LEAH Coworking Space

Joseph Hardie

CompleteGrant

$3,847raised

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

donated $800

Joseph Hardie

25 days ago

Final report

I’m now closing this project, thanks again to everyone that donated!

Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

As mentioned in my previous update, we moved our office to a new 35-desk space across 2 floors and have been there for over 1 year now.

Last year, we ran an updated user survey of 39 office users where users reported an average of:

7.3 additional productive hours per week from using the office.
overall rating of 8.6/10 for the office.
9.5 new connections and 4.7 impactful connections.

As Arcadia has worked to restructure and focus our core programmes on AI safety, we have recently re-branded the office to be run by Impact First (named the Impact First Coworking Space), a new project within Arcadia Impact working to support exceptional students and early-career professionals as they explore and pursue high-impact careers.

Alongside continued grant funding, we have implemented a charging system which has contributed to ~15% of our costs in the past year. We have continued to focus on providing low-cost office space. In the past year we have reduced our cost per desk to £360 per month from £467 the previous year. We have also now obtained business rates (UK property tax) relief as a charity, which will allow us to reduce our costs this year to ~£336 per desk per month.

If you’re interested in supporting the office in the future then please get in touch. You can learn more about the office and apply to be a member here.

Spending breakdown

All of the funding contributed to our rent costs, covering ~1.5 weeks of rent. In our 2025 Financial year our full spending breakdown for the office was: Rent (71%), Food (16%), Business rates (12%), Other (1%).

donated $800

Joseph Hardie

11 months ago

Progress update

Thank you everyone who donated to support the LEAH Coworking Space and to Manifund for organising the EA community choice. Your donations have helped our space continue and improve over the last 6 months.

Since our first post there’s been some big updates on the office which we think have improved the space and make it a more sustainable project.

New office
One major update (which I mentioned as a possibility in the original post) is that that we have now moved the a larger office in our building. This has improved the space by:

Increasing our capacity from 25 desks to 34 desks and has more space per desks allowing us to serve more users and provide a better working experience.
Improving our meeting rooms and call pods. The new office included a (much needed) extra call pod, and two private meeting rooms with space for 4 or 10 people. We previously shared meeting rooms with other companies in our building, so this allows us to get more use out of the rooms and improve the booking experience.
A few small improvements such as being brighter, having better ventilation, more social/dining space, and better space to host events.

Charging users

Another big update is that we have recently started charging users for the office usage with the option to apply for discounts. So far, we’ve been impressed by the take up of users paying for space while still being generous in the discounts we offer. We have given many discounts including free memberships to those who wouldn't be able to pay including students or those working for small nonprofits with limited budgets.
We’re expecting to cover around 1/3 of our office costs, and if Arcadia paid for desks for our own staff it would come to ~50%. With the introduction of charging, we have seen a slight decrease in usage which was expected.

Costs

The new space has decreased our cost per desk to ~£400 per month and ~£22 per visit. We are also hoping to reduce costs further in the future since Arcadia Impact recently became a registered charity in the UK, allowing us to apply for a significant discount on business rates which is currently 19.4% of our office costs.

Next steps

For the rest of this year, we are planning on making some improvements to the office and promoting the space to new users. If you’re interested in applying as a permanent user or visitor, you can submit an application here.

Marine Lercier

over 1 year ago

Great work! 👏🏽

donated $50

Neel Nanda

over 1 year ago

I've worked out of LEAH and appreciate its existence!

donated $100

🦋

Yashvardhan Sharma

over 1 year ago

LEAH is a great office space. I loved co-working and meeting people there when I visited London this year!

donated $600

🍊

Erin Robertson

over 1 year ago

I donated partly because I run this office, but also because it has been the EA community space which has given me by far the most value over the course of my time there. I have learnt so much about Routes to having an impact, and have met people who went on to work closely with me and my organisation as a result of the office.

Sasha Cooper

over 1 year ago

@erin_f Self-donating like a prisoner's dilemma defection to me. Many people in this initiative both received money and contributed a project to the selection, and most of us resisted the temptation to donate at all, let alone the full amount. Were I a funder considering a similar initiative like this I would find it highly offputting to see this behaviour (since it amounts to a first-come-first-served distribution of the funds, losing almost all the informational value it was supposed to generate).

Sasha Cooper

over 1 year ago

*resisted the temptation to self-donate

donated $55

🦁

Christian Shaw

over 1 year ago

The team do a great job fostering a vibrant EA community in London, and providing a valuable space for professionals to focus on their work and connect in the kitchen! It's personally valuable to me, and helps me stay connected with the wider EA community.