AMA with Ambitious Impact’s Co-founder & CEO Joey Savoie
As AIM’s Co-founder and CEO, I’m running an AMA to answer any questions you may have about our Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program (including our newly announced third round focused on increasing the impact of philanthropy), lessons from co-founding and running Ambitious Impact, and more.
The 2026 Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program
Ambitious Impact has applications open for our flagship program, the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, until October 5th.
This program supports driven and talented individuals in launching high-impact charities based on rigorous research. We provide training, mentorship, co-founder matching, and seed funding (average £100k) to bring evidence-based charity ideas to life.
In 2026, we will run three rounds of the program for the first time ever. Two of these rounds will continue our proven focus on farmed animals and global health. The third will be a special edition dedicated to increasing impact in the philanthropic sector.
Feb-Apr: Animal Welfare, Global Health & Wellbeing, and Climate Co-benefits
Jun-Jul: Impactful Philanthropy
Sep-Oct: Global Health & Wellbeing
You can read more about the program in this earlier EA Forum post. Please consider applying!
A personal AMA
Answers to questions can be subjective. I do not want to claim to speak for every AIM team member. As such, I want to clarify that I’ll answer from my perspective. I think this has multiple notable benefits:
My answers can be more candid since I don’t have to worry (as much) that I’ll say something others may significantly disagree with
Application season is busy! This saves coordination time when agreeing on how to respond to tricky questions.
You can ask me questions through this AMA that go beyond AIM’s core activities.
A little about me
For the past ~ seven years, I have been the CEO of Ambitious Impact. In these last years, I have primarily focused on high-level strategy across all departments and mentorship and training for the participants of the Incubation Programs.
Before founding AIM, I co-founded Charity Science, a meta-organization that increased the amount of counterfactual funding going to high-impact charities. Subsequently, I co-founded Charity Science Health, a nonprofit that increased vaccination rates in India using mobile phones and behavioral nudges.
I also write a Substack where I post about my interest in philanthropy, career optimization, and the non-profit ecosystem, among other things.
Things you could ask me
Any questions you may have about…
the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program & reasons to pursue this program (even if you are an experienced founder)
lessons from co-founding and running Ambitious Impact & our track record launching orgs reaching 1B+ animals and 75m+ people
why Ambitious Impact now is focusing on increasing the impact of philanthropy, the sort ideas that we are excited to see launched through it
my thoughts on EA, impactful careers, and cause-plurality vs. cause prioritization
Or anything else where I might be a good person to ask.
How to ask questions
Please post each question as a separate comment.
I’ll reply to comments, likely on September 20th
Small reward for your time
We will send a digital copy of the Peter Singer-endorsed handbook How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit, which I co-authored, to the authors of what I consider to be the five most interesting questions.
Looking back at your journey from Charity Science to Ambitious Impact, what’s one major strategic assumption you made early on that turned out to be completely wrong? How did that realization change your approach to launching new charities?
Tons of things. A big category of stuff that comes to mind is underrating certain traits (e.g. hard work) and overvaluing others (e.g. domain experience). A more unique answer (as I often say the above one during talks etc) would be focusing too much on the EA movement and not building strong enough relationships outside of EA (both for AIM directly but also for our charities).
What have been the commonalities between the most successful charities created through the programme so far?
The most clear one is cofounders. Out of the selected ideas and selected cofounders and most other factors we can track, cofounders are easily the most predictive of later charity outcomes. To be more specific, cofounders that are good at problem solving, gritty and really impact driven.
I’m interested in this too.
Regarding the idea to scale-up funding for alternative proteins, how do you envision this being more impactful than just donating the resources to GFI?
GFI is currently hiring for a role which seems to have a similar remit.
Few different perspectives here:
Diversification is good and it’s really hard to cover an entire space (even if you do not get bottlenecked by funding). I think competition creates useful positive incentives.
GFI is great but also does tons of things and it’s pretty hard to restrict donations to a sub-area of a charity so if you thought some activities were higher impact than others and this was one of the higher impact things to do, it could make sense to support a charity that focuses directly on that.
AIM charities tend to run smaller and more cost-effectively than the comparable incumbents—it’s pretty typical for our charities to do things at about half the price of larger organizations so insofar as a person is willing to trade cost-effectiveness for risk, small orgs tend to overperform.
Thanks for your reply! These are general points for big org vs. small org, I do wonder about the evidence base for GFI vs. prospective new org specifically, but I’ll save my nitty gritty questions for the interview if I make it that far through the IP process. Thanks again!
In ecosystems without strong accelerators, it’s hard to find mentors who understand both ambition and local constraints. At the same time, many of the brightest minds in Nigeria leave academia or the nonprofit space due to survival pressures. From your experience, what mentorship structures and co-founder matching practices are most critical to replicate in regions like Nigeria to help leaders retain talent and build resilient organizations?
I think it starts at an earlier stage than something like CE generally operates. I sometimes think of CEA as like a PhD program—it’s best fit for someone who has been working on impact directly for a long time. I think what is missing in most LMICs is the early university and chapter infrastructure to build up networks and knowledge so that there is more ready-to-found/be-Sr-staff talent built up over time. I generally wish more people spent time living in LMICs as I think it does give you a practical edge that is hard to get otherwise.
