TL;DR: EA Poland is active and growing. Our aim is to build and maintain a supportive and empowering community that enables individuals to plan their next steps to make a positive impact. We want to achieve this by focusing on three areas: Community Building, Career Planning, and Project Incubation.  

Introduction

At the beginning of June we had our first Polish EAGx, in Warsaw. We think this is a good opportunity to introduce EA Poland. Before we start, we would like to mention that this post’s structure was inspired by EA Estonia’s post and was prepared with the support of ChatGPT and DeepL/Writer.

Quick Facts About Poland

Located in Central Europe, Poland has a population of ~38 million and has been classified by the World Bank as a high-income country since 2009. Additionally, there are up to 21 million Polish people living across the world. We love potatoes, onions, and dumplings with onions and potatoes. 

Quick Facts About EA Poland

The first EA meetup we know of took place in 2014, and the first group was established in Cracow, in 2015. In 2018, the Polish Foundation for Effective Altruism (FEA) was registered. We have members from all over Poland: Cracow, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Katowice, Lodz...

Current status

EA Poland in numbers:

• 3 employees, with a total of 1.5 FTE (full-time equivalents; funded by the EA Infrastructure Fund)
• ~30 volunteers (incl. group organisers)
• ~60 highly-engaged EAs – HEAs^[1]  (incl. most of the volunteers) 
• 178 members registered on our community Slack
  • Of these, ~70 users are active on a weekly basis (figure 2)
• 336 newsletter subscribers
• Social media:
  • 2,700 Facebook fanpage followers
  • 1,100 Facebook group members
  • 515 Instagram followers
  • 893 Linkedin followers
  • 211 YouTube subscribers

• 3 local groups (Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw) 
• 1 active university group (University of Warsaw) and 1 university group expected to start in 2023/2024 (AGH in Cracow)
• An online book club (we plan to publish a separate forum post about it)
• 2 AI Safety Groups (on-line): technical and governance
• 2 EA-aligned organisations (Otwarte Klatki [Anima International Poland] and Optimum Pareto Foundation)

What we did last year (June 2022 – June 2023)

Organisational Structure and Operations 

Over the course of the past year, we channelled a lot of effort into strengthening our organisational structure and operational capacity. This includes establishing basic processes and procedures in areas such as IT, finance, and legal; reintroducing Asana for task management; and revitalising our social media and newsletter. We collectively agreed to form an executive board where two Co-Directors represent FEA for a period of two years. After this period, re-election of the Co-Directors requires approval, granted by the Active Members via a vote. To evaluate and support the work of the Co-Directors, we have set up a Supervisory Board consisting of five HEAs, elected by the Active Members (employees, volunteers, interns, groups organisers, projects coordinators).

Mission, Vision, and Strategy

In 2022, we defined our strategy through a workshop and multiple group discussions. In November 2023, we will revise it and determine an action plan for the next two years. We intend to write a separate post on this topic.  

Organisational Culture 

Creating a safe and inclusive environment is a priority for EA Poland. We developed a Code of Conduct through workshops, and introduced the Safety Person^[2] role to ensure the well-being and comfort of all community members. We also conducted a comprehensive survey to examine our organisational culture, with the aim of continuous improvement and fostering a supportive community. The survey, consisting of 72 questions, had an average score of 3.55 on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being highest. If you are interested in more specific information, let us know.

Community Building

To better understand the demographics of EA Poland, we held 1-1s with pretty much anyone in the community who was interested, and conducted a national survey in October 2022. 130 people filled it out, and you can read the analysis in Polish here. 

The data we acquired helped us determine that there seems to be enough people to attend an EAGx; which locations have the biggest potential to form local groups; which cause areas are of the biggest interest to the community members; and which individuals are eager to support our efforts. 

