Remote Volunteering Opportunities in Effective Altruism

By Evan_Gaensbauer @ 2018-05-13T07:43 (+43)

Introduction

There is a lot of discussion in effective altruism about how to use one's career to do good, either through earning to give as a donor to effective charities or organizations, or with your time through direct work at one of those organizations. In geographic hubs like Oxford or Berkeley there are opportunities to volunteer at an effective altruism organization in person. However, worldwide, there are now thousands of effective altruists, and their spare time is an under-utilized resource by organizations in the effective altruism ecosystem. 80,000 Hours rightly point out using your spare time to upgrade your education or learn transferable skills to further your career. However, effective altruism is a community attractive to people from all walks of life. This leaves EA with a lot of community members whose time for a variety of reasons goes unused:

There are also several organizations part of the effective altruism or allied movements focused on causes common to EA which primarily focus on research, outreach and advocacy, Often these organizations depend on volunteers to keep costs low, spread awareness, raise funds, and run their projects. The EA community actively grows through word of mouth and on the internet to a degree many organizations may not notice, and there is consistent demand for volunteer opportunities. They're out there, but they're not written down all in one place. I've surveyed organizations in and around EA for volunteer opportunities, and I've compiled them below. For the purposes of this master list, "volunteering" is broadly defined as a designated activity or task an effective altruist can take up in their spare time. 

How to Read This List

For Aspiring Volunteers

On this list are volunteer opportunities in the following focus areas across 16 different projects and organizations:

For students and other EA community members at the beginning of their careers, all these organizations provide the opportunity to learn new skills and gain experience and contacts with EA organizations and at non-profits working on high-impact causes. For volunteers without much non-profit experience or who are looking to build their skills, several of these organizations provide the opportunity to learn and develop skills which are not only invaluable in volunteering but can be transferred to professional work on any cause. In descending order of availability, these skills include:

Several of the organizations on this list are seeking volunteers with prior experience or expertise with the following skill sets. These include:

Feel free to search this list using these terms, or to browse the list until you find a volunteer opportunity fitting your skills and interests.

For Meetup/Community Organizers

One idea for a meetup is to have an EA volunteer opportunity presentation & sign-up party. Another volunteer opportunity as a meetup organizer is to run events for effective altruists or other groups to raise awareness of effective altruism and related causes. The last section of this list is 'Volunteer to Organize A Local Event', including lists resources for EA meetups, and non-profits supporting the independent organization of advocacy, outreach, and fundraising events. 

For Organizations

If you know of a volunteer opportunity for effective altruists not on this list, please let me know so I may add it. Please provide the name of your organization or project, the area you're focused on, the skills or requirements for the volunteer role you're seeking to fill, contact info, and if possible a webpage where prospective volunteers to learn more about the opportunity.

Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities

Global Poverty Alleviation

The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) is an EA organization focused on raising awareness of effective giving and fundraising for several recommended charities working in global development, public health and poverty alleviation, including Givewell's top recommended and standout charities. TLYCS is currently seeking volunteers for their social media team. TLYCS also provides resources for how to run Giving Games for global health and development charities, as well as materials for charities in other focus areas such as farm animal welfare and global catastrophic risk reduction.

The Missing Maps campaign Humanitarian OpenStreetMap is an online, easy, direct volunteering initiative aimed at helping a variety of local charities and NGOs around the world become more effective through using donated satellite imagery to build open-source maps. The local teams working with this campaign can then immediately use these maps, and local people can take on and enhance them. Initiatives supported include disaster response as well as longer-term poverty alleviation, health, and human rights interventions. You can get started directly at Missing Maps website, or ping effective altruist @jamiewoodhouse on Twitter to learn more.

Farm Animal Welfare

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) offers research internships every quarter, and has a research volunteer opportunity of writing detailed but readable summaries of conversations based on audio recordings or transcriptions. You can apply to an ACE research internship here, and apply to be a research volunteer here.

The Humane League (THL) is an ACE-recommended charity. THL runs the Fast Action Network, an online group which sends out easy, one-minute actions two or three times per week, including signing petitions, posting on social media, or emailing decision makers, as part of campaigns to mitigate factory farming. You can sign up to join the Fast Action Network in the United States here, in the United Kingdom here and for a Spanish version of the Fast Action Network here.

