What problem is the Centre for Effective Altruism working on?

CEA is working towards bridging the growing gap between the scale of the world’s most pressing problems and the scale of the resources effectively deployed to solve them.

Effective altruism (EA) encourages people to combine compassion and care with evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help others. We believe that the core principles of EA are the best tools anyone has ever found to answer the questions, “How do I do the most good with my time?” and

“How do I do the most good with my money?”, and that many more people should be using them to improve the lives of others.

Our work promotes these principles and provides people with the information and support required to take actions which increase the impact of their careers and donations.

What does the Centre for Effective Altruism do?

CEA stewards the movement putting EA principles into practice by:

Running EA Funds, a platform for moving money to particularly cost-effective and altruistically impactful projects via fundraising and grantmaking.
Running EA Global and supporting EAGx conferences, which bring together thousands of people to share ideas and collaborate on pressing global issues.
Providing funding, advice, and resources for local effective altruism groups worldwide.
Maintaining and moderating the Effective Altruism Forum, an online hub for discussion, coordination, and knowledge sharing.
Publishing the Effective Altruism Newsletter, reaching tens of thousands of subscribers.
Running effectivealtruism.org, a central collection of resources for learning and engagement.
Offering online courses that introduce people to effective altruism principles and concepts.
Offering community health support, helping community members navigate challenges and contribute sustainably.
Educating the public and media about EA through a Communications team that develops content, provides strategic communications advice, and manages responses to public relations challenges.

Based on survey data, CEA believes that this helps people find an effective way to contribute that is a good fit for their skills and inclinations.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of CEA?^1.

The impact-focused evaluator Longview has made grants to CEA based on their assessment that CEA is highly cost-effective. CEA has also received significant grants from Open Philanthropy.

(Note that Longview and CEA used to be part of the same umbrella organisation, Effective Ventures, as did we.)

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.