In this write-up, we aim to reflect on our experience: Highlighting what went well, identifying areas for improvement, and offering actionable insights for those planning similar gatherings (as well as for ourselves in the future!).
The Effective Altruism community is steadily growing in Turkey, with a significant presence in both Istanbul and Ankara. We currently have over 200 subscribers to our newsletter and over 300 members in our national WhatsApp group. The network now includes 5 active university groups and several cause-specific initiatives, such as AI Safety Türkiye, Health Progress Hub, Effective Animal Advocacy Turkey, and Etkili Bağış (Effective Giving Turkey). Recent community-building activities include a February retreat with 26 participants, 6 cohorts of the Intro Program, 1 In-Depth Program, and a career mentorship program that targeted more experienced community members.
Encouraged by this momentum, on October 18, 2025, 104 attendees from across Turkey gathered in Kolektif House Levent, Istanbul for EA Summit Istanbul 2025, the first-ever Effective Altruism conference and by far the largest EA-related event held in Turkey to date.
The Istanbul Summit had 2 main objectives:
We believe the event was a success and grateful for the strong turnout, positive feedback and enthusiasm we witnessed!
| Attendance | No. of applications received | 215 |
| No. of approved applications | 159 | |
| No. of attendees who registered on Swapcard | 102 | |
No. of attendees (people who actually attended the event) | 104 | |
| No. of volunteers | 10 | |
| Budget | Total event grant | $21,775 |
| Actual expenditure (including staff costs) | $21,324 | |
| Travel support | $78 | |
| Cost per attendee | $205 | |
| Team Hours | Total team hours | 468 |
| Content | No. of sessions (Talks, workshops, and meetups) | 10 |
| Organizations / Groups | No. of EA Groups that joined the mini org fair | 4 |
| Average meaningful connections per attendee | 6 | |
| Non-male ratio (in applications) | 57,5% | |
| Average likelihood to recommend score | 9.1 / 10 |
We were 2 organizers (@Ren D. Karabulut & @Fırat Akova) working part-time on the event for 5.5 months, and on average we worked around 18 hours per week each, roughly 468 hours in total. We feel like many aspects of event organization are things that, once you’ve done them for one event, would take significantly less time the next time around. (One example is communication with the venue and vendors.)
We didn’t divide roles very strictly. Attendee and speaker communications, as well as content, were mainly on me, while all meta-level organisation, budget- and money-related tasks and contracts were handled by Fırat. (We would recommend managing the budget through a single organizer.) Beyond that, we worked together on most areas. I (Ren) imagine that with three or more people, it would make more sense to divide responsibility areas more clearly, but for us this setup worked well.
One thing we realized about teamwork is that in the first few months we had biweekly meetings, and later we found that this wasn’t ideal. We realized we could have completed many things earlier if we had talked more frequently. Switching to weekly check-ins, and then later to twice-a-week conversations, worked really well. Even when there wasn’t much to discuss in a given week, especially toward the end, it was reassuring to have that regular touchpoint with each other.
We had an amazing volunteer team of 10 people. We didn’t include a “do you want to volunteer?” question in the application form; instead, we reached out to community members one-on-one to ask if they’d like to help out during the summit. Given the size of our community, this worked really well for us, though if your community is larger, including it directly in the application form probably makes more sense.
We set up a WhatsApp group for quick communication, since almost everyone in Turkey uses WhatsApp. We had 3 main touchpoints with the volunteer team.
Our volunteers were absolutely crucial to making the event work. They took a lot of initiative and often came to us with better, more efficient ways of doing things, and we’re genuinely very grateful for that! Two of our volunteers had just completed the Intro Fellowship and were first-time volunteers for EA Turkey.
While distributing volunteer roles, we first presented a list of all the tasks needed on the event day and asked volunteers if there were any they would feel uncomfortable doing. This simple step helped ensure a smoother and more positive experience for everyone.
We strongly suggest assigning one main task to each person for the entire day and avoiding giving one person three or more different types of responsibilities. This makes it much easier for everyone to remember and keep track of what they’re supposed to do. When tasks keep changing, it becomes confusing for both the volunteer and the organizers.
Even though we prepared a very detailed run sheet, on the event day we often had to improvise or disregard it at some moments. It is important to keep in mind that there will always be unexpected needs!
For instance, we forgot to bring some of the lanyard cords! So we sat in the volunteer room, pulled up Google Maps on our phones, and started calling nearby stationery stores to see if anyone had 150 blue lanyard cords. One of our volunteers, Kaan, then ran to a nearby store to pick up replacements!
Another example: as the lunch break approached, we realized we might not have enough food if attendance kept rising, even though we had already ordered more catering than our original estimate. To be safe, we sent another volunteer, Oğuz, to pick up an additional 15 vegan wraps. Not ideal, of course, but life happens!
When the run sheet is too complex, it’s also harder to see which volunteers have time-sensitive tasks, so you don’t immediately know who can handle last-minute errands. If you have one designated MC, for example, you know they need to stay alert toward the end of each talk and can’t be sent off-site. Similarly, if someone is responsible for the university groups fair, you’ll know they’re occupied during that part of the event.