Mercy For Animals, an ACE-recommended charity from 2014 through 2016, runs a similar program called Hen Heroes.

Animal Equality is an ACE-recommended charity providing opportunities for volunteer and online activism in the following ways. You can find out how to get involved at this link. Animal Equality has the following volunteer opportunities available:

Faunalytics is an ACE standout charity, and a non-profit research organization providing information resources to enhance and empower the effectiveness of animal advocates. They're a small organization which depends on all kinds of volunteers: library assistants, statisticians, WordPress developers, AdWords and SEO experts, professional editors, expert social science researchers, and graphic designers. You can sign up to volunteer with them at this link. 

Sentience Institute (SI) is a non-profit think tank doing evidence-based research on movement-building and values-spreading for the purposes of anti-specieism and moral circle expansion. You can sign up here to join their volunteer research network. SI focuses on social movement research broadly benefiting many focuses in effective altruism, so the benefits of joining their research network are not limited to anti-specieism or farm animal welfare. 

Wild Animal Welfare

Animal Ethics is a non-profit organization researching and advocating on the subject of animal welfare, including wild animal suffering due to both anthropogenic and naturogenic causes. They have volunteer opportunities for street outreach work; online outreach work; research and dissemination of information; and hosting talks and events. Animal Ethics could use the help of volunteers with technical skills in the following areas of online outreach: 

Volunteer roles for research and dissemination of information with Animal Ethics include:

You can contact Animal Ethics through their website about volunteering with them.

Utility Farm is an organization doing research and advocacy for gr assroots movement-building to reduce wild animal suffering, and is currently seeking volunteer writers (in English). While a basic understanding of the issues of wild animal suffering is required, no particular technical knowledge or background is required. Writers will be working on digestible and accessible blog posts and essays for Utility Farm's social change project. Sign-up information for volunteering is provided at this link. 

 AI Safety & Existential Risk

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is a pioneering organization in AI alignment research which provides support and funding for satellite research workshops through their MIRIx workshop program. MIRIx workshops help create exposure and spread thinking on AI alignment problems, and help MIRI identify researchers and potential hires interested in AI alignment. From MIRI's website: 

MIRI wants to support AI safety research around the world. Our MIRIx program encourages mathematicians, computer scientists, and formal philosophers to organize their own workshops, and offers to reimburse the organizers for expenses.A MIRIx workshop can be as simple as gathering some of your friends to read MIRI papers together, talk about them, eat some snacks, scribble some ideas on whiteboards, and go out to dinner together. Or it can be a multi-day research workshop pursuing a specific line of attack on a particular problem. It’s up to you.In some cases we’ll be able to send a MIRI research fellow to your first meeting to give tutorials and answer questions, or perhaps they’ll Skype in to your workshop to do the same. We’ll work out the details, and send you some tips on how to organize the workshop.

 You can inquire with MIRI about starting a local MIRIx workshop using this online form, or check out if there is a workshop active in your city at the MIRIx webpage.

The Road to AI Safety Excellence (RAISE) is an initiative to create an online course to improve the development pipeline for AI safety researchers. Those eager to volunteer with RAISE to develop the course can sign up here, and you can also join their volunteer study group.

The Foundational Research Institute (FRI) is a non-profit research institute focusing on AI alignment from an ethical perspective focused on suffering reduction. Volunteer opportunities at FRI include independently researching and publishing on one of FRI's research subjects to be hosted on their website; fact-checking and proofreading draft papers; helping manage FRI's Google Grants AdWords campaigns; translating essays and articles into English, German and other languages; and recording episodes of FRI's podcast.

The Existential Risk Research Assessment (TERRA) is a project by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk combining volunteer efforts with machine learning. TERRA accesses a searchable database of academic research, and uses human feedback on the relevance of the research to existential risk studies to train an ML "recommendation engine" to do the job of automatically constructing x-risk bibliographies. You can sign up here to join TERRA.

