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Sam Hilton

How I organise a growing chapter in a big city in less than 30 minutes a month.

Starting a local group is really easy to do, a lot of fun and you meet some amazing people. And of course you can have a huge huge impact on the world by encouraging people to do good and to think more carefully about how they do good.

I started organising regular Giving What We Can social events in London in the summer of 2013. I had for a while been helping organise irregular events, then, one day, I thought why not try something a little different. I arranged an evening at a pub with a friend, created a Giving What We Can social Facebook event and invited anyone who I thought might be interested. It went well and I have been creating infrequent social events ever since.

I recently came to the rather surprising realisation that the Giving What We Can London group was growing quite fast. This was particularly curious because for quite a while I had been putting in less than 30 minutes a month. Essentially the only organising I had been doing was taking the responsibility to choose a time and place for a social event and posting this on Meetup.com and Facebook about once a month.

Now perhaps it is just chance that the group has grown of late, some twist of fate or flimsy whim of the gods. But either way it was suggested that I write my tips down on paper (well screen). The recipe below describes how I have organised things in London. Everywhere is different but I hope some of this is useful to someone.

The rest of the article from hereon in has been cross-posted to the EA Wikipedia so that others can add their advice. So to see the most up-to-date version go 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

How to run a local Giving What We Can chapter in a minimal amount of time

Starting a local group is very high value and very easy. This page is aimed at non-students living in a city that does not already have a Giving What We Can group, who may not have much time to put into growing a group but who will be in the same city for a prolonged period of time. This post does not set out the ideal way to run a local group but sets out how to run and grow a group if optimising for investing a minimal amount of time.

 for a social event and invite friends of yours who you think might be interested. Have at least one friend who can definitely come, so if your event is not popular you are not sitting alone for an evening. Choose a time (e.g. evening/weekend) and place (e.g. pub/bar/café/arts centre/etc) that people should be able to make.

Well done - you have started a local group!! It should take about 20 minutes to organise a first event. Once this is done you can use Facebook to create future events and automatically invite all the same people by going to the first event on Facebook and clicking " ••• " then clicking "copy event".

Building a group – get an online presence

Create a Meetup.com group and/or create a Facebook group and/or start and email list and/or find other places online to post events.

 It is useful to have an online platform which can gradually grow in membership and from which events can be publicised. A good online platform (I 

) will help your group grow without you having to do extra work or publicity. Posting about each event in more places will help your group grow faster but will take some a little bit of extra time on a regular basis to copy and paste across the event details. Giving What We Can London posts all events on Meetup and on Facebook. See below for more advice on different online platforms.

 See below for advice on running events. Make sure events are posted on all the sites that you are using (Facebook/Meetup/etc).

Effective Altruism and Giving What We Can London Facebook group

Once you have an online platform that people can join and be invited to events, then you can start publicising it. Below are some very simple quick easy ways of publicising your group:

 Encouraging people who turn up to bring friends and to add people to the online groups is crucial.

Let the Effective Altruism community know that you exist.

. Maybe even add the occasional post on to the 

. Tell the people who run other groups whose members might be interested about your group. Ideally tell them about a specific relevant upcoming event. People to tell would be local groups for: Less Wrong, students, philosophy, charity, atheist and humanists, religions, RESULTS, etc.

Trying something slightly different every few months is low cost and will allow you to gradually work out what works best in your city. You can experiment with:

Different ways of describing the event. Etc.

And that is it – SUCCESS – you should now have a growing thriving local group. And none of the steps above should have taken you very long to do.

Remember, you can spread this work out over as much time as needed. In London this whole process was spread out over about a year and took a small amount of time each month. Alternatively you can take a single evening to kickstart the process and do all of the above steps at once.

Below is more advice to make sure that events run smoothly and that the group does not fail.

Additional tips – Choosing online platforms

 has a cost but it has really helped the EA London group grow. It may not work for your city but it is likely to be worth trying. Keep the description snappy, make sure you add lots of popular “labels” so that your event will be found.

 (not a Facebook page) lets people add their friends to the group and events turn up on people’s Facebook newsfeed. If you create a Facebook group add anyone who you think would be interested and then when you create future events create them from the Facebook group so people in the group are automatically invited.

