Adapted from my Substack, Funding Anthropalypse.

Short version: if you want a share of the coming Anthropic and OpenAI windfall - the $37bn+ that could be in play next year - the way in is to become 'legibly excellent', so the evaluators and donors that frontier lab staff already trust point them to you. The way to blow it is to cold email them. Despite previous attempts to discourage it, this is still happening, and EA needs to do better on this as a community.

Someone in a WhatsApp group recently asked for donation recommendations that they could pass to Anthropic employees. The subsequent exchanges reminded me of the episode in The Last of Us when the infected start pouring out of the ground.

Every person in the chat started sending their own charity/fund/pet project (including me, in fairness) and the questioner was immediately overwhelmed. Disappointingly, many of the suggestions explicitly did not fit the brief from the person asking, and were fairly obvious attempts to crowbar pet projects into scope.

As someone who has thought a lot about the Funding Anthropalypse (hat tip to @Pablo Melchor 🔸 for the name), I want to suggest a better way [...]

---

Outline:

(01:32) Should I cold email people at Anthropic and OpenAI?

(02:37) How can I get noticed by frontier AI lab donors?

(03:34) Demonstrate excellence through trusted evaluators

(04:04) Have a credible plan for scaling

(06:21) How much time do I have to build awareness?

(07:11) What's so bad about emailing them anyway?

(08:49) I'm an AI equity holder and I'm overwhelmed. Who can help me with my philanthropy?

---

First published:

July 16th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bHvamKxyBeWPFoJgn/how-not-to-fundraise-from-anthropic-staff

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This week is a big one for the lead poisoning community. The TED Talk I gave in April about lead poisoning just went live, and it's nearly at 100,000 views. Watch it here:

In the talk, I describe a crisis affecting more than one billion children, the toll it takes on their health and futures, and the main sources of exposure. Most importantly, I share our path to solving it.

This momentum did not evolve by itself. The EA community was among the first to recognize lead poisoning as both important and severely underfunded. That early support, through a GiveWell recommendation and initiatives like Coefficient Giving's LEAF, helped bring this cause to where it is today, and we are grateful.

Now the goal is to make sure everyone else is aware of this crisis too. Lead poisoning has been overlooked for too long, and this TED Talk is the kind of visibility that will help change that.

That's where I would love your help. If you find the talk compelling, please share it with your networks on LinkedIn, Instagram, or wherever you share content.

---

First published:

July 13th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8pHXGAbGHkJWQ8EwS/my-ted-talk-on-ending-childhood-lead-poisoning-is-live

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Apply nowDeadline: August 9, 2026  
Program dates: August 31 – November 9

The Sentient Futures Project Incubator is a 10-week long program for people who want to do high-quality work on some of the most important problems of our time - from AI's impact on animals to artificial sentience to post-AGI transition, and more.

As a mentee, you can:

• Work with an experienced mentor on a concrete & impactful project (think: short-term research fellow)
• Push the frontier of nonhuman welfare through research, field-building, or real-world action
• Join a growing network of like-minded people motivated to improve the wellbeing of future sentient beings

What to expect:

• 5-10 hrs/week of independent project work
• Weekly 30-60 min call with your mentor + light async support
• 10 weeks, fully remote

Apply by August 9 or visit here to learn more.

Feel free to share with anyone who'd be a good fit!

❓ Questions? Reply below or write to us.

---

First published:

July 14th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NrzNhmjRY3eisgLtd/apply-to-the-sentient-futures-fall-2026-project-incubator

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Summary

Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first 198 thousand dollars. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.

The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well and GiveWell made us a grant last year. Now there's an urgent opportunity in front of us: US funding for community TB contact tracing across half of Sindh province in Pakistan ends this month. The provincial government has invited us to expand our work - taking on those 15 districts and expanding to cover all 30 districts of Sindh, up from the 7 we serve today. To do that we're aiming to raise 512 thousand dollars by the end of July, the most urgent slice of a ~1.8 million dollars gap for 2026–2027. By our own modelling, our work is in the ballpark of something that would meet GiveWell's bar - around $5,000 per life saved. But if we want to avoid a gap in coverage on the ground after the US pulls out, we’ll need to [...]

