Hi all,
A while back I posted on here asking if there were any other pro athlete aspiring EAs. The response (while not including other pro athletes) was amazing, and the conversations and contacts that manifested from this forum were myriad. Thank you deeply for being such an awesome community!
Now I am very pleased to say that High Impact Athletes has launched.
We are an EA aligned non-profit run by pro athletes. HIA aims to channel donations to the most effective, evidence-based charities in the world in the areas of Global Health & Poverty and Environmental Impact. We will harness the wealth, fame, and social influence of professional athletes to bring as many new people in to the effective altruism framework as possible and create the biggest possible snowball of donations to the places where they can do the most good.
You can poke around on the website to learn more at https://highimpactathletes.com/
Feedback is welcomed, and even more welcome is a follow on any of the socials. I'm terrible at social media and could use all the help I can get to build an audience.
Instagram: high.impact.athletes
Twitter: HIAorg
Facebook: @HIAorg
On that note, if anyone is interested in helping out with the social media side of things or knows anyone who would be please do get in touch either on here or at marcus@highimpactathletes.com
Thank you once again, you're all awesome.
Cheers, Marcus Daniell
Hi Marcus,
I don't have any experience with athletes, though I'd be surprised if they were unusually self-centred compared to other rich people.
Donating a % of winnings above a threshold might be better if income volatility is the worry. That's the approach Founder's Pledge and REG both use, which are also very relevant examples. (Note that FP started out with IIRC 2% as their default but now they don't have a specific percentage and try to suggest the idea of donating much more initially.) I could imagine a pitch like "if you win X big competition, how about giving 30% of that?"
We do know that the EA pitch has worked best on finance, quanty and techy people so far, and it might be hard to extend.
One other thing I'd say is that when we've done outreach for GWWC, we're always letting interested people come to us, rather than going out and pitching to people. I expect if I tried to pitch giving 10% to a randomly selected friend I wouldn't get far. Instead we'd do something like host a talk about charity, or have a media article, or get introductions to people - so we were always working with a group who have preselected themselves into being pitched.
Though, I think David Golberg has had a lot of success with a more proactive approach at FP among tech entrepreneurs, so it's possible, though I think even there he'd mostly screen people for interest in charity, or get warm introductions.