 Consider looking for other websites where events are posted. For example Eventbrite or Time Out or Yelp. Try googling “how to meet new people in [city]” or “finding interesting events in [city]” and seeing what websites appear prominent.

Effective Altruism and Giving What We Can London Facebook group (click About to see the description. Feel free to copy and paste this)

Additional tips – Preparing for an event

If trying to run a group with minimal time and effort a simple social event is the easiest to organise. People turn up when they want and discuss whatever takes their fancy, often including effective altruism.

 In London we tend to meet at 7pm on a weekday evenings. Increase the regularity of events as the group grows. In London we started off with events every few months, then every other month, then every month, and now a few times a month. As the group grows having a fixed time for events (Eg. 1st Tuesday of each month) can help people plan around them.

 In London we tend to meet in a centrally located pub. The ideal location will be somewhere cheap, without background music, with some vegetarian/vegan foodstuffs where space can be pre-booked.

 People are more likely to attend events and enjoy events more if each event has a specific theme. It helps give people something to discuss and a reason to talk about Effective Altruism topics as well as educating people about the key questions that underpin the EA movement. Put a list of interesting questions in the event description. (Optionally print of some articles that are connected to the theme. This can help spark interest and conversation but can also be a sizeable time sink.)

 Remember that your target audience for the description is not people who turn up every week but the people most likely to be persuaded to turn up with a good event description (i.e. new people or people who have only attended once). Be welcoming. Describe something about effective altruism. Add a phone number so people can find you. Make it clear that people can turn up at any time.

 The main benefit here is for people who have been brought along by a friend or by word of mouth and are keen to sign up on Facebook / Meetup / etc. A small piece of paper with a short explanation of effective altruism and a link to any Facebook / Meetup / etc groups would suffice.

 (with Isha Datar Director of New Harvest) (Theme: Lab grown mean)

Under the influence @ the Shakespeare's Head

Effective Altruism - Awesomely Fun Christmas Social

, friendly, hospitable, nice and so on. Talk to the new people. Explain effective altruism. Smile.

 from attendees as to how they found the event.

 Feedback has suggested that it is useful to walk about at the half way point of an event and say: 

“Hi everyone. Sometimes at events like this people end up talking to the same person or group of people the whole evening and wish they had met more of the wonderful people here. So I want to suggest that you move about, now or in a few minutes. Just saying this to prompt you or to give you an excuse to get up and move around and meet more people”

 to any offensive or off-putting behaviour.

At first you do have to turn up to your own events – although once you have a few regulars this is a relatively easy task to pass on to someone else if you need to.

 Most EA groups that have fizzled out have done so because the leaders have had limited success at growing the group, have felt disheartened and given up. To avoid this: 

Aim low and you will not be disappointed.

Be aware of the huge potential benefit of EA outreach. Read haste consideration and do a back of the envelope calculation.

Have fun. Make sure you enjoy the events. Do not get stressed organising things - organise things at your convenience. Finding a co-organiser may help.

Put less time into running the group (see below).

Problem: Feeling like this is a sub-optimal use of time.

 Put less time in but keep events going. Eg have events every 2 months. Copy and paste the same event description for each event. Organise them at your convenience (oh I am meetup up with a friend that evening anyway so I can make it an EA event and invite others). If people ask for more events then suggest they organise them. If necessary try to hand over (see below).

 can be difficult (without significant effort). If you think there is a high chance that you will leave a town in less than a year then maybe don’t start a group like this. Ask lots of people and pressure them into helping. Write a very detailed handover note with everything you can think of.

Problem: Feeling like this is a sub-optimal use of money.

) and I can pay for the cost of a meetup group. Or maybe ask Giving What We Can (

). Remember 1 Meetup account can host 3 groups.

 Bigger groups grow faster – if the group is not growing you could try some of the additional things to do with extra time that are listed below. If you can or find someone to organise one big event – such as a famous talker that may be all the group needs.

