Center for Applied Rationality

Berkeley, California

https://www.rationality.org/

Actively Fundraisingestablished8 peopleFounded 2012

Endorsed by:

The Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that develops and teaches applied rationality techniques. Founded in 2012, CFAR runs immersive multi-day workshops drawing on cognitive science, behavioral economics, and decision theory to help participants improve their epistemic and instrumental rationality. The organization has historically focused on training people working in AI safety, effective altruism, and other high-impact fields. After a roughly five-year hiatus, CFAR renewed operations in 2025 with pilot workshops in Austin and San Francisco, and also fiscally sponsors SPARC, a summer program for mathematically talented high school students.

Funding Details

Annual Budget: -
Monthly Burn Rate: -
Current Runway: 4 months
Funding Goal: $200,000
Funding Raised to Date: -
Fiscal Sponsor: -

Theory of Change

CFAR believes that improving the quality of human reasoning is critical for navigating increasingly powerful technologies and complex global challenges. Their theory of change operates through several channels: (1) directly training individuals who work on high-impact problems, especially AI safety, by giving them better cognitive tools for clearer thinking and decision-making; (2) building a community of practice around rationality techniques where participants continue to develop and refine these skills after workshops; (3) developing and iterating on a curriculum of practical rationality techniques drawn from cognitive science and decision theory, making abstract research findings actionable; and (4) growing a pipeline of talent for the AI safety and effective altruism ecosystems through programs like SPARC that engage promising young people early. The underlying belief is that many of the most important decisions affecting humanity's future will be made by relatively small numbers of people, and improving those people's thinking can have outsized positive effects on existential risk reduction.