Will MacAskill has stepped down as trustee of EV UK

By lincolnq @ 2023-09-21T15:41 (+141)

Earlier today, Will MacAskill stepped down from the board of Effective Ventures UK[1], having served as a trustee since its founding more than a decade ago.

Will has been intending to step down for several months and announced his intention to do so earlier this year. Will had initially planned to remain on the board until we brought on additional trustees to replace him. However, given that our trustee recruitment process has taken longer than anticipated, and given also that Will continues to be recused from a significant proportion of board business[2], he felt that it didn’t make sense for him to stay on any longer.

Will announced his resignation today.

As a founding board member of EV UK (then called CEA), Will played a vital role in getting EV and its constituent projects off the ground, including co-founding Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours. We are very grateful to Will for everything he’s contributed to the effective altruism movement to date and look forward to his future positive impact; we wish him the best of luck with his future work.

  1. For context, EV UK hosts and fiscally sponsors several (mostly EA-related) projects, such as CEA, 80,000 Hours and various others (see more here). ↩︎

  2. This is because his recusal affected not just decisions that were directly related to the collapse of FTX, but also many other decisions for which the way EV UK has been affected by the collapse of FTX was important context. ↩︎

Peter Wildeford @ 2023-09-22T15:11 (+79)

I am happy to see that Nick and Will have resigned from the EV Board. I still respect them as individuals but I think this was a really good call for the EV Board, given their conflicts of interests arising from the FTX situation. I am excited to see what happens next with the Board as well as governance for EV as a whole. Thanks to all those who have worked hard on this.

CaroJ @ 2023-09-22T15:28 (+69)

I agree that these decisions are going in the right direction. I think their resignations should have been given earlier given the severity of the conflicts of interest with FTX and the problem of their judgments over the situations.

(I still appreciate Nick and Will as individuals and value immensely their contribution to the fields)

Grumpy Squid @ 2023-09-23T15:36 (+4)

I agree. The governance and decision-making of the EV boards is an important matter that shouldn’t be dismissed because of Will and Nick’s other contributions.

Michelle_Hutchinson @ 2023-09-23T20:49 (+54)

Thanks very much for all your work on EV over the years. Your contribution to my work and to me personally have been significant enough that anything in the way of ‘thanks’ feels kind of trite and inadequate, and hopefully obvious to you. But I still want to mark the change by expressing some of the gratitude I feel for the work you’ve done at EV over the years. 

Amongst other things, in your role stewarding EV you co-founded all three of the orgs I’ve spent my working life at (GWWC, 80k, GPI). In my (wholly unbiased! :-p) opinion, setting those up has been tremendously valuable. You’ve also provided me with much needed coaching, support and advice over the years. 

I’ve really enjoyed feeling that EV was in safe hands, knowing you were on the board. I’m crossing my fingers we get to work together again soon. I very much hope that you feel proud of everything EV has achieved over the last (more than) decade, to match the deep awe I feel when I think about what you guys built.