EA - CEEALAR: 2022 Update by CEEALAR

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: CEEALAR: 2022 Update, published by CEEALAR on December 13, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Tldr: we are still going, currently have lots of space, and have potential for further growth. Please apply if you have EA-related learning or research you want to do that requires support.UpdateIt’s been a while since our last update, but, suffice to say, we are still here! During 2021 we gradually increased our numbers again, from a low of 4 grantees mid-pandemic, to 15 by the end of the year (our full capacity, with no room sharing and 2 staff living on site). We lifted all Covid restrictions in March 2022, and things started to again feel like they were pre-pandemic. However, our building and its contents are old, and in mid-May this year we closed to new grantees for building repairs and maintenance. We reopened bookings again at the end of July, by which time we had once again got down to very low numbers - we are now up and running again and starting to fill up with new grantees, but we still have plenty of spare capacity. Please apply if you are interested in doing EA work at the hotel. We are offering (up to full) subsidies on accommodation and board for those wishing to learn or work on research or charitable projects (in fitting with our charitable objects).See our Grant Making Policy for more details.Along with the ups and downs in numbers, we’ve had ups and downs in other ways. We were delighted to receive our largest grant to date, from the FTX Future Fund, in May ($125k or ~ a year of runway), but this is now bittersweet given recent events. We condemn the actions of SBF and the FTX/Alameda inner circle, and are ashamed of the association. It’s possible the grant will be subject to clawbacks as a result of the commenced bankruptcy proceedings. As with many FTX grantees in the EA Community, we are following and discussing the situation as it unfolds. We intend to follow the consensus that emerges around any voluntary returning of unspent funds.Despite the significant funding, with the ongoing energy crisis, inflation in general, and increased spending on building maintenance and salaries, our costs have risen rapidly, and we were recently down to ~4 months of runway again. Enter the Survival & Flourishing Fund (SFF). We are extremely grateful to have been awarded a grant of $224,000(!) by Jaan Tallinn as per their most recent announcement.In order to attract and retain talent, with the last grant we upped our management salaries to ~the UK median salary (£31,286), plus accommodation and food (worth about £6k).It’s now 4.5 years since we first opened. Since then we have supported ~100 EAs aspiring to do direct work with their career development, and hosted another ~200 visitors from the EA community participating in events, networking and community building. We’ve established an EA community hub in a relatively low cost location. We believe there is plenty of potential demand for it to scale, but we still need to get the word out (which we are doing in part with this blog post).Our impactGrantee workThere are two main aspects to our potential impact: the direct work and career building of our grantees, and the community building and networking we facilitate.We are open to people working on all cause areas of EA, with the caveat that the work we facilitate is desk-based and mostly remote. In practice, this has meant that longtermist topics, especially x-risks, and in particular AI Alignment, have been foremost amongst the work of the grantees we have hosted. But we have also had grantees interested in animal welfare, global health, wellbeing, development and progress, and meta topics related to EA community building.Since our last update, we have had a number of grantees go on to internships, contracts and jobs at the likes of SERI, CHAI, Alvea, Re...