How to Meet Effective Altruists

(this post is co-authored by Tom Ash and Ryan Carey)

Growing numbers of people identify with effective altruism worldwide, and there are now regular meetups from Adelaide to Vancouver. By meeting with local effective altruists, you can have a lot of fun and make long-lasting social connections! Meeting up gives a way to share your experience and thoughts of giving. So here is how you can arrange meetups, either with a group or one-to-one:

• 1. Use the map of effective altruists to find people near you - you can search by city or country, and contact people you find via their linked contact forms. If you’d like others to be able to find you, sign up to the map yourself! To avoid decision paralysis, it is often better to meet any effective altruists that you discover sooner, even if it’s just over a coffee, rather than agonising over the ideal location for a full-scale meetup that may never get around to creating.

• 2. Find more effective altruists. Let others know that you might be interested in meeting by commenting on this article. Do the same at the Effective Altruists Facebook group. You can contact effective altruist organisations like Giving What They Can and 80,000 Hours, who may also be able to link you in with some contacts, especially if they have previously established a chapter near you.

• 3. Once you’ve arranged to meet, announce it on the Effective Altruism Forum.

We hope that by using these resources, meeting effective altruists is now easier than ever. As for how to make meetups awesome, Sam Hilton has some extra resources that he will share in an upcoming post.