Happy holiday season! Thank you for the contributions that you’ve made to your EA group in 2021. It’s been a year of growth for many groups, with about 5 x more people participating in fellowships than in 2020, and approximately 30 groups professionalising through funding from CEA and the EA Infrastructure Fund. We are hugely grateful for all the work that group organisers put into creating engaging and welcoming spaces for people to discuss effective altruism ideas – your efforts are crucial to the building of a vibrant and active community that can tackle the world’s most pressing problems!

• The new and improved process for groups to easily get flexible funding for future group costs

• Many part-time paid and volunteer opportunities you could share with your members

• Discussion group content from EA Anywhere

• A spotlight on EA UCLA

All the best,

Joan, Rob, Huw, Catherine, Jessica, Kuhan, Alex and Will (Groups team, CEA)

• The EA Funds would love to get more applications for academic scholarships (including undergrads), teaching buy-outs, new EA-relevant startups, travel funding for visits to EA hubs, and anything else that might be impactful. Applying is fast and easy, and public grant reporting is now entirely optional. Apply here.
• Global Challenges Project is offering fast funding for student EA groups.

• CEA's community health team is looking for EA Librarians – a 2-4 hour per week paid role that will help improve newcomers' understanding by answering anonymous questions about EA on the EA Forum. 

• The WikiProject on effective altruism is a new project to improve Wikipedia articles on EA-related topics. They are seeking collaborators! This could be a great opportunity for group members who enjoy writing or who want to work on their writing skills, and is potentially a very impactful thing to do. Sign up here.

• Impact CoLabs aggregates lots of EA volunteering opportunities, featuring both new and established projects. Encourage group members interested in volunteering to sign up at Impact CoLabs. 

• 12 week online AI Programs are starting next month, run by EA Cambridge and AI safety experts, with one track on Governance and one on Technical Alignment. More information and application details found here. Applications close soon: December 15. 

• Applications are now open for the GovAI 2022 Summer Fellowship. This allows early-career individuals from a wide range of disciplines to spend three months at the GovAI office in Oxford, working on an AI governance research project, learning about the field, and making connections. More information. Deadline for applying is 1 January.

• The EA Forum is running its first end-of-year review – an event where people review and vote for the pre-2021 posts that seem most valuable to them. The Forum is offering up to 5,000 USD in prizes for reviews of Forum posts, and another 5,000 USD for authors who improve their posts during the review. This could be a nice chance for your group members to try out some public EA writing that may be less nerve-wracking than a full post.

• Phillip Trammel from the Global Priorities Institute is planning a 2-week summer course in economic theory and global prioritisation for economics students.

• Ben West lists a host of EA Communication Project Ideas. 

• The EA Forum has been adding local and online groups to their Community and Events page! If you have a group you’d like to add, please contact Sarah (sarah.cheng@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) with your group name and your forum display name. You can then add your group’s events to the forum (or our contractor will add them for you if you’d prefer).

• EA Anywhere has collated their notes and discussion prompts from their discussion meetups. Many of these meetups involve the group watching a short EA Global video together followed by discussions. This very easy meetup format is great if many of your group members don’t have the time to read articles between meetups. They also have “Scout Mindset” and “Factfulness” book club discussion prompts.

• Personal reflections

  • Since the end of the calendar year is a common time for self-reflection, you and your group members might like to review your year and plan for the next one. Many people have found Alex’s Vermeer’s guide; ‘How to get the most out of next year’ very helpful.

  • Clearer Thinking has two excellent self-reflection tools: Life Changing Questions, a set of questions about yourself that will help you work out personal goals, and the Lifetime Aspirations tool will help you create a life-improvement plan.

• Giving What We Can has created a beautiful Effective Giving Guide 2021. It’s full of practical advice and the latest effective giving recommendations across a wide range of causes. It is suitable for sharing with people who are completely new to EA.

• Ashley Lin explains why we need alternatives to Intro EA Fellowships.

• Gidon Kadosh from EA Israel has been investigating ways to describe and pitch EA. 

• Community Club lists a variety of tools that might liven up your Virtual Festivities over the holiday season.  

• Nuño Sepere and Phillip Trammel published a model of patient spending and movement building.

• Akash from EA UPenn started a discussion about useful content for a workshop for community builders.  

• Michael Aird created a database of over 130 organisations relevant to longtermist/x-risk work.

• Check out many ideas for EA mega-projects in this Forum post.

• The university groups across Boston have started having shared EA dinners, which have been attended by students from Northeastern, Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities, as well as some non-university affiliated EAs.

• EA Austin just finished their very first intro fellowship, which counted 30 fellows, and have been hosting social events about once a week.

• UChicago EA is also just finishing up their intro fellowship, with their biggest cohort yet (32 fellows). 

• EA Finland has launched a new effective donation site. The site is called lahjoittaminen.fi which is Finnish for “donating”. 

• EA Aotearoa New Zealand has upgraded their website, and has launched a summer fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation with $50,000 of counterfactually valid matching funds. This fundraiser is designed to get friends and family of community members to start donating effectively.

• EA Anywhere recently hosted a Lightning Talks event which attendees reportedly found very inspiring! The recording is available here.

• EA Supply Chain and Logistics held a launch event with EA Entrepreneurs featuring Daniel Yu (Sokowatch) discussing the benefits of improving supply chains in Africa, and Yangbo Du (INNOVO) about cost structures in government procurement and infrastructure projects.

• High-Impact Medicine has launched! They are a network of local groups aiming to bring together medical students and doctors to have a wide-reaching positive impact within medicine. They are starting groups in Oxford, Cambridge and London. 

• The University of Pennsylvania’s group was recently revived, with the help of two community builders from other universities. Read their takeaways on their forum post.

• The EA Resource Hub is the main source of online resources.

• Connect with other organisers on the EA Groups Slack.

• For most groups, Catherine Low is your main CEA contact person. Reach out to her with any questions about running your group through the EA Groups’ Slack or by email (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org). We particularly encourage you to reach out if you are having problems in your community or are planning significant outreach or media activities. You can also find a suitable time on Catherine’s Calendly to chat.