TL;DR: In 2024 CEA’s Events Team supported three pilot “EA Summits” and we are excited to continue with more low-cost, introductory events in 2025 and beyond. Apply to run one!
Pilot Results
In 2024, we tested a new event format in three locations:
- Brazil & Nigeria: Strong attendance and engagement led us to begin planning full EAGx conferences in these countries for 2025
- South Africa: Less interest than expected, but still provided valuable insights about the community and the viability of larger events
All three events were run for a much lower cost-per-attendee than EAG and EAGx events, with reduced CEA support time, and were very positively received by attendees. We are excited to continue running events at this scale, using them to explore and inspire EA engagement in different regions and iterate on the introductory event model.
Why add a new event series to EAG and EAGx?
After exploring the cost-effectiveness of EAGx versus smaller community events, we determined that the lower cost-per-attendee of EAGx events was a key driver of cost-effectiveness, and we’d like to explore ways to lower that even further.
We've brought EAG and EAGx conference costs down substantially in 2024, but the basic point stands that there are many fixed costs for large, professional, multi-day events. Our metrics and the data collected by other sources indicate that this is still a very high return on investment. We believe that this is in large part due to an attendee pool that is filtered through our application process, allowing us to improve the caliber of 1-on-1 meetings, the place where attendees indicate they find the most value. To attract and serve this audience, EAG and EAGx have developed processes and systems that carry over from one event to the next, allowing a high level of production value relative to our spending.
We see an opportunity to create additional impact via a complementary model: EA Summits will be more accessible, exploratory events with lower costs and lighter CEA oversight. This approach is inspired by events like the EA NYC picnic, which is run at a fraction of the financial and labor costs of an EAGx, but still provides a full day of networking, talks, and meetups to 120+ attendees. The organizers for our 2024 pilot Summits were given small grants and minimal support and delivered impressive results. This makes us optimistic that we can find a cost floor for impactful, introductory events and then support them on a large scale, especially in more diverse areas across the globe.
EA Summit theory of change
EAG and EAGx operate on a similar theory of change. Very briefly: EAG(x) aims to create value primarily by accelerating paths-to-impact of people who already have EA context. Secondarily, the conferences aim to accomplish things like sharing cause-area updates, fostering principled and technical discussions, energizing attendees, and helping to sustain community motivation. Notably, recruiting less engaged people and otherwise driving growth is an outcome we see, but it is not a core focus that drives event design.
EA Summits, on the other hand, have “introduce EA concepts” and “inspire newcomers to get involved” as primary goals alongside serving those already in impactful positions. To facilitate newcomers joining and help get them up-to-speed, Summits will have a minimal application process, introductory content, broader marketing, and (we hope) a strong cohort of mentors to guide and provide context. We also expect to put less emphasis on attendee-driven 1-on-1 meetings, as a meeting between two attendees with relatively low EA context will be less likely to create an impactful connection and has more risk of spreading or entrenching misconceptions.
We want to acknowledge that in-person events likely don’t have a comparative advantage in reaching large numbers of people to inform them about effective altruism (relative to e.g., effectivealtruism.org, EA Virtual Programs, or the EA Forum). But through showing newcomers that the effective altruism movement has strong principles, a thriving community, and a strong professional network, we believe engagement at events is a uniquely strong way to provide attendees with a concrete sense of what EA is and why they might want to be involved.
To accomplish this, it is important to have a significant presence of mentor-level attendees: established, professionally engaged EAs who are interested in connecting with newcomers. Readers of this post are very likely to be in this segment of the target attendee group for EA Summits. We hope that mentors will view attending introductory-focused events as a worthwhile service to help grow the EA community and help it build resilience; once event organizing is underway, CEA will support Summit organizers in reaching out to and encouraging mentors to participate. We also aim to make the events worth attending for mentors by providing other opportunities for them.
For example, during a single-day EA Summit, mentors could have time for networking among themselves while newcomers attend intro talks and workshops in the morning. This would be followed by a period of the event dedicated to having mentors connect with potential mentees, among whom may be potential recruits. When feasible, we will encourage organizers to include further opportunities for continued engagement, including things like dinners for speakers and mentors and/or an unconference on the following day.
