EA Workplace/Professional Groups

“By working on promoting effective altruism you can multiply your impact several-fold, by helping others avoid ineffective ways of helping others, and channeling their efforts into strategies that are many times more effective.” – 80,000 hours

For example, in less than one year, the EA Finance group helped multiple people to make extremely high-value plan changes by switching careers into other priority paths.

EA workplace/professional groups make up a small proportion of the EA groups landscape. However, community building in this field might create impact based on three case studies. Hence, it is worth looking into arguments for and against workplace/professional groups from an EA community perspective, and to share advice on how to start and run workplace/professional groups. Furthermore, we share some considerations for developing a Theory of Change for these diverse groups as we don’t believe that there is currently a one-size-fits-it-all solution. As some existing workplace/professional groups have been successfully established and are generating impact, it also seems to be worth presenting examples of existing groups.  

In this sequence, we present an initial outline on the following:

• Post 1: The why and how of starting and running a workplace/professional group
• Post 2: Considerations for developing a Theory of Change for your workplace/professional group
• Post 3: Three case studies of workplace/professional EA groups

These posts result from a consulting project for the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), which was realized as an initiative to explore the potential of Effective Altruism workplace/professional groups. However, even though financially supported by CEA the content of these posts does not necessarily map CEA’s strategy or imply any future strategic decisions or CEA investments. The views expressed don’t always represent those of the authors and/or contributors and their employers.