EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

Written by Sjir Hoeijmakers (CEO) and Lucas Moore (Senior Partnerships Manager), Giving What We Can following the Effective Giving Summit 2026.

The core proposition

GWWC provides three public goods to the effective giving ecosystem, and these are the only ecosystem work we should take on for now:

1. Convening: the EG Summit and Evaluators Forum
2. Information node: the ecosystem annual pulse survey and associated update, money moved (not public) and total number of donors (not public) sheets, ecosystem overview, and evaluators database.
3. Quality control: evaluating evaluators, impact evaluation toolkit.

We are a key coordinator, but not the only one, and don’t aim to be the exclusive provider of these three goods either. We provide them because we are uniquely well-placed to, and we invite others to contribute to these goods alongside us and to build the public goods we are not building.

Why this scope

We considered the full range from substantially expanding our coordination role (up to incubating or spinning out a broader coordinating body), and dropping GWWC's coordination work entirely. We landed deliberately at a mid-point where we feel currently able to create the most value.

Why not less. These three functions provide a lot of value, both for [...]

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Outline:

(00:23) The core proposition

(01:19) Why this scope

(02:53) Why these three specifically

(06:11) What we are explicitly NOT doing

(06:51) Other public goods we'd like to see

(07:58) What would change this conclusion

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First published:

July 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uc39gihvEXB2sBbc6/gwwc-s-effective-giving-ecosystem-strategy-2026-27

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Written by Lucas Moore (Senior Partnerships Manager), Giving What We Can for the Effective Giving Summit 2026. Published with some elements redacted.

This memo provides a high-level overview of the effective giving landscape as of May 2026. It builds on the memo we wrote for last year's summit (later published with some elements redacted) and is based largely on the 2026 EG pulse survey and money moved sheet (not public). Please leave a comment if you'd like us to clarify anything. All figures are in USD.

Background

The effective giving ecosystem is an interdependent network of >70 organisations directing philanthropic resources to where they can do the most good, guided by principles such as cost-effectiveness, cause prioritisation and counterfactual impact. Within the ecosystem, some organisations identify high-impact opportunities (evaluators) and others fundraise for them (fundraisers). Many do both.

Key updates

• Money moved by the ecosystem (not public) grew by ~60% between 2024 and 2025, from ~1.2B to ~2B money moved

  • The bulk of that growth came from Coefficient Giving and GiveWell

    • Coefficient Giving: stable at ~650m since 2022, grew ~50% to ~1b in 2025

    • GiveWell: stable at ~200M since 2021, grew ~100% [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) Background

(01:13) Key updates

(05:46) Overview of the ecosystem

(09:01) How much money is moved to high-impact destinations

(10:59) Donors giving through the ecosystem

(11:24) Where money goes

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T7CKswFYSgjePAwZh/updates-on-the-effective-giving-ecosystem-2026

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Your balls are baked aren’t they, mate”.

He would not have been born

Thanks Lyndon, that describes the situation. Like almost 1 in 10 modern men, my sperm weren’t up to the task - at least not the old fashioned way. So IVF it was - the miracle that now feels almost commonplace.

We landed on the moon and Woodstock changed music forever. But in 1969 a quieter event transformed the world. The first human embryo was fertilised “In vitro”, outside the body. Yet 10 years passed before one was inserted into a womb, and then born. 48 years ago, Louise Joy Brown was the first woman born through IVF. This year about a million babies will be born through IVF.

IVF stands at the frontier of rich-privilege, a norm for the middle class in rich countries. In my home country New Zealand, the government even pays for it! Yet every week I meet women here in Northern Uganda who can’t have kids, and could never afford IVF. Even the human “right” to have a kid can depend on where you are born.

If I was born 25 years ago, or in Uganda, my boy would never have [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) He would not have been born

(01:35) Our Risky Choice

(03:47) He didn't die once - a routine miracle

(05:33) He didn't die twice - Neonatal care

(08:54) I am Grateful

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

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First published:

July 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KMNk8zXLxHQXgN7rK/never-born-then-maybe-died-twice

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The EA Forum does a lot of things. It's a place to talk about EA community issues, share jobs, updates from organisations, ask for support with new projects, meet people etc…

All of this is good, but as we all know, not all good things are equally good.

