Announcing our plan to become an independent organisation

We are excited to share that 80,000 Hours has officially decided to spin out as a project from our parent organisations and establish an independent legal structure.

80,000 Hours is a project of the Effective Ventures group — the umbrella term for Effective Ventures Foundation and Effective Ventures Foundation USA, Inc., which are two separate legal entities that work together. It also includes the projects Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and others.

We’re incredibly grateful to the Effective Ventures leadership and team and the other orgs for all their support, particularly in the last year. They devoted countless hours and enormous effort to helping ensure that we and the other orgs could pursue our missions.

And we deeply appreciate Effective Ventures’ support in our spin-out. They recently announced that all of the other organisations under their umbrella will likewise become their own legal entities; we’re excited to continue to work alongside them to improve the world.

Back in May, we investigated whether it was the right time to spin out of our parent organisations. We’ve considered this option at various points in the last three years.

There have been many benefits to being part of a larger entity since our founding. But as 80,000 Hours and the other projects within Effective Ventures have grown, we concluded we can now best pursue our mission and goals independently. Effective Ventures leadership approved the plan.

Becoming our own legal entity will allow us to:

• Match our governing structure to our function and purpose
• Design operations systems that best meet our staff’s needs
• Reduce interdependence with other entities that raises financial, legal, and reputational risks

There’s a lot for us to do to make this happen. We’re currently in the process of finding a new CEO to lead us in our next chapter. We’ll also need a new board to oversee our work, and new staff for our internal systems team and other growing programmes.

We’re excited to begin this next chapter and to continue providing research and support to help people have high-impact careers!