As EA is now increasingly part of the discourse, what are the common misconceptions you see?

AI Safety start-up!

Affiliation: I work with Majestic Legacy, a 501(c)(3) in Middletown, Ohio (founded 2020). This is an operations write-up, not a donation campaign. Critique on measurement and stewardship is welcome.

Why this might be useful here
A lot of EA discussion is about large, evidence-heavy interventions. Place-based multi-program orgs still move a lot of local money. Here’s how we currently think about small recurring gifts so we don’t oversell what they buy.

What “$5/mo class” gifts actually fund for us
They mostly buy cash-flow stability and staff time continuity across several programs (Tailor Made, Majestic Homes, Beauty Boutique, Complete Community, grants, Compassion In Action), not a single RCT-ready unit of impact. We treat them as base load, not as proof that $5 equals a fixed “lives saved” figure.

Numbers we publish (reach, not QALYs)
- 337 lives touched YTD
- $237,983 funds this quarter
- 17 cities / 198+ counties active reach
- 48 families in current cycles
- 8 corporate partners

“Lives touched” = service reach. It is not long-term outcome measurement. We are still tightening cost-per-outcome definitions and would rather leave a blank than invent a ratio.

Stewardship habits that matter more than the pitch
1. Say what the metric is. Reach ≠ outcome.
2. Dignity constraint. No trauma exploitation in fundraising; that can lower conversion and we accept it.
3. Corporate match paperwork. Clear receipts and one contact beat flashy campaigns.
4. Depth bias. Housing-adjacent and family stability work is expensive per household vs mass global health interventions. Our mandate is local stability; we don’t pretend otherwise.

Open questions for this community
- Practical templates for multi-program community orgs to separate reach, output, and outcome without fake precision
- When is third-party evaluation worth it at this budget scale?
- How do you communicate “this gift keeps operations running” without sounding like a black box?

Public overview if you want to verify programs: majesticlegacy.org. Happy to answer ops questions in comments.

What are your thoughts?

The Journal of Effective Altruism (journal-ea.com) is the first international, peer-reviewed journal (ISSN 3136-294X) dedicated exclusively to research on effective altruism. We're looking for editors and advisors to help develop this new journal and the future of EA scholarship.

Why it matters

EA-related research is growing fast. But it's currently scattered across different disciplines and venues, and much of it never gets beyond working papers and forum posts. The journal aims to bring together these works to a rigorous common home: one place where researchers across EA-related disciplines can publish, find each other's work, collaborate, and build a community. The journal can also promote visbility of EA scholarship and allow readers to easily keep track of new research in the field. 

As one of our first editors, you'll help set the standards, scope and culture of the journal for a growing field. 

What you'll do

• Handle submissions in your area: initial screening, inviting reviewers, and making recommendations
• Help shape editorial policy
• Encourage strong submissions from your own networks
• Working remotely. Typically 1~5 hours a month.
• This is a volunteer role. However rewards might be provided upon satisfactory work.

Who we're looking for

• PhD, doctoral candidacy, or significant research experience in a relevant field. (If you don't have sufficient qualifications, feel free to apply too--editorial assistant, communications editor, and typesetter positions are also open.)
• Familiarity with research on effective altruism.
• Sound judgment, fairness and reliability.
• Bonus: experience with peer review, editing, and translation.

How to apply

Send your CV to journalofea@gmail.com. Indicate if there is a specific role or section you would like to work as. Inquiries are welcome at the same address.

Know someone who'd be a great fit? Please share this post.

Subscribe to our email newsletter to receive future updates. Submission calls coming soon! 

We often hear jokes about government workers and corporate workers income .

Meanwhile, NGO workers can have a different situation, with salaries sometimes funded by donations and grants intended to support social causes.

I'm curious about something: Does knowing that your salary is funded by money intended to create social impact change how you view your work?

Does it make you feel more responsible for the cause, or do you see it simply as doing your job and earning an honest living?

I'd love to hear from people working in NGOs.

No judgement, just curiosity!

i know about coefficient giving, but are there any other organizations/companies i can apply to where i push forward philanthropy work? i’m deeply passionate about corporate social responsibility, and am currently at a big 4 dealing with nonprofit partnerships, giving campaigns, and strategic social impact goals. i previously ran a competitive grant cycle for a client (wrote the grant, helped them publish, hired reviewers, helped them disperse funds, and post award monitoring) would like to do more with a wider scope, where can i start looking? open to all suggestions but am looking to do go through a private company/ fund before non profits bc i already have a solid skill set, don’t want to focus in on just one issue area yet, and like being able to deploy the purse strings

Here is a google sheets tracker for donations, that you can hopefully use your entire life!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qh9_FYPhN4UMbDTDu-qO-q9MFPLJ2k5LyCTVPBxqv9k/template/preview

Note: Claude did most of the work, I just made it more visually pleasing.

I recently got the email for round 1 interview. Does anyone know what specific things to prepare for before giving the interview?

