EA Sweden’s Impact 2023, Plans for 2024, and Current Funding Gap

By Emil Wasteson Wallén 🔸, Kiryl Shantyka, YsalineB @ 2024-03-25T07:26 (+58)

This post draws on insights from EA Sweden’s 2023 Impact Report, which we encourage the interested reader to read in its full length. The purpose of the report, and this post, is to share and reflect on: 

• The current state of the Swedish EA community 
• EA Sweden’s activities, impact and learnings during 2023
• Our plans for 2024 and current funding gap to realize these plans

We believe that this post has the most value for 1) People in the Swedish EA community, 2) Other EA community building groups, 3) Grantmakers and individuals who seek to financially support the development of EA community building.

Introduction to EA Sweden

EA Sweden acts as an umbrella organization for the Swedish EA community, and consists of a 4 people team (3.25 FTEs). We are mostly active in Sweden since we have our comparative advantage here, but act with a global impact in mind, which we do in three main ways: 

1. Building a thriving and inclusive community of epistemically humble people who are ambitious in their altruistic pursuit. We enhance engagement with EA by raising public awareness, ensuring our active presence in spaces where like-minded individuals gather, and organizing events and conferences. Additionally, we maintain a vibrant online presence through our website and Slack workspace, while also providing resources, encouragement, and opportunities for networking.
2. Supporting individuals to realize their full impact potential, mainly through their careers. We do that by providing individual career counseling, in-depth career courses, resources about how one can have an impactful and fulfilling career depending on personal skills and experiences, sharing open high impact opportunities and personal job recommendations as well as supporting people through the job switching process.
3. Supporting promising projects to increase their impact. We do that by providing support with funding applications, fiscal sponsorship and employer of record services, office space alongside other EAs, and strategic and operational support tailored to each project’s or organization’s needs, often crafting a robust theory of change and a structure for goal setting and impact evaluation.

A visual version of our current theory of change (ToC) can be found here. 

State of the Swedish EA community

Below are some of the most noteworthy data points of the current state of the Swedish EA community. Please note that these results might not entirely represent the whole community, since most data points are based on a survey with 73 respondents and these respondents might represent the most committed and involved in the community. 

• The average age of the community is 31.54 and the median age is 30.5
• ~50% of the community has more than 5 years of work experience. 
• AI Safety is the cause area most of our members are interested in, (51%), followed by Global Health & Wellbeing (40%) and Climate Change (36%). 
• 73% strongly believe EA will guide their future career choices.
• Women and non-binary people constitute 38% of the community and engage less than men in EA Sweden’s activities. 
• Women believe to a lesser extent that they can use the ideas of effective altruism to make a significant difference for the world.
• 12% volunteered for an EA organization during the year, and 24% worked on an individual EA-motivated project. 
• 24% of the community donated 10% or more of their income to charity. 

For our reflection on these, and more data points, see the “Our Community” section in the impact report.
 

Our strategy and focus areas 2023 

During 2022, EA Sweden focused on building up robust infrastructure, processes and practices, which created good conditions for scaling up our impact during 2023. On the other hand, the FTX crash had just happened and both the Executive Director and Executive Manager were new in their roles. With this background, along with other insights and learnings from 2022 (see our 2022 impact report), a handful of focus areas were identified: 

• Achieve measurable growth and increased engagement within the Swedish EA community.
• Formulate a clear diversity strategy, with the main goals of engaging more women and non-binary individuals, especially in cause areas where they are extra underrepresented (e.g. AI Safety), and making their experience as good as men’s.
• Make EAGxNordics, one of the events during 2023 with the biggest opportunity for impact, a big success.
• Expand the regional collaboration between Nordic EA groups.
• Scale up the individual career support we provide to people with the will and potential to do a lot of good. 
• Explore how we can support promising projects in the best way.

What we are satisfied with

Below we have listed some of the most noteworthy outcomes from this year’s activities and initiatives, divided into the different focus areas we set out for the year. 

