Hello Joel, Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal, here our answers:

1- The most important paths are:

• Continue with the strategic partnership and collaborations. This includes working with different stakeholders in Spanish-speaking countries to introduce GCR areas in national risk plans, as has been done with Argentina, and continuing with other partnerships with institutions such as ALLFED, Simon Institute, etc.
• Seize the opportunity: Being GCR a neglected area, all the reports, articles, and other academic production in Spanish-speaking and with an emphasis on Latin America have a high probability of impact and reception, as we have verified in the development of our projects.
• Betting on our staff training: Our team comes from different academic areas and various countries such as Spain, Mexico, and Colombia. We have different approaches that have served the development of projects with an interdisciplinary perspective and have facilitated engagement with stakeholders. This has been particularly important when engaging with stakeholders keen on seeing views from the Global South, such as the UN.
• Evidence-Based Decision Making: With our publications and projects under development, we have detected that some areas are more promising in certain countries than others. We plan to use this knowledge to tailor our outreach strategies efficiently.

Our 95th-percentile version looks like

• Integrate the most promising themes of our four main areas into the Spanish-speaking countries in which the best opportunities are detected or in the process of renewing national risk management plans.
• Collaborations and partnerships flourish, resulting in an expansive network of allies who share our vision and contribute to our collective success.
• We've achieved remarkable growth and successful financial stability that will allow us to continue our work long-term, improve the team's and interested people's training, and develop workshops in different countries to achieve significant stakeholder acceptance.
• In this version, we have reached the Spanish-speaking community that works in risk management and the community, making them aware of the importance of longtermism and global catastrophic risks.

2.

Indeed, Jaime and Juan actively participate in the staff mentoring process, along with our advisers. We also have developed internal training modules, which could become training material for internal and external mentoring. So far, our training has successfully taken our staff from having little exposure to Global Catastrophic Risk studies to actively contributing to high-quality reports in a couple of months. We have little capacity to expand and grow because Jaime and Juan's time is limited, but this will remain a pillar of our organization.

3.

If we were to emphasize mentorship and movement-building as our primary goals, it could lead to significant transformations in how we operate. Here are some specific ways this could manifest:

• Structured Mentorship Programs: Our ongoing staff training has resulted in well-structured training modules endorsed by experts. These modules, along with recommended reading materials and resources from EA communities, 80000 hours, and others, could serve as the foundation for a mentorship program.
• Leadership Development and Talent Identification: Through previous recruitment processes, we've identified promising individuals within the Spanish-speaking effective altruism community. These individuals show a keen interest in advancing and leading in this field. Notably, our essay contest has been successful in spotting emerging talent.
• Sharing Resources Platform: Our website boasts the largest collection of Spanish articles on global catastrophic risks, and we're committed to expanding this repository. This rich content will undoubtedly be a valuable resource for learners from various backgrounds.
• Engaging the Community: We've successfully hosted events to introduce our reports and intend to continue doing so. Additionally, we're considering establishing platforms for talks at local universities and facilitating workshops for community participation.
• Collaborative Initiatives: Collaborative projects have proven effective in enhancing staff training. Working with experts from organizations like ALLFED and EPOCH has resulted in products like the ASRS and AI reports. Furthermore, we've contributed to a United Nations policy brief in collaboration with the Simon Institute.

It's important to note that we already play a pivotal role within our community. As the sole organization dedicated to nurturing experts in global catastrophic risks within the Spanish-speaking community, our impact can have a cascading effect because other people learn about the topic through our reports and receive mentorship from the experts we are forming.

It's unclear whether we should prioritize more community building over other work. We're open to considering the idea of securing additional resources to expand our efforts and launch more mentorship-focused programs.

4.

We are currently drafting a chapter on the ASRS for inclusion in Argentina's National Risk Reduction Plan for the period 2024-2030. Our objective is to contribute to more national plans across various Latin American countries, recognizing the unique opportunity to make a substantial impact. Given the region's geographical characteristics, Argentina and its neighboring countries hold pivotal roles in ensuring food security during scenarios such as nuclear winter and related scenarios.

Simultaneously, Spain is currently presiding over the European Council until the end of the year. We have established connections with an expert who will oversee discussions on regulating foundation models within the context of the EU AI Act in September. Additionally, we are in contact with a member of the European Parliament. Our intention is to maintain these connections and ensure that both individuals are well-informed about the latest standards in AI governance.

Shifting our focus to biological risks, we are working on a report for Guatemala. This aims to underscore the importance of monitoring emerging infectious diseases. The Latin American region holds significant potential for the emergence of epidemiological hotspots. Through this report, we hope to draw attention to the necessity of proactive measures in this regard.

Remain at your disposal for any further inquiries.

@JTorrescelis thank you for your reply!

After reading, my core worry remains: constraints on Jaime and Juan's time make me nervous about the community-building benefits of RCG, and the catastrophic risk reduction projects are not compelling enough to make up for this.

I could imagine being excited about the community-building benefits even without Jaime and Juan putting lots of time into mentoring. This would probably look like hearing about collaborations beyond Epoch and ALLFED, and/or signs that other relatively senior staff were going to devote significant time to mentoring.

I am not sure what evidence would convince me that the catastrophic risk reduction benefits are competitive with other proposals. One necessary thing would be increasing the concreteness of your 95th percentile outcomes sketch. But, even then, I'm not sure that "significantly improving biological surveillance in Guatemala" would be a compelling enough result. (This is part of what leads to me emphasize community-building benefits.)

So, though I continue to be open to hearing more evidence and/or criticism of my view, I think I will not fund this project right now.

To be clear, I think this is really sad. I continue to be excited about:

• Funding projects that other grantmakers do not have the time to get enough context on -- Spanish-speaking catastrophic risk work where I know some key organizers seems like a great example of this.
• Spain/CDMX/LatAm as a non-US/UK hub for high-impact projects.
• Any project that receives a large personal donation from Nuno Sempere.