Announcing the 2025 Effective Altruism Donor Lottery: A Monumental Opportunity

By Milan Griffes @ 2025-04-01T17:49 (+13)

Esteemed Effective Altruists! 

In our relentless quest to optimize impact, the Effective Altruism Donation Lottery Commission is thrilled to unveil the 2025 Effective Altruism Donor Lottery. 

This year's iteration of the lottery introduces a novel twist – the privilege to allocate a substantial funding pool, coupled with the honor of enshrining an EA luminary in marble on the grounds of the Lighthaven Campus in Berkeley, California. 

 

Donor lottery parameters

Allocation of funds. The winner of the lottery will direct the entirety of the donation pool to a charity of their choice, excepting an earmarked allocation that will be set aside to fund the creation and installation of a marble bust celebrating a distinguished EA thinker and/or doer, in the beautiful halls of Lighthaven.​[1]

Commemorative bust. The winner of the lottery will select the honoree to be sculpted from the following list of pre-vetted candidate luminaries:​

The sculptors. The bespoke commemorative EA 2025 donor lottery sculpture will be meticulously crafted by the artisans of Monumental Labs, a dynamic American startup renowned for its merging of robotic precision and traditional craftsmanship as it works to revive the ancient art of stonemasonry and make America beautiful again. 

Installation venue. The bespoke commemorative EA 2025 donor lottery bust will grace one of the common spaces of Berkeley’s beautiful Lighthaven Campus – a Bay Area community hub dedicated to hosting events & programming aimed at enhancing humanity's longterm trajectory. 

Financial infrastructure. After a careful survey of the available service providers, the Effective Altruism Donation Lottery Commission selected PayPal’s “friends-and-family” service and Alphabet’s Google Workspace software suite to administer the back office of this year’s lottery.

 

Participating in the 2025 lottery 

Tickets to the 2025 EA donor lottery are priced at $100. 

Entering the lottery is easy! Simply remit the amount of money equivalent to the number of tickets you would like to buy to the Commission’s Official PayPal address and we will take care of the rest.[2]

We invite you to participate in this unparalleled opportunity to shape the future of effective giving while simultaneously immortalizing one of the pioneers who have propelled our movement forward over the years! 

Sincerely, 

 

Milan Griffes on behalf of the Effective Altruism Donation Lottery Commission 
 

  1. ^

    The size of this allocation will be determined in consultation with Monumental Labs, Lighthaven, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and other industry & subject-matter experts. 

  2. ^

    Tickets to the 2025 Donor Lottery can be purchased on a rolling basis. The lottery winner will be announced sometime before March 31st, 2026 and installation of the commemorative sculpture will proceed posthaste.