To connect Polish EAs and create a space where they can help each other on the path to exerting positive impact, we – EA Poland’s Active Members – have: 

• Organised the first EAGx conference in Poland, Warsaw
  • It was attended by a total of 250 attendees, including ~100 Polish community members of which ~10% constituted people who have not interacted with EA Poland before;
• Reactivated two local groups, in Cracow and Warsaw, seeded one in Wrocław, and held several meetings in Poznań, Łódź, and Gdańsk;
• Officially registered a university group at the one of the country’s largest and best-ranked university, University of Warsaw
  • It has 6 coordinators, who are also active members of the wider EA community;
• Launched the national EA Intro Fellowship, which includes English-language resources alongside a Polish-language attendee handbook
  • So far, we have had 2 editions – completed by 11 people in total – and the third edition started in July, with 13 more participants;
• Organised a three-day retreat attended by 24 Active Members;
• Facilitated the establishment of the AI Technical Safety and AI Governance Groups which meet weekly and twice a month, respectively;
• Facilitated online meetups every fortnight for Active Members;
• Facilitated the online book club twice a month;
• Organised two weekend-long events which included workshops and integration activities.

Although we focused on getting to know and working with people who were already interested in EA, we accepted a number of invitations to participate in awareness-spreading projects, most notably by:

• Featuring on two podcasts: Otwarte Klatki [Anima International Poland] and Przemyślane [Radio Luz];
• Giving an interview to Business Insider (in Polish);
• Attending conferences and events such as Conference on Animal Rights in Europe (CARE), organised by Anima International;
• Holding a 6-week-long EA intro workshop at AGH University in Cracow, for 20 sociology students and their professor. The workshop resulted in an offer to repeat it next year and to guest on the students’ sociology podcast. Moreover, 4 members of the university’s sociology club are eager to form an EA subsection.

Additionally, members of our community have been involved in:

• The Eastern European Community Builders retreat, held in Bratislava in November 2022;
• ML4Good, held in August 2023;
• The AI Safety Fundamentals: Governance course;
• The EU Tech Policy Fellowship (along with relevant internships in AI policy);
• Changing their PhD studies to focus on impactful EA-aligned topics.

Research on Local Priorities 

In order to have a better understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities in our region, as well as possible effective interventions, we are running a research project about local priorities. The key focus is on Poland, since it’s both one of the largest countries in the region and the one most familiar to us. The project is ongoing and is currently sifting through ideas in multiple stages, from an initial pool of over 300 ideas. Until we narrow down the list sufficiently to report on the absolute most promising interventions, please contact us if you are interested in our intermediary results.

Launching an Effective Giving Platform

Inspired by the work of other EA groups, for example in Norway and Germany, we created an effective giving platform called WiecejDobra.pl (lit. More Goodness) to make effective giving more accessible in Poland. This is achieved by introducing the local language and local payment methods (e.g. BLIK); it is currently in its first version, with basic functionality. We are currently working with tax advisors to determine whether such a donation is tax deductible. Over the next few months, we will focus on two areas: further development of the platform and marketing for the wider community.

What's next? 

The Big Picture

Based on our strategy workshops, EA Poland has established three key pillars for our activities: Community Building, Career Planning & Project Incubation. The main responsibility for executing the strategy will be shared between the two EA Poland Co-Directors, Maria Gembarzewska-Truong and Chris Szulc, with significant support from Active Members.

Chris, with his prior experience in community building at EA Netherlands, continues to lead the Community Building pillar. Maria, with her extensive background in human resources, focuses on Career Planning. Project Incubation will be a focal point in Q4 2023, with WiecejDobra.pl and Local Priorities Research already underway.

Community Building

From our perspective, EAGxWarsaw set a good deadline for focusing our efforts on the activities that helped us identify and engage the existing EAs and EA-aligned folks in Poland. We could then bring them together and let them experience what we have already discovered along the way: that our community is larger than it seemed on the surface, and its members are eager to rock.  

Now, given our history of the community going somewhat dormant whenever its main organisers could no longer contribute to its development, we are adding two new sets of activities aimed at minimising the risk of such a scenario repeating itself:

1. Supporting the new Community Builders’ growth and ensuring the mechanisms facilitating the successions are in place.
2. Experimenting with field building. We assume that groups with shared interests (AI Safety, animal welfare, policy-making, etc.) are more likely to prevail, regardless of what is happening with the general community.

Apart from the above, we are continuing with the activities that have proved to work well and that we deem important: providing support to our individual members and the existing groups; organising retreats, workshops, and other events; running Intro Fellowships; developing relationships within the third sector. 

More details will follow after November, once we are done with our action plan for the coming two years.

