6.4 Four ways to help, and how the EA Fellowship works

Most people who want to help have four main options. They can be combined.

Your career. A working life is roughly 80,000 hours: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. For most people it is the largest resource they have. You don't need to change jobs to use it well. Sometimes the best option is to build skills where you are, or to steer your current work towards a more important problem.

Your giving. Donations to highly effective charities can achieve a great deal, as Unit 2 showed. 11,287 people have taken Giving What We Can's pledge to give at least 10% of their income. Many others give less, or start with a smaller trial pledge.

Your voice. Voting, advocacy, and the influence you have at work and among friends. How much this matters depends on your situation, but for some people it is the largest lever.

Bringing others in. Helping one other person find a more impactful path can matter as much as your own work. This is much of what EA Netherlands does.

The EA Fellowship

This course has been a tour. The EA Fellowship is where you build the skills and a plan.

• Five weeks, free. About 3.5 hours a week: a 75-minute group session, plus about two hours of reading and exercises.
• Small groups. 4–8 participants with an experienced facilitator. Mostly online, with in-person groups where possible.
• One skill a week:
  1. reasoning transparently;
  2. measuring impact;
  3. reasoning under uncertainty;
  4. prioritising between problems;
  5. making a plan for your career, giving, voice and community.
• A plan at the end. In the final week you present your plan to your group and get feedback.
• Next cohort: to be announced. Applications close when dates are announced.

People who have taken the course have gone on to work in government, start organisations, do research at universities, and redirect significant resources to effective causes.

The EA Fellowship is selective, to keep group discussions good. When we read applications, we look for three things:

• A focus on effectiveness and prioritisation. You want to know which options do the most good, not just which ones do some good, and you're willing to choose between them.
• Open-mindedness. You're prepared to follow an argument to whichever problem it leads to, including problems you hadn't considered, or ones nobody has recognised yet.
• Expansive altruism. Your concern extends beyond the people close to you: to strangers far away, to animals, to people not yet born.

You don't need settled views on any of the problems in this course. If parts of it changed your mind, or made you want to argue back, that's a good sign.