A Database of EA Organizations & Initiatives

By michel @ 2022-07-22T03:52 (+62)

Summary

I’ve created a new database of EA organizations and initiatives that I host on the recently revamped EA Opportunities page. Here’s the raw Airtable. 

• I think this is the most comprehensive collection of organizations in or closely involved with EA to date. It features orgs explicitly within or adjacent to EA, as well as a non-comprehensive list of other orgs working on global catastrophic risks, even if they have little involvement with EA. As of writing this, there are 276 organizations in this database. Of these, 130 are labeled as “Part of EA community” and the rest are labeled as either “aware of and friendly to EA” or uninvolved.
• I still recommend this database as the most valuable database of organizations doing longtermist/x-risk work given its more comprehensive indicators for how orgs are aiming to reduce x-risk.
• If you see any mistakes in this database, please let us know. You can also submit new organizations.

Some possible use cases

• You’re a student interested in gaining experience in biosecurity, and you want to see if any organizations working on biosecurity have any positions.
• You’re trying to help someone else find a position within a cause area
• You’re thinking of starting a project and curious about what organizations may already be working in your area of interest
• You’re already working on a project, and you’re looking for guiding advice from organizations that may have experience in your area

Improvements to this organization database

I’m not prioritizing making major upgrades to this board, although I will keep it updated with new orgs and remove orgs that become inactive. There are, however, some next steps if someone were to prioritize upgrading this board. 

Adding the columns in Michael Aird’s Database of org relevant to longtermist/x-risk work would be a great start:^[1]

• An indicator of what proportion of an organization’s focus is on a specific cause area
• An indicator for how confident I am that an organization is inactive
• Whether an organization influences funding decisions, policy decisions, career decisions, or does research
• Where an organization is based
• What type of organization it is (e.g. NGO, for-profit, academic institute)

Caveats

• The data in this database was sourced with the help of a virtual assistant. As a result, some of the cause areas may be off
• Distinguishing whether an organization is working in a cause area is not an exact science. Many organizations doing ‘indirect’ work (e.g., 80,000 Hours, Global Challenges Project) are doing this in the hopes of making progress on cause areas like AI Safety & Policy, and there is no clear line between direct and indirect work on a cause area.
• The line between “Part of EA Community” and “friendly to EA community” can be blurry.
• Some people in the organizations labeled as "friendly and aware of EA" may actually be aware of and slightly against EA. 
• Some organizations may be inactive. (I remove organizations I’m confident are inactive, but I included some I wasn’t sure about).
• I probably missed some organizations. Please submit any organization you think should be on this database here.

Related Resources

• List of EA-related organisations (contains things relevant to cause areas other than longtermism/x-risks, but otherwise is less comprehensive/detailed)
• Job board - 80,000 Hours (also fe
• List of EA funding opportunities
• The EA Forum Wiki
• A central directory for open research questions

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Michael Aird for making this collection of orgs relevant to x-risk & longtermist work and for compiling these related resources. And thank you to Jessy Williams and early EA Opportunity board contributors for help with sourcing and entering organizations.

1. ^{^}

   For this reason, I still recommend Michael Aird’s collection over mine if you’re exclusively focused on orgs working on X-risk reduction