Additional tips – Things to do with extra time

 A single big well publicised event can help group the group significantly. In London we had Peter Singer come and talk to a crowd of 400 and this helped the group take off (

. As the group leader your main time sink after creating (and attending) the event each month or so will be responding to emails form people who are interested in Giving What We Can. The easy thing to do is to ignore these or send a standard message to people. Being polite and responding to individual emails is likely to be a useful way to spend extra time.

 With more time your experiments into how best to run the group can be bigger and more rigorous. You can trial different kinds of events or having a to do list with tasks that anyone can take on or sending a personal message to new members and so on.

Jesse Schnall

Living Through Malaria

'I had never felt like this before. I wasn’t just sick… I was dying.' This is 

 of Ann Paisley Chandler, a Peace Corps volunteer who, following a tour in West Africa, fell ill with flu-like symptoms.

What initially appeared as a minor bout with the common virus quickly escalated into toxic shock, anaemia and emergency kidney dialysis. The diagnosis came in one shattering word: malaria. Her chance of survival? 5-10%. And yet, one coma and two weeks in an intensive care unit later, Chandler was blessed with a new lease on life, and left with a sobering reminder of what might have been.

Ann’s is but one episode in an estimated 219 million global cases of the tropical disease. While not often afforded the same status as HIV, Tuberculosis and other prominent illnesses endemic to the developing world, the mosquito-borne parasite was responsible for roughly 

Yet armed with long pants, insect repellant and a toiletry bag filled with anti-malarial drugs, western travellers often underestimate the catastrophe of malaria. Despite its significant mortality rate, many in the developed world appear to have given the illness a back seat in the hierarchy of infectious diseases.

The reality however, could not be further from the truth. Chandler’s ordeal paints a picture of a far more devastating illness, one that begins with vomiting and fever and, all too often, ends with organ failure and death.

The vivid experience of Mariama Jones*, a Sierra Leonean living in the United States, testifies to this grim fact.

Pregnant with her first child, Jones was advised not to take anti-malarial therapy on a trip to her hometown, and ultimately fell ill with the parasite. Cruelly, it was her very desire to protect her baby that ultimately led her to miscarriage only three days after reaching hospital. The bereaved mother would go on to survive the illness, 

 to avoid malaria, 'especially if they are pregnant women.'

It is vital that such stories be heard for two equally important reasons. Firstly, so that we might begin to comprehend the pain and helplessness of those who endure malaria, and secondly, so that we are made aware that with proper care and treatment, they can survive.

Crucial to our understanding of this disease is the fact that it is both readily treatable and easily preventable, making it an optimal target for aid.

For sufferers, mosquito nets as cheap as $5.30 

, preventing the illness from even entering the body. Antimalarial drug regimens, on the other hand, require greater effort and expenditure, and only act to suppress the illness after infection.

Like most in the developing world however, the six-year-old victim of cerebral malaria lacked access to this basic preventative tool. While fortunate to survive the most serious strain of the disease, Rael can now look forward to a life in which she is 

 to walk, feed herself or communicate. [6]

Our donations, put towards causes like the Against Malaria Foundation – one of 

 – can help reverse a cycle that inflicts a devastating economic, emotional and human cost. For only the price of a Starbucks coffee, a young girl’s future might have looked more like that of our own children.

Tragedies like Rael’s need not be a reality for millions. Give now, and help make malaria a thing of the past.

Larissa Hesketh-Rowe

Just Try Giving

This year, after much procrastination in 2014, I saw in the New Year by taking the 

 pledge with Giving What We Can. I have pledged to give 5% of my income to effective charities throughout 2015. It was a big step for me but I can’t imagine ever looking back.

The effective altruist philosophy of giving to the most effective charities seeped into my consciousness in early 2014. Having been aware of 

 from my university course (which steered a once fussy eater toward becoming a vegetarian enthusiast) I listened to his 

 when it made it’s way into my podcast queue. I also accidentally stumbled across an inspiring Development Drums 

 about the principles behind Giving What We Can.

These ideas really resonated with me. Why should the fact that someone is miles away as opposed to right in front of me diminish my desire to help them? What must it be like to know that any day I, or my family, could get sick just from drinking water? Uncertainty at work makes me nervous but I know I always have family, even the state, to fall back on; what must it be like to know one bad harvest means loan sharks or starvation?

