Building off of Mathias’ question, it seems like the idea behind CE is to find passionate generalists, give them a few months of training/mentorship/support, and set them off to implement a research-backed intervention. How does expertise, experience, and personal fit play a role with regard to founding a successful charity?
Personally, I can’t imagine signing up for the incubation program without having a concrete idea that I’d feel uniquely capable of working on. Is that common?
I understand where you are coming from. Our general belief is that an evidence-based idea coupled with a strong and value-aligned founder is a recipe for success. We would rather have a smart inexperienced person who believes in the methods of science and cost-effectiveness than a domain expert who thinks less in these terms. In this sense, being an impact-focused effective altruist is a “unique capability”.
We do, however, acknowledge that expertise and experience can add a lot of value. Our recruitment targets experts from subfields of our cause areas as well, e.g. young global mental health professionals. In the program, we try to pair generalists with domain experts, whenever possible. In addition, many founders recruit domain experts as their first hires.
Building off of Mathias’ question, it seems like the idea behind CE is to find passionate generalists, give them a few months of training/mentorship/support, and set them off to implement a research-backed intervention. How does expertise, experience, and personal fit play a role with regard to founding a successful charity?
Personally, I can’t imagine signing up for the incubation program without having a concrete idea that I’d feel uniquely capable of working on. Is that common?
I understand where you are coming from. Our general belief is that an evidence-based idea coupled with a strong and value-aligned founder is a recipe for success. We would rather have a smart inexperienced person who believes in the methods of science and cost-effectiveness than a domain expert who thinks less in these terms. In this sense, being an impact-focused effective altruist is a “unique capability”.
We do, however, acknowledge that expertise and experience can add a lot of value. Our recruitment targets experts from subfields of our cause areas as well, e.g. young global mental health professionals. In the program, we try to pair generalists with domain experts, whenever possible. In addition, many founders recruit domain experts as their first hires.