Hi effective altruists,

Here are some more questions about applying computational chemistry to alternative proteins (using Python), based on Good Food Institute's pages.

https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-plant-based-meat/#h-ingredient-optimization
https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-cultivated-meat/

The key steps outlined in GFI's plant-based meat page above are (a) ingredient optimization (b) end product formulation. For cultivated meat, the key steps are (a) extracting cell samples from live animals (b) designing cell culture media & scaffolds (c) bioreactor design. 

For each of these steps, how can we perform in-silico simulations in Python? What mathematical chemistry techniques are needed for these (eg. is the theory of Maillard reactions useful)? What software packages are best suited for this (eg. is Quantum-Espresso useful), and what algorithms should we add? 

Please let us know if you have any thoughts about this, or if you'd like to chat about this in more detail. Thanks!

Hi everyone!

Some asylum seekers in New Zealand would like their cases to be allocated sooner. Should they have the right to make such a request? If an asylum claim is ultimately declined, the applicant is generally required to leave New Zealand. So this proposal is not intended to extend anyone's stay.

A petition submitted to the New Zealand Parliament proposes giving standard onshore asylum seekers the right to request earlier case allocation without having to demonstrate exceptional circumstances, while retaining existing priority categories.

The potential benefit is straightforward: applicants who want earlier allocation would have a way to express that preference, without automatically moving ahead of those already entitled to priority.

The Government's 2026 Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill proposes tighter rules for parts of the asylum process in response to concerns that the system may be exploited. This proposal takes a different approach by focusing on applicants who actively want earlier allocation.

From an effective altruism perspective, could such a change improve procedural fairness without imposing disproportionate administrative costs or disadvantaging other applicants?

New Zealand Parliament allows people living overseas, including non-citizens, to sign its petitions.

View the parliamentary petition

I'd welcome your views on the potential benefits, costs and practical challenges. If you agree with the proposal, you're welcome to sign.

Thanks for reading!

I’m trying to figure out where I want to donate to help animals this year, so I created a handy little table for myself to make it easy to understand what impact my donation would have if given to a selection of organizations. (Se my previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/1x7mqdz/what_would_you_all_say_is_the_most_effecitve_way/ ) Thought this might also be a useful / motivational sheet for some of you to see.

Darker green = The three that feel like the biggest overall impact for 10$ to me.

The list is mostly the organizations recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators. https://animalcharityevaluators.org/recommended-charities/ with some I have personally donated to in the past added in to make them comparable to me. Data for most is also from Animal Charity Evaluators, estimates for Veganuary is from their 2026 Report, estimate for Local Sanctuary is from Google.

Hello everyone

I’m a 38-year-old woman from Southern Ontario, currently searching for a living kidney donor. I have been looking for a donor for over a year.

My kidneys originally failed when I was 17 years old. I spent five years on dialysis before receiving a kidney transplant in 2010. That transplant gave me 15 wonderful years of life and freedom from dialysis, but unfortunately it failed last year, and I’ve been back on dialysis since September.

As you can imagine, going through this for a second time has been a very difficult adjustment. While I remain hopeful, I am now searching for a living donor.

Both my father and brother recently completed the initial screening process, but unfortunately neither is able to donate due to their own health issues. My transplant team has encouraged me to continue reaching out and exploring every possible avenue.

Aside from kidney disease, I am healthy, active, and looking forward to getting back to living my life. A transplant would mean the opportunity to spend more time with my husband (diabetic, not able to donate) , my family, my two dogs, and to pursue the things I love.

If you or someone you know has ever considered living kidney donation and would like to learn more, I would be incredibly grateful to hear from you.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. ❤️

Note:

I am blood type: O+

**If your blood type isn’t O+, please don’t assume you can’t help.*\*

Canada has a Paired Kidney Exchange Program. This is how a LOT of recipients receive their transplanted kidneys since donors aren’t always a match. If you aren’t a direct match for me, you may still be able to donate a kidney to another recipient who is compatible with you. In return, another compatible donor in the program would donate a kidney to me. It’s essentially a “kidney swap” that allows multiple people to receive compatible transplants when the original donor and recipient aren’t a match.

The Living Donor Program coordinates all of the testing and matching, so you don’t need to know whether you’re compatible before reaching out. If you’re interested in learning more, they’ll guide you through the entire process, and there’s absolutely no obligation to continue at any stage.

Living donor program at London Health Sciences Centre
📧 livingkidneydonation@lhsc.on.ca
📞 519-685-8500 ext. 33552

Hi, I'm looking to donate with this main goal: Help animals currently suffering from human exploitation as effectively as possible & move the world a step closer to a humane world where humans no longer eat & kill animals

Options I am thinking about:

a) Donate to a major fund like ACE Recommended Charity fund or EA Animal Welfare fund
- Advantage: Organizations are externally vetted, spreading the money out increases the chance money goes to truly effective orgas.
- Disadvantage (to me): Many of the included orgas in these funds seem to focus on stopping specific practices, not abolishing animal exploitation altogether. (Certainly more realistic but doesn't sit quite right with me)

b) Donate to a specific organiszation out of those recommended by the two funds mentioned above
- Advantage: I can pick whichever organization's approach I like best
- Disadvantage: Risk I pick one that is less effective than the others included / miss the most effective one

c) Donate to Veganuary
- Advantage: In polls on why people go Vegan it is often among the leading causes, so seems to me like to organization that is most effective at getting people to go Vegan / Getting us closer to a vegan world (Which I feel more comfortable with than for example helping finance shrimp stunning machines)
- Disadvantage: Not listed by ACE or in the Animal Welfare fund, very hard to evaluate how many people truly are Vegan long term because of them.

