EA Groups Newsletter March 5, 2019

Effective Altruism Groups Newsletter

March 05, 2019

EA Groups Newsletter - March 2019

Hello!

Here’s the latest quarterly newsletter for EA Group organisers. Share your feedback and content suggestions here.

News & Announcements

  • CEA’s Community Liaison and Boston EA group organiser Julia Wise will be giving an online presentation on ‘handling community problems’ aimed at EA group leaders on March 22nd at 7pm UTC. RSVP to join here. This talk will focus on how to support group members when you notice a problem in your group — for example, a member struggling with mental illness, or bad behaviour by a group member.
  • Applications for EA Global San Francisco (June 21-23rd) are open! From the team at CEA working on EA Global:
  • “We try to accept some applicants from each local group. However, due to space constraints, we likely won’t be able to accept everyone who applies from a given group. This means that sometimes two applicants with similar backgrounds can get different responses to their applications. If there are people from your group who you think are especially promising, please encourage them to apply, and feel free to contact us at hello@eaglobal.org to let us know any extra information that you think would be helpful. We particularly encourage applications from people in demographic groups currently underrepresented in EA.”
  • For the majority of your community members, feel free to point them towards upcoming EAGx events, which are open to everyone (such as EAGx Nordics described below).
  • CEA are also seeking paper submissions from graduate students and early-stage academics for an academic session at EA Global San Francisco. If you are a university group in contact with any EA adjacent faculty please send them this information about how to participate. The extended deadline for this is March 8th.
  • Registrations for EAGx Nordics (April 5-7th) and EAGx Boston (April 27-28th) have opened - spaces are limited, so if you are planning on attending, sign up now!
  • The January 2019 round of Community Building Grants has closed, and all decisions will be made by April 1st. The next open round will take place in summer 2019.

Tools & Resources

  • CEA has updated the Group Funding page to better explain the different kinds of funding available for groups, and the application process.
  • CEA has created a retreat guide (folder, starting point), primarily to help groups who are planning retreats. This is still in beta, and we would appreciate any feedback, which can be given by this form.
  • Julia Wise has put together a folder of community health resources for groups.
  • Aaron Gertler has written an EA forum post about ‘The Meetup Cookbook’, which he calls “almost everything you need to run a meetup, in a box.”
  • Yale EA have shared a guide to running fellowships in a student group context.
  • The Effective Thesis Project, which helps students have a higher impact with their research by directing them towards EA related topics, has asked us to remind you that many students will be choosing a final thesis topic soon.

Community

Group Highlights

  • EA Norway had their annual general assembly with 60 attendees on the second weekend of February, with 3 days of workshops, talks, and official proceedings. They're also co-organising EAGxNordics with EA Sweden.
  • EA Yale just selected their Spring ’19 cohort of 14 fellows. They recently held events with Julia Wise & Spencer Greenberg and hosted a CFAR workshop.
  • EA Spain recently ran an “all-hands event” in which community members had the chance to get up to speed with their group strategy, take on responsibilities, and start new projects.
  • EA Geneva are growing their professional community through themed dinner discussions, are starting a GCR governance group, have launched an applied rationality practice group for their core, are launching a LessWrong group, are starting standard semester activities again, and are conducting dozens of interviews for a research agenda on improving policy-making.
  • EA Exeter have gained regular members and ensured a committee handover for the next academic year, ensuring the stability of the group into the future. They have focused on promoting effective careers and EA concepts.
  • EA Christchurch recently created an EA Donation Swap system, which makes it possible for more donors to get more tax credits by matching donors together who donate to each other’s favourite charity, such that both get full tax benefits. They particularly need more donors from the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Switzerland.
  • EA York have been holding weekly discussions based around 80,000 Hours podcasts and online EA written content (alternating weeks) in local coffee shops. Earlier in term they hosted a Giving Game with Kathryn Mecrow-Flynn from The Life You Can Save, which ended in a draw between AMF and GiveDirectly.
  • EA Cambridge are currently recruiting for their 2019/2020 organising committee. They're trying a new approach by decreasing the size of the committee and increasing the level of commitment it requires, as they shift their model away from that of a student society and towards that of a local organisation. They have set out their reasons for making this change here.
  • EA Oxford recently hosted Dr. Anders Sandberg as a speaker (the video will be uploaded to their Facebook page soon). They are currently focused on running a Fellowship programme with in-depth discussions and 1-1s for highly-promising students. They will have a retreat with close to 50 attendees in early March, and plan to expand some of their activities (e.g. undergrad career coaching) to other EA groups.
  • Effective Altruism Sydney formalised their first official committee, moving from their previous relatively decentralised organising method and developing more ambitious goals for the community's activities in 2019.
  • EA Penryn have launched in the UK. Following an introductory talk, they will soon host a second follow-up event to establish core members and begin hosting regular meetings.
  • EA Plymouth are kicking off, with their first event planned for March 4th.