Applications are currently open for the next cohort of AIM's Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in August 2025. We've just published our in-depth research reports on the new ideas for charities we're recommending for people to launch through the program. This article provides an introduction to each idea, and a link to the full report. You can learn more about these ideas in our upcoming Q&A with Morgan Fairless, AIM's Director of Research, on February 26th.   Advocacy for used lead-acid battery recycling legislation Full report: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/reports/lead-battery-recycling-advocacy    Description Lead-acid batteries are widely used across industries, particularly in the automotive sector. While recycling these batteries is essential because the lead inside them can be recovered and reused, it is also a major source of lead exposure—a significant environmental health hazard. Lead exposure can cause severe cardiovascular and cognitive development issues, among other health problems.   The risk is especially high when used-lead acid batteries (ULABs) are processed at informal sites with inadequate health and environmental protections. At these sites, lead from the batteries is often released into the air, soil, and water, exposing nearby populations through inhalation and ingestion. Though data remain scarce, we estimate that ULAB recycling accounts for 5–30% of total global lead exposure. This report explores the potential of launching a new charity focused on advocating for stronger ULAB recycling policies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The primary goal of these policies would be to transition the sector from informal, high-pollution recycling to formal, regulated recycling. Policies may also improve environmental and safety standards within the formal sector to further reduce pollution and exposure risks.   Counterfactual impact Cost-effectiveness analysis: We estimate that this charity could generate abou

If you don’t typically engage with politics/government, this is the time to do so. If you are American and/or based in the U.S., reaching out to lawmakers, supporting organizations that are mobilizing on this issue, and helping amplify the urgency of this crisis can make a difference. Why this matters: 1. Millions of lives are at stake 2. Decades of progress, and prior investment, in global health and wellbeing are at risk 3. Government funding multiplies the impact of philanthropy Where things stand today (February 27, 2025) The Trump Administration’s foreign aid freeze has taken a catastrophic turn: rather than complying with a court order to restart paused funding, they have chosen to terminate more than 90% of all USAID grants and contracts. This stunningly reckless decision comes just 30 days into a supposed 90-day review of foreign aid. This will cause a devastating loss of life. Even beyond the immediate deaths, the long-term consequences are dire. Many of these programs rely on supply chains, health worker training, and community trust that have taken years to build, and which have already been harmed by U.S. actions in recent weeks. Further disruptions will actively unravel decades of health infrastructure development in low-income countries. While some funding may theoretically remain available, the reality is grim: the main USAID payment system remains offline and most staff capable of restarting programs have been laid off. Many people don’t believe these terminations were carried out legally. But NGOs and implementing partners are on the brink of bankruptcy and insolvency because the government has not paid them for work completed months ago and is withholding funding for ongoing work (including not transferring funds and not giving access to drawdowns of lines of credit, as is typical for some awards). We are facing a sweeping and permanent shutdown of many of the most cost-effective global health and development programs in existence that sa

This is a Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked.  Commenting and feedback guidelines:  I'm posting this to get it out there. I'd love to see comments that take the ideas forward, but criticism of my argument won't be as useful at this time, in part because I won't do any further work on it. This is a post I drafted in November 2023, then updated for an hour in March 2025. I don’t think I’ll ever finish it so I am just leaving it in this draft form for draft amnesty week (I know I'm late). I don’t think it is particularly well calibrated, but mainly just makes a bunch of points that I haven’t seen assembled elsewhere. Please take it as extremely low-confidence and there being a low-likelihood of this post describing these dynamics perfectly. I’ve worked at both EA charities and non-EA charities, and the EA funding landscape is unlike any other I’ve ever been in. This can be good — funders are often willing to take high-risk, high-reward bets on projects that might otherwise never get funded, and the amount of friction for getting funding is significantly lower. But, there is an orientation toward funders (and in particular staff at some major funders), that seems extremely unusual for charitable communities: a high degree of deference to their opinions. As a reference, most other charitable communities I’ve worked in have viewed funders in a much more mixed light. Engaging with them is necessary, yes, but usually funders (including large, thoughtful foundations like Open Philanthropy) are viewed as… an unaligned third party who is instrumentally useful to your organization, but whose opinions on your work should hold relatively little or no weight, given that they are a non-expert on the direct work, and often have bad ideas about how to do what you are doing. I think there are many good reasons to take funders’ perspectives seriously, and I mostly won’t cover these here. But, to