Charity Entrepreneurship in collaboration with Giving What We Can is opening a new program to launch 4-6 new Effective Giving Initiatives (EGIs) in 2024. We expect them to raise millions in counterfactual funding for highly impactful charities, even in their first few years.

[Applications are open now] 

In recent years Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden & Giving What We Can have moved huge sums of money ($1.4m, $35m and $330m, respectively) to the best charities globally. We aim to build on their experience and success by launching new EGIs in highly promising locations. These initiatives can be fully independent or run in collaboration with existing organizations, depending on what is most impactful. We’ll provide the training, the blueprints, and the all-important seed funding.   

This 8-week full-time, fully cost-covered program will run online from April 15 to June 7, 2024, with 2 weeks in person in London. We encourage individuals from all countries to apply, and we are particularly excited about applications from our top recommended countries.

[Apply by January 14, 2024]

Learn more on our website: 

[EFFECTIVE GIVING INCUBATION]

Who is this program for?

We invite applicants from all backgrounds, ages, and nationalities. Specific work experience or formal education credentials aren’t necessary. During the program, we’ll help you join forces with a co-founder from the cohort – someone whose skills and experience complement your own. Together, you’ll make up an entrepreneurial team that:

• Is high in moral ambition: Drives to maximize funds raised and then optimize their impact.
• Is deeply impartial and open-minded: Focuses on following the latest evidence about the most impactful giving opportunities worldwide.
• Has a strong focus on tangible results: Pushes for rigor, organization, and accountability to run a tight ship with excellent governance and outcomes.
• Grows its influence and credibility over time: Builds relationships and acts as a trusted advisor to discerning donors. 
• N.B. One of you may have previous experience in fundraising or strategic marketing, though this is not required.

Why do we think this is promising?

In the last few years, several Effective Giving Initiatives such as Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden & Giving What We Can have moved millions in funding to the best charities globally, to the nonprofits that are helping the greatest number of those most in need, to the greatest extent. In short, they have made real progress on many of the world’s most pressing problems.

However, there is still too little funding for highly impactful nonprofits and our internal analysis suggests that EGIs are a proven effective way to raise these funds. This lack of funding takes time away from people who could be working on important problems, who instead have to focus on fundraising. In some cases, this means that high-leverage work won’t get done because there is not enough funding, and projects have to shut down or minimize their scope. 

Established EGIs have developed a deep repository of knowledge, resources, and systems that new actors can build on. Leveraging this has two significant benefits: New EGIs will (a) have a significantly higher chance of successfully launching and (b) be able to move faster and have an impact sooner than they would if they were starting from scratch.

CE has an excellent track record of launching highly impactful organizations and has expertise in incubating and training charity founders. GWWC and other effective giving initiatives have expressed their excitement for this new program and will support its development and implementation, as well as directly mentor the new EGIs after the program. 

Read our report below to learn more about our reasoning, theory of change, potential impact, and more: 

[DOWNLOAD THE REPORT]

Our top recommended target countries

For the upcoming April-June 2024 Effective Giving Incubation, our research evaluated the counterfactuality of the donations made to existing EGIs, like Effektiv Spenden and Doneer Effectief, as well as which countries would be most promising to start new EGIs. 

Our country's recommendations are based on each country's donation potential and tractability. To estimate the donation potential, we modeled funds raised from existing EGIs and extrapolated them to new countries based on several metrics that appear to be relatively predictive of donations raised, such as population and GDP. For the tractability assessment, we used several proxies such as the World Giving Index ranking, the size of the Effective Altruist community as a proxy for impact-mindedness, and expert interviews with people from these countries. Read more about our recommendations in the report.

We are excited about new EGIs starting in the following countries, but we are also open to people presenting a strong case for countries not on the list.

We kindly ask you to share this post with individuals in those specific countries. Additionally, if you are from one of these countries, we encourage you to share this within your local EA communities. Your support in reaching out to these regions is greatly appreciated and could significantly contribute to the success of our initiative.

Should you apply?

We hope nonprofit entrepreneurship is already on your radar as a potential career. It’s an unconventional career step, but we genuinely believe that for those for whom it is a good fit, starting a charity could be one of the most impactful and fulfilling paths they might take.

Pursuing this career path can have an immense counterfactual impact while providing opportunities to learn and develop a diverse set of transferable skills. Here are just a few examples of what you will learn from our program alone: 

• Leadership Skills
  • Strategic planning and prioritization
  • Tools for excellent evidence-based decision-making
  • Skills for critically assessing impact & cost-effectiveness evaluations
• Marketing & Outreach Skills
  • Pitching
  • Fundraising
  • How to advise high-net-worth individuals

After the program, you will gain hands-on experience in running a nonprofit, collaborating with stakeholders, designing and implementing fundraising and outreach campaigns, and learning from GWWC’s network of over 50 organizations in the effective giving ecosystem. Plus, you’ll leverage ongoing support from the GWWC team and CE’s community of over 100+ previous incubatees, researchers, and funders.

Application process

We value potential over experience. We encourage everyone to use our application process to assess your fit for high-impact nonprofit entrepreneurship as a career step. Over the past five years, our application process has been improved and validated to be highly predictive of an individual's potential to successfully launch a high-impact charity. Completing the initial application form will only require approximately 30 minutes of your time.

Timeline

Applications are open until January 14, 2024.
The selection process will start on January 15, and offer letters will be sent at the latest by March 15, 2024.

[APPLY NOW]

• The entire application process will take no more than 10 hours of your time from start to finish (if you make it into the program).
• To protect your valuable time, we will only invite you to the next stage if we think you have a good chance of success.
• We have designed the process to help you learn more about what is important for founding a high-impact charity and how to weigh it against other career options and pathways to impact.