👉 Can't find what you're looking for, or want some more context or advice? In that case, I recommend checking out the EA Groups Resource Centre.

EA Syllabi Collection

Editor: Irene Hulsen

Last update: Dec 28, 2025

This document is no longer actively updated. If you’d like to take over custody of this document and keep it updated, please reach out to me to let me know you’re interested.

If you’re looking for an up-to-date condensed collection of resources for starting and running an EA group, I recommend you use the EA Groups Resource Centre before using this document! The EA Groups Resource Centre is a curated version of some of the best material you need for organising a group, put together by the Centre for Effective Altruism, while this syllabi collection attempts to give an exhaustive list of publicly available resources for EA group organisers.

Context

Aims of this document

  • Inspire community builders and build on the work of previous community builders.
  • Save community builders time and effort in doing basic things that they can copy from others, so that they can spend their time on location-specific projects.
  • Improve the quality of programming at EA groups.
  • Inspiration: Suggestion: EAs should post more summaries and collections (Michael Aird)

Disclaimers

  • I do not necessarily endorse/recommend the resources and advice in this document. My sole aim with this document is to provide an overview of the space of the thinking around EA community building, not to advocate for one particular way of going about it.
  • This document is probably really overwhelming, but the aim was to gather a comprehensive overview of all resources, as opposed to linking only 1 or 2 recommendations, which is the way the Groups Resources Centre is organized.

How to use this document

  • Using the table of contents or Ctrl + F + [what you’re looking for] probably works best for navigating this document
  • Please feel free to place comments and make suggestions if you have additions to this list! 
  • When you add something new, please add a source (name of the group and/or person who made the resource) wherever possible to give people the credit they’re due and to facilitate others reaching out to the creator if they have more questions.

Community building handbooks

Overview of EA organizations

For more on EA infrastructure, check out [shared] EA Community Building Readings

One-off events

General event organization advice

  • Do an evaluation
  • Save all of the resources and outreach material you made to appropriate folders for future reference
  • Maybe: write a guide about what you did or update an existing one, and add the guide to this collection :)

Virtual events

Many of the other event suggestions elsewhere in this doc can also be adapted to an online format.

Introductory presentations

  • Stanford EA
  • UMichigan EA
  • EA New Zealand
  • EA Eindhoven
  • Other

Socials and discussion groups

Guides to socials

Icebreakers/speed dating

Getting to know each other better

Also, see the ideas under the Reflection section of this doc.

  • PechaKucha: “PechaKucha [...] is a storytelling format in which a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each. At a PechaKucha Night, individuals gather at a venue to share personal presentations about their work.”

Fun activities for socials

  • Questioning beliefs
  • Would you rather
  • Games
  • Quizzes
  • Estimating important numbers/Fermi estimates
  • Watch parties

Discussion groups

Also see the section on watch parties in this doc

Speaker events

Single-day events/workshops/hackathons

Career planning

For recurring career planning programs/fellowships, see this section of this doc

Effective giving

Personal development/Reflection/Life in review

For recurring programs and fellowships around this topic, see this section of this doc.

  • Annual reviews
  • Getting value from events/retreats

Retreats

For exercises and workshops to do during a retreat, see for example the socials, workshops, reflection, and rationality sections of this doc.

  • EA UK
  • EA Yale
  • EA Zurich
  • Retreats for employees/organizers (instead of group members)
  • Other groups

EA Global and EAGx

  • For individuals/group members

EA holidays and special events

Mostly based on the EA Holidays and Special Events Calendar made by Aaron Gertler. You can subscribe to it by clicking the “+Google Calendar” button on the bottom right. Also, check out internationaldays.org or daysoftheyear.com.

  • Grace Adams (GWWC): “For Effective Giving Day, we’re currently celebrating it the day before Giving Tuesday (the Tuesday after US Thanksgiving)”

(Career) 1-1s

  • EA Oxford

Recurring/fellowships

Facilitation

For Introduction Fellowship-specific facilitation guides, see this section of this doc.

Introduction Fellowship (or equivalent)

For one-off introductory workshops, see this section of this doc. For guides on advertising Intro Fellowships, see this section of this doc. For Career-focused Introduction Fellowships, see this section of this doc

  • Resources made by CEA
  • Organizing advice
  • Curricula from other groups
  • EA Philippines
  • EA Netherlands
  • Alternatives
  • Self-paced
  • Advertising
  • Copywriting
  • Application templates
  • End-of-fellowship surveys
  • Info sessions

In-Depth Fellowship

Reading groups

General advice

Book discussion guides

  • Book clubs with suggestions on books to discuss (EA Groups Resource Centre)
  • What We Owe the Future - Will MacAskill
  • The Precipice - Toby Ord
  • Doing Good Better - Will MacAskill
  • The Scout Mindset - Julia Galef
  • Poor Economics - Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Career planning

For one-off career planning workshops, see this section of this doc

  • Local group versions of this:
  • 80,000 Hours
  • Career-focused Introduction Fellowships
  • Stanford EA
  • EA Philippines

Personal development/Reflection/Life in review

For one-off events around this topic, see this section of this doc.

Co-working

University Courses

Cause-specific resources

(presentations/fellowships/workshops)

AI Safety/Governance

  • Running an AIS group/AIS movement building
  • AI Alignment 101 (Richard Ngo)
  • AI Alignment 201 (Richard Ngo)
  • AI Governance (Mauricio Baker)
  • AI Alignment 101 courses
  • Other currricula
  • AI Governance/Policy
  • Intro ML Safety
  • Presentations
  • Other projects for groups
  • Reading lists
  • Other opportunities; not for groups (very incomplete)

Alternative proteins

Animal advocacy/(wild) animal welfare

  • Presentations
  • Animal advocacy fellowships
  • This syllabus has a minimal expected background for participants.
  • Wild animal welfare fellowships
  • Groups familiar with basic EA arguments for animal welfare could skip or shorten weeks 2 and 3. Facilitators don't need any prior experience in wild animal welfare.

Biosecurity

  • Independent projects/learning

Economics and Global Priorities Research (GPR)

For university courses related to EA and economics, check out this section of this doc.

Environmentalism

Existential risks/longtermism

  • Presentations
  • Existential risks programs
  • Longtermism programs

Forecasting

  • Fellowships
  • Forecasting training
  • Competitions
  • Workshops/games
  • A slightly more outdated/worse UI/etc but still pretty good one is by Open Philanthropy
  • Wits and Wagers

Global health and development/Mental Health

For resources for people to work on their own personal development/mental health, see this section of this doc.

Moral philosophy

Nuclear Security

Rationality

  • Also see the “Questioning beliefs” section of this doc for some exercises.
  • Rationality practice regimes (with different exercises)
  • Hamming circles

Other curricula

Things I don’t really know how to categorize.

  • China

Self-paced learning about EA

These are just some suggestions, but of course, this list is woefully incomplete

  • Best Intro to EA Resources (helpful resources for 1:1s and links to send people)
  • Reading material
  • A lot of the syllabi/curricula above can also be followed in a self-paced way
  • EA Forum posts (about all things effective altruism)
  • Self-paced Introduction Fellowship equivalents
  • Small projects (e.g., for group members to work on)
  • Per Ivar Friborg (EA NTNU)

Outreach and communication

General outreach guides

Student outreach

Aimed at getting people to sign up for Intro Fellowships

Explaining what EA and the EA movement are

  • Talking to journalists
  • Responding to objections and controversies
  • Promoting other EA organizations

Pitching EA

Activities Fairs/Tabling

For what to actually say during your pitch of EA, see this section of this doc.

Style guide and branding

  • EA Style Guide: details about page examples, logo, typography, and colors
  • EA Forum Style Guide: stylistic rules to which all EA Wiki articles should conform, but can be more generally applicable to EA content. Some important things:
  • Avoid jargon whenever possible and especially when communicating with people who do not know a lot about the topic
  • Websites for EA Groups

Social media

Templates/graphics

  • EA Content Creation Dashboard (ready-to-use Canva templates for social media posts)
  • Graphics (EA Groups Resource Centre)
  • Picture library of Wikimedia. The pictures tend to be licensed under a Creative Commons license, so you can use them as long as you attribute rights to the original creator and keep the same license. If you use the Featured Pictures collection, you'll get some amazing results.
  • Unsplash (free images), Undraw (graphics), Pixabay (royalty-free images)
  • Effective Altruism Groups Canva Team: offers templates for EA outreach materials and has a Pro subscription. The Pro subscription is necessary for some tasks such as changing a design’s ratios or removing an image’s background.
  • EA Ox fellowship ads (text for Facebook posts and emails for mailing list admins from Effective Altruism Oxford)

Physical outreach

Flyers

Books

Emails

Templates