Should small donors (~$10k per year) support small scale charities such as charity entrepreneurship incubated ones? Or would these charities be better supported by other larger founders?
I don’t think size is the best determiner. I think the seed network or mid-stage funding is probably higher EV at the cost of higher risk and more time to assess. I think if a donor finds getting into the weeds and speaking to the charities more fun I think they should go earlier stage. If they are time poor and want a reliable index fund I think it’s hard to beat GW/ACE recs.
Longshot here: Is there a minimum annual EA-aligned contribution threshold above which you would recommend that potential CEIP applicants continue earning to give rather than applying to the program?
I think it starts becoming unclear in the $200k-$500k a year of donations range
Have you considered starting “fundraising charities” that hire professional fundraisers from the traditional NGO space and apply all the best practices to EA?
I have slightly mixed views on this depending on the method. I in general think that competing in very typical fundraising methods, EA areas will typically underperform. Something like door-to-door or online ads—I expect EA areas (picked based on effectiveness vs appeal to donors) would pretty constantly lose to other NGOs who do a good job. On the other hand, I do think EA can have a pretty strong competitive advantage working on things that are closer to common goods that a single charity might not do itself but makes sense if you care about multiple charities/cause areas. E.g. when I go to a philanthropy conference it tends to go better than a classic charity as I am pretty comfortable talking about 50 possible charities with other donors instead of 1 which NGOs themselves might focus on. That just gives you more surface area to connect. Similar things like charity evaluators or setting up philanthropic funds I think EA might have an advantage on relative to classic NGOs.
To what extent the EA community should put more effort towards increasing the donation basis vs finding ever more impactful opportunities? What worries me the most in the second case is that while there might be some pretty good untapped opportunities to create new, more impactful charities, there is always too much uncertainty. For example, this is often argued as a reason to not prioritise funding Vitamin A supplementation (€3.5k/per live saved) vs malaria nets (€5.5k/per live saved), see this Ayuda Efectiva spreadsheet based on GiveWell data; which are already pretty heavily researched areas.
I am probably more excited about outreach than research when it comes to high absorbancy opportunities like vitamin A vs malaria nets. I am probably most excited about research on things like family planning or livelihoods that we have not as a movement dug as deeply into and I think there are reasonable ethical views that would prioritize the top of those areas over the top of classic direct delivery global health.
Hi Joey! Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA.
My question is what are the most overlooked challenges that charities or non-profits face and what are some of your suggestions to help those challenges. Conversely, what are some of the challenges that are not as significant as people on the outside may think?
Good question. I think talent vs funding—most people get this fully backwards, with NGOs worrying way more about funding than they should and way less about talent than they should. I also think a lot of charities worry about doing something that causes harm (pretty rare) vs just being really inefficient at accomplishing your goals and effectively wasting resources (very common). NGOs that focus on great talent and getting a lot done per $ end up going a pretty long way.
Since targeting Ultra High Net Worth Individuals seems to be a more effective strategy than broad donations (reference), to what extent do you think it is feasible to attract more such individuals to effective giving? What strategies are you particularly excited about researching and testing more extensively to do so?
I am very optimistic about promising things being done in this area. I think being able to talk genuinely about multiple cause areas and being less directly pitchy on one worldview/NGO is a huge advantage a lot of EAs have. We are running a round on improving philanthropy and I would guess ideas we recommend there will be UHNW leaning. I wrote about a couple to do with dessert events and dragons den. Other things that are high on my list right now include grantmaker and philanthropic advisor training (a bit like our grantmaking training program), funder networks (like FAF but for other cause areas), more cross-cutting quizzes/tools (like GWWC’s how rich are you tool). We are putting pretty active research into this over the next 6 months so I think I will have a better answer then, but on net, I think it’s quite feasible there will be like 6 ideas we would be excited to see a full charity on—maybe 3 on HNWs.
What clear advantages come through creating a charity through AIM, compared to starting a charity independently?
If anything I think charities might be a bit too advantaged by going through AIM. The success rate is about ⅓ in terms of CE charities becoming field leading—this is compared to something like 1⁄10 of charities founded by other founders in the movement/via other incubators. I think part of this is fairly earned (e.g. strong cofounders and ideas selected via more rigorous process) but part is reputational—a bunch of funders I know are categorically more excited about AIM charities than identical charities that have not gone through the program. I think the same goes for hiring high talent staff. Why that happens concretely, I think cofounder pairing and idea pairing create a huge value add and the training, mentorship and community help new charities avoid some predictable mistakes.
In places like Nigeria, systemic barriers (weak infrastructure, scarce funding, policy gaps) often mean impact takes much longer to show. From your own leadership journey, what practices or mindsets have helped you sustain vision and motivation over the long term—and how might these lessons translate for founders working in Global South contexts where “quick wins” are rare?
Thanks for doing this AMA, Joey! I’m curious about Ambitious Impact’s experience with outreach and participant recruitment for your accelerator.