So, we’d strongly recommend giving each volunteer one clearly defined role and avoiding mixing multiple types of tasks throughout the day.
The Istanbul Summit event featured talks, networking sessions, and a mini organization fair.
Among the applicants (which had an impressive 57,5% non-male ratio!), 25.4% had never heard of EA before, and another 29% reported having limited knowledge. 31% expressed mild engagement with the community, while 14.7% were existing community members. We had already intended for the event to be beginner-friendly, so these ratios made sense. All sessions were structured so that someone with zero prior EA knowledge could easily follow along. As expected, we did receive a few comments from more experienced members wishing for more advanced sessions.
To avoid more engaged members getting bored with introductory-level sessions, we recommend using an additional room to run interactive sessions or deeper dives. In our summit, the only interactive elements were Q&As, a trivia contest led by Alparslan Bayrak, and occasional “show of hands” activities. Venue limitations and additional costs prevented us from arranging a second track, but adding one in the future would be highly beneficial!
The event saw a higher level of interest than expected. Our initial estimate was 50 attendees when starting this project, but 104 people ultimately attended!
During socialization breaks, attendees were free to meet & connect, supported by Swapcard. We observed that at least 90% of participants were engaging with others in groups or one-on-one and about five-ish attendees were occasionally alone during breaks. While we couldn’t act on this at the time due to other more critical and time sensitive matters, next time we could brief volunteers on how to gently engage those who may be alone.
During the three main socialization breaks, we ran what we call a “mini org fair,” featuring Etkili Bağış (Effective Giving Turkey), Effective Animal Advocacy Turkey, AI Safety Türkiye, and University Groups. Because the venue had only one room and did not provide standing booths, we had to work within tight spatial constraints. We arranged two long, narrow tables and had the four groups share them. This setup was slightly suboptimal: with representatives seated very close to one another, it became difficult for all four groups to engage with attendees simultaneously. When crowds gathered around the two tables, conversations often overlapped with each other.
Based on this experience, we would recommend that event organizers explore external options such as renting standing booths if the venue itself does not offer suitable infrastructure.
Overall, we are very happy with the level of social interaction during the summit!
We also used Swapcard, which allowed attendees to:
Around 102 participants registered on Swapcard, and 59 one-on-one meetings were scheduled. This level of engagement was honestly higher than we expected. Since the majority of attendees were newcomers to EA, we assumed there might be some resistance to using Swapcard, but it ended up being much more welcomed than anticipated.
We recommend sending a separate message about Swapcard via WhatsApp or a Slack group, and letting attendees know they can message you directly if they have any trouble navigating the platform. I think this move really helped people.
The summit took 5.5-6 months to plan and execute (May–October), with a total of 468 team hours dedicated to achieving our goals. A significant portion of this time was spent negotiating terms and conditions with vendors and partners.
We worked with an external contractor for video production and photography.
We were very pleased with the recorded videos, the quality was high and the editing was well done. However, we were not as satisfied with the photos. They turned out quite dark initially, so we contacted the team and kindly asked if the photos could be retouched, they were happy to do so, and the final result was much better. If this ever happens to you, we recommend reaching out to the team as well. Even if they don’t feel comfortable retouching all 500+ photos, they will likely be open to retouching a smaller selection to your liking. For future events, it would be worth investing in proper lighting. Our venue offered an additional lighting package at extra cost, which we decided not to include at the time, but it might have been worth it for better photo quality.We used headsets for speakers to ensure the best possible audio quality for recordings. For Q&A sessions, handheld microphones worked perfectly fine.
We feel like an important part of a smooth event day is having a solid registration and welcoming setup.
Even if your event space (room or rooms) is located right at the entrance and seems straightforward, I’d still recommend always having volunteers welcoming attendees as they arrive and pointing them in the right direction. Most events take place in large buildings with multiple floors and rooms, and even if you include a floor plan in the attendee guide, not everyone will notice or check it. For example, our venue had two separate entrances, and our room was about 50 meters away from the main entrance.
Originally, we thought that arranging all 150 name badges in alphabetical order would make things run very smoothly at the registration table. In practice, it was hard to fit everything into a single folder, so I (Ren) split the alphabet into three sections and placed the name badges into three corresponding folders. This meant we ended up with three large folders, which wasn’t the most elegant setup. We’d recommend future organizers think through a better system here. That said, our volunteers were incredibly positive and picked up my slightly weird system very quickly.
We think dry runs should be made a mandatory part of the preparation and communicated clearly from the start. Some of our speakers were initially reluctant to spend time on them, but the ones who did found them very helpful. (So did we!) During these sessions, we fixed issues such as overuse of English terms (the summit was fully in Turkish) and advanced terminology, exceeding time limits, and improving slide designs. We absolutely recommend organizers make dry runs a requirement for every speaker, because even when speakers are domain experts, that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll give a strong presentation for this particular event. From the organizers’ side, supporting a speaker through 2 rehearsals and revisions typically requires about two hours in total. In our case, we did dry runs with 4 of our speakers and spent 8-9 hours.