I gave money to charity previous to signing up to Try Giving, but based on the most emotive stories in TV. advertisements and the friendliest phone calls from volunteers, not on what cause would be the most effective. Yet when I really thought about it, about the individuals at stake and the extraordinary opportunity I had to help, how could I settle for that?

I also did the maths on my philanthropy. I thought I was quite generous with my donations each month, yet it turns out I was donating 0.01% of my income. Ouch.

We hear a lot in the news still today about how the richest 1% will soon 

 than the rest of the world's population. It’s hard to comprehend. How can this be right? Why doesn’t somebody do something? And yet even average young professionals like my boyfriend and I fall within the 

 of the world! That shocked me. A lot. Maybe I should act.

Yet I have to be honest and say it still took me a while to act. It’s easy to procrastinate and make excuses. I have a very busy job, I’m trying to save to buy a house, there’s always a birthday or a bill or something coming up. Maybe when I’m a bit older. Maybe when I earn more.

As they say, why put off something until tomorrow that you can do today?

Fortunately for me I have a brilliant mechanism for encouraging myself into action. I have a 

. This is a list of 1001 things to do in 101 days - like a bucket list but with a time frame long enough to complete big projects, and short enough that there is some urgency to act. I added task 11 “Donate 5% of my income to charity for at least a year” and clarified to myself that it must be before tax income and should ideally be to one of Giving What We Can’s 

So I did it. I put aside 5% of my income each month, went online and pressed ‘donate’.

Do you know what the funny thing was? After that it was easy. Having made the decision I no longer spent time making excuses to myself and devoted that energy instead to making it happen. From then on I really started to feel part of a wider community. A community full of passionate and compassionate people just looking to make the most difference they can in the world.

. It was frequently mentioned as a top effective charity but it didn’t seem to receive the attention of the Against Malaria Foundation for example. While the rationality of making the most difference possible appeals to me I have to admit I’ve been slightly swayed in a preference for SCI by enthusiastic, personable and regular emails from Alex in their team. She sends me regular updates on the latest data on the most effective interventions in Neglected Tropical Disease and provides that human element we all connect to, some information on the people it made a difference to. Effective Altruism hasn’t meant no longer caring about that emotive story: if anything I feel all the closer to others having given my donations so much conscious thought.

Yes I could have waited until I was able to give 10%, until I’d bought my house, got a better job. But what would that have meant for the specific people who received treatment now? Would they have gotten sick instead? Would a little boy have missed the chance to start school last year? Would a mother have gone blind?

I still plan to donate 10% and maybe I just need to take the plunge on that now too. Either way Try Giving gave me the perfect step to make a difference now. Why put off something you can do today? Why wait around to make the most difference possible when you can make an amazing difference right now?

Giving What We Can

Animal Charity Evaluators is Hiring! Researcher Position Available

. ACE is a US-based charity dedicated to finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. They do this by analysing research on methods of helping animals in order to provide research of interventions and top-charity recommendations. They offer suggestions on being a more effective animal advocate by providing career, charity, and volunteering advice, and also plan on working with other organisations to help them conduct their own research.

Update: We are offering a $1,000 donation to the animal charity of your choice if you bring us an applicant that we otherwise didn’t know about that we end up hiring for the position. Some of our best candidates in that past have come from referrals, so please think about anyone in your network who might be a good fit, and send them our way!

Are you looking to help animals as effectively as possible? So are we! At Animal Charity Evaluators, our mission is to find and promote the most effective ways to help the largest amount of animals. We do this through our research and outreach programs, and by making recommendations to donors on where to give and what to do. In 2014 alone, we influenced over $141,000 in giving to our recommended charities!

We are looking for qualified individuals to help our research department take the next step in finding the most effective ways to help animals. We offer an intellectual and challenging environment that can provide great stimulation and satisfaction as you see the results of your efforts impact animal advocacy groups and advocates from around the world. Our work structure is especially flexible, and we can adjust to almost any schedule. If you’re looking to join a dynamic and engaging team, including a diverse 

 that spans the globe, read more about the 

Not interested in this position? Do us a favour and share this with anyone who you think might be a good fit!

