EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

TL;DR: Compassion in World Farming U.S. aims to raise $100,000 by the end of December. These funds will support corporate engagement and campaigns focused on retailers that are falling behind on their cage-free commitments, amplify farmer voices to federal lawmakers in the fight against the dangerous EATS Act, and jump-start initiatives to drive systemic improvements for chickens raised for meat.

• $10,000 could help us build grassroots volunteer initiatives, creating a pipeline for animal welfare leadership through new internships and fellowships.
• $15,000 could support our campaign work and recover costs associated with the recent farmer fly-in which brought more than 200 farmers to Washington, DC to speak out against the EATS/Save Our Bacon Act.
• $20,000 could support organizing costs for cage-free campaigning – including against one of the largest grocery retailers in the U.S. 

Support Compassion in World Farming Today

Compassion in World Farming is the world's oldest organization dedicated to ending the cruel practices that enable industrial animal agriculture. Our storied history includes major victories that banned veal crates in the EU, banned the live export of animals from Great Britain, expanded access to cage-free eggs to an estimated 4.6 million families in the U.S through [...]

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rEy5vnC2qJMjujkmD/compassion-in-world-farming-s-case-for-marginal-funding

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

AMF has had a busy 12 months distributing 25.4 million nets to protect 46 million people.

In 2026 we will be distributing 69 million nets to protect 124 million people.

Our immediate funding gap currently stands at US$462 million and is for distributions in 2027 to 2029. More information here.

There are significant opportunities in front of our team of 15 and our partners to change health outcomes in a fundamnetal way for tens of millions of people.

One of the reasons for the size of the immediate funding gap is the shortfall in funding to major partners including The Global Fund, meaning gaps are significantly higher than all had hoped or expected.

We feel fortunate as an organisation to receive occasional individual donations of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. The occasional US$1 million donation allows us to protect close to a million people. However, our lifeblood is the many tens of thousands of donations we receive that are of US$2, £5, €10, NZD20, CHF30, AUD50 etc that underpin our work. No donation is too small as every US$2 matters and buys a net that protects two people when they sleep at night. All donations [...]

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PLMqeoDHfpksrpXKX/amf-s-immediate-funding-gaps-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

• Amplify is an EA-aligned digital marketing agency that has supported 40+ EA and AI Safety fieldbuilding organisations with subsidised or pro bono marketing.
• We secured over 3000 counterfactual expressions of interest to join EA Intro & AIS programmes, helped multiple groups recruit highly engaged participants, and delivered other cost-effective results such as ~$570 per GWWC pledge and ~$1700 per MARS fellow.
• Marketing remains heavily underinvested across the EA ecosystem, and many groups lack the expertise or budget to run effective outreach. For every $1,000 donated, Amplify can support one additional fieldbuilding organisation with end-to-end campaign setup, guidance, and post-campaign analysis.
• Institutional funders have not prioritised marketing, so we are turning to the community to keep Amplify running. Without additional support, we will have to pause or shut down operations in January.

If you think the world would benefit from more people taking EA and AI Safety ideas seriously, we would deeply appreciate your support.

Who is Amplify?

Amplify is an EA-aligned digital marketing agency supporting Effective Altruist and AI Safety fieldbuilding organisations in attracting talent and building a strong, professional online presence.

What is our track record?

To date, we have provided pro bono or subsidised digital marketing support to more than 40 EA communities, such as EA [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) Summary

(01:27) Who is Amplify?

(01:43) What is our track record?

(02:24) Highlights

(04:08) What success for a local EA community looks like:

(05:22) What does a 1,000 USD donation to Amplify achieve on the margin?

(07:34) What is your budget ?

(07:49) What is Amplify's theory of change?

(08:07) How do you measure impact and cost-effectiveness?

(09:15) Who is on your team?

(14:44) What other organisations are there in the space?

(14:49) GoodImpressions

(15:16) User-friendly

(15:27) FAQ:

(15:30) 1. Why doesn't CEA fund this work?

(16:15) 2. Why don't groups or clients fund this themselves?

(17:20) 3. Why not hire a regular (non-EA) marketing agency?

(18:24) 4. Why not fund the fieldbuilding orgs themselves?

(18:53) 5. Has Amplify tried fundraising from institutional funders?

(21:08) 6. Does Amplify have other planned or pending funding applications?

(22:13) 7. What's the value of having another person join the EA movement? Aren't there very few available roles anyway?

(24:28) 8. What are some ways in which Amplify is trying to improve?

(25:33) 9. What are some mistakes you made?

(27:44) 10. How does Amplify decide who to work with and offer subsidised support to?

(28:27) 11. Even if recruiting highly engaged participants is cost-effective, isn't the total investment per career transition still much higher? After all, the organisations Amplify supports also need to invest in supporting their program participants.