In a perfect scenario, by 2025 we will set up autonomous and sustainable groups working on specific cause areas, while attracting new members who wish to explore how to do the most good they can. 

Career Planning

We are in the process of determining the most effective direction for our career planning and talent development efforts. Ideas currently under consideration include: creating workshop scenarios for local and university groups; developing a short guide for our website; starting fellowships; or providing one-on-one career advisory services for professionals and highly engaged EAs. We will conduct research on these topics, starting in August 2023, to ensure that we use the best approach.

We have partnered up with Zwolnieni z Teorii (ZWZT) [Exempt from Theory]. ZWZT is a non-profit organisation that organises the nationwide Zwolnieni z Teorii Olympiad, where high school students compete by creating projects tackling societal problems, developing competencies and skills for use in the workplace, and more broadly – such as project management, social entrepreneurship, problem solving and communication. ZWZT also works with teachers, who support young people during their projects, by providing lesson plans.

In the Polish EA community, we also have members who are finalists of the previous Olympiads. The last Zwolnieni z Teorii Finale (a celebration at the end of the edition) was attended by about 3,500 people.

Together, we will develop a lesson plan focused on career planning, and distribute it along with the 80,000 Hours book to the most socially-engaged teachers from the ZWZT database. We expect to reach around 250 teachers in the first round. The lesson plans will be ready by October/November 2023. 

Project Incubation

This area requires some further planning, which will commence in Q4 2023.

We aim to streamline the incubation of projects, which will support all other activities of EA Poland – be it promotional, organisational, community building etc. – as well as projects which have the potential to directly help those in need, both on a global and local level (thanks to our local priorities research project, which we want to leverage).

We are thinking of:

• helping to match co-founders/coordinators with each other,
• helping them with planning the project,
• connecting them to EAs and other experts with relevant expertise, both in local and global communities,
• connecting them to resources, such as programs, fellowships, relevant knowledge and know-how,
• helping co-founders to get funding and promoting their projects,
• providing assistance throughout the project as needed, etc.

Organisational Tasks

In parallel to our strategic pillars, we are working on a number of organisational tasks:

a) Fundraising strategy: since July 2023, we are developing a fundraising strategy to increase the sustainability of our operations.

b) Communication strategy: we are finalising our communications strategy to optimise our outreach efforts and effectively communicate the principles of effective altruism. We will most likely target the wider audience via the WiecejDobra.pl brand, while The Polish Foundation of Effective Altruism will focus on communicating with EA community members.

c) Policy on counteracting potential discriminatory and unwanted behaviour: in September 2023, we will complete the development of a policy aimed at promoting a safe and inclusive environment in our community. This document is more complex than the Code of Conduct, and it will focus on procedures to follow when difficult situations arise.

d) In order to optimise our daily work, we are developing a wiki, hosted on Notion, and a CRM (customer relationship management) system using Airtable, aimed at facilitating meaningful connections between our community members.

e) Following the same process as described by EA France, we have started to translate EA materials into Polish. We plan to translate articles that we will use on WiecejDobra’s blog. 

Summary

We have explained the current state of EA Poland, centering around our role as a hub for effective altruists (EAs) in Poland. Our aim is to provide a supportive and empowering community that enables individuals to plan their next steps to make a positive impact.

We are seeking feedback from the community so that we can continually improve and develop our approach. If there are any areas we might be missing, or aspects we should consider, please share your thoughts and suggestions.

If you would like to have a chat about any aspects of what we have covered in this post, don’t hesitate to book a slot in Calendly. We are especially keen to hear from Polish people (regardless of where you live) with whom we have not interacted yet. 
 

1. ^{^}

   “Highly-engaged EAs are people who create significant behavioural changes based on EA principles, such as shifting their career path and/or taking jobs or internships directly relevant to EA.” Source: https://resources.eagroups.org/running-a-group/strategy/measurement-evaluation

2. ^{^}

   A person responsible for ensuring that the EA PL environment is safe for all, which includes: monitoring the implementation of prevention policies; monitoring interventions against acts of discrimination and violence; receiving complaints about such acts; ensuring compliance with the Code of Conduct; and reporting problems within the Foundation, including reports to external bodies as necessary.