Effective Ventures

Effective Ventures was the umbrella organization that served as the legal and operational home of the central institutions of effective altruism. It consisted of two affiliated charities, the Effective Ventures Foundation in the United Kingdom and Effective Ventures Foundation USA, which between them hosted projects including the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can, and the EA Funds. The group received about 27 million dollars from Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and its associated foundation in 2022, repaid the full amount to the FTX bankruptcy estate in a January 2024 settlement, and subsequently decided to dissolve the umbrella and spin its projects out as independent organizations.¹²

Structure and Projects

Effective Ventures operated as a fiscal sponsor, a single charitable structure under which a number of distinct projects ran without each having to maintain its own legal entity, board, and back-office functions. The arrangement covered two charities, the Effective Ventures Foundation registered in England and Wales and the separately incorporated Effective Ventures Foundation USA, sharing staff and governance across the Atlantic. The model let the constituent projects share legal, financial, and operational services while presenting themselves publicly under their own names.¹³

The projects housed under Effective Ventures included the Centre for Effective Altruism, which runs the movement's conferences and community infrastructure; the career-advising organization 80,000 Hours, cofounded by William MacAskill and Benjamin Todd; Giving What We Can, the pledge organization for charitable donation also cofounded by MacAskill and Toby Ord; the grantmaking platform EA Funds; the Forethought Foundation; and at various times other research and outreach efforts. Several of the people who ran Effective Ventures and its projects, including MacAskill, also held roles in Bankman-Fried's philanthropic operation.¹³

The FTX Money and the Settlement

In 2022 entities within Effective Ventures received approximately 26.8 million dollars in grants from FTX and the FTX Foundation, part of the wave of money Bankman-Fried directed into effective-altruism and longtermist causes before his exchange collapsed in November 2022. When FTX failed and entered bankruptcy, its estate moved to recover money that FTX and Alameda had paid out, including charitable grants, on the basis that the funds had originated in customer deposits misappropriated in the fraud.²⁴

Effective Ventures announced in January 2024 that it had reached a settlement with the FTX bankruptcy estate under which it returned 26,786,503 dollars, a sum the organization stated was equal to one hundred percent of the funds it and its projects had received from FTX and the FTX Foundation. The repayment, which the group covered in part by drawing on reserves and other donors, removed the threat of clawback litigation but consumed a large share of the organization's resources.²⁴

Wytham Abbey

Among the assets Effective Ventures had acquired in the period of FTX-era abundance was Wytham Abbey, a fifteenth-century manor house near Oxford, bought in 2022 for a reported price of about 15 million pounds to serve as a conference and workshop venue for the effective-altruism community. The purchase, made with funding connected to the movement's major donors, drew public criticism as an extravagant use of charitable money and became a symbol of the movement's spending during its flush years.⁵³

After the FTX collapse and the settlement, Effective Ventures put the property up for sale, and it was sold in 2024 at a reported loss of about 14.5 million dollars against the purchase and associated costs. The sale was part of the broader unwinding of the organization's holdings and commitments in the wake of the FTX failure.⁵

The Decision to Spin Out

In the aftermath of the FTX collapse, which implicated people close to the organization and exposed the concentration of legal and reputational risk in a single shared structure, the boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures USA decided to spin out all of the group's projects into independent organizations rather than continue as an umbrella. The decision followed an external investigation, commissioned after the collapse, into the organizations' ties to Bankman-Fried.¹⁶

The dissolution proceeded over the following two years. 80,000 Hours announced its plan to become independent in December 2023 and completed its spin-out in May 2025, establishing new United Kingdom entities; the Centre for Effective Altruism announced in January 2024 that it would leave the umbrella and merge with EA Funds, targeting independence by mid-2025. The boards stated that they would not take on new sponsored projects to replace those that departed.⁶⁷