Image: EA New Zealand

Published 21st September 2019

Volunteer

Whether you live close to an EA organisation or not, and whether you have time to give short-term or long-term, there’s likely a way to apply your skills to help high-impact projects that make the world better.

Volunteering gives you the opportunity to start making a difference now, while also developing your abilities for the future. You can hone existing skills, gain new ones, and make connections with organisations and people in the EA community.

Place to look for volunteering opportunities:

• Suggested voluntary activities from CEA, which you can sort based on your availability, time and background in EA.
• See the Effective Altruism Volunteering Facebook group for current volunteer opportunities.
• See this forum post on cause-area specific opportunities for more ideas.
• If you’re interested in volunteering for effective animal charities, see this guide of opportunities from Animal Charity Evaluators
• Go to eawork.club to check out volunteer opportunities
• If there is an EA group in your area, meet up with them and volunteer to help run the group. If there isn’t an EA group in your area, consider starting a group.
• If you see an opportunity, or a need that isn’t being met, consider starting your own project. You can seek advice and assistance from other EAs by writing your idea up on the EA Forum, or on an EA Facebook Page.

You can also mark yourself available for volunteer opportunities on the EA Hub. This will cause your profile to be viewable on the volunteers page.

Research

If you are embarking on research as part of your degree, the Effective Thesis program will connect you with a coach who will help you find a thesis topic with a high potential to improve the world. They have current and finished theses on their website.

Many people conduct their own research and publish it on the EA Forum.

Fundraise for Charity

Fundraising for an effective charity can provide funds and spread awareness of effective charities. Some people in the EA community raise money for charities using fundraisers, most commonly by setting up a birthday or christmas fundraiser online and asking their networks to donate.

Ways of setting up online fundraisers:

• Some charities have the ability to make fundraisers on their website. This makes it really easy to set up a fundraiser. E.g. Against Malaria Foundation.
• Depending on where you live, and which charity you choose, you might be able to create a facebook fundraiser.
• GoFundMe is an easy way to create a fundraiser for charities registered in the USA.

Peter Hurford describes how he created a successful birthday fundraiser here.

Spread EA Ideas

Sharing your actions and the reasons behind them can be a great way of increasing your impact. It can encourage others to check out causes you mention, to donate, or to get involved in the community. This can be a difficult thing to do sometimes, and it has some risk: Firstly talking about giving is often grouped with socially unacceptable behaviours like discussing income, so you might come across as strange. Also, if you spread EA messages poorly people could get a negative or inaccurate impression of EA, which could cause harm. However, sharing your story can be very powerful, as argued by Peter Hurford in in this forum post.

To maximise the chances that your communication of EA goes well, read these tips on talking about EA.

The EA Workplace Activism project provides a handbook for anyone wanting to marshal the resources of their organisation and the enthusiasm of your colleagues to hasten the eradication of extreme poverty.

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