– What have been the biggest challenges in finding and engaging the right applicants?
– Which approaches or channels have you tried so far, and what’s worked best (or least well)?
– Looking ahead, how do you see participant recruitment and scaling evolving — what do you expect to double down on in the future?
– More broadly, what do you think are the common challenges accelerators or fellowship programs face when it comes to effective participant recruitment?
No answer to my question yet. I will try to ask a much shorter question that might be easier to answer.
Why has the EA movement focused on creating EA charities, rather than creating a charity impact credit/financing mechanism that even non-EA charities can use at the project level for high-impact projects?
Might creating a mechanism for non-EA charities to participate in creating EA-type-impacts expand the funds and financing that is going to EA-type cost-effectiveness?
Hi Joey! I have a question on cause plurality and prioritization. In the Clearer Thinking podcast Ep 154, you highlighted your skepticism on the expected value theory and described is “one tool of many” with a preference for a convergence of many models.
As a decision maker, if EV strongly points to one cause but other frameworks don’t converge, would you rather commit to the EV cause given its potential impact or to diversify across causes at the risk of diluting that impact?
Hey, indeed I have a bit of a unique perspective on this relative to other EAs. I would say it really depends if we are talking about a model of EV (which I think in practice is typically what we have) or the real EV. I would not trade off “true” EV but in practice I am pretty skeptical about models of EV really getting at truth, particularly when they diverge from other forms of evidence. Another way to frame it is I am comfortable with risk but discount EV models based on uncertainty as I think in practice uncertainty tends to lead to less dramatic outcomes (closer to no effect) as we gain more evidence/certainty.
What are, in your opinion, the most promising strategies to increase the amount of funding dedicated to effective charities?
I like meta and I like HNW broadly as areas partly due to there already being a solid number of country-level effective giving organizations. More specific ideas within other comment.
Which makes for a better applicant: A researcher with no entrepreneurial skills, or an entrepreneur with no research skills?
Definitely an entrepreneur with no research skills. Given that most folks pick an idea our research team already looked heavily into, research skills are a bonus but far from mandatory. Academics have categorically struggled in our program and entrepreneurs have categorically done really well.
Can one apply for the impactful Philanthropy program only?
What are your thoughts on Social impact Bonds/outcome-based financing vs traditional models of giving grants up front?
Hello, the application form https://form.jotform.com/252124953365357 on your website doesn’t open. What can I do ?
If a first-time applicant has previously attempted independent projects that didn’t quite take off, but is currently working on one that is still in its early stages, would you advise them to apply now or wait until the project is more developed before applying to stand a better chance?
I have applied for Impactful Philanthropy on AIM. I need to ask you if I have submitted the idea through the from on the website, I need also to apply using the link available until 5ht of October? Could you help me?
I do not understand the following phrase on the AIM website ‘If you’d like to propose an idea for this round, you can submit it through this expression of interest form alongside submitting our main application form.’
How do you identify promising non profits? Some for profits are social enterprises. do you work with them?
In Carbon Credit markets, project implementers create carbon emission mitigation projects, and buyers, either environmental philanthropists, or organizations wanting or regulated to mitigate their climate impact buy verified impact credits, called carbon credits. A balance between supply and demand sets the “price” of buying impact, and buyers try to maximize impact per dollar by minimizing the price they pay per credit.
Acknowledging that carbon credit markets have a whole host of problems, they still seem to be an interesting mechanism for “buying impact” and by being market based, they create incentives to minimize barriers to entry for both buyers and sellers. And competition should encourage cost-minimization or impact maximization.
So do you have an opinion on why EA has not yet succeeded in creating a version of an “Impact Credit” market for expanding and incentivizing impact-based philanthropy? I can imagine a few possibilities. Here are some that come to mind:
(1) It is just too hard to accurately characterize impact accurately at the project level so the focus is on charity-wide impact evaluation and quantification.
(2) Attribution of impact cannot be realistically done at the project level, it has to be done at the charity level.
(3) An open market will encourage cheating and the EA community does not have the resources to police the potential cheating and corruption.
(4) There are too many types of impact that EAs are interested in, and because EAs focus on neglected cause areas, you can’t really create Impact Credits for a neglected area because that puts the “cart before the horse.”
(5) Maybe it is a good idea and the EA community just hasn’t gotten around to seriously or successfully trying it yet.
(6) Maybe if there is too much money going into “Impact Markets,” by the laws of supply and demand the cost of impact will go up for the donors, and the impact cost effectiveness will go down. Therefore EA donors get much more “bang for the buck” by being exclusive, raising requirements on donors, charities and projects so that their more limited, exclusive projects can have higher cost effectiveness, than what might be possible at larger scale. Do we really want Malaria bednets to get $20,000 per life saved instead of $5,000 per life saved so that Malaria bednet charities have an incentive to lower the average bed net distribution cost-effectiveness? If the market price for impact is $20,000 when a focused program can deliver $5,000 per life saved, then the bednet charities have an incentive to expand and lower their cost-effectiveness by 4X by distributing bednets to people who really don’t need them.
I am sure that there are many more possible answers.