The Effective Altruism Movement
The movement and other central EA organizations were founded in the 2000s and 2010s in Oxford, UK. However, effective altruism has much earlier roots in various philosophical theories and communities related to doing good and rationality.
What Has The EA Movement Achieved?
Billions for effective charity
Through organizations such as Giving What We Can , Founders Pledge and Good Ventures, hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to effective charities.Â
3,000 career changes
Over 3,000 people have followed 80,000 Hours’ advice and changed careers to make a bigger difference. That equates to roughly 80 million more hours spent working on important problems. Â
Influence work
Influential thinkers in the EA movement have reached millions of people through books, podcasts, TED Talks and media.Â
What has the effective altruism community done?
Effective altruism isn’t one organization, it’s a broad community of people working on a diverse set of projects with a common goal: doing as much good as possible. Below are some things people have done.
- Global Health
Prevented deaths from neglected diseases
Against Malaria Foundation
Provided significant support to the Against Malaria Foundation that has distributed 200 million nets, likely preventing 150,000 deaths.
- Global Priorities Research
Founded an institute to research global priorities
University of Oxford
Started Global Priorities Institute at University of Oxford, an interdisciplinary research centre, to identify the most pressing issues and how we might approach them.
- Emerging Technologies
Pushed for safer technological progress
Berkeley, University of California
CHAI, a research group at UC Berkeley, works to ensure that new artificial intelligence technologies benefit humanity rather than posing unacceptable risks.
- Animal Welfare
Successfully campaigned against battery-cage factory farming
Open Wing Alliance
Corporate campaigns and legal reforms with the Humane League and Mercy for Animals freed more than 100 million hens from battery cages.
- Innovation and global wellbeing
Inspired early employees of the largest mobile money service in Senegal
Wave
Lincoln Quirk (Founder) and Ben Kuhn (CTO) decided to work on Wave to help unbanked people save money. The service now saves people in Senegal over $200 million every year.
- Pandemic Response and Preparedness
Advocated for human challenge trials to understand COVID-19
1Day Sooner
Convinced decision-makers to run trials, which deliberately expose volunteers to infection, to better understand how to stop COVID spread.
Exploring effective altruism
Philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord then launched Giving What We Can , a community for people who donate 10% of their income to the most effective charities.Â
MacAskill also co-founded 80,000 Hours , which focuses on career advice. Since then, effective altruism has grown into an international movement with thousands of people and dozens of organizations working in various ways on issues related to effective world improvement.Â
The ambition is to find the best ways to help others, and then act on that.Â
Organizations
Effective altruism includes everything from research institutes and think tanks to charities and networks of philanthropists.
How to maximize the benefits of your career. They have a career guide , a podcast and a job board where they publish vacancies.
Evaluates global health charities and recommends those with the greatest impact.
Community for people who have made a "pledge" to donate 10% of their income to effective charity.
Would you like to learn more about the impact stories achieved by members of the Swedish community? If so, read our chapter on stories of impact.
Future of Life Institute
Rethink Priorities​
Forethought Foundation​
Global Priorities Institute
Center for the Study of Existential Risks
Engage yourself
Effective altruism is a rapidly growing social movement that takes both brain and heart very seriously. We are entrepreneurs, philanthropists, researchers, students, professionals and others who work in various ways to improve the world as much as possible. Become part of an international network of thousands of world improvers! Â