In our experience dry runs really helped with making speakers feel more relaxed and confident, catching issues that are easy to miss after working on a presentation for too long, ensuring the content works for an intro-level audience, and flagging problems around using English words and overly technical terminology.
We recommend setting the presentation submission deadline one month before the event and communicate this early with the speakers. Even though we reminded our speakers more than three times, almost everyone was still late from the initial (soft) deadline! Setting an early “fake” deadline worked well, it gave us buffer time to review slides and saved a lot of stress in the final days before the conference.
Regarding the slide formats, one thing we missed was not giving speakers any instructions on the file format and slide ratio. This was completely on our side and ended up causing some time loss while rearranging and consolidating the final deck. We strongly recommend setting clear guidelines on slide format and page ratio in advance to avoid this kind of last-minute friction.
We also recommend organizers to make sure all speakers have provided next-step slides with QR codes because it attracts considerable interest from attendees!
During the breaks, the founder of Effective Giving Turkey, Alparslan, hosted a desk where attendees could participate in a mini giving game.
We found that LinkedIn ads were largely ineffective for event marketing, generating very low engagement. Only 14 people reported hearing about the event through LinkedIn, and this number also includes our own organic posts rather than paid ads.
Instagram ads slightly performed better, 25 people who have applied heard about the event there.
We have also collaborated with 1 micro influencer who creates content around career and personal development and 1 email newsletter that focuses on social justice issues. In total 25 people applied from these. Thanks to Güney for connecting us!
Additionally, we reached people through organizations whose audiences could be interested in EA, such as Istanbul Impact Hub and the Entrepreneurship Association. We recommend not spending too much time on outreach to EA-adjacent organizations in general; this approach usually works best when you already have a first- or second-degree connection to someone inside that network.
The most effective way to get newcomer applications was referrals from existing community members and we got the majority of our applications thanks to their referrals. Especially University club members played an important role in promoting the event within their own networks. In several cases, even students who weren’t members of those clubs saw the posts and decided to attend.
We created a WhatsApp group early on to share reminders, key updates, and content with confirmed participants. This worked extremely well and helped maintain engagement both before and during the event. We strongly recommend doing this if people in your country commonly use WhatsApp, especially if you don’t have tools that allow you to send automated batch emails. Honestly, this WhatsApp group was one of the best things we did.
Another function of the group was handling dropouts: we asked people to leave an ❌ emoji on a specific message if they could no longer make it. This made it much easier to accommodate late applications, since reacting with an emoji is the lowest-effort action possible. We think that if we had instead sent emails asking people to reply to say they couldn’t attend, we would have received far fewer responses.
Reminder emails were also essential, of course. We recommend not skipping them and setting up automated email workflows if possible, as this can save a lot of time.
It quickly became clear that neither Fırat nor I (Ren) were great at creating social media visuals, so we worked with a talented community member for graphic design. This made the communications process smoother, more responsive, and more cost-effective than hiring an external contractor. Thanks to Eren for saving us, and to Güney for suggesting Eren.
One thing we didn’t do but wish we had was to create LinkedIn post templates for attendees and encourage them to share their insights in their own words. A few participants shared posts regardless, tagging us, but providing templates could have made this easier and required minimal effort.
Including “Next Steps” slides at the end of presentations worked really well. It’s good to have these compiled and shared as physical brochures or small notebooks for attendees to take home.
Güney also created a WhatsApp group and a Notion page with follow-up resources, which was a great strategy, 28 people joined the WhatsApp group and continued engaging after the event.
Here are the key takeaways from the 31 submissions we got:
The following was the breakdown of our expenditure.
| Category | Cost (USD) |
| Venue & Catering | $4,701 |
| Video recordings & photography | $2,444 |
| Volunteer T-shirts & name badges & First-aid kit | 601 |
| Social media visuals | $173 |
| Ads + LinkedIn Navigator subscription | $251 |
| Speaker Travel Support | $78 |
| Staff pay | $13,075 |
| Total | $21,324 |
For our next steps, Fırat and I (Ren) have applied for funding to run several projects to build on and leverage this community growth. We’ll focus on running more advanced and cause-specific fellowships, supporting EA-aligned groups and organizations in Turkey. We’ll also help engaged members take the next step through retreats, mentoring, and career support.
This event was an important step for the EA Turkey community, and we’re excited to build on the momentum with the next set of projects.
If you’re planning something similar and want to compare notes, we’re always happy to share more details or learn from others’ experiences!
We’d be very happy to chat if there’s anything we can help with, here’s my (Ren's) calendar link: https://zcal.co/i/r58DGFa2
Executive summary: This retrospective argues that EA Istanbul Summit 2025 successfully introduced many newcomers while strengthening an emerging national community, and distills concrete lessons on team coordination, volunteer management, content design, logistics, and outreach to improve future events.
Key points:
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