TL;DR
The best way to increase your odds of being accepted into Ambitious Impact's Charity Entrepreneurship Program is to build the relevant aptitudes for running an impactful charity. I provide some practical tips that I would recommend to anyone considering this career. Basically all of these steps are worth pursuing whether they shift your odds of acceptance or not.
The tips are:
- Actually apply for the program
- Read the book "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit"
- Design personalized aptitude building exercises based on the book
- Start something new
- Think deeply about what career you are best fit for
Background
I applied for Ambitious Impact's (AIM) Charity Entrepreneurship Program in early 2023 and went through the program in early 2024. Since then, I have launched Access to Medicines Initiative, which saves lives and prevents unintended pregnancies by ensuring contraceptives are consistently available in Nigerian public health facilities.
I have been repeatedly asked at EAGs and other events how to get accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship Program. I've generally given the same advice, and wanted to make that information more freely available. AIM previously posted about how to increase your odds of acceptance, and despite the post being over 6 years old, it seems to have held up well. I view this as a complement to that piece, written by a program participant rather than AIM staff.
To other Charity Entrepreneurship graduates: I strongly recommend adding your own perspectives in the comments.
One last caveat before I begin. Ambitious Impact is continuously changing and improving their selection process. What worked for me may not work for you, but I strongly believe it will improve your odds AND provide strong career capital for whatever you end up doing next.
Tip #1: Apply
So many people filter themselves out from roles because they don't believe they can do it well. If this describes you, stop!
A good charity entrepreneur needs to have a high level of self-skepticism. It shouldn't be surprising that many, if not most, people accepted to the program strongly believed that they would not be accepted.
I count myself among them. I was a junior in college who applied after the deadline with no experience working in Global Health. I believed that launching a new charity was the most impactful thing I could do, so I applied. However, my primary goal was, through the process of applying, to discover what skills to develop before I could be accepted in the future. The idea that I might be accepted my first time applying was such a removed possibility in my mind that I barely considered it.
While imperfect, AIM's selection process is fairly good and, from what I can tell, tends towards false rejections rather than false acceptances. You should not worry about being accepted even though you're not ready. You SHOULD worry about not applying even though you ARE ready.
If you're worried about the time cost, know that I found the process useful as a skill building exercise and, at times, enjoyable. Applying for things is generally a good skill to develop, but the particular nature of AIM's process lends itself more towards upskilling than most.
Don't second guess yourself. Just apply!
Tip #2: Read the Book
At my first EAG, I saw a presentation on the Charity Entrepreneurship Program by Steve Thompson. At the end of the conference, Steve handed me the book "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit." This is AIM's guide for, well, how to launch a high-impact nonprofit.
The book is full of decision making tools and guides for how to think about impact in a critical but practical way. Most of what is discussed is much more widely applicable than you would expect given the narrowly framed title. If you remove the (very few) sections about issues specific to launching a charity, it would still be a full book, titled "How to Do Good Work in an Impact-Oriented Career".
A previous version of me, if I had not received this book, would not have bought it or read it on the basis of frugality and cost-efficiency. This would have been a terrible mistake. Frugality is an excellent virtue. However, don't let short-term frugality constrain your long-term impact.
Frugality is, in fact, one of the many values expressed by "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit." There are numerous values discussed implicitly or explicitly throughout the book. I think these values are generally good, and reading the book will help you adopt some of them. You will also probably disagree with some of the views expressed within the book.
Good!
Having a strong sense of what your values are is a key skillset for decision making within a highly impactful non-profit, and reading this book may help build that sense.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that I think this book is worth reading even if it doesn't mean you will improve your chances of joining the Charity Entrepreneurship Program. I have recommended this book to multiple people who were not interested in starting a charity.
Tip #3: Design Personalized Aptitude Building Exercises
This is the most unique advice I have to offer. When I first engaged with AIM, I was in the middle of an aptitude-based career exploration guide from 80,000 Hours. Once I was committed to the pathway of starting a charity, I fundamentally restructured my career search project.
Rather than testing my fit for different pathways with aptitude tests, I started to design aptitude building exercises. The goal was to identify specific skills that I wanted to improve, design a quick skill building exercise, and then do it.
In identifying skills, I turned to "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit". I considered which skills I saw represented or explicitly discussed within the book and reflected on which I thought I needed to develop most.
