EA is very important to me. I’ve been EtG for 5 years and I spend many hours per week consuming EA content. However, I have zero EA friends (I just have some acquaintances).
(My local EA group is quite small. I’ve attended a few meetups but haven’t really connected with anyone. I’ll be attending my first EAG soon and hope to make some friends there.)
How do you make EA friends?
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I’m considering building an OkCupid-style platform for EA networking. Some personas that could benefit from it:
Ambitious EAs who don’t enjoy EA meetups (probably many earning-to-givers)
EAs living far away from EA hubs
EAs unable to attend meetups due to health or personal reasons
I’m aware of existing Slack, Facebook, and other groups for making connections, but most EAs, including myself, tend to be lurkers.
What would be the positive impact of this? I would probably donate more if I had friends who were donating as much or more than I am.
Perhaps by starting a group? You don’t have to live in a major hub to start a group :)
Do you mind sharing approximately where in the world you live?
There’s a small local group in my city but I didn’t click with any of the attendees (mainly because of different levels of ambition).
Perhaps you could start a group that does something slightly different? Or speak with your national organisation (if you have one) and collaborate with them in starting a national cause or profession-based group? Or a company group?
For example, in the Netherlands, in addition to our city/student groups, we have a policy and politics group, a new group at ASML, and a new animal welfare group. And then we also have the Tien Procent Club. They’re inspired by Giving What We Can and run events focused on effective giving. They started in Amsterdam but they’ve now got chapters in several other cities.
You mentioned you’re applying to CE—I’d love it if we had a sort of CE group in NL, so that could be an option for you. I’m happy to jump on a call if you’d like to talk about this further :)
In the EA Anywhere Slack (which you can join here) there are semi-regular “random matches” with other members. Not every match will be somebody that you click with or have chemistry with, but if you are looking to meet new people and you don’t live in a major city, it might be helpful.
It is quite challenging to build friendships without the in-person element. All of the friends that I have made are people that I have either met in-person, or people that I interacted with somewhat online and later met in-person.
EDIT: oh, I just remembered that you could join some online book clubs if you are a person who likes reading. I run a few of them that are either explicitly EA or are EA-adjacent. The way they work is that each has a theme/topic, and about once a month or so we vote on what book to read, then vote on what day/time to meet. After a few weeks of reading (or listening, if you prefer audiobooks) we then have a roughly hour long video chat to talk about it. It is pretty informal, and there are no discussion questions, and we are okay if people join only having read part of the book. If you want to read and discuss books around any of these topics, feel free to join. Also, feel free to share this info with other people. I’m not big on gatekeeping.
Professional development book club (hosted within the EA Anywhere Slack). Join here: https://join.slack.com/t/eavirtualmeetupgroup/shared_invite/zt-1vow1kgs6-m64QEK~Pj2ZqYs2oHFoDgQ
China & Global Priorities book club (hosted within the China & Global Priorities Slack). Join here: https://cgpg.super.site/
Animal advocacy book club (hosted on Bookclubs.com). Join here: https://bookclubs.com/clubs/6009539/join/5d18d6/
I met people via in person events and parties. But also via twitter and to a lesser extent substack. I sense either I meet people and figure out who I work well with or I produce content that draws like minded people to me.
I made a lot of my early friends in EA through my local group. I’m guessing you don’t have one since you said you’re not in an EA hub (?) but there’s always EA Anywhere.
You could also organise an online discussion group yourself — a couple of my closest friends today were people I met because I started an online discussion group on animal welfare during the pandemic. We would discuss an article or paper on animal advocacy for like an hour in the evening, and then some people would stay and chat all evening. It was really nice :)