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by Dane Valerie
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Building effective altruismCommunityOpportunities to take actionAnnouncements and updatesOrganization updates
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If you would like to see EA Organization Updates as soon as they come out, consider subscribing to this tag.

Some of the opportunities and job listings we feature in this update have (very) pressing deadlines:  a faculty role in aquaculture law or policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School (December 30th), Events Associate for the Safe AI Forum (4th January) and several roles at the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (January 5th).  

Opportunities and jobs

Opportunities

Consider also checking out opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board and the Opportunities to Take Action tag.

  • Expressions of interest for the summer 2026 ML Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) Summer program are open. MATS is a 12-week AI safety research fellowship program in Berkeley, California, with an optional 6–12 month extension program for select participants. Scholars are supported with a research stipend, shared office space, a seminar program, support staff, accommodation, travel reimbursement, and computing resources.
  • Rethink Wellbeing is seeking universities to host an unpaid 8-week online peer-led CBT pilot for students interested in evidence-based mental health and productivity training. Open to faculty, staff, and student groups, with minimal campus support required; learn more here.
  • The Good Governance Project offers free governance reviews and follow-on support for leaders, founders, and board members seeking clearer structures and stronger decision-making; support is remote and unpaid, with rolling access. Reviews include interviews, document analysis, and concrete next-step recommendations for boards.
  • AISafety.com has launched a redesigned, free online hub that guides newcomers through ten curated resource areas, including courses, funders, events, communities, advisors, jobs, and field maps to help people navigate AI safety more effectively.
  • A full-time, paid residential faculty role at Vermont Law and Graduate School is open for candidates with a PhD, JD, or equivalent to lead research and teaching on high-impact aquaculture law and policy. It’s aimed at interdisciplinary scholars committed to welfare and environmental impact, based in South Royalton, Vermont, with applications reviewed on a rolling basis before December 31st.
  • Field Work Forum, a 1.5-day workshop for people shaping strategy in emerging research fields will run in person in San Francisco on February 12–13, with travel and hotel covered; it’s aimed at those working on field-growth across areas like AI safety, animal welfare, and metascience. Applications are due January 8th.
  • LawAI’s paid 10-week Summer Research Fellowship offers tailored mentorship and policy engagement for law students, legal professionals, and academics working on US law, EU law, or legal frontiers, with mixed remote and in-person formats and a required one-week residency; applications close January 30th. Fellows earn $1,500–$2,400 per week and join seminars, networking, and career development sessions.

Upcoming EA conferences

Job listings

​​Consider also exploring jobs listed on the Job listing (open) tag. For even more roles, see the 80,000 Hours Job Board.

Coefficient Giving

Evidence Action

GiveWell

Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)

Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC)

Safe AI Forum

  • Events Associate (Remote (UK/US East Coast/US Bay Area preferred), USD $68.7K–$96K / GBP £44.7K–£62.4K, apply by January 4th)

Organization updates

The organization updates are in alphabetical order (W-0-X).

Wild Animal Initiative

Wild Animal Initiative’s Science Director, Luke Hecht, spoke on a panel at an event hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The discussion explored the ethics of conservation, including whether humans should intervene in nature, tradeoffs between animal welfare and biodiversity, and which species interventions should focus on. A recording of the event is available on YouTube.

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours published an article on the US AI policy landscape and where to have the biggest impact, as well as a blog post on successful networking.

On The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob interviewed:

They also released an episode where Rob and Luisa chat about kids, the fertility crash, and how the 1950s invented parenting that makes us miserable.

Ambitious Impact

Ambitious Impact has announced that Samantha Kagel has been selected as its new CEO.

Anima International

Historic victory for farmed animals. On December 2, Polish President Karol Nawrocki signed legislation banning fur farming. This makes Poland the 23rd EU member state to ban the practice.

The move is particularly significant as Poland is Europe's largest fur producer and the world's second largest, currently killing approximately 3 million animals annually for fur.

The law – co-drafted by Anima International and MP Małgorzata Tracz – includes an immediate ban on new farms and an 8-year transition period for existing operations. A 5-year degressive compensation scheme is expected to incentivize earlier closures.

Anima International mobilized over 12,000 responses to the (EU's public consultation on animal welfare, with support from Eurogroup for Animals and influential advocates including Peter Singer.

The consultation addressed proposals with significant potential to reduce animal suffering: banning cages for approx. 149.2 million egg-laying hens in the EU, and banning the killing of 330 million day-old male chicks annually in the egg industry.

With over 150,000 responses at the time of writing, this is the largest participation in any EU public consultation concerning farmed animals, highlighting the strength of EU citizen’s demand for welfare reforms.

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) has published its latest influenced-giving metrics.

