EA - The Operations team at CEA transforms by Josh Axford

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: The Operations team at CEA transforms, published by Josh Axford on August 2, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. The Operations team at CEA — or “Ops” — provides the financial, legal, administrative, grantmaking, logistical, and fundraising support that enables many high-impact organisations to grow. These organisations include CEA, 80,000 Hours, the Forethought Foundation, EA Funds, Giving What We Can, the Centre for the Governance of AI, Longview Philanthropy, Asterisk, Wytham Abbey, and Non-trivial. Summary The last six months has been the most transformational period for Ops so far. We’ve nearly tripled our capacity, from 7 to 20 FTEs. Increasing capacity was our primary focus over this period, because it lets us sustain high quality operational support while meeting the rising demands on our systems. We’ve been thrilled with the results of our recent hiring rounds, including the team's approach to onboarding new members. And the quality of the new hires is a strong indication for the sustainability of future growth. Our increased capacity has also allowed us to support more organisations. So far this year we’ve fiscally sponsored four additional organisations, including Longview Philanthropy, Asterisk, and Non-trivial. We’ve added a Property team within Ops. This team creates and manages offices and accommodation spaces that are optimised for productivity, creativity, and wellbeing. The team has been evaluating the impact of the Oxford office while exploring creating more office spaces on the US East Coast. Looking ahead, we’ve been working on a rebrand for Ops to minimise brand entanglement with CEA. This change reflects the fact that Ops now supports an increasing number of organisations beyond CEA, and we expect to announce an update in Q3. We’ve also decided to appoint a Head of Fiscal Sponsorship in the second half of the year to manage the rising demand for the fiscal sponsorship service. What does Ops look like? Here’s the current structure of Ops: Highlights of the year so far Executive Summer internship: We trialled a three-month summer internship programme. We received 135 applicants and hired 5 interns. The strength of the pool was very high, and we were able to recommend candidates to partner organisations. In September, we’ll evaluate the programme and share a write up on the Forum. So far the results look positive. Restructure and rebrand: We’ve been exploring legal structure options which will give us the greatest amount of flexibility going forward. We’ve also appointed a team to work on a new website and selected a name for the legal entity. Fiscal Sponsorship: We began fiscally sponsoring Longview Philanthropy, Asterisk and Non-trivial. Sara Elsholz (Executive Assistant) and Susan Shi (General Counsel) joined the team. Property Trajan office survey: A survey of users at Trajan House (the EA hub workspace in Oxford) suggests that the workspace produces a ~12% counterfactual increase in productivity for users. We’re exploring opening further office spaces in Oxford. Offices in the US: Buoyed by the Trajan House data, we’re also exploring the possibility of opening office spaces in Boston and New York. Work on the Boston offices has begun, while a New York office is still being evaluated. Visitor accommodation in Oxford: We’ve acquired some property in Oxford to let visitors stay the night while avoiding high hotel costs. The property is called Lakeside and rooms will be available for booking soon. Jonathan Michel was promoted to Head of Property. Bethany Lacey-Page and Tom Hempstock (Office Assistants for the Trajan Office), and Kaleem Ahmid (Project Manager) joined the team. Staff Support Automated onboarding: We optimised the onboarding process by automating common tasks — like sending contracts, writing welcome emails, and requesting feedbac...