Owain Johnstone

Whose fault is it? Attributing responsibility for solving social problems

 have discussed how we come to identify and define social problems. Once we have identified and defined them, we then need to decide who should solve them.

 reported in the Guardian can help us understand how we go about doing that.

UK donors respond much more willingly to natural disasters than to war or conflict

. This trend appears more prevalent amongst older donors than younger ones.

It might not be obvious at first glance, but this finding can shed useful light on how we attribute responsibility for problem solving.

The survey's main finding is fascinating, but it does not make clear on the surface why the attitudes it identifies are held. We can suggest a couple of plausible reasons.

Why do people care more about natural disasters than war or conflict?

 possibility is that the emotional impact of natural disasters is greater than that of other issues because we could potentially be affected by the same phenomenon, wherever in the world we live. We can therefore empathise more readily with those suffering. Their emotional impact and their sudden appearance also lend themselves well to media headlines.

By contrast, other problems have complicated local contexts which, while difficult to understand, suggest that we're probably OK as long as we stay home. A local war is unlikely to affect us unless we actively seek to get involved. Poverty in a distant country isn't something that's going to cause us harm. In essence, this explanation is about self-interest – we help people out when we think we might one day need helping out ourselves in similar circumstances.

I think there's some truth to this explanation. But it's easy to come up with counter-examples. Some natural disasters are mostly local or regional occurrences (like hurricanes or droughts), affecting some parts of the world more than others – but that doesn't necessarily affect our willingness to donate to relief efforts.

 plausible explanation is to do with human agency. Natural disasters are not caused by us – there is very little that we can do about them (at least in the short-term; long-term, human impacts such as on climate change are important). Problems that have an obvious short-term human cause, on the other hand, must surely be soluble – if we can provoke them, then we can stop them happening.

 makes, quoting an official from the Charities Aid Foundation as saying: '...There seems to be a perception that the victims of human-caused tragedies are less worthy recipients of their donations.'

Without wanting to simplify too much (our motivations for charitable giving are many and complex), I would suggest that 

this question of human agency or responsibility is key to understanding how we react to these different kinds of charitable cause

This is where working out who should solve particular problems comes in. If we accept that the degree of human responsibility involved is important in determining charitable donations to a particular problem, then it's a short step then to suggest that 

we're more likely to donate to the solution of problems where there is no-one obviously placed to solve it themselves

Turning that around, if we can say that a particular problem is someone else's fault, we're more likely to leave them to solve it.

Agency, responsibility, and solving social problems - a look at immigration

Adopting this perspective can shed some interesting light on our approaches to existing complex social problems – immigration, to continue our theme, is a good example.

In its most basic terms, immigration is about people moving from one country to another in search of some advantage – maybe they want physical security, a better job, to be with their family, etc. Which means that people only move if they have a reason to do so. That reason might be anything from conflict to poverty to a dearth of sufficiently attractive jobs and so on. Immigration is therefore a response to, or symptom of, underlying issues.

Another key aspect of immigration is the degree to which attitudes towards it differ so widely. The debate around immigration – particularly in a net-recipient country like the UK – is fiercely polarised.

One reason that might be the case is because 

attitudes towards the the conditions that motivate people to migrate differ

. In particular, I think they probably differ 

with regard to who we think ought to be responsible for addressing each of those issues

If we extrapolate from the survey findings, we should expect that we are more welcoming towards immigrants who are fleeing natural disaster than we are those who are fleeing conflict. Adopting the human agency explanation, that would be because there's nothing you can do about a natural disaster – it's no-one's fault.

Blog

How I organise a growing chapter in a big city in less than 30 minutes a month.

Living Through Malaria

Just Try Giving

Animal Charity Evaluators is Hiring! Researcher Position Available

Whose fault is it? Attributing responsibility for solving social problems

Running for SCI - support a new journey

Why I finally took the pledge

Médecins Sans Frontières: a brief review

What values do we need to keep in mind about the DALY? Part I

What values do we need to keep in mind about the DALY? Part II