A final core component of our aims with the new EA Summit event series is a broad category of “explore and experiment.” CEA values the concept of “perpetual beta,” and all of our events include goals to iterate and improve, but as a new, lower-cost event series, this is an especially good opportunity to run tests. For example, some EAGx conferences we’ve supported for the first time in a new area have revealed difficulties that were hard to foresee: unique logistical challenges, less demand than expected, visa challenges, bureaucratic obstacles, etc. Having a lower-investment exploratory event helps us identify these issues before investing significant resources in a larger event.
Further, we hope that by supporting EA Summits in a broad range of areas, we can help organizers in their respective regions test their own theories of change. Community building within the EA sphere has many open questions, and we are excited to see organizers shape EA Summits in a wider range of formats. For example, some local CB groups aim to help some members of their community join impactful organizations, whether that means remotely or by leaving the local community. Other CB groups deliberately aim to attract and retain individuals to the area, with the longer-term goal of building organizations based in their region. EA Summits organized by groups with such differing aims would naturally look quite different from each other, and we’re excited to see how they structure their events.
Where should we support EA Summit organizers in 2025?
The CEA Events Team would like to support more events, in more places, and in ways that make EA events accessible and compelling to newcomers.
We’re especially interested in places where we haven’t previously held events. Ideal candidate locations would include some of the following:
- LMICs where there is important EA direct work happening
- Regions with thriving EA communities that have not had supporting infrastructure like those in established EA hubs
- Regions that show strong evidence of increasing EA community engagement
- Regions with lots of “untapped potential” (e.g., high concentration of people with relevant skill sets to EA direct work or large amounts of philanthropic capital) but without an active EA presence
However, we believe the EA Summit model could also be impactful in existing hubs (i.e., areas that are already served by EAG(x) events). Our data show that we miss out on some engaged EAs we’d like to see, possibly due to the perception of these events being “high status/exclusive” due to the application process. We’re trying to address this by being more transparent about the admissions bar, but EA Summits could also serve to bring in this audience.
Further, there are plenty of “top of funnel” people residing in hubs who could potentially be involved in effective altruism, but who wouldn’t currently meet the EAG(x) admissions bar and would benefit from an introductory event. Hubs are typically higher cost-of-living areas and will likely have higher production costs than EA Summits in LMICs, but we hope that this can be offset by some benefits of high-concentration cities (namely: reduced need for attendee travel support and more existing community members that can volunteer their time as organizers, speakers, and mentors).
Apply to organize an event
If you are interested in organizing an EA Summit, please fill out this form! The form can also be used to nominate a location even if you aren’t interested or available to contribute to organizing yourself, though note that interested and experienced organizers are an important factor in favor of supporting an event in a new location.
If you are interested in running an EAGx: In most cases, we expect to support an EA Summit in any newly proposed location before supporting an EAGx, so we encourage you to fill out the above form. However, if you think that there are special considerations that would make your region better served by an EAGx than a Summit, please email me directly.
If you are interested in support running an event outside the scope of EA Summits or EAGx conferences, you can inquire with grantmaking organizations like the EA Infrastructure Fund or Meta Charity Funders. If you think there is a unique case for coordinating with CEA, please email the Events Team Chief of Staff, Ollie Base.
I’d like to thank Ollie for initiating and coordinating the 2024 pilot EA Summits, and for much feedback on the event theory and this post. A lot of gratitude goes out to the organizers of the EA Summits in Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa for their hard work and feedback. I’d also like to thank the EAGx organizers I worked with in 2024 who, when hearing that marginal funds could support events in LMIC, made extra effort to trim their spending.
*Appendix: Naming the new event series
This post previously included an option to weigh in on the name of the event series. Thank you to everyone who voiced an opinion! Sticking with "EA Summit" received the most votes and we are moving forward with the convention of "EA Summit [Location]" to help differentiate these events from local groups named "EA [Location]".
This is awesome! Also a great stepping stone for groups that eventually want to put on an EAGx.