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Curated and popular this week
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I speak to many entrepreneurial people trying to do a large amount of good by starting a nonprofit organisation. I think this is often an error for four main reasons.
1. Scalability
2. Capital counterfactuals
3. Standards
4. Learning potential
5. Earning to give potential
These arguments are most applicable to starting high-growth organisations, such as startups.[1]
Scalability
There is a lot of capital available for startups, and established mechanisms exist to continue raising funds if the ROI appears high. It seems extremely difficult to operate a nonprofit with a budget of more than $30M per year (e.g., with approximately 150 people), but this is not particularly unusual for for-profit organisations.
Capital Counterfactuals
I generally believe that value-aligned funders are spending their money reasonably well, while for-profit investors are spending theirs extremely poorly (on altruistic grounds). If you can redirect that funding towards high-altruism value work, you could potentially create a much larger delta between your use of funding and the counterfactual of someone else receiving those funds. You also won’t be reliant on constantly convincing donors to give you money, once you’re generating revenue.
Standards
Nonprofits have significantly weaker feedback mechanisms compared to for-profits. They are often difficult to evaluate and lack a natural kill function. Few people are going to complain that you provided bad service when it didn’t cost them anything. Most nonprofits are not very ambitious, despite having large moral ambitions. It’s challenging to find talented people willing to accept a substantial pay cut to work with you. For-profits are considerably more likely to create something that people actually want.
Learning Potential
Most people should be trying to put themselves in a better position to do useful work later on. People often report learning a great deal from working at high-growth companies, building interesting connection
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TL;DR
Exactly one year after receiving our seed funding upon completion of the Charity Entrepreneurship program, we (Miri and Evan) look back on our first year of operations, discuss our plans for the future, and launch our fundraising for our Year 2 budget.
Family Planning could be one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available. Reducing unintended pregnancies lowers maternal mortality, decreases rates of unsafe abortions, and reduces maternal morbidity. Increasing the interval between births lowers under-five mortality. Allowing women to control their reproductive health leads to improved education and a significant increase in their income. Many excellent organisations have laid out the case for Family Planning, most recently GiveWell.[1]
In many low and middle income countries, many women who want to delay or prevent their next pregnancy can not access contraceptives due to poor supply chains and high costs. Access to Medicines Initiative (AMI) was incubated by Ambitious Impact’s Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in 2024 with the goal of increasing the availability of contraceptives and other essential medicines.[2]
The Problem
Maternal mortality is a serious problem in Nigeria. Globally, almost 28.5% of all maternal deaths occur in Nigeria. This is driven by Nigeria’s staggeringly high maternal mortality rate of 1,047 deaths per 100,000 live births, the third highest in the world. To illustrate the magnitude, for the U.K., this number is 8 deaths per 100,000 live births.
While there are many contributing factors, 29% of pregnancies in Nigeria are unintended. 6 out of 10 women of reproductive age in Nigeria have an unmet need for contraception, and fulfilling these needs would likely prevent almost 11,000 maternal deaths per year.
Additionally, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would reduce the cost of pregnancy-related and newborn care by three do
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Need help planning your career? Probably Good’s 1-1 advising service is back! After refining our approach and expanding our capacity, we’re excited to once again offer personal advising sessions to help people figure out how to build careers that are good for them and for the world.
Our advising is open to people at all career stages who want to have a positive impact across a range of cause areas—whether you're early in your career, looking to make a transition, or facing uncertainty about your next steps. Some applicants come in with specific plans they want feedback on, while others are just beginning to explore what impactful careers could look like for them. Either way, we aim to provide useful guidance tailored to your situation.
Learn more about our advising program and apply here.
Also, if you know someone who might benefit from an advising call, we’d really appreciate you passing this along. Looking forward to hearing from those interested. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
Finally, we wanted to say a big thank you to 80,000 Hours for their help! The input that they gave us, both now and earlier in the process, was instrumental in shaping what our advising program will look like, and we really appreciate their support.
Canadian vs U.S. Law Schools (in short):
Similarities:
Law school is pretty stressful and features lots of reading and writing. But, graduates from the most prestigious universities gain highly-valuable network, connections, and credentials. Plus, law school develops highly transferrale skills like conducting detail-oriented research, organizational skills, written and oral advocacy.
Pros of Canadian Law schools:
Canadian law schools cost a lot less than U.S. schools - even for international students, but especially for locals. For e.g., Quebec locals pay 50x less than Harvard locals to attend a law school in Quebec.
Pros of U.S. Law schools:
U.S. law school graduates, especially when practicing in trade hubs like New York, have have access to super-high paying jobs. For e.g., top New York firms pay 10x as much as top Canadian firms for their first-year associates.
U.S. law school graduates also have access to highly influential decision-making positions. The U.S. features more lawyers in Congress and Senate than Canada does in its equivalent chambers. U.S. policy has wider influence than Canadian policy. Last, the New York Bar is one of the best bars to hold to understand and influence international business practice.
Differences in Recommendations
80K's career page recommends students who have a clear vision of what they want to do, have a high stress tolerance, and a good personal fit for lawyering. This advice ensures that the time, money, and energy that goes into law school is well spent.
Since Canadian law schools cost less, Canadian law school can be for students who are still trying to figure out their career path since it provides highly transferrable skills and good career capital.
That said, unless they can move to the U.S., Canadian students looking to earn-to-give have better prospects in other careers or the U.S.
Canadian law school can be for students looking to influence global change or policy-making, but they'll face a steeper hill than U.S. law students since their credentials are less recognized than the U.S.' credentials (especially within the U.S.).
US lawyer here: to make explicit what is implied here, the pros of US schools listed here generally only apply to the elite schools.
Thanks Jason! Good point. Most 80K posts make this explicit, but I didn't, so it's good to point out.
Why doesn't EA have many career opportunities or recommendations for law students (especially outside the U.S.)?
Three reasons: