaning into your interests (rather than usefulness)? Seems worth trying some things out and then taking time to reflect on how they went. I've benefited a lot fro

[Apologies for the rambly nature of this response]

Thanks Ozzie, I agree with your point here. I don't think this is essential for everyone and I agree it can lead to or be indicative of some weird biased mental move.

A couple of clarifications/mini-rambles on what I mean (but I think what I mean is a much less interesting than a useful discussion about what is helpful to people and what the implications and pros and cons of different views are):

• I agree that the value I can give to others is a lot more in expectation than the value of my life on its own.
• My c

+1. I also think that the chilling effect can extend to people's thoughts, i.e., limiting what people even let themselves think let alone write.

EDIT: The EA Meta Fund and Long-Term Future Fund deadline is now 12 June, as announced elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the identity of the anonymous donor myself, so I can’t speak to their plans for 2020 and beyond.

The most relevant question might be: if EA Grants is going to collapse into EA Funds, what would that mean in terms of funding needs for EA Funds? EA Funds grew something like 30% last year. From 2018-2019, Funds grew by $1.3M (and growth was concentrated in the Meta, Long Term Future, and Animal Welfare Funds, all of which make grants to individuals). If this growth rate remained steady through 2020, we would expect the... (read more)

I feel very uncertain. I wasn’t very involved with funding individuals and that ecosystem before taking on EA Grants, so it’s hard for me to speak to the changes over time.

I decided to mostly not donate this year, and instead save for future donations. Because of my role at CEA and the fact that I might not be doing as much grantmaking in the future (see "Update on CEA's EA Grants Program"), I think it's reasonably likely I'll come across some small grantmaking opportunities that otherwise might not be funded. I want the resources available to be opportunistic. If I don't come across any opportunities this year, I think I should reassess my donation plans.

I also cut down my allocation this year ... (read more)

We are still happy to help with hiring and to consider helping to fund the role if there's enough general funding. We haven't received new info from Greg about whether there is enough general funding that it's worth moving forward hiring, so we're currently on standby.

Thanks for the question! My exact role is still being nailed down, but as an example, I’m likely to work on things related to risk mitigation. E.g. coordinating advice on how to give a talk to foreign government officials. Another consideration that’s related to staff capacity and is an input into this decision, is the importance of narrowing down CEA’s scope to allow more focus for the organization.

I believe this has been fixed, but please let us know if you see any more issues.

Thanks for the comment! I agree. I think that whether this iteration makes sense will depend on what Funds can handle and what it looks like in the future. I do like this general idea of thinking creatively about how to best integrate EA Grants into EA Funds, and would be keen to hear more ideas if you have them.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with most of your points, (though am a bit confused on your first one and would like to understand it better if you’d have the time to elaborate. EA Grants didn’t, when I was involved, have an overlapping funding mandate with CBGs, although I think that the distinction was a bit blurrier in the past). I am keen to work with others in the funding ecosystem so it can adapt in a good, healthy way. If you have more specific thoughts on how to make this happen, would love to hear them here or in a call.

As mentioned in another response, where the freed up resources go is dependent on donors. EA Grants never had (to my knowledge) multi-year commitments. For example, since I've started, it's been ~entirely funded by 1 anonymous donor. On funding, if the Meta Fund sees funding shortages, I hope that they will make that known to donors, so that donors can fund the Meta Fund accordingly. To my knowledge, this has not been the case to date, even though EA Grants has been somewhat limited in its disbursements this year.

Thanks for this thoughtful comment! I agree with many of the points you raise. A few responses/clarifications:

1. On the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem: While I agree with you that EA Grants projected it would disburse more money than it actually did, when I said that "the role of EA Grants in the grantmaking ecosystem was unclear" I primarily meant that there was ambiguity about which type of projects were likely to be accepted for EA Grants, and it was unclear to applicants whether they should apply to Funds or EA Grants. I also thi

Hi all - just a quick note to thank everyone who has commented. I've been out on leave for personal reasons and will respond when I'm back. Apologies for the delay!

This is a bit hard to go into detail without investing a lot of time. On a general level, I think some grants led to people starting projects with good, impactful output on areas EA cares about (including “meta”). This only describes some of the grants, but I think this is appropriate given the hits-based approach of this style of grantmaking. There were also some grants that I think created or deepened some risks without having much positive benefit. This is not specific to the particular grants made, but some of the general types of risks I... (read more)

Thanks for raising this! I agree with this concern, and more broadly think it’s important to do work to mitigate grantmaker biases and make the grantmaking ecosystem more robust. In this particular case I think the trade-offs are too high, the biggest ones being the ability to narrow CEA’s focus (which has historically been too broad) and our staff capacity.

Hey all,

I'm the EA Grants evaluator. We don't usually comment publicly on reasons for not granting to something, but Greg gave us permission and encouragement in this case given the community interest. At this point I'm not excited to fund the EA Hotel's general costs. My concerns are:

- Hotel management generally (including selection of guests/projects)
- Potential for community health issues, and concern about handling of a staffing issue
- Some concern about the handling of past PR situations; I think these were very difficult situation... (read more)

Thanks so much for writing this! This is something I think about in my work, but I'm sure still need to improve on.

Hey Raemon - I run the EA Grants program at CEA. I'd be happy to chat! Email me at nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org if you want to arrange a time.

Hi Khorton,

Apologies! I missed your question. Most of the decisions have been made and funds disbursed, although there are a few decisions and fund disbursals that have been very delayed. This delay has been due to staff changes, an internal audit of our legal processes, and some more complex situations with a few of the applications. I'm in touch with those still waiting.

We have also discovered a number of other issues with the way grants were tracked and funded in 2017 and 2018. I'm working to resolve these issues, and intend to publicly follow... (read more)

This is so sweet and made me really happy to read <3

(x-posting my comment)

Hi Jameson,

I lead the EA Grants program at CEA and anyone should feel free to contact me (nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if they have any questions or if a time sensitive opportunity comes up before the next grant round opens. Please feel very free to reach out!

Also, in case it's helpful: I looked at your other post briefly, and I don't think the topic automatically excludes it from EA Grants.

More generally, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about the types of projects that might be falling through... (read more)

Hi Jon! This is certainly something I've thought about. I think there are lots of pros and cons, and currently I'm leaning towards no until I've had a chance to explore the cons more thoroughly. If we publicly share applications we reject, it's especially important to give a thorough explanation so the applicant, other potential funders, and future applicants can understand our reasoning. These things involve a lot of nuance and complexity, and it would take a lot of time to do it at an adequate level. If you have any more thoughts, feel free to reach out to me directly: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. Thanks for putting thought into this!

Thanks!! :)

Hi Sanjay -- apologies! It looks like we missed your question. We asked applicants if they were comfortable with us sharing their applications with other potential funders and we sometimes pass along promising projects. If you have more questions happy to follow-up via email: nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. If you'd like to be alerted when the next open round is, please fill out the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeM4_1Um3qWI-s-DhE_LsV4YUGoh0KONvv452qeLXIxvsqYaw/viewform.