Building EA Projects While Working an Unrelated Full-Time Job

Brad West🔸23 Jul 2025 15:27 UTC
84 points
9 comments5 min readEA link

Epistemic Status: These observations come from my personal experience trying to advance a specific idea (Profit for Good) while working full-time as a lawyer on unrelated work. I’m sharing my impressions and frustrations, which may or may not generalize to others developing EA-aligned projects outside traditional pathways—whether that’s creating new theories, developing interventions, researching neglected areas, organizing communities, or working on any high-impact initiative while maintaining an unrelated career. I have deep uncertainty about how much of what I’ve experienced reflects systemic issues versus my particular circumstances, idea, or approach. Others pursuing impact work part-time may have very different experiences, and there may be support systems I’ve failed to find or utilize effectively. I share this not as a definitive critique but as one data point that might resonate with others in similar situations.

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Since late 2021, I’ve been developing a framework that could redirect $100 billion annually to effective charities. I’ve also been slowly destroying my health, finances, and relationships doing it. This is what building EA projects outside the approved pathways actually looks like.

I hesitated to share this story. It feels vulnerable to admit the struggles, the mental health costs, the financial strain. But I realized someone else might be pushing their own boulder uphill, thinking they’re alone. You’re not. This is for you.

The Visibility Gap

EA celebrates certain paths:

  • Working at EA organizations

  • Earning to give

  • Academic research at prestigious institutions

  • AI safety research

But what about those of us building new frameworks while maintaining unrelated careers? We exist in an unrecognized category: part-time theory builders and infrastructure creators. We’re not earning-to-give (except in that every dollar goes to the project). We’re not at EA orgs. We’re not in academia.

How many of you are quietly nursing projects with massive potential impact but don’t fit these neat boxes?

There’s also a hierarchy: Oxford professor > Random lawyer. Known causes > Novel frameworks. Inner circle > Outsiders with ideas. If you’re not the right kind of person with the right credentials talking about the right topics, your world-changing idea might never get heard.

What I’ve Built Despite the Constraints

The Intellectual Contribution

@Vincent van der Holst and I coined the term “Profit for Good” and developed the theoretical framework explaining why companies that donate profits can systematically outcompete traditional businesses. My key insight: stakeholders have a measurable preference for companies benefiting charity over enriching shareholders. This creates competitive advantages that compound. This advantage does not correspond