EA Organization Updates: July 2024
By Dane Valerie, JP Addison🔸 @ 2024-07-18T13:41 (+15)
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Some of the opportunities and job listings we feature in this update have (very) pressing deadlines (see the Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator (ARENA) ML bootcamp, EAGxBerkeley 2024, and an opening for an IT Director at Open Philanthropy).
- You can see previous updates on the "EA Organization Updates (monthly series)" topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series.
- These monthly posts originated as the "Updates" section of the monthly EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity.
- (If you’d like to share your updates and jobs via this series, please apply here.)
Opportunities and jobs
Opportunities
Consider also checking opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board and the Opportunities to Take Action tag.
- Founders Pledge is now accepting requests for funding. They are particularly interested in work related to global health and development, global catastrophic risk, climate, and animal welfare.
- Metaculus’s Q3 tournament benchmarking the state of the art in AI forecasting is now live. Create a forecasting bot and enter for the chance to win $30,000.
- The Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator (ARENA) ML bootcamp for engineers interested in boosting their skills to help with AI alignment will run from September 2–October 4. Apply by July 20.
- The next round of AIM’s free, eight-week grantmaking program will run from September 23–November 22. If you’re a funder or grantmaker who gives over $1M annually and would like to build your grantmaking skills (and your network), contact AIM by August 1.
- The newly launched Arthropoda Foundation is seeking funders to support scientific research on insect welfare — work that science funders typically won’t cover.
- The Future of Life is running a contest called Superintelligence Imagined. They will award $50K in prizes for the best educational materials on superintelligence and its associated risks. Apply by August 31.
- EAGxBerkeley 2024 will bring together 500 people interested in solving the world’s biggest problems. It will take place September 7–8. Apply by August 20.
- The Food System Resource Fund released seven RPFs related to the fund’s focus on accelerating the transition away from an animal product-based food system. Apply by September 1.
- The Center for Reducing Suffering is offering a free six-week online fellowship for people interested in reducing s-risks (risks of astronomical suffering). The fellowship will begin on September 2. Apply by July 31.
- Animal Advocacy Careers and Stray Dog Institute are running a survey for people who work at animal advocacy organizations. The survey explores talent gaps in the field and takes approximately 15 minutes. All answers are confidential.
- Astera’s Open Science Fellowship program is for scientists, product designers, and software engineers who wish to advance open science practices. Selected fellows will be employed full-time by Astera and, in addition to a salary, will receive up to $350,000 in support of their projects. Apply by July 25.
Job listings
​​Consider also exploring jobs listed on the Job listing (open) tag. For even more roles, check the 80,000 Hours Job Board and our Who’s Hiring? thread.
Epoch
- Senior Researcher, ML Distributed Systems (Remote, $150K–$180K)
Faunalytics
- Content Manager (Remote in US or Canada), $65K, apply by July 31st)
Founders Pledge
- Philanthropic Services Director (Hybrid, $160K), Advisor (Hybrid in Germany, France, London, UK, £45K–£55K / €52.5K–€64.5K), Research Assistant - Global Catastrophic Risks (Remote in US East Coast, Part-time, $20–30 per hour), Research Assistant - Global Health and Development (Hybrid in London, UK, Part-time, £15–£20 per hour), Growth Lead - EMEA (Hybrid in London, UK, £60K–£70K), Grants & Monitoring Officer (Hybrid in UK, £30K–£35K), Applied/Senior Researcher - Climate (Remote in US, UK, Europe, $95K–$120K / £65K–£85K), Senior Product Manager (Remote in UK, £70K–£80K), Interim Head of People (FTC) (Hybrid in London, UK, £75K–£80K), Research Communicator (Remote in UK, Germany, US, $60K–$80K / GBP £40K–£60K / EUR €40K–€60K)
GiveWell
- Senior Accountant (Remote in US, $114.8K–$126.6K), Manager, Talent Acquisition (Remote in US, $143.2K–$157.9K), Head of Operations (Remote in US, $264.3K–$294.7K), Head of Technology (Remote in US, $173.5K–$191.4K), Head of Fundraising Operations and Analytics (Remote, $166.2K–$183.3K)
Longview
- Development Coordinator (London, UK, £40K–£55K, apply by July 28th)
Open Philanthropy
- Associate Counsel/Counsel (Remote, $190K–$253.2K) and IT Associate (Remote, $112.7K, apply by July 21st)
The Good Food Institute
- Startup Innovation Lead (Remote in US, $91K–$95.5K, apply by August 6th) and Legislative Specialist (States) (Hybrid in Washington DC, $87.9K–$92.3K, apply by July 29th)
Organization updates
The organization updates are in alphabetical order (N-Z, 0-A-M).
New Incentives
In their latest blog post, New Incentives shares what they are doing to reach the 2.3 million unvaccinated children in Nigeria and what the data show so far.
Open Philanthropy
Emily Oehlsen, the managing director of Open Phil’s Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio, appeared on VoxDev’s podcast to discuss Open Phil’s approach to cause prioritization.
Senior Program Officer Jacob Trefethen published two new posts on his blog: 10 U.S. policy ideas for 10 lifesaving technologies, and FDA, ARPA-H, & CDC – policy ideas part 2.