Coefficient Giving

After more than a decade as Open Philanthropy, the organization is now Coefficient Giving, a name that better reflects its role as a philanthropic funder and advisor working with many donors. For more on its plans for the future and why it believes philanthropy can be a much stronger force for progress than it is today, the team points readers to an essay by CEO Alexander Berger. Berger also wrote an op-ed in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about lessons from more than ten years of grantmaking. Fortune profiled Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, Coefficient Giving’s main funders, in a story about their philanthropic journey. Jordan Dworkin, Associate Program Officer in Abundance and Growth, wrote for the Institute for Progress on how much funding should be allocated to replication studies. Lewis Bollard, Managing Director in Farm Animal Welfare, published a blog post about rising global demand for protein and how to make it more animal-friendly. Jacob Trefethen, Managing Director in Global Health and Wellbeing, released a new Hard Drugs episode on the history of vaccines. Abhi Kumar, Senior Program Associate in Farm Animal Welfare, appeared on the Wageningen Alternative Protein Podcast to discuss alternative protein policy and funding.

Faunalytics

A new study released by Faunalytics reveals widespread opposition among the US public for standard animal agriculture practices, including severe confinement and painful mutilations. The report, Public Acceptability Of Standard U.S. Animal Agriculture Practices, found that 71% to 85% of US adults view 12 standard practices, such as confining egg-laying hens in battery cages and pigs in gestation crates, as unacceptable.

Faunalytics has outlined exactly what it could achieve with more resources in its new Room for More Funding report. From specific global research projects in Brazil and China to deep dives into US advocacy effects, the organization has high-impact initiatives ready to launch.

Fish Welfare Initiative

FWI recently published several project updates, including on its remote sensing and feed fortification projects. It has also shared its 2026 strategic plans.

Givewell

NPR's Planet Money recently featured GiveWell in its episode “Saving lives with fewer dollars,” which followed GiveWell’s evaluation of a potential grant to ALIMA to maintain primary healthcare and malnutrition services in Cameroon after unexpected aid cuts earlier this year. GiveWell has since released a follow-up episode in which CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with lead researchers Rosie Bettle and Alice Redfern for a deeper look at how the investigation progressed and what ultimately led to the grant being made.

GiveWell recently shared an update on how it’s responding to an increasingly uncertain funding landscape for global health. With significant cuts to foreign aid this year, it’s now even more important to ensure every dollar is used as effectively as possible. GiveWell outlines where additional funding can achieve especially high impact in the year ahead.

This year’s cuts to foreign aid funding disrupted highly effective programs to prevent malaria, including seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). In a recent podcast episode, CEO and co-founder Elie Hassenfeld speaks with Program Officer Natalie Crispin about how GiveWell responded quickly and flexibly to ensure SMC campaigns moved forward when the funding freeze jeopardized time-sensitive pre-campaign activities. Subscribe here for the latest updates.

The Good Food Institute

The Alt Protein Project (APP), GFI’s university chapter program, held regional student symposiums for North American, European, and African APP chapters at the Bridge2Food (Minneapolis) and Future of Protein (Amsterdam) conferences.

Giving Green has recognised GFI as one of their top climate nonprofits for the fourth year running.

The international journal Industrial Biotechnology published an editorial on alternative proteins and the bioeconomy, authored by Curt Chaffin and Erin Rees Clayton. The article makes the case that food biomanufacturing is an essential component of the bioeconomy that can accelerate the entire bioindustrial sector.

GFI APAC joined forces with the World FoodTech Council to accelerate alternative protein innovation in South Korea, formalizing the partnership at a joint signing ceremony in Seoul. The World FoodTech Council is a consortium with 3,300+ members focused on establishing global foodtech standards, certification support systems, and international cooperation on emerging food technologies.GFI was well represented at the 2025 World Agri-Food Innovation Conference (WAFI) in Beijing, with Bruce Friedrich speaking at a plenary on climate change and the low-carbon transition and giving a keynote address on alternative protein innovation for a resilient food system. Alysson Soares was a panelist for a session on technology pathways for novel proteins and for another on alternative proteins’ role in combating hunger and malnutrition, speaking alongside World Food Prize (the Nobel Prize for food security) winner Howarth Bouis.

The Humane League

In November, 5 companies reported on their cage-free commitments to spare 1.8M hens in their supply chains. Based on the progress these companies made, THL estimates their campaigns spared 660,000 hens from suffering.

In addition, THL published a cost-effectiveness analysis which estimated that each dollar invested in its corporate cage-free campaigns from 2015 to 2024 spared roughly two hens from life in a cage. Finally, THL was once again named a Recommended Charity by Animal Charity Evaluators, making it the only organization to receive the highest ranking in every rating period.

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