Note: In my view, one of the most impactful opportunities for university students is running a great club for an important cause. E.g, a student group focused on Effective Altruism, AI Safety, Moral Ambition, Animal Welfare, Global Development, improving policy or politics, or other important causes.
This document lists ideas other than organizing a high-impact student club (potentially for students at schools that already have strong-performing clubs, or students curious to explore other impactful projects). For more information on starting an impactful EA student group, you can check out this post collating resources for making university organizing fun and easy.
Onto the projects!
1) Setting up institutions related to EA or impactful causes at your university. This might involve presenting an idea like NYU’s Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, Stanford Existential Risk Initiative, or the Stanford Alt Protein Project to a relevant department at your university. Then, securing professor backing to mentor student researchers through a university institute over the summer. Then, applying for university funding to support research and other work to advance the mission of the institute and create impact in the world.
2) Writing op-eds for the student newspaper (many of which have high student/alumni readership), to raise awareness about doing good effectively in a non-controversial way. Examples include this piece on effective giving, and lots (1, 2, 3, 4) of coverage on Harvard’s School For Moral Ambition society!
3) Reaching out to your university about a student-taught, for-credit class related to doing good effectively. This could be particularly impactful if your school’s policy on for-credit student classes is flexible. E.g, Wesleyan University's Student Forums.
4) Advocating (alongside other students) for your university to feature a impactful book as their summer pre-read for incoming freshmen. Examples include the 80,000 Hours Career Guide, Doing Good Better, Moral Ambition, or The Life You Can Save.
5) Owning logistics for regional EA retreats:
Last spring, a number of EA university groups in the northeast spent a weekend together learning about doing good. The cost was modest (under $200 per person for the weekend), and the retreat provided an opportunity for students to spend more time engaging with EA ideas than they might spend in a whole semester of weekly meetings through their university group.
This retreat didn’t happen the prior year, and likely wouldn’t have happened this year had it not been for an incredibly dedicated student organizer (who didn’t even go to a school in the northeast)! There is a real need for capacity in managing logistics for retreats like this (e.g., finding an affordable venue, creating a notion page, inviting guest speakers etc.) If you might be interested in helping make logistics for regional retreats happen, 10-30 hours of volunteering can make a huge difference. Please email me at sa9156[at]princeton.edu if you’re interested in getting involved!
6) Leveraging university branding to generate interest in doing good! This can include:
- Hosting virtual programs as an extension of your university EA club that are welcoming to both university students and non-students (e.g, an EA intro fellowship, giving games, cause specific programs like an animal welfare fellowship, etc).
- As an example, Stanford EA launched a publicly-accessible virtual program during Covid, which got hundreds of participants and turned into EA virtual programs!
- Producing and sharing club-recommended career and giving opportunities.
- Using book launches to host and promote speaking engagements on campus.
7) Supporting classmates in applying for university funding to volunteer with impactful nonprofits (e.g, global development organizations that may not have funding to offer paid internships).
8) Joining the EA Anywhere Slack and posting about how you may be able to help others in the introductions channel. Examples could include:
- “I live in X city and I’m excited to commit Y hours per week to helping with in-person events, or scouting office spaces/retreat venues for organizations, etc. Please reach out if your org could use support!”
- “I have experience with X skill which I think high-impact orgs could benefit from. I’d love to help your org. ”
- Example skills could range from copyediting, improving social media strategy, negotiation, AI enablement and infosecurity, paralegal work, government relations, submitting successful grant applications to foundations outside the EA movement, etc.
- “I’d love to hear what pain points your org has: I’ll be happy to spend some time researching what solutions other orgs have found.”
9) Creating Career newsletters tailored towards new audiences.
E.g, I put together a newsletter about impactful careers for policy masters students, largely drawing on EA job boards and the EA DC newsletter. Student interest has been high (less than 5% of joiners end up unsubscribing, open and clickthrough rates are promising), and I think it would be interesting to spread impactful career resources to other groups doing good. This could look like:
- Replicating this for other masters programs (e.g. Public Health, Sustainability, Divinity, Social Work); reaching out to current students to share a signup form with peers in their program, then sending a monthly newsletter (which itself links to other career infrastructure like Probably Good, 80k, etc.)
- Asking university career service centers if they’re willing to feature career resources you send on their online career portals.
- Looking into acquiring social impact newsletters.
10). If you have personal connections to large platforms, helping thought leaders share messaging about effective giving and careers with new audiences. This could look like:
11) Proposing and leading impactful volunteering projects with existing service groups.
If your city, university, or employer organizes volunteering projects, leading a high-impact project could leverage a large group’s efforts. For example, the EA Foundation organized a volunteer advocacy drive in support of foreign aid that led the city of Zurich to contribute millions of dollars toward development assistance. It could be worth reaching out to your local Rotary International chapter to see if they may be excited in supporting similar international development efforts.
I could also imagine you might find traction by arranging impactful volunteer events for university clubs. In my experience, service-oriented club participants often enjoy social activities that help them make friends by spending a weekend on a cause they care about. This could look like door-knocking/phone banking for impactful political change within a civic activism club, or coordinating group conference volunteering at AVA or Sentient Futures with your school’s plant-based club.
12) Exploring neglected effective fundraising channels, for example:
- Setting up fundraising events in affluent areas for effective nonprofits. This may be particularly lucrative if the nonprofits have broad appeal like GiveWell, Project Resource Optimization, Giving Green, or an effective charity based near the community (e.g. CA Yimby, Open New York, etc.)
- Speaking with Corporate Social Responsibility staff to facilitate high-impact corporate philanthropy.
13) Working on a socially impactful research project (potentially even for academic credit!) Below are Effective Thesis' research topic archives (they also offer fellowships, workshops, mentorship and internships for students pursuing impactful research):
Other research opportunities include building a living literature review for an important cause (example: Lauren Gilbert on Migration), or identifying areas that don’t have significant EA funding yet but seem like strong candidates for funding (example: Coefficient Giving’s cause exploration prize.
14). Finding projects (volunteer or paid) on the EA Opportunities Board, or Hive!
Finally, here is a Claude-compiled list of links to others’ project ideas.