---

Outline:

(00:13) Summary

(01:55) What Spiro does

(03:35) Progress since our launch

(05:14) The next opportunity: all of Sindh

(06:22) We're fundraising for an urgent $512k now

(08:01) Risk and uncertainties

(09:37) How to give

(10:07) The future for Spiro

(10:27) Appendix: More on what we've done since Spiro's launch

---

First published:

July 15th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBoGLwKwMmizeRyZx/spiro-an-update-2-5-years-on-and-a-fundraising-ask-for

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Cross-posting from Substack. It's written for a broad audience not necessarily familiar with effective giving or altruism, so some of it may be a bit introductory for an EA audience. That said, I expect most of the points and examples will be new (and hopefully useful) to many.

Can we do better than traditional philanthropy and impact investing?

Nan Ransohoff argues that AI wealth is about to bring a “third wave” of tens of billions of dollars a year into philanthropy, and that we’ll need many more capital allocators and builders to make sure this money is deployed well.

I agree, but not with her underlying claim that “The real question is whether there are 50 billion dollars worth of initiatives that are compelling to these funders. If not, the dollars won’t get spent.”

The track records of both philanthropy and its sister impact investing show us that it won’t be hard to spend the extra 50 billion dollars: philanthropy in the US grew by $30 billion just last year and impact investing's self-reported assets grew by $100s of billions. What will be hard is to avoid the incentives that usually guide their expansion: catering to donors' individual [...]

---

First published:

July 10th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4AfjuHrKCs9MYC9jk/the-third-wave-of-philanthropy-needs-a-new-marketplace

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The Effective Altruism Opportunities board now lists full-time roles alongside internships, fellowships, and volunteering opportunities. We’re aiming for it to be a curated home for EA opportunities across all cause areas.

If you’re actively looking for a role you might want to check out the board, and if you’re only passively looking you might want to sign up for the newsletter to get a weekly digest of impactful roles.

History

The Effective Altruism Opportunities Board was originally aimed at helping people find internships, volunteering opportunities, and part-time roles to build skills or contribute to impactful work. It was run by students and young professionals for a long time, and has had multiple iterations over the years.

The Online team at CEA took over the board early 2025, and I started giving it focused attention beginning this year. In April we decided to start listing full-time roles.

Why we added full-time roles

After taking over the board I was exploring if the current niche was still what visitors expected and wanted, and whether it was filling a gap. The board's niche was defined back when 80,000 Hours covered full-time roles across cause areas equally (without focusing more strongly on [...]

---

Outline:

(00:45) History

(01:18) Why we added full-time roles

(02:26) Numbers

(03:17) Other improvements

(03:56) We're looking to hire someone to own the board

(04:25) A visual timeline

(05:27) Ways you can help

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

July 13th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2YdPfvQSRLcWwNXCc/the-ea-opportunities-board-now-has-full-time-roles

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This is some very old work I never published in the EA forum; publishing it now because I want to add it to my Estimating value series, mark the end of an era & reference it elsewhere. I don't think I could produce this work today since I've lost the youthful innocence to think it'd be worth the effort given the idosyncrasies of funding institutions. Thanks to SoGive for commissioning this piece a few years ago; you can see the original here.

1. Review of estimation strategies

The following are strategies we might consider using to determine a reasonable cost-effectiveness threshold for philanthropy to reduce existential risk.

1.1. Summary table

StrategyFeasible?Recommended?1. Randomized trialsImpossibleNo2. Shapley valuesEven more impossibleNo3. Natural experimentsUnlikelyNo4. Direct reduction in x-riskWith effortMaybe5. Relative value comparisonYesMaybe6. Estimate intermediate outputsYesYes7. Sanity checks or thresholdsYesYes8. Other funders as a benchmarkYesNot really9. Expert intuitionYesIn moderation10. Impact rubricYesNo

1.2. Discussion of strategies

1.2.1. Ideal yet impracticable

Randomized trials are the gold standard in medicine and global health and development. However, they do have the problem of double-counting or triple-counting impact. Shapley values address that limitation.

However, randomized trials are impossible1 for the case of existential risk2; we can't boot up different possible worlds [...]