Allfed focuses on creating solutions to feed everyone in the event of catastrophes both local and global in scale, and so is focused on both extreme global poverty alleviation and existential risk reduction. Since they are working in so many countries around the world, and the scope of their work is constantly expanding, they need researchers, developers, clerical assistance, and specialists in different countries and major languages. You can apply by contacting Allfed.

EA Community (e.g., Movement-Building, Education, Outreach, etc.)

Students for High Impact Charity is an international organization teaching students how to think critically about charity through their educational program with modules focused on effective charity, rationality, animal welfare, global catastrophic risks, and other topics at the heart of effective altruism. SHIC has run a very successful volunteer program within the EA community, with over 100 volunteers, several of whom have gone on to do paid and professional work with EA organizations. SHIC has opportunities for volunteering and internships both seeking in or teaching volunteers the skills of project management, copy writing and editing, web development, web marketing, outreach, communications, donor stewardship, and more! Teachers and students can also respectively sign up to become a SHIC teacher or a SHIC student leader at their own schools. 

Rethink Charity (RC) is an EA community organization focused on movement-building and other high-impact projects such as SHIC, the Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN), Rethink Priorities and the annual Effective Altruism Survey. RC has similar volunteer opportunities to SHIC. From Rethink Charity's website: 

As member of the Rethink Charity team, you will wear many hats. Although we try to match tasks with skill level, you will regularly be given the chance to try new things. You have the potential to get familiar with project management, copy writing and editing, web development, web marketing, outreach, communications, donor stewardship, and more!

Check out their website to get involved. RC also provides support for online fundraisers for high-impact charities such as the Against Malaria Foundation, the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, GiveDirectly, Cool Earth and Project Healthy Children, including as a birthday fundraiser.

The Effective Thesis is a project by the Czech Effective Altruism organization and the Effective Altruists of Berkeley club at UC Berkeley aiming to focus research on areas that have the potential to greatly improve the world. They're currently seeking volunteers to help promote the Effective Thesis project via social media, to help with content creation or volunteer programmers to help with redesigning their website. 

Life Extension & Anti-Ageing

The Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) promotes the advancement of biomedical technologies which will increase the healthy human lifespan. By sponsoring and democratizing research efforts through crowdfunding and engaging the public in thoughtful dialogue, LEAF aims to accelerate the achievement of milestones in anti-ageing research. LEAF is seeking volunteers who are specialists in:

You can fill out a form to join LEAF as a volunteer at their website.

Volunteer to Organize A Local Event

One way to volunteer outside of any organization is to run a reading group for your local effective altruism group, community or university club. Here is a link to an EA Reading Group Guide and a folder of EA discussion sheets on topics such as personal and financial decision-making; the basics of EA; outreach topics; and various causes.

Organizations supporting local events focused on various causes include:

Please see the profiles of these organizations to learn how to get in touch with them regarding support, resources or materials for organizing local events and activities. 

undefined @ 2018-05-17T17:04 (+5)

Anyone choosing between these alternatives may find our volunteering decision tool useful: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1k0/effective_volunteering/

undefined @ 2018-05-13T14:48 (+3)

The Humane League (THL) is an ACE-recommended charity. THL runs the Fast Action Network, an online group which sends out easy, one-minute actions two or three times per week, including signing petitions, posting on social media, or emailing decision makers, as part of campaigns to mitigate factory farming. You can sign up to join the Fast Action Network in the United States here, in the United Kingdom here and for a Spanish version of the Fast Action Network here.

Mercy for Animals (which was ACE-recommended for 2014, 2015, and 2016) runs a similar program called Hen Heroes.

undefined @ 2018-06-18T09:14 (+2)

One of my favourite on-line, easy, direct volunteering initiatives is http://www.missingmaps.org/ via https://hotosm.org/. From an EA perspective the benefit may be hard to quantify - as it's 2nd / 3rd order. Aim is to help a variety of local NGOs / charities become more effective through using donated satellite imagery to build open source maps. The local teams can then immediately use these maps + local people can take them on and enhance. Initiatives supported include disaster response as well as longer-term poverty / health / human rights interventions. Ping me at @jamiewoodhouse if you want to know more. Great post by the way - thanks.

undefined @ 2018-05-13T18:42 (+2)

This is somewhat off-topic but it's relevant enough that I thought I'd raise it here.