One of the most impactful things the EA Forum does is enable us to have important conversations that could meaningfully shift the focus of funding and talent in the community. As EA grows, I want the Forum to maintain that function, and, indeed, get even better at it.

There will be a number of interventions in this direction in the near future.

The first is the ‘featured page’, launching today. This is a new homepage for the EA Forum which allows us to highlight the posts we (the EA Forum team and moderators, or, for this experimental period: me) think are likely to be the most impactful.

If this works it will a) reward the authors of particularly valuable posts, who will have more readership and have their writing elevated and b) make it easier for readers to find the very best of the EA Forum, however often they turn up.

[...]

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Outline:

(01:25) How it works

(02:17) What is the featured page for?

(04:30) What goes on the featured page?

(05:26) Defining 'featured'

(05:30) Necessary conditions to be on the featured page

(06:56) What we exclude from the featured page:

(08:22) This is an experiment

(09:02) I would genuinely love your feedback

(09:31) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 28th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nx2wA6u8uS9qRorTD/the-featured-page

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR: We're hiring an Executive Director to lead CEEALAR through its most ambitious phase yet. Beyond running our existing Blackpool hotel, you'll plan and spearhead our expansion into London, including its fundraising and staffing. This is a project that is designed to 10 to 20 times our impact. We need someone who can be both a reliable custodian of what exists and a driving leader of what comes next. Full-time, £40,000-£50,000 (with significantly more contingent on successfully fundraising and expanding into London), UK-based (Skilled Worker visa available), rolling applications until 31st August 2026.

Looking for your next high-impact role?

We are looking for a highly dynamic and strategic individual to lead CEEALAR's growth. There is considerable flexibility for the candidate to shape the role according to their own strengths and preferences. We envisage this being a full-time role. As our current operations are in Blackpool, we expect a short (1-3 month) stint of living and working on-site in Blackpool to get detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the organization. If a grant for a London expansion is approved, we expect the location to shift significantly toward London, including moving to London (with a few days spent in Blackpool [...]

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Outline:

(01:33) What you'll do

(02:55) Person specification

(04:32) Compensation and benefits

(05:15) Application process

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First published:

July 26th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hpBsjQPQehv5vtKi4/job-executive-director-of-ceealar-ea-hotel-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hello Forum friends! I'm posting today to let you know that I recently left CEA to join 80,000 Hours, as a product engineer on the Career Services Team.

This means I'm no longer running the Online Team, the EA Forum, and the moderation team. I've handed the Forum and mod team to @Toby Tremlett🔹, and @Rory Fenton is leading the Online Team on an interim basis.

I sat on this draft for a while. I've been at CEA for almost 5 years and it's been a wild ride — there's a lot I could write about! I didn't want to keep putting it off, so just a warning that this post is a bit disorganized. Feel free to ask me questions if there's anything you'd like to hear more about. :)

A bit about the Forum

It's been a little over a year since my last update post, where I hinted that the CEA Online Team was spending less capacity on the Forum over time and you'd get less updates as a consequence. I estimate that the team is spending a bit over 1.5 FTE on the Forum in 2026, so that trend has continued, and may decrease more [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) A bit about the Forum

(03:37) More on the past 12 months

(03:41) 2025

(06:57) 2026

(08:23) Thank you! 💙

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

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First published:

July 27th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w9S2n6WEpRt6qx3Lf/moving-on-from-the-ea-forum

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR

The 1 billion dollars grant from Coefficient Giving to GiveWell is very exciting and will improve the lives of millions. Is it a change in the equilibrium of funding for implementation organisations within the cost-effectiveness focused global health and development space? I argue that it could be and share some thoughts of what the implications of that may mean.