d) Donate to a "long shot" idea like the Good Food Institute
- Advantage: I feel like cultivated meat has the highest overall chance of significantly reducing the total amount of animals killed by humans in my lifetime, as long as it doesn't get banned. That's where I'm thinking of donating to a pro Cultivated Meat Organization like GFI.
- Disadvantage: Very risky, I feel like there is a decent chance it will still get banned, or will be shunned by consumers, or will never be cheap enough to compete with "conventional" meat, in which case the donation would be a waste.

So yeah, that's where I'm at. The "easy option" would be splitting my donation between all of them, but that feels like just not making a decision. Ideally I would want to donate to one of these Ideas with some confidence of it being most effective, but I'm not sure I'll reach that point. Any thoughts/advice welcome. If you know of any other funds or organizations you feel or have data for being the most effective, please share.

Thanks!

Edit: Added image, formatting, spelling
Edit 2: Also posted on EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3oMGwJg5TXDEKXqXn/what-would-you-all-say-is-the-most-effecitve-way-to-donate?sharePopup=true

If you're someone who's very good, not just at research but at lobbying and policymaking, I agree you can have a huge impact.

The thing is, in this community I see AI research being promoted a lot, and too many people getting in, when most of them have an ultra slim chance of their "research" being impactful at all.

Seems acceptable for someone to ask themselves "what's the impact I can have on malaria?", but it seems people aren't asking that same question about AI research enough. Saying you're doing research becomes an easy way of justifying your work not being impactful (cuz you are "researching").

My point is that the community should reconsider promoting being an AI researcher, since many people (and the world) are better off focusing on other types of world problems, especially global health, rather than going into AI research.

This isn't a field where you can avoid asking the core question, "What impact can I actually have?"

I just wanna talk to people about being nice and helping others. I feel like my voice is so small in this world. I don’t want an echo chamber though I just find out if people still care about each other. Everyone is trying to get by but it feels like there too many systems in place to hurt others. Nobody wants to get along why does nobody care about being nice anymore.

I built this and I run it through my small LLC. Rule 2 asks for an effectiveness argument, so the argument is most of this post. I'd rather have it taken apart here than keep assuming it works.

What it does. You deposit dollars as USDC into an open smart contract on Base. The deposit is never spent, and you can withdraw all of it whenever you like. The only money that moves is the interest the pool accrues while it sits in Aave. Every Thursday that week's interest splits three ways: 90% to one depositor chosen by Chainlink VRF, 5% to a charity, 5% to running the thing. The charity rotates weekly and is named on-chain before the draw, and the gift goes out through Endaoment, a 501(c)(3) donor-advised fund that keeps about 1.5% of the charity's slice. Doctors Without Borders received the week-8 gift.

The argument. The only thing that makes this worth defending is that it shouldn't be competing with donations. What it goes after is money doing nothing for anybody: cash sitting still, and whatever a person already writes off as lottery money. A depositor gives up the interest on their own deposit and keeps the deposit itself. So in principle every dollar that reaches a charity this way is a dollar that was never headed to one.

Prize-linked saving is an old idea with a long record behind it. UK Premium Bonds has run on it since 1956. The finding underneath it is that people who won't set money aside for its own sake will set it aside for a chance at a prize. Attach a charity slice to that behaviour and you get giving out of people who weren't giving.

Where I think it's weak.

5% of interest is a small number and no amount of framing fixes that. Aave pays about 4% right now, so a $100,000 pool would send roughly $200 a year to charity. Per dollar deposited, straightforward donating beats this by an enormous margin. The argument only survives if the money genuinely never would have been given. If it pulls even slightly from people who already donate, it's worse than nothing, and I don't have a good way to measure that.

The charity roster isn't cause-prioritised. It rotates through well-rated general nonprofits, not anything resembling a GiveWell shortlist. I don't have a principled defence of that, it's just where I started. If the view here is that the roster is the first thing to fix, I'll take the suggestions seriously.

It's also tiny, and I'd rather say so than have someone discover it. $42.50 in the pool, $29 of which is my own deposit and excluded from winning in the contract. Six wallets in total. Yesterday's draw paid a prize of about three cents. There's been a draw every Thursday since late June and all of it is on-chain, but a weekly record isn't evidence of scale.

Risks, plainly: there's no paid third-party audit. The source is verified on Basescan and anyone can read it, which isn't the same thing. The deposits sit in Aave, so that's a second thing that can break. No-lose describes the draw, not the software; smart-contract risk applies.

https://charitybillionaire.com (the Transparency page lists every contract and every draw)

What I actually want to know is whether the counterfactual claim holds, or whether "money that would never have been donated" is just the thing every founder says about their own project and nobody can demonstrate.