Achieving measurable growth and increased engagement

• The number of formal members in EA Sweden grew from 520 to 642 members during 2023, an increase of 23%. 
• 80% of the community has felt strongly welcome and comfortable at EA Sweden’s events, with another 19% feeling somewhat welcome.
• 44% of the community reported that EA Sweden contributed a lot to their motivation and commitment to do good, 22% to their understanding of pressing problems and 29% to increase their international EA network.
• 17 introduction lectures were hosted, reaching more than 500 unique attendees.
• We were featured in three different newspapers and magazines, together reaching some 600,000-700,000 individuals.
• The Swedish translation of "What We Owe the Future" was successfully launched, thanks to a collaborative effort between former and current EA Sweden staff and the publisher. Together, they engaged in outreach activities and co-hosted a book club, enhancing the book's impact and reach.
• We organized a 3-day conference in connection to our Annual Meeting with more than 100 unique participants from the Swedish EA community, consisting of talks, workshops, networking and social activities. The purpose of the conference was to increase community engagement, give people a deeper understanding of EA and make them take concrete steps in their career plans, as well as presenting and getting input on EA Sweden’s work. The conference received a Likelihood-to-Recommend (LTR) score of 9.1 and on average, 3.9 valuable new connections. 
• A 3-day volunteer-led EA Sweden Summer Retreat with similar goals was hosted for 28 participants. More than the high LTR score of 8.9 and 7 new valuable connections per participant, we are excited to see multiple of the participants reporting they updated their career plans as a result of the retreat. E.g. one person planned to start an AI governance project and another person made a career shift into an EA international organization, partially as a result of attending the retreat, and now using our Employment-on-Record service. 
• 8 inspirational and informative talks were organized, some in collaboration with EA Stockholm or the other Nordic EA groups, e.g. “Can Longtermists Avoid Cluelessness?” by Joe Roussos, “Impactful Policy Careers in the EU” by Jan-Willem van Putten and “Scaling to 4.5 Million Vaccinated Infants” by New Incentives.
• 7 new local and cause-area specific groups were established: 2 EA groups, 4 AI Safety groups and 1 Biosecurity group. 

Development of a diversity strategy 

• A diversity strategy is in place, with the following three main elements:
  • Creating more comfortable spaces for women and non-binary people, to increase the sense of inclusiveness and thereby lowering the barrier to start engaging. To initiate this, we have launched recurring meetups exclusive to women and non-binary individuals, which have received some initial positive feedback.
  • More actively highlighting and featuring the great number of women who are doing impressive and impactful work in our community, aiming to create more role models for other women, making them proud to be part of the community and inspire them and be ambitious in their altruistic pursuits. 
  • Creating speaker guidelines and more strongly emphasizing our Code of Conduct at events and retreats. This is intended to foster a more comfortable atmosphere and encourage more equal participation from members during talks and events.
• Of the people new to the community in 2023, 64% are women and non-binary, suggesting that our efforts have contributed to these initial positive outcomes.

Making EAGxNordics a big success

• The conference, with over 500 attendees. was rated as one of the most successful EAGx conferences in terms of LTR (9.01) and new connections (11.3 on average), where 4.12 were rated as impactful.
• Some self-reported outcomes, from a follow-up survey 4 months after the conference: 
  • “[I] brought funders to the event and introduced them to relevant people. They were very impressed, and I think it made them more likely to donate more to EA causes in the future, including projects led by people I introduced them to.”
  • “Motivational boost I experienced after this event was something I needed. After some negative events in the global community during the fall-winter 2022, I was considering to shift back to a career in the corporate world. As of now, I am still working with an EA-adjacent work in a non-profit and planning to do so.”
  • I got valuable info from a lot of different relevant people about career options I was considering, which made me more interested in policy work long term […] and helped me make a decision about applying for my current position.”
  • “The career workshops helped me prepare for a job search and I’m starting a new job in September”
• In addition, two new local groups in Sweden were founded as a result of EAGxNordics, and multiple people applied for upcoming EAG and EAGx conferences as they had such a positive experience at the conference.
• Thanks to the positive results, the Nordic countries have been given the opportunity to organize an EAGxNordics in 2024 as well, this time in Copenhagen. 

