A great option if you’re thinking of starting your own non-profit is the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation programme, which will open to applications on 3 August. If you’re not yet set on a particular idea, they can help you work through that, along with pairing you with a co-founder, and providing various kinds of support. Having a look through their charities will give you a sense of the kinds of ideas people have pursued; not all are in LMICs, and many of the founders didn’t have experience in international development before starting.
Finding the ideal volunteer opportunity can be tricky, but my guess is that even if the work isn’t exactly what you want to be doing in the long term, you’ll likely learn useful things about what makes an organisation successful, what things you like and dislike about organisational culture, and some basic tools and techniques you can take into future work. That said, you might actually be better trying to start a small, low-cost project yourself in the areas you mention above, or even a for-profit enterprise to help you build and demonstrate your skills so that you could start your own non-profit later.
In terms of finding small EA orgs, you can check out the orgs on the Probably Good jobs board. We don’t (yet) have a way to rank them by size, but clicking through and learning a bit about each organisation is probably useful in building your knowledge anyway.
Hi James! Thanks for the question.
A great option if you’re thinking of starting your own non-profit is the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation programme, which will open to applications on 3 August. If you’re not yet set on a particular idea, they can help you work through that, along with pairing you with a co-founder, and providing various kinds of support. Having a look through their charities will give you a sense of the kinds of ideas people have pursued; not all are in LMICs, and many of the founders didn’t have experience in international development before starting.
Finding the ideal volunteer opportunity can be tricky, but my guess is that even if the work isn’t exactly what you want to be doing in the long term, you’ll likely learn useful things about what makes an organisation successful, what things you like and dislike about organisational culture, and some basic tools and techniques you can take into future work. That said, you might actually be better trying to start a small, low-cost project yourself in the areas you mention above, or even a for-profit enterprise to help you build and demonstrate your skills so that you could start your own non-profit later.
In terms of finding small EA orgs, you can check out the orgs on the Probably Good jobs board. We don’t (yet) have a way to rank them by size, but clicking through and learning a bit about each organisation is probably useful in building your knowledge anyway.