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AKKe9h3fgBRPucgFJ/runway-till-january-amplify-s-funding-ask-to-market-ea-and-2

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) is a new policy advocacy organization, working to improve the lives of wild animals today and build support for wild animal welfare policy. We’re now fundraising for our first year, and the next $60,000 will be matched 1:1 by a generous supporter.

We’ve already started engaging policymakers on wild animal-friendly urban infrastructure (e.g. bird-safe glass). In 2026, we plan to keep engaging on urban infrastructure; start working on additional policy areas like fertility control and pesticide policy; and pursue agenda setting (e.g. publishing a State of Wild Animal Welfare Policy report).

Wild animal welfare is one of the world's most important and neglected issues. Governments routinely make decisions that affect trillions of wild animals without considering their individual wellbeing. We want to change this: CWAW is one of the first organizations in the world dedicated to ensuring policymakers consider the individual welfare of wild animals. Our focus on near term policy will help wild animals now, and also build future support by proving that wild animal welfare is a legitimate and tractable policy concern.

CWAW is co-founded by Richard Parr MBE, a former policy adviser to the UK Prime Minister, and Ben [...]

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Outline:

(02:27) Why support wild animal welfare policy?

(07:37) What we've achieved already

(09:38) What we'll do in 2026

(14:51) How will CWAW use marginal funding?

(15:45) Who we are

(16:17) Endorsements

(18:30) How to help

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uko8rxrcmYB54ZnBH/new-donation-opportunity-the-center-for-wild-animal-welfare

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Overview

Since our founding in 2011, The Center for Election Science (CES) has become the nation's leading organization advancing approval voting through research, education, advocacy, and on-the-ground implementation. To date, we’ve helped cities adopt approval voting, supported legislative champions in multiple states, and built a robust evidence base to improve our elections.

In 2025, CES made major progress toward real-world pilots, legislative breakthroughs, community partnerships, and empirical research that will influence election reform nationally. This year alone, we worked across multiple states, strengthening both bipartisan coalitions and local civic movements. We also expanded our data and legislative capacity, enabling faster response to emerging political windows—several of which appeared in Utah and Maryland.

We will update this post in January 2026 to include final developments from the remainder of 2025.

What is Approval Voting?

Approval voting is a straightforward, voter-friendly method where individuals can select (“approve”) as many candidates as they wish, rather than being restricted to choosing only one. This small shift creates a major improvement in how elections function. Instead of forcing voters to strategize, guess electability, or worry about “wasting” their vote, approval voting allows them to express their full and honest preferences.

Under approval voting, the [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Overview

(01:16) What is Approval Voting?

(03:22) Why This Reform and Why Now?

(04:51) I. Background

(06:44) II. A Year in Review

(06:49) Key Numbers and Reach (2025)

(07:14) Program Distribution

(07:19) By Intervention Type

(08:16) By Geography

(09:10) Highlighted Projects

(09:20) Utah Special Election (Live Approval Voting Implementation)

(10:00) Cumberland & Frederick, Maryland Pilot Pathway

(10:23) SurveyUSA Statewide Voter Study

(10:45) III. Organizational Updates

(10:54) Operations

(11:12) Transparency & Communications

(11:31) Research & Evaluation

(11:59) Funding & Development

(12:18) IV. Future Plans (2026 & Beyond)

(12:23) Pilot Implementation

(12:46) Legislative Momentum

(13:02) Research Expansion

(13:18) Infrastructure & Capacity

(13:36) V. Room for More Funding

(14:30) VI. The Path Forward

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zSPo9WtPKXx2vQhLZ/fixing-the-bottleneck-behind-every-ea-cause-our-broken

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Cameron Meyer Shorb and Cat Kerr recently posted about funding priorities for Wild Animal Initiative in 2026.

I'm the founder of Green Butterfly Games, an educational board game company and I wanted to support their efforts.

So, in an effort to encourage folks to consider donating to wild animal welfare research, Green Butterfly Games is giving away free copies of the deluxe edition of "Primates: An Evolutionary Board Game" to folks who donate $500 or more to Wild Animal Initiative in the month of November.

https://greenbutterflygames.com/blogs/news/special-black-friday-deal-donate-and-save

(scroll down to the 2nd offer in the link above)

The blog post above mentions Wild Animal Initiative explicitly, but I'm actually extending the same offer to all the other organizations working on animal welfare that have posted on EA Forum's 2025 Marginal Funding Week such as:
The Humane League
The Humane League UK
The Humane And Sustainable Food Lab
Arhropoda Foundation
Legal Impact for Chickens
Rethink Priorities
etc.

So, if you donate $500 or more to any of the organizations above in the month of November 2025, you can use the same DONATE500GETFREEGAME coupon code and Green Butterfly Games will send you a free deluxe copy [...]

