Project summary

The LEAH Coworking Space is an office space in central London for students and professionals working on projects related to EA. The office has 25 desks with separate rooms for silent and social working, call pods, a kitchen, access to meeting rooms, and breakout spaces.
Our office has been able to maintain high usage while keeping our costs low relative to comparable spaces. London also benefits from a large EA community across many organisations, professionals, and students.

Our goals

We aim to provide value through:
1. Increasing productivity of users doing impactful work
2. Creating new and impactful connections and interactions
3. Hosting events for office users, students, and other EA organisations/groups

Our track record

The LEAH Coworking Space was opened in 2022 and moved to our current office in May 2023 near Farringdon station.

• Productivity: In June 2024 we ran a survey of 57 office users where they reported an average of 6.8 additional productive hours per week from using the office. Based on our average of 45.1 weekly unique visitors per week (over the last year and excluding guests [1]), this suggests 1,319 additional productive hours per month. If we place a value on users time at $50 per hour, it would be the equivalent of $65,936 (~£50,700) per month from productivity [2]. We expect this is a noisy metric, although we do think it shows that on average users are getting significant productivity benefits from using the office. In the survey, users mentioned improved productivity due to an improved ability to focus, the ability to work in-person with colleagues, access to equipment such as monitors, and reducing time spent making or buying food.

• Connections and interactions: Our survey highlighted many outcomes that users reported from connections and interactions in the office. Common examples mentioned giving and receiving advice and making useful connections. The clearest examples of impactful outcomes included seemingly valuable introductions or connections being made, with potentially high counterfactual value although this is difficult to estimate. Specific examples included conversations in the office that led to valuable introductions being made, collaborations on projects, someone being hired for a part-time role after meeting in the office, getting encouragement to apply for jobs or grant opportunities, and more enjoyment in their work.

• Events: In the last year, we have hosted ~21 events in the office, mostly hosted by our team (Arcadia Impact) who have run 17 events. Our events have included mini-conferences for students and research sprints on AI governance, cost-effectiveness of global health interventions, and biosecurity. We have also hosted around 11 reading group cohorts including Introduction Fellowships for students, or in-person AI Safety Fundamentals groups. Access to a reliable venue for events has saved event organisers time and money, although it is difficult to estimate how much.

• Usage: Between 1st July 2023 and 30th June 2024, we recorded 5,617 visits in total, an average of 18.1 visits per weekday and 4.6 visits on weekend days. We expect this is an underestimate of ~20% of actual usage based on our observations (our sign in system relies on users to manually sign in and out which people often don’t). The office has been visited by 81 unique users in the last month.

• Users: Our users work on a range of cause areas including EA community building/meta, animal welfare, global health, forecasting, biosecurity, and AI Safety/governance. Historically ~81% of visits have been from professionals, 10% from PhD or Masters students, and 9% from undergraduate students. Many users work independently, or remotely without an alternative office space to work from. We currently have 136 permanent users signed up and have had visits from ~393 users in total (including guests).

How will the funding be used?

The funding will contribute to our rent costs for 6 months in our office which cover most of the costs (76% of our costs were for rent over the last year), between November 2024 - May 2025. We have worked hard to create a space that provides the value of office spaces as discussed above while keeping our costs low, especially considering our central location.
We also cover costs for food including snacks and basic meal options for users, and a small amount on equipment and running costs. In the last year we have spent £140,090 (~$182k) on the office, £467 per desk per month and ~£25 per recorded visit. This doesn't include salaries for time spent managing the office. 76% of costs were on rent, 21.4% on food, and 2.6% on equipment and running costs. We intend to raise additional funds to cover food and other running costs over this period.

We are also currently considering expanding by moving to a larger office in our building although this will depend on availability and securing further funding.

Our team

The office is managed by Joe Hardie and Erin Robertson from Arcadia Impact who have run the office alongside our other community/field building projects including supporting Effective Altruism groups in London, Safe AI London, and LASR Labs. We estimate we spend a total of 10 hours per week on managing the office on average.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

We are in the process of applying for other grants including from previous funders of the office.

Footnotes:
[1] We exclude guests since applying the average productive hours per week from survey respondents would be an overestimate on their productivity.
[2] Calculation: 45.1 users 6.8 average hours 4.3 weeks in a month= 1,319 hours per month, $50 * 1,319 hours = $65,936