Thanks for this series. It helps illuminate a murky area.

Seems to me that it supports the same basic fact I've seen for a while now: the highest-impact stuff is increasingly in the political sphere, a community mismatch where engaged EAs and EA funders are drawn more towards soft political neutrality.

I have no good answers to this problem.

This sounds absolutely excellent and something I might well copy!

The place is still going strong! They're currently in the process of level-accessing the whole building, although that might take a while.

I painted one of the walls in the Meeting room white in anticipation of audiovisual stuff.

While I cannot hope to comment on the specifics of EVF's situation, I assume there are aspects of the selling process complicating that.

Being a good landlord of a fancy building does require quite a lot of outreach to potential tenants, not all of whom will be your favourite tenants, and it is quite easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people who aren't your favourite people shouldn't come into your fancy building because they might mess up your fancy floor. This is of course a horrible trap because fancy buildings fall into disrepair from lack of use all the time and from too much use almost never.

I spend a nontrivial amount of time on the upkeep-related decision making circles for fancy buildings and not once have I ever heard the sentence "we have too many bookings and it's hurting our finances".

(Despite hearing lots of worries about the ways this could, hypothetically, somehow be the case.)

Also, given that the application states that you receive donations of approx. 30% of costs without fundraising, you should give serious consideration to hiring at whatever level of part-time that implies rather than giving up.

However, if you do shut down EA UK as a paid organisation, consider what can be done to leave it in such a manner as to allow any core work arising in future to be handled by ad-hoc volunteers, or to be picked back up if the org is restarted in future. 

Upvoted, tentatively disagreed.

Your last paragraph is exactly why such a position focused on UK specific community-building should exist.

Whether director of EA UK is that position, I simply do not know.

Oh also, on a related note: if anyone has any somewhat outdated audiovisual equipment they need to get rid of to upgrade or are happy to loan out free, I'd really appreciate it. We're talking things like a portable projector, webcam, room mic. Stuff that can turn a blank wall into a makeshift dial-in to a Zoom room.

My life philosophy is very much "start doing things with loaned equipment in order to work out what you actually need to buy and why". Helps cut down unnecessary purchases.

I'll try to phrase this question as: let's say the standard EA cost-effectiveness threshold for saving a life is $5000 (that's roughly what it is). Are there any charities (presumably EA ones) where if I donate $5,000 (enough to save a life on average), I can be

• nearly certain (let's say 95% sure) that my cash has been spent in ways that caused at least one life to be saved
• that would not have been saved if I had not given them $5,000?

Great question, and I'm not sure there actually is one at present, because charities that are significantly more cost-effective than this threshold or that can demonstrate conclusive lifesaving at about this threshold tend to acquire donation reserves so additional money to them doesn't result in them being able to spend it - that's basically why the threshold exists, it's sort of determined by the amount of money EA-inclined donors have available to direct.

Although actually now I think of it there might be something to do with HIV treatment now that PEPFAR money has been pulled. If someone with HIV doesn't get HIV treatment they will die (unless they are very rarely the person who is naturally immune). And there's a huge funding gap in that space. So if I were so inclined to care about concreteness in the way you do, that's where I'd go hunting.