- I used an LLM to help draft this post and it likely contains >10% AI-generated text (translation and correction), but I’ve edited and rewritten it extensively and endorse it.
First EA Italy Fundraising Campaign
Hello everyone!
My name is Fabio, and I am a member of the board of directors of EA Italy APS. I have been involved with Effective Altruism for around ten years, but I believe this is my first post on the Forum.
The Italian EA community and I would like to share the progress and goals of our current fundraising campaign (individual donors). We hope that our experience may be useful to other national or local groups facing similar challenges, or simply encourage local groups to start a fundraising campaign from scratch.
Previous Situation
EA Italy APS was founded several years ago to support the growth of the Effective Altruism movement in our sun-kissed country. One of the main challenges we face is the different culture around charitable giving and philanthropy, although I suspect that other Southern European countries encounter similar obstacles.
Initially, the community had a full-time paid community builder, to whom we owe much of the creation and development of EA Italy. She also served as our first president. Later, the project was supported by two part-time paid community builders (approximately 20 hours per week each, often more). During this period, our activities were funded through grants from the international EA community.
What Happened in 2025
In 2025, our president decided to pursue a different career path, and a new board of directors was elected.
During the same year, largely due to changes in the broader funding landscape, two grant applications we submitted were unsuccessful. As a result, we had to rethink how to ensure the long-term sustainability of our association.
Our First Fundraising Campaign
After reviewing our priorities and goals, we launched our first fundraising campaign in mid-May.
We are aiming to raise a modest annual budget of €2,300, allocated across three categories:
- Operational costs: €650
- Funded book clubs (two book clubs, two groups per book club) and resources such as domain hosting, email marketing tools, and other essential services: €1,050
- Outreach and advertising: €600
As you may have noticed, because our association is entirely volunteer-run, there are no staff costs.
So far, we have raised approximately €1,400 in about one month, reaching 64% of our target.
The largest contributions have come from members of the board and supporters from the international EA community. However, we have also received donations from members of the Italian community, which is particularly encouraging.
Our Goals
Although our fundraising target is relatively small, reaching it is not straightforward because:
- The Italian EA community is still relatively small.
- Italy has a different culture around charitable giving compared to some other countries.
- While some of us have fundraising experience, this is our first campaign of this kind, and we still have much to learn.
Our primary goal is simply to ensure that EA Italy can continue operating and organizing EA-related events and programs, including career workshops, one-on-one conversations, introductory programs, and book clubs.
More broadly, we want to learn how to build a sustainable and effective national community with limited financial resources and without relying entirely on international grants.
We aimed to be as transparent as possible about our budget, and we shared a detailed breakdown with potential donors (more information here, in Italian).
Having already reached 64% of our goal, we are reasonably satisfied with the results so far, but we hope to reach 100% before the end of June.
How We Collected Donations
The campaign is entirely online.
Our fundraising activities include:
- Announcements through our national Slack workspace.
- A series of newsletters.
- Social media posts on Instagram and Facebook (now planned for mid-June).
- A dedicated fundraising landing page on our website.
- Digital donation methods, i.e. bank transfer, PayPal, and Satispay.
You can find our fundraising page here: https://altruismoefficace.it/raccolta-fondi-2026 (currently available only in Italian).
Final Thoughts
This is our campaign in a nutshell. We hope that other local and national EA groups may find some value in our experience. I think the main issues were related to communication: we missed our planned timing on social media, and there was a gap before the launch of the fundraising landing page on our website. We still have a lot to learn, so we would be grateful for any questions, feedback, or suggestions.
Please feel free to also contact us at [email protected] or reach out to me directly.
We promise to share the results of our campaign in mid July, editing this post.
Thank you for reading!