Expansion of the regional collaboration between Nordic EA groups (in addition to EAGxNordics)

• On the initiative of EA Sweden, a joint virtual career course, with updated material adapted to a Nordic context, was launched with 14 participants. Multiple people in the course took significant steps toward increased impact in their career and, given the promising results, another round of the course started in March 2024, with 25 participants, chosen from 40 applicants. 
• The Nordic groups started to host joint virtual events, with rotating responsibilities for organizing. In total, 5 such talks and seminars were organized.
• Finally, like in 2022, EA Sweden organized a 3-day retreat for group organizers based in the Nordics and Baltics. The main objective was to equip the groups with a robust strategy for the year and foster collaborative efforts. A significant highlight of the retreat was the conceptualization and initial networking for the AI Safety Nordics initiative, which has since facilitated AI Safety Fundamentals courses for more than 100 individuals and grown to include more than 50 AIS field builders. Additionally, the retreat led to increased collaboration between groups, and laid the groundwork for the coordination calls for the Swedish groups format and accountability sessions rolled out later in the year. 

Scaling up our individual career support

• The number of formal 1-1 sessions held increased from 52 to 96, with 52 unique individuals and 44 follow up sessions. Of these, at least three people changed jobs to something we deem significantly more impactful, three people were accepted into impactful programs (e.g. SuccessIf), and around 50% of the coachees made significant updates in their career plans, as a result of the counseling.
• The average cost per session was reduced by 52% compared to 2022. 
• We implemented a new process for recommending jobs and program/fellowship opportunities to individuals we believe are extra well-placed to make a significant positive impact. As this recently was implemented, it’s too early to evaluate the impact of the initiative. 

Identifying a model of supporting promising projects

• After intensive research and conducting small experiments, we have identified a seemingly good model for project support, resulting in:
  • 10 funding applications submitted for promising individuals and projects, of which 3 were successful.
  • 3 new people using our Employer of Record services and 2 projects using our fiscal sponsorship services. More have joined at the beginning of 2024.
  • Strategic advice (e.g. theory of change, M&E and goal setting) for ~10 projects, including one new tuberculosis foundation, one Effective Giving initiative, one new Nordic-wide Biosecurity group and one Europe-wide AI Safety initiative.
  • 15 EA-aligned people are using our co-working space at least 2 days a week on average.
     

What we are less satisfied with

Gender diversity

Even if the inflow of women and non-binary individuals was larger than the inflow of men (64%), and their experience at EA Sweden’s events improved compared to 2022, we still see significant gaps between the genders on both metrics (62/38% men/women and non-binary people in the community and 89/62% feeling strongly welcome and comfortable at our events). We think decreasing these gaps would lead to: 

1. A more thriving environment where more people are excited to join and participate in the community.
2. More diverse perspectives in discussions and projects, especially in heavily male dominated cause areas like AI Safety.
3. Reducing the unrealized impact from women and non-binary that chose to not engage.

Our outreach efforts

We believe that more effectively reaching people with the will and potential to do a lot of is one of the current main bottlenecks to scale up our impact, including two complementary approaches: 

1. Broad outreach (e.g. being featured in podcasts and newspapers). This would in the best case lead to both a higher awareness of, and positive attitudes towards, EA among the general public, and make people who feel aligned with EA principles approach the community to engage. 
2. Targeted outreach (e.g. attending fairs for the relevant target group; partnering with institutions and organizations with the relevant group). While this would not significantly affect the general public’s awareness about EA, or significantly grow the EA community in Sweden, this approach could lead to more people with the potential to do a lot of good to take direct and concrete steps to do so. The heavy tail distribution of impact is an argument for this approach. 