Lewis Bollard, program director of Open Phil’s Farm Animal Welfare team, published a new Substack post about how to get the world to talk about factory farming. You can subscribe to Lewis’s Substack here.
Open Phil published a blog post about the seven philanthropic wins that inspired the organization’s office names.
Their Communications team continued their “Day in the Life” series with a post by Anna Weldon, Open Phil’s director of internal operations.
The Humane League
The Humane League’s Open Wing Alliance (OWA) released the 2024 cage-free fulfillment report — finding that 89% of corporate cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2023 or earlier have been fulfilled worldwide — and launched a global campaign against Kewpie.
Kewpie uses 10% of all eggs produced in Japan to create its signature mayonnaise, and while the company has already made a commitment to source 100% cage-free eggs in certain regions it has yet to do so globally. The OWA’s campaign against Kewpie is a continuation of THL’s focus on multinational companies headquartered in Asia, where around 68% of the world’s egg-laying hens live.
THL also released Battleground, a powerful new documentary that tells the story of Wisconsin residents fighting to protect land, water, people, and animals from the threat of Big Pork.
80,000 Hours
80,000 Hours released blog posts about what the research says about whether your vote matters and their most in-depth research on careers.
On the 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob interviewed Carl Shulman for a two-part episode about the world after AGI:
- Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI (Part 1)
- Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI (Part 2)
Anima International
Anima International marked several big wins for chickens in the UK. Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket (which sells between 100–200 million chickens a year), has committed to reduce maximum stocking density to 30kg per square metre for all own-brand fresh products. This puts their space requirements in line with the European Chicken Commitment. Aldi (which sells over 100 million broilers a year) also made the same commitment. This most likely signals the end of conventional stocking density in the UK, with only one major UK supermarket left to make a stocking density commitment.
These developments come amid a wave of commitments over the past six months from major UK supermarkets to improve space requirements for broiler chickens. The commitments are the result of years of campaigning from groups like Anima International, The Humane League UK, and Compassion in World Farming.
Animal Advocacy Careers
Animal Advocacy Careers and Stray Dog Institute invite those who work at an animal advocacy organisation to participate in a talent survey. The survey will help identify key talent gaps in the movement, enabling better support for organisations like yours and shaping the future of animal advocacy. It takes approximately 15 minutes!
Note: They accept one response per organisation, and everything will be confidential.
Animal Charity Evaluators
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) announced that 10 charities have successfully passed this year’s application phase and are currently undergoing comprehensive evaluation.
Faunalytics
Faunalytics presented their 2024 Community Survey results with both quantitative and qualitative feedback about the use and value of their research, along with details on how advocates’ ideas are being incorporated into their work. Highlights include: 97% of respondents agreed that Faunalytics’ work is high-quality, 96% said they would probably or definitely recommend Faunalytics to others, and 77% said that Faunalytics’ work has improved their own or their organization’s advocacy efforts.
Faunalytics has updated their Global Animal Slaughter Statistics & Charts. In this resource, the organization looks at the number of animals slaughtered globally for food every year, based on data gathered by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The organization is accepting applications for a Content Manager. This high-impact position is responsible for overseeing and maintaining Faunalytics’ Research Library, supporting other team members with developing and editing public-facing content, and working alongside the Content Director to drive the overall vision and execution of Faunalytics’ content plan. Applications are due July 31st.
Fish Welfare Initiative
Some updates from Fish Welfare Initiative:
- They published findings from their recent satellite imagery study, in which they assessed the potential to use satellites to detect water quality fish welfare issues remotely.
- They launched their new feed fortification study.
- They made improvements to their farm program and shared an update on their partnerships program.
Founders Pledge
FP saw news coverage in Reuters of the first US-China nuclear dialogues in five years, which FP funded.
FP also published new research and recommendations on AI, complete with new funding opportunities, a 100-page technical report, and a ten-page summary. The report was authored by Tom Barnes, who has been on secondment to the UK government working on AI issues. In August, Tom will be returning full-time to FP, where he'll lead AI funding opportunity evaluation.
FP senior researcher Christian Ruhl published pieces in Lawfare and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists based on his research on hotlines. He also appeared on the Future of Life Institute podcast.
FP's climate team published their June update featuring detailed updates from eight grantees of the FP Climate Fund and explaining how their grantmaking revolves around systematically reducing climate risk.
Senior researcher Rosie Bettle traveled to Rwanda to participate in a retreat with Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, a group focused on scaling up promising nutrition interventions. Rosie also visited Essential, a Nairobi-based FP grantee using fermentation to produce low-cost, high-quality proteins to prevent and treat malnutrition.
Givewell
GiveWell recently published blog posts covering why it's harder than you might think to combine interventions effectively, how they think about fungibility, and their water portfolio strategy. Also, meet GiveWell Program Officer Erin Crossett in this researcher spotlight.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can has renamed their main pledge "The 🔸10% Pledge" — a voluntary commitment to give at least 10% of your income to organisations that most effectively help others.
Those who pledge will join more than 9,000 people who have done so. Thousands of others have taken a Trial Pledge, where you can give 1% or more for a custom amount of time.
Rutger Bregman, bestselling author of Utopia for Realists and Humankind, also released a video advocating for the 10% Pledge.