Disclosure: I am the CEO of Fortify Health, an organisation that has received funding from GiveWell. I also sit on the Governance and Advisory Boards of organisations that have received funding from GiveWell. This article reflects my personal opinions and not those of Fortify Health or other associated organisations. I am not a neutral observer, and much of my optimism below is the optimism of a potential beneficiary. Please discount accordingly.

AI used to structure thoughts and review verbally dictated text

On Thursday, Coefficient Giving announced a $1 billion commitment to GiveWell. I expect it to be a superb grant, funding interventions that are about as cost-effective as anything we know of. It will likely improve, if not save, millions of lives whilst also building the capacity of both GiveWell and recipient organisations for the future.

[...]

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First published:

July 25th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ukmPFndcd8m2Rs8ph/usd1-billion-grant-to-givewell-how-might-this-change-who

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I propose the Long Self-Correction[1] as an alternative name/idea/concept to AI Pause and Long Reflection.

Problem with AI Pause: Pause until when, and for what purpose? Presumably to make AI (that we'll build later) safer, but the deeper problem is that humans aren't safe, and can't safely serve as builders, overseers, or alignment targets for powerful AIs.

Problem with Long Reflection: It seems to imply that the main problem with humans is that we just haven't had enough time to think, that reflection is the main thing we need to do more of, and then we can get on with building powerful AIs or other technologies. Or that if we build aligned AIs that sincerely help us think a lot more, or do the thinking for us, then things will turn out fine.

So I think we need a catchy handle for a related but distinct idea, that humans aren't ready to build AIs or other extremely powerful technologies, because we're currently too flawed, in a variety of ways, and it will take a long process (which may or may not end up succeeding) to fix those flaws.

A summary of the flaws that I have in mind:

1. [...]

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

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First published:

July 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uibtodWFky3TRwere/the-long-self-correction-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

(Please share with your friends in the Netherlands).

On August 5, in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, there's a protest that could help shut down the world's largest insect farm. It's at Teleportboulevard 105 1043 EJ Amsterdam, Netherlands. Read more at this link. There's also a zoom call on Wednesday 29th July at 12:30pm (CEST) with more info. This is a super important protest, so if you’re in the Netherlands, please show up!

This single farm, Protix, raises tens of billions of farmed insects. Shutting down this farm could affect many hundreds of billions of insects in total. The life of a farmed insect is a nightmare: the adults are not fed and left to starve to death; the juveniles are shredded, boiled, or microwaved; they’re overcrowded so that disease spreads rapidly and natural behaviors are thwarted. There aren’t any welfare regulations for insects.

If larger animals were being treated this way, we’d all recognize it as a horror. But the fact that insects are small shouldn’t make much difference to how bad their mistreatment is. So long as they can suffer, we shouldn’t cause extreme suffering to trillions of them for no reason. It is pretty plausible that black [...]

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First published:

July 25th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TyYYGE7TWwWf6TrtG/amsterdam-insect-protest

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Linkpost for my Substack piece, lightly adapted. Disagreement very welcome.

What happened

Coefficient Giving (cG) announced a $1 billion gift to GiveWell on 23rd July. This increases a previous commitment of 175 million dollars for 2026. cG say this could be a one-off surge, but it has implications for other donors either way. Both organisations have lowered their funding thresholds this year (GiveWell from 8x their benchmark to 6x, Coefficient from 2,000x their benchmark to 1,000x). Even if GiveWell hit their aim of grantmaking that will "approach or even exceed $1 billion this year", cG's gift is roughly the size of everything GiveWell expects to grant this year.

They don't specifically mention AI wealth, but I think it's fairly clear what they mean when they say "much of the future funding we're anticipating depends on the valuations of some extremely volatile assets." They also say that a belief in the potential of AI to transform global health affects their decision. In essence, AI wealth and short AI timelines are now setting budgets for bednets, vitamin-A distribution and vaccination incentives. This is the first major example of how the Funding Anthropalypse will reshape EA.

What should donors do - my [...]

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First published:

July 24th, 2026

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sgzmaRgxDFXZgNAsv/coefficient-giving-just-gave-givewell-usd1-billion-where

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.