Future Impact Program

Doing the EA project isn’t easy. There are countless problems, each of which is its own complex challenge, and it’s hard to predict which roles you could eventually make the biggest difference in.

So we want to bring together the people most determined to make a difference with their careers, and support you to take action now to maximise the impact you’ll have in the future.

Investing in your future impact in this way is EA Oxford’s current top priority.

We’ll meet together as a group for a few hours every week to work towards our EA goals. It’ll be mostly unstructured, so you’ll be free to do whatever seems most valuable, whether that’s conversations about cause prioritisation, reflecting on your personal career strategy, reading and discussing an article making an important claim, or something else. But we’ll also help you to figure out what the best way for you to spend the time is – see below for more info!

As well as these activities, we’ll have dinner together every week, and either go to the pub or do something else fun :)

How will the Future Impact Program actually help me?

Initial chat

You’ll have a chat with one of the EA Oxford organisers, who help you to figure out how to make the most of the rest of program. They can also help you figure out whether the program is the best option for you at the moment.

what’s the right approach to maximising impact over our lives?

The first time we meet, we’ll focus on this question, because having a better answer will importantly guide the way we approach the rest of the program (and beyond!).

The EA Oxford organisers will give a short talk explaining the main ways we think it’s easy to go wrong with this question. Then there’ll be plenty of time for discussions on the question in small groups, before dinner and social time to get to know the other participants better.

Weekly meetup

Every week, we’ll meet for a few hours. You’ll have time to do whatever you want, working towards your EA goals – it’s a great chance to prioritise things you want to do that are valuable, but can get dropped in the urgency of term.

Here are example of the kinds of thing we imagine people might choose to do during the sessions:

  • Having a conversation to help you work out your views on an important question.

  • Sitting with someone else to read through and discuss an article making an argument that could have big implications for your future impact if correct.

  • Making notes summarising your understanding the core reasons to prioritise a problem, as you read about it.

  • “Double-cruxing”: trying to work out why you and someone else have different views on an important claim.

Being part of a motivated community

It can be motivating to be part of a group of like-minded people, working together towards the same goal. We expect that we’ll learn from each other, help each other figure things out, give each other encouragement, and hopefully have fun!

Ongoing 1-1 support

As the program continues, we’ll continue to offer you 1-1 chats with an EA Oxford organiser, to help you figure out how you can make the most of the weekly sessions, and to chat about anything else EA-related that would be useful.

Is this for me?

The Future Impact Program is for you if:

  • You plan to use your career to make the biggest positive difference you can

  • You’re very familiar with the key ideas of effective altruism (e.g. have participated in our In-Depth Seminar Program or have spent roughly 60 hours thinking or reading about effective altruism)

  • You’re keen to spend a few hours every week in a supportive environment doing whatever seems best – things you expect to make it bit-by-bit more likely that you have an unusually large impact in the future

If any of these things don’t apply to you, the program will be less useful for you, and could be less useful for other participants. If you’re not sure whether this or something else like the Guides program would be best for you, we’re keen to help, so book a chat here!

How do I get involved?

Applications for the current round of the Future Impact Programme are closed but please use this form to register your interest for future rounds.