Welcome 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: Update on CEA's EA Grants Program, published by Nicole_Ross, Centre for Effective Altruism on the Effective Altruism Forum. Write a Review In December, I (Nicole Ross) joined CEA to run the EA Grants program, which gives relatively small grants (usually under $60,000 per grant) to individuals and start-up projects within EA cause areas. Before joining CEA, I worked at the Open Philanthropy Project and GiveWell doing both research and grants operations. When I joined CEA, the EA Grants program had been running since 2017. Upon my initial review, it had a mixed track record. Some grants seemed quite exciting, some seemed promising, others lacked the information I needed to make an impact judgment, and others raised some concerns. Additionally, the program had a history of operational and strategic challenges. I've spent the majority of the last nine months working to improve the overall functioning of the program. I'm now planning the future of EA Grants, and trying to determine whether some version of the program ought to exist moving forward. In this brief update, I’ll describe some of the program’s past challenges, a few things I’ve worked on, and some preliminary thoughts about the future of the program. I’ll also request feedback on the current EA funding landscape, and what value EA Grants might be able to add if we decide to maintain the program going forward. Note on early 2019 EA Grants round Last year, we publicly stated that we “expect the next round after this one to be early next year [2019] but we want to review lessons from this round before committing to a date.” When it became clear that we would not hold a round in early 2019, we did not update the previous statement. We regret any confusion we may have caused by failing to provide a clear update on our plans. Issues with the program EA Grants began in 2017. From June 2017 to December 2018 (when I joined CEA), grant management was a part-time responsibility of various staff members who also had other roles. As a result, the program did not get as much strategic and evaluative attention as it needed. Additionally, CEA did not appropriately anticipate the operational systems and capacity needed to run a grantmaking operation, and we did not have the full infrastructure and capacity in place to run the program. Because everyone involved recognized the importance of the program, CEA eventually began to take steps to resolve broader issues related to this lack of attention, including establishing the full-time Grants role for which I was hired and hiring an operations contractor to process grants. We believe it was a mistake that we didn’t act more quickly to improve the program, and that we weren’t more transparent during this process. My first responsibility in my new role was to investigate these issues, with support from staff who had worked on the EA Grants program in the past. I am grateful for the many hours current and former staff have spent helping me get up to speed and build a consolidated picture of the EA Grants program. Below are what I view as the most important historical challenges with the EA Grants program: 1) Lack of consolidated records and communications We did not maintain well-organized records of individuals applying for grants, grant applications under evaluation, and records of approved or rejected applications. We sometimes verbally promised grants without full documentation in our system. As a result, it was difficult for us to keep track of outstanding commitments, and of which individuals were waiting to hear back from CEA. This resulted in us spending much longer preparing for our independent audit than would have been ideal. 2) Lack of clarification about the role EA Grants played in the funding ecosystem While we gave information about the types of projects EA Grants woul...