CENTRE FOR EXPLORATORY ALTRUISM RESEARCH

STARTED: Incubation Program 2022

SEED GRANT: $100,000

MONEY FUNDRAISED TO DATE: $262,000

Joel Tan
Founder, Managing Director

TEAM SIZE: 2

WEBSITE: https://exploratory-altruism.org/

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CEARCH is a cause prioritization research and grantmaking organization – they identify highly cost-effective philanthropic ideas, and work to direct additional funding and talent accordingly.

COST-EFFECTIVENESS:

Their internal cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that their work is more than 10x as cost-effective as GiveWell top charities
An independent evaluation by Charity Entrepreneurship also expects an “exploratory altruism” organization like CEARCH to be about 8x as cost-effective as existing top philanthropic causes (link).
That said, such estimates should not be taken literally, given the high amount of uncertainty involved. Rather, they should be understood as giving a sense of how promising cause prioritization research and outreach is, given (a) the outsized benefits from identifying extremely impactful causes and directing resources there, and (b) the low operating costs of research and outreach.

SIGNIFICANT UPDATES:

Search for potential new causes:
Created a longlist of 650 causes. (link)
Research, with a particular focus on cost-effectiveness (link):
Researched around 20 of these causes and successfully identified the following ideas as especially cost-effective: (a) combating hypertension through top sodium reduction policies; (b) preventing diabetes through a tax on sugary drinks; and (c) resilient food supply policies to prevent famine in nuclear and volcanic winter.
CEARCH has also produced research reports on mental health (commissioned by the Flourishing Minds Fund) and the EA meta funding landscape (commissioned by the Meta Charity Funders).
Outreach, to direct resources towards new impactful causes:
They conduct biannual grant rounds where they evaluate charities and help fund particularly promising projects (such as a USD 100,000 grant to a Philippines NGO working on salt reduction). They also provide high-impact donor advisory (e.g. their research support to Founders Pledge helped inform their decision on whether to make a multi-million dollar grant in salt policy).
They are also regularly supplying charity recommendations to career advisory organizations like Probably Good.