CEA builds and supports the global effective altruism community through conferences, online platforms, local group support, grantmaking, and community health programs, helping people use evidence and reason to address the world's most pressing problems.
CEA builds and supports the global effective altruism community through conferences, online platforms, local group support, grantmaking, and community health programs, helping people use evidence and reason to address the world's most pressing problems.
People
Updated 05/18/26OSP Leadership Mentor
OSP Leadership Mentor
Organiser/Advisor
Organiser/Advisor
Courses Project Lead
Director of EA Funds
Funding Details
Updated 05/18/26- Annual Budget
- $21,800,000
- Current Runway
- -
- Funding Goal
- -
- Funding Raised to Date
- -
Org Details
Updated 05/18/26The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) was founded in late 2011 by William MacAskill and Toby Ord, both philosophers at the University of Oxford, as an umbrella organization to house Giving What We Can (founded 2009) and 80,000 Hours (founded 2011). The name itself introduced the term "effective altruism" in its current sense for the first time, at a period when the movement was still variously called "optimal philanthropy" or "rational altruism." Over its early years, CEA incubated several organizations that later became independent, including The Life You Can Save and Animal Charity Evaluators (2012). In 2014, CEA hosted the Good Done Right academic conference and partnered with the Future of Humanity Institute to establish the Global Priorities Project. Starting in 2015, CEA began running the EA Global conference series, and in 2016 Giving What We Can formally merged into CEA. The organization launched EA Funds in 2017, opened a permanent Berkeley office alongside its Oxford headquarters, and introduced EA Grants and Community Building Grants. By 2019-2020, CEA had distributed $9.8 million through EA Funds and nearly $900,000 in Community Building Grants. The EA Forum saw engagement grow 2.9x during the 2021-2022 period, and event connections increased 5x. Between 2021 and 2023, headcount grew from 24 to 34 staff while spending increased significantly. In 2022, the operations and fiscal sponsorship division of CEA was renamed "Effective Ventures," with CEA becoming one project within the Effective Ventures federation. In December 2023, Zachary Robinson was announced as CEA's next CEO, taking the role in February 2024. Robinson previously worked at Open Philanthropy where he helped identify new charitable priorities and served as Chief of Staff. In 2024, CEA cut its spending by $5.9 million (24%), while avoiding proportional declines in key metrics, starting the year with 34 staff and making over 20 new hires. By end of 2025, staff had grown to 66, with 38 new hires and 14 departures. Total 2025 spending was $21.8 million. In July 2025, CEA merged with EA Funds, bringing the four major funds (Global Development, Animal Welfare, Long-Term Future, and EA Infrastructure) under the CEA umbrella. CEA is currently completing its spinout from Effective Ventures to become a fully independent entity. The organization achieved 20-25% year-over-year growth across its engagement funnel in 2025, and expanded EA Summits from 3 to 9 locations. CEA's 2025-26 strategy focuses on growing the EA community, improving the EA brand, diversifying EA funding, and strengthening internal infrastructure.
Theory of Change
Updated 05/18/26CEA's theory of change is that building a thriving, intellectually rigorous community of people committed to doing the most good is one of the highest-leverage interventions for addressing global catastrophic risks including AI safety. By running conferences that connect talented individuals with high-impact opportunities, maintaining the EA Forum as a knowledge commons, supporting hundreds of local groups worldwide, and distributing funding through EA Funds, CEA creates the human capital pipeline and institutional infrastructure needed for effective work on existential risks. Their approach is especially valuable on longer AI timelines, where community building compounds over time to produce more researchers, policy experts, and funders working on critical problems. CEA believes that careful stewardship of the EA community's intellectual culture and norms maximizes the probability that talented people will direct their careers toward the most pressing problems, including AI safety, biosecurity, and other x-risk domains.
Grants Received
Updated 05/18/26Projects
Updated 05/18/26
A team within the Centre for Effective Altruism that works to strengthen the EA community's ability to have impact by addressing interpersonal harm, advising on risk management, and supporting healthy organizational cultures.
The EA Forum (forum.effectivealtruism.org) is the primary online discussion and publishing platform for the effective altruism community, run by the Centre for Effective Altruism.
The Online Team at CEA builds and maintains the EA Forum, effectivealtruism.org, and the EA Newsletter, providing the primary digital infrastructure for discussion, research, and coordination within the effective altruism community.
Discussion
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