While everyone is different (and there's great value in going through this process for yourself), I'll share my list here: task planning, working autonomously, idea generation, time estimation, probability estimation, following self-imposed deadlines, re-evaluating methods and plans, delegation, and selective perfectionism (being perfectionistic only when necessary).
I then designed specific tasks for each of these skills. Often, I built them into existing work. For example, for "following self-imposed deadlines," I selected the class I enjoyed least and arbitrarily decided that I must complete the work a day earlier than it was due. For "estimating time," I quickly mapped out my work and college schedule in detail on a daily/weekly basis.
For other tasks, I had to add new activities to my schedule. For example, for "idea generation," I gave myself a strict time limit to generate 10 new ideas for potential high-impact charities. For "re-evaluating methods and plans," I conducted a day-long post-mortem and planning exercise for my university's EA group programs.
I give these examples to make this project more tangible. You may gain some value from doing the specific exercises I described. However, you will gain much more value from determining skills specific to your own situation and designing your own tasks.
This is a bit more in-depth than the first two tips. However, there is very low downside. It's basically never a bad idea to spend a bit of time getting improving your professional skills.
Tip #4: Start Things
This is classic AIM advice. If you want to become better at starting things, you should start things. In general, the best way to get better at anything is to do it. If you want to get better at starting things, then start something new. Once again, even if this doesn't improve your odds of getting into the program, you will be better off because of it.
In my case, I co-founded Tucson Effective Altruism at the University of Arizona. Starting an EA-associated project had the added benefits that I could simultaneously develop EA ways of thinking, but the most important thing was that I started something.
If for whatever reason you can't start something new, one of the best things you can do is work for a smaller organization. Working in start-up environments is meaningfully different from other roles because each person needs to be good at self-directed work, prioritization, and taking responsibility beyond your domain of expertise.
Tip #5: Think Deeply About Your Career Fit
As I mentioned, I was in the midst of career exploration when I first engaged with AIM. I was systematically considering a wide range of potential careers and reflecting on where my skills would be best positioned to improve the world. As a result, when I encountered AIM, I had a reasonable framework with which to compare it to other options, and it was the clear winner. In addition, as I pursued the Charity Entrepreneurship Program, I knew exactly why I was doing it.
I would strongly encourage everyone considering this path to introspect carefully about why. Make sure that you are not pursuing the program for prestige or because "it's what you're supposed to want to do."
Make sure you have considered other opportunities thoroughly. While I did this to some extent, I still wish I had done more. There are countless highly-impactful roles out there, and AIM-incubated charity founder is just one particularly visible option. Depending on your values, your aptitudes, your life circumstances, and more, there may be more impactful options available to you. If so, you should do that instead.
For example, a friend of mine applied to the program and was accepted. He had to turn it down because starting a charity requires a high level of flexibility that he didn't have at that time. He planned to reapply a few years later when he was more flexible, so he pursued an alternative career in the meantime. He discovered that his personal fit was so strong for that pathway that reapplying was no longer worthwhile.
By staying laser-focused on the Charity Entrepreneurship Program without considering other options, you might deprive yourself of finding something even more impactful.
Conclusion
As I've stated throughout this piece, Tips #2-5 are not really about applying to the Charity Entrepreneurship Program. They are about how to prepare for being a charity entrepreneur in general. I think the application filtering process is good enough such that you should not try and "get good at the application." The best way to get accepted is to prepare for the job itself.
If you want to be a better charity entrepreneur, I think you will benefit greatly from reading "How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit," designing personalized aptitude building exercises, starting something new, and (most importantly) thinking through what career is truly best for you.
These are not the only paths for improvement. The aptitude building exercises I designed were something I just did, and I think they were a key reason why I was accepted. You should feel free to "just do things" too.
I was never accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship programme, but I was able to land a high-impact role at one (now leading it!), by getting in touch with other founders. For me, this is no less rewarding than being the real founder, and enough people treat me as if I went through the programme that it’s usually a surprise to people that I didn’t.
So I would urge some people to reconsider if founding is exactly what you want, you may be able to derive almost all of the benefits via a slightly different path, and CE’s charities would very much welcome talented founder-type generalists in high-level leadership & ownership roles!