EA - Announcing the Rethink Priorities Special Projects Program by Rachel Norman

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the Rethink Priorities Special Projects Program, published by Rachel Norman on September 21, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Key points Rethink Priorities (RP) has launched a Special Projects (SP) Program to help start promising EA initiatives by providing fiscal sponsorship and full-service operational support–including, but not limited to hiring, finance, event planning, and communications. A key strength of RP is its operations. We have been able to scale the organization from 1.5 full-time equivalents (FTE) staff to nearly 50 FTE in just four years. The SP Program advances projects that RP would like to see happen and allows these projects to focus on their core work rather than worrying about running their organization. Current special projects include Epoch, the Insect Welfare Project, Unjournal, EA Market Testing, Condor Camp, and EA Pathfinder. There are various ways to get involved in the SP Program: join our team, apply to have your project sponsored, or share with us lessons you’ve learned incubating projects if you have experience in this arena. Please reach out by submitting an Expression of Interest form. About Rethink Priorities Founded in 2018, RP is dedicated to informing decisions made by high-impact organizations and funders across various cause areas. To date, our team has conducted over 50 person-years of work (you can find all our public research here). One of our key strengths is our operational capacity, which allows us to recruit, onboard, and support talented researchers to produce quality work with minimal bureaucratic red tape. Given our strong operations, RP would like to support other promising EA projects – particularly longtermist ones – in getting off the ground. To this end, we recently launched a new Special Projects Program. About the Special Projects Program As an off-shoot of our Operations Department, Special Projects is a distinct team dedicated to supporting the launch of new projects rather than running RP’s day-to-day operations. The team’s Acting Director Carolyn Footitt is leading this work with Associates María De la Lama and Cristina Schmidt Ibáñez. Their projects generally fall under two areas: Incubated (internal)–In addition to our research agenda, RP is incubating direct work and other projects that advance our mission. The SP Team works closely with RP staff to launch these initiatives. Once the incubation period for each respective initiative ends, the project will either conclude or spin-off to become an independent organization. Fiscally sponsored (external)–The SP Team is also providing fee-based fiscal sponsorship and support to projects that are managed by individuals outside of RP. Within this model, the project’s founders maintain autonomy and decision-making authority while we provide them with operational and fiduciary oversight. Our services Although our involvement will depend on the project, in general, the SP Team will provide operational support to projects much in the way that our Core Operations Team supports RP’s work. Such services might include developing and managing budgets, accounting, contracting, running hiring rounds, planning the onboarding of new staff, hosting and developing the project website, and other operations tasks outlined in the below chart. Current Special Projects The SP Team is currently incubating the following projects: LAISR, an AI strategy retreat in Washington, D.C. The provisionally-named Insect Welfare Project to address welfare concerns around the growing insect farming industry Unjournal, an open platform for research relevant to global priorities EA Market Testing, a survey on how to best promote effective giving and action EA Pathfinder, an initiative to advise and support mid-career professionals looking to switch into EA work Condor Camp, an EA a...