What is the most impactful volunteering opportunity for a non-EA who prioritizes more conventional causes (including global poverty) and who lacks specialized skills? Basically, I'm seeking a general recommendation for non-EAs who ask how they can most effectively volunteer. I recognize that the recommended volunteering for a non-EA will be much less impactful than the recommended volunteering for an EA, but I think it can sometimes be worthwhile to spread a less impactful idea to a larger number of people (e.g. The Life You Can Save).

The standard view seems to be that volunteering in a low-skill position produces as much value for an organization as donating the amount necessary for them to hire a minimum wage worker as a replacement. While this may be correct as a general matter, I think there are likely exceptions:

  1. An organization may feel that volunteer morale will greatly decrease if there are some people doing the same work as the volunteers for the same number of hours who are paid.

  2. An organization may be unwilling to hire people to do the work for ideological reasons.

  3. An organization may be unwilling to hire people to do the work because doing so would look bad to the public.

  4. An organization may feel that passion about the cause is extremely important and that the best way to select for passion is to only accept people who will work for free.

  5. An all-volunteer organization may lack the infrastructure to pay employees meaning that it would have to pay a high initial cost before hiring its first employee.

Thus, it seems plausible to me that there is some relatively high impact organization with appeal to non-EAs where a person without specialized skills can have a significant impact. Does anyone know of a volunteering opportunity like this?

undefined @ 2018-05-17T00:25 (+2)

These are good questions. I was surprised and disappointed I couldn't find more volunteer opportunities for more conventional causes like global poverty alleviation. I'm spitballing some ideas here.

  • I made contact with a bunch of people running different mental health, well-being and happiness projects from within effective altruism. Some of them might have some kind of volunteer opportunities. I can find out.

  • The closest thing there currently is to organizations rated as effective by EA working in the developed world is some policy organizations. My friend Finan from Seattle had a meetup where a representative from an urban housing reform organization also in Seattle which had received a grant from the Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) came to talk about their work. If someone is in a city in or near the same place as where one of Open Phil's grantees throughout North America or the rest of the world, they could have an event, or visit the organization. There could be a 'What Can You Do?' section at the end of talks. Alternatively, you could just email such organizations and ask them if there is anything in addition to donating individuals can do to support the organization. Hosting an event with the organization and non-EAs looking for effective volunteer opportunities could help them build a personal connection to the cause.

That stated, among the options in the post, hosting a Giving Game through The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) is a well-structured volunteering opportunity. TLYCS has all of Givewell's standout and recommended charities, plus some charities well-rated by other charity evaluators. There is over 18 charities to fundraise for through Giving Games, all of them on conventional causes, mostly in the focus area of global development. Whoever runs a Giving Game can choose a few from any of those 18 causes for a Giving Game. After hosting a successful Giving Game, unskilled people can say they gained these skills by doing so, and put that on their resume:

  • Social Media Engagement/Management
  • Public Speaking & Presentation
  • Event Planning & Organization
  • Fundraising

That's because that's all the stuff someone technically has to do to host a Giving Game. So after hosting a Giving Game, if someone didn't want to get involved with EA, they could go to an organization and say "look at all this stuff I learned how to do!", which I think will look pretty good to a lot of different kinds of NPOs. Also, if someone wants to help with farm animal welfare/research, Faunalytics' online Library Assistant volunteer position is recommended as a good fit for high school or university students.

undefined @ 2018-07-19T20:13 (+1)

ALLFED.info spans across Poverty Alleviation, Health and GCR/X-rsik with GCR impact on food importing nations and developing countries as a priority.

We need researchers, developers, financial, IT/web, country specialists, major languages and actually almost anyone can be found a role of some kind, so if you want to save the world (really!) contact David@ALLFED.info or Ray on +447765477305

undefined @ 2018-06-08T13:34 (+1)

Thank you for the mention!

undefined @ 2018-05-18T18:24 (+1)

Wow, this is great! I wasn't aware remote internships were available at FRI.