---

Outline:

(00:36) 1. Review of estimation strategies

(00:49) 1.1. Summary table

(01:06) 1.2. Discussion of strategies

(01:11) 1.2.1. Ideal yet impracticable

(03:10) 1.2.2. Methods at the sweet spot of feasibility, informativeness, ambitiousness

(06:19) 1.2.3. More common status quo methods

(07:51) 2. Review of past thresholds

(07:56) 2.1. List of past thresholds

(10:23) 2.2. Meaning of these thresholds

(13:24) 3. A few tentative thresholds

(13:42) 3.1. From first principles

(17:46) 3.2. Thresholds based on better specific interventions

(18:35) 3.2.1. Why not the LTFF

(20:28) 3.2.2. Comparison against robust AI safety technical research

(25:07) 3.2.3. Other interesting targets for comparison

(25:37) 3.3. Summary table and links to the models

(25:43) 3.3.1. Summary of meanings

(26:01) 3.3.2. Summary of values

(26:36) 3.4. A note on replicability of estimates

(28:16) Footnotes

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

July 11th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aBAkov3iJNWDWu8qS/thresholds-for-funding-existential-risk-interventions

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.

Cross-posted from Good Structures.

Executive Summary

• Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal, and Y>X of this animal, so Y might be a better target to focus on.”
  • For example, you could imagine someone making a claim like “there are 20 quadrillion ants, so they are a higher priority to work on than Pacific salmon (wild population size: ~500M), even accounting for moral weight and welfare range.”
  • Some arguments for working on farmed over companion, or wild over farmed animals, take this shape – where population size serves as a rough heuristic for prioritization.
• These claims frequently rely on abundance estimates produced by conservation- and evolution-focused scientists, who primarily focus on estimating the“stable adult population,” since reproductively active individuals are what's relevant to evolution and species continuity.
• We show that:
  • Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates the number of animals who will live over a specific period. Using stable adult populations systematically underestimates morally relevant experiences of some small and heavily r-selected animals.
• Given this, we argue that:
  • [...]

---

Outline:

(00:27) Executive Summary

(03:09) Introduction

(07:22) What do abundance estimates actually count?

(09:11) Callaghan et al. 2021 -- Global Bird Abundance

(12:52) Comparing five example groups of animals

(16:44) Implications for impact estimates

(19:11) Takeaways

(21:48) Appendix A: Methodology for animal throughput estimates

(22:37) Common framework

(23:43) Wild pacific salmon

(24:15) Passeriform birds

(24:41) Grasshoppers

(25:08) Ants

(25:37) Aphids (asexual summer phase)

---

First published:

July 12th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YRfcKzTfW34FunjYy/counting-animals-stable-population-size-is-not-equivalent-to

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“How long have you been v*g*n?”

This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It's a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.

But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the space, has a few conversations, realizes they’re surrounded by v**ns, and they have one of two experiences:

a) if they are v**n, they feel like they’ve found their people; or
b) otherwise they immediately feel out of place—maybe they’re stressing: “uh-oh, I’m realizing everyone else here is v**n, I probably need to be very cautious about what I reveal about myself, do I need to hide?”[1] This makes it hard to interact normally and they’re probably on track to silently not returning.

Compare this to a slightly different world where the word never comes up—where you just get what you expected, namely participation in an animal-protection movement which you opted into.

A dogmatic culture

The V-word [...]

---

Outline:

(01:25) A dogmatic culture

(02:18) Diet restrictions have costs, sometimes very high

(03:43) Minimizing and gaslighting

(05:45) There are lots of pro-animal people who eat meat

(08:38) Language can change culture

(09:56) Really? Stop saying the V-word entirely?

(11:23) What to do instead

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

July 12th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fWyFHfZiFKg3GGzNf/let-s-taboo-the-v-word

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Thanks to the work of advocates and donors inside and outside of this movement, the Farm Bill draft released by Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman did not include the dangerous Save Our Bacon Act. This was a huge win towards protecting millions of animals from extreme confinement and other cruel farming practices in the US.

The next step is calling or emailing your Senators, telling them to reject any attempt to slip the amendment into the bill, and oppose any Farm Bill that includes it.

You don't need to be an expert on the topic. Senators put a lot of weight on emails and especially phone calls.

How to call your Senators here (via The Humane League)

How to email your Senators here (via Compassion in World Farming)

---

First published:

July 10th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/42WKK8xwo5rLZyKqG/a-huge-way-you-can-help-pigs-in-5-20-minutes-in-the-us

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.