This is something we think we should have invested more resources into during 2023.

Plans for 2024 

Considering the progress and rooms for improvement mentioned above, we plan to, in addition to continuously improving our core activities, put extra effort into the following four areas: 

Engaging more women and non-binary individuals 

With a first strategy in place, and some initial positive results, we will keep investing resources in engaging more women and non-binary individuals and making keep improving their experience of the Swedish EA community. As mentioned above, some planned activities are: 

1. Creating more comfortable spaces by hosting meetups exclusive to women and non-binary individuals.
2. Actively highlighting more women who are doing impressive and impactful work. 
3. More strongly emphasizing our Code of Conduct and Speaker Guidelines at events and retreats.

Independently of how significant the results will be, we believe the learnings from these interventions will be valuable for other EA organizations as well. We also plan to keep doing in-depth research of the root causes of the gender imbalance in the community to better understand the problems and update our strategy accordingly. 

Crafting a high-quality outreach strategy

Our current outreach efforts are not based on a thoroughly crafted strategy, which we think is one of the main limiting factors for scaling up our impact. Creating such a strategy – including how to balance broad and targeted outreach, digital versus in-person activities, and mapping potential strategic partnerships – will therefore be a key priority in 2024. 

Scaling up our project support

One of our milestones in 2023 was identifying how we can support promising projects in a valuable and effective way. With a seemingly good model in place, we’d like to scale up this support, including: 

• Reaching more individuals and organizations in need of employing people on record in Sweden.
• Reaching more people and projects in need for fiscal sponsorship.
• Reaching more Stockholm-based EAs working on independent projects or remotely for an international organization who would benefit from working from a central co-working space with other EAs.
• Providing more strategic or operational support to promising projects in the Nordics and Baltics (e.g. theory of change, M&E, risk management and setting up processes, systems and organizational structure). 

Since most of these aspects are limited by the awareness of promising people and projects and their needs – or their awareness of the services we provide – we would greatly appreciate your help by connecting us to people and projects you think could benefit from receiving EA Sweden’s support.

Increasing our altruistic ambitions 

While we are proud of our progress in 2023, we believe we could accomplish (a lot) more by being more ambitious. With a good foundation and infrastructure in place and core activities running well, we are excited to explore projects that are at the end of the heavy-tail impact distribution. That is, projects that could have significantly higher impact than our core activities (at least an order of magnitude), even if the projects have a low chance of succeeding. An example of such a project is Future Academy, which was successfully launched by EA Sweden in 2022. The initiative is now a part of the Impact Academy, co-founded by EA Sweden’s former ED Vilhelm Skoglund. More than increasing EA Sweden’s expected overall impact, exploring other heavy tail projects would also provide valuable learnings for the wider EA community, especially other community building organizations. 

Funding gap 

With our current plans, and after implementing reasonable cost-saving measures, we face a funding gap of €65,000 (685,000 SEK). This gap originates partly from reduced available central funding in the community, and partly from increasingly ambitious plans. 

We believe that we probably can increase our total impact slightly in 2024 (10-20%), even without the additional funding, thanks to a more experienced team and more efficient processes. However, closing the funding gap would allow us to scale up the activities we believe have the most impact (e.g. project and individual career support), significantly improve our strategic foundation (e.g. crafting a superb outreach strategy), and allow us to explore new heavy tail projects. 

If you’re interested in financially contributing to realizing this impact, please reach out to emil@effektivaltruism.org. 

We also want to highlight that we are not the only EA meta organization that is in need of additional funding. For example, the EA Infrastructure Fund, CEA, Giving What We Can, EA Poland, High Impact Medicine or CEEALAR have all expressed similar needs.

Engage with us! 

Finally, our world-view, strategy and activities are ever-evolving, and we appreciate feedback so we can improve and increase our positive impact in the global EA community, and in the world. If you are interested in following EA Sweden’s progress, we invite you to sign up for our newsletter.