Get help from our community

Joining a community can be one of the best ways to increase your impact. First, it can enable you to make hundreds of connections in one go. Second, a group of people working together can have more impact than they could individually.

Back in 2011, we helped to found the effective altruism community. It’s a group of people devoted to using evidence and reason to figure out the most effective ways to help others — whether through donations, political advocacy, or their careers.

Many of our readers have made crucial connections within the effective altruism community.

Learn about effective altruism

If you want to learn about the ideas behind the community, you have a choice of introductions:

• Our podcast series: Effective Altruism: An Introduction
• A webpage: effectivealtruism.org from the Centre for Effective Altruism
• An academic article: Effective Altruism by our cofounder and Oxford philosopher Will MacAskill

Meet people interested in effective altruism

How to meet people in person

We think the best way to meet people in person is to attend an Effective Altruism Global(x) conference. Click the link to see all upcoming events.

The EAGx series are locally organised conferences aimed at people new to the community. EAGx conferences have taken place in cities around the world, including Nairobi, Stockholm, Jaipur, Hong Kong, Sydney, Boston, as well as virtually.

If you’ve already had some involvement in the community, you could attend an EAG event. They usually take place annually in London and San Francisco, and there are travel grants available.

Besides conferences, there are also hundreds of effective altruism groups at cities and universities around the world — if you’re a student, we especially recommend getting involved in your university group. To see if there’s a group near you, search this directory.

Finally, here’s a list of other in-person and online events.

How to meet people online

If you’d prefer to meet people virtually, we recommend Effective Altruism Virtual Programs, where you’ll be grouped with a handful of other people to discuss the core ideas over several weeks. New programmes start each month.

Here are some other options:

• Start using the Effective Altruism Forum to discuss the ideas. Making useful posts and comments can help you make connections as well as learn about the ideas.
• There are many online effective altruism groups themed around specific problem areas, career paths, and cities. You can join ones in your areas of interest and introduce yourself.
• Attend an online event.
• Join the 80,000 Hours LinkedIn group, search for
  people who work in the areas you’d like to enter, and message them.

Other communities

There are many other great communities that can help you have more impact, or be more successful. What matters is that you find your people — collaborators you can learn from and work with.

We discuss some other communities you might want to join in our career guide article on the importance of joining a community.