My take: have you spoken with key decision-makers about incentivising them to write more on the forum instead of discussing things internally in Google Docs or whatever? 

IIRC, 80k stopped using their DIPY(?) metric several years ago.

If you look through their recent reports, they mostly share metrics related to engagement with their programmes/services. And then occasionally there is an additional survey, e.g., the job board survey in their H2 2025 report.

From what I understand, CG likes grantees to report individual narrative case studies, and then these are coded. At least, that's how it works for the CEA's CBG programme. So maybe that's what 80k does as well? And then this is supplemented with engagement metrics. 

If that's the case, it's pretty similar to CEA's system. 

Be grumpy! I think the forum lacks spice. 

Tier 5 is about career changes. That seems like a sensible thing to be tracking, no?

But it’s a lagging indicator so to me it also makes sense to look at engagement at other points in the funnel.

They said growth was their focus, set goals, and, by their own account, did well. 

However, the only place I've 'felt' their growth (beyond their reports) was with EAGxAmsterdam (attendance was up 36%). But I don't know how much of that was due to things we did vs what CEA did. 

My guess is there really is growth, but it's not 'felt' by people like you and me because of where that growth is happening.

And yeah, they've struggled to hire for comms. They've admitted this. Last I heard, their hiring team was at full capacity hiring for other functions, so I guess they're prioritising sorting their core programmes before going hard on comms.

I've said it before, but I really do think a General Assembly responsible for holding CEA's board accountable would help keep everyone up to date with what CEA's doing.

I can't remember, to be honest, nothing fancy...

Thanks! Useful to see this laid out. I'd like to hear more on the marketing and communications side: Justin's video was good, but what else is in the plan there?

Sharing what we're doing at EA Netherlands in case it's a useful point of comparison. Most of our effort has gone into LinkedIn — brand-building posts on my personal page, plus an automated outreach campaign for EAGx — and Instagram performance ads for our introductory course and EAGx. So the brand-building is currently all organic and all on LinkedIn; the paid work is event-led. I'm interested in trying more audio and video content for organic brand work, and running an always-on brand campaign.

We're targeting proto-EAs in the Netherlands, and within that we segment by skills and career capital rather than demographics: policy and politics, organisation building, research, communicating ideas, and existing expertise in a priority problem area.

GiveWell accounts for government spending through quantitative adjustments for 'fungibility' and 'leverage', estimating both the probability that their funding alters government budgets and the comparative value of those displaced funds. These adjustments are explicitly included in their cost-effectiveness models. You can go through their spreadsheets and check out their inputs and assumptions.

• Fungibility and Displacement: GiveWell evaluates whether philanthropic funding frees up a beneficiary government's domestic budget to spend elsewhere, or conversely, whether the government would have funded the intervention anyway (the counterfactual).
• Counterfactual Value: They assign a rough numerical value to what a government would have done with the money otherwise - estimating, for instance, that general counterfactual government spending is worth a fraction (such as roughly 75% or lower, depending on the specific model and sector) of direct cash transfers.
• Leverage Effects: If a grant successfully persuades or helps a government scale up a highly cost-effective program using its own domestic resources, GiveWell attempts to credit that amplified impact to the initial philanthropic investment.

What about new charities?

Charities incubated by the main EA global health incubator, Ambitious Impact (AIM), view government adoption not just as a bonus, but as their primary strategy for massive, cost-effective scaling.

Unlike established organisations that often run parallel to public systems, AIM’s incubation model heavily favours non-profits designed to systematically plug 'execution gaps' in public health. Their goal is to build, prove, and hand over the playbook to state and national governments.

Lafiya might be a good example. They distribute modern contraceptives in northern Nigeria through a network of community health workers called "Lafiya Sisters". They do not view themselves as a permanent, independent health provider; their explicitly stated scaling strategy is to "work with governments to execute, pay for, and take ownership of the model".

Disclaimer: I knew this info but was feeling lazy so got AI to write it up.

I interpreted Huw’s question to be more about the region being a hub (or not) rather than there being a hub in the region. Although of course population density helps with general hub-y-ness

Really useful, thanks for preparing and publishing on here!

Excellent! Would be nice to get down to brass tacks as well. E.g., we’ve been spending 6-10% of our budget on this the past couple of years, and substantial staff time.