This draft was composed as a response to funders’ comments on the EA forum that they want to fund work that is critical of EA. It will for now be circulated with funders, but I hope to make a future version of it public.

I propose a list of structural changes for organisations that identify as EA institutions. ^[1] I have reasons for why I propose the specific reforms and research directions, but I will only type them out if I get a clear signal that this is worth my time.

EA Structural Reforms

I have outlined reasons why I think EA needs to reform here.

I mentioned some of the effects of epistemic deterioration here.

Intention: to ensure that EA institutions are likely

• to have a positive effect in the long-term
• to converge on correct policies
• to remain a nice environment for most members

I classify the list in two types:

A = ideas I’m pretty sure about  and thus believe we should now hire someone full time to work out different implementation options and implement one of them

B = ideas I’m less sure about, but convinced enough such that I believe they are worth structural deliberation, research and concrete proposals -> resources should be allocated to determine whether they should be implemented (moved into list A)

Structural Reforms List A

• Set up whistleblower protection schemes for members of EA organisations  

• Legal, financial and social support for those who want to come forward to make information public that is in the public interest

• Transparent listing of funding sources on each website of each institution
• Detailed and comprehensive conflict of interest reporting in grant giving
• Within the next 5 years each EA institution should reduce their reliance on EA funding sources by 50% (ensures you need to convince non-members that your work is of sufficient quality and relevance)
• Within 5 years: EA funding decisions are made collectively 

•  First set up experiments for a safe cause area with small funding pots that are distributed according to different collective decision-making mechanisms

• Subject matter experts are always used and weighed appropriately in this decision mechanism

• Experiment in parallel with: randomly selected samples of EAs are to evaluate the decisions of one existing funding committee - existing decision-mechanisms are thus ‘passed through’ an accountability layer
• All decision mechanisms have a deliberation phase (arguments are collected and weighed publicly) and a voting phase (majority voting, quadratic voting..)
• Depending on the cause area and the type of choice, either fewer (experts + randomised sample of EAs) or more people (any EA or beyond) will take part in the funding decision.

• No fireside-chats at EAG with leaders, instead panel/discussions/double cruxing disagreements between widely known and influential EAs and between different orgs and more space for the people that are less known

• Instead feature people who are less well known / host discussions between leaders and unknown EAs
• Invite external speakers/academics who disagree with EA to give central talks and host debates between external speakers and leaders

• Increase transparency over

• Who gets accepted/rejected to EAG and why
• leaders/coordination forum

•  Set up: ‘Online forum of concerns’

• yearly invite all EAs to raise any worries they have about EA central orgs
• establish voting mechanism: upvotes on worries that seem most pressing
• top x worries promised to be addressed by a central org (declares this beforehand)

Structural Reforms List B

• quality journalists get full access to EA institutions to investigate
• More non-EAs should work at EA institutions
• EA red team
• Explicit programmes on theory of change: debates, lectures, series of forum posts and competitions, hosting of experts, panel discussions, EAG framed around this question
• Set up survey on cognitive/intellectual diversity within EA
• Prioritise getting greater representation of underrepresented academic fields
• Democratise EA institutions: strategic, funding and hiring decisions should not be made by the institute director or CEO
• Set up a  counter foundation that has as its main goal critical reporting, investigative journalism and “counter research” to EA and other philanthropic  institutions (a red-team). This body should be  run by different, independent people and funded by its own donations, with a “floor” proportional to other EA funding decisions (e.g., at least 1 researcher/community manager/grant program, admin fees in a certain height.)