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HpGdpAiyXTCEy35tS/raising-funds-for-marginal-funding-week-with-board-games

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Big news from Open Philanthropy Coefficient Giving today:

Today, Open Philanthropy is becoming Coefficient Giving. Our mission remains the same, but our new name marks our next chapter as we double down on our longstanding goal of helping more funders increase their impact. We believe philanthropy can be a far more vital force for progress than it is today; too often, great opportunities to help others go unfunded. As Coefficient Giving, our aim is to make it as easy as possible for donors to find and fund them.

(For more on how we chose our new name, what's changing, and what's staying the same in this next chapter, see here.)

The linked essay, from Coefficient CEO Alexander Berger, shares more about the change, our approach to giving, and why we’re focused on growing our work with funders outside of Good Ventures.

I also wanted to highlight some details that might be of particular interest to a Forum audience. If you have other questions, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond!

1. Any changes to your relationship with EA? Nope. While we do lots of work outside traditional EA cause areas, we still see EA as a community [...]

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vkvtu6xbvfkHPhJkC/open-philanthropy-is-now-coefficient-giving

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR

Recently, an argument has circulated claiming that factory farming is net positive because of the effects on soil animals. While I do not personally agree with this argument, I believe nematodes and other soil animals are worth caring about and respect the spirit with which it has been presented. However, I argue that if you truly believe that soil animal welfare is our top priority, arguing in favor of factory farming is not the most efficient way to pursue soil animal welfare, and there are much better, ethically safer levers for change.

Background

If you have browsed the comments under almost any animal welfare related EA Forum post recently, you have likely seen claims that the effect of ending factory farming would actually be net negative because of what I will call The Nematode Argument:

1. Factory farmed animals are outnumbered by springtails and soil nematodes by several orders of magnitude,
2. There is at least a small chance that these animals are sentient to some degree,
3. These animals are slightly more likely than not to live net negative lives, and
4. Ending factory farming would cause more of these animals to come into existence.
5. Thus, the total suffering caused [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) TL;DR

(00:43) Background

(02:08) It's Worth Caring About Nematodes

(03:03) If You Care About Nematodes...

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First published:

November 17th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wdsxaHs6aPu9ypbhn/if-you-care-about-nematodes

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Summary

As part of Marginal Funding Week, I want to share how Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) would use additional resources beyond the support we expect to receive from major funders. We are deeply grateful for the support of everyone who has contributed to the substantial progress we’ve achieved over the years, going from a bold project idea to the creation of a new subfield of research and its implementation. We now have scoped out the technology to produce enough food for humanity even in some of the most extreme scenarios possible, though policy and economic pathways still need to be developed. However we’ve already made tangible progress on implementation through both institutional plans and community-level technology solutions.

Projects that may not happen without your support include: research on surviving a total nuclear war scenario with maximal infrastructure disruption ($80,000), development of contingency plans to protect vital sectors against extreme pandemics ($80,000), policy work to implement our resilience recommendations ($71,000+), and a technology demonstration for maintaining basic survival needs if critical infrastructure collapsed ($30,000).

How ALLFED creates impact

• Centred on one of humanity's greatest vulnerabilities We are one of the very few organisations whose core [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Summary

(01:25) How ALLFED creates impact

(03:20) Why is our work important? Why is donating now particularly impactful?

(07:03) Projects in need of funding

(10:37) More examples

(12:19) Thank you

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mTgAmcbkhEvmWK8Rq/support-allfed-at-a-critical-juncture-for-global-food

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

As part of Marginal funding week, we are releasing our 2025 Evaluation: A retrospective after 5 years and sharing other ongoing projects and those we are currently scoping for the first half of 2026. There is a great deal of overlap between this post and our review, engagement on our evaluation would be most useful on the other post.

1. Overview

Animal Ask is a research organisation that offers consultation and dedicated research to stakeholders in the animal advocacy movement to help those organisations make strategic decisions to bring about the highest possible impact for animals. Animal Ask also offers other custom research, such as written documents to help animal advocacy organisations communicate as effectively as possible with policymakers.

Since being launched in 2020, Animal Ask has completed 57 major research projects around the world, covering all major exploited animal groups (insects, shrimp, fish, chickens, pigs, and ruminants). Early stage indicators of the impact of these projects' work has shown promising signs, but the data is currently inconclusive.

Since its launch in 2020, Animal Ask's team of 3–5 staff members has:

• Completed 57 major research projects, with the majority of this research published on the organization's website [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) 1. Overview

(02:33) 2. Animal Asks theory of change

(05:29) 3. Summary of our 5 Year Review

(11:11) 4. Upcoming projects and Room for more funding

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First published:

November 18th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8o2oFQthizhxBAzgw/marginal-funding-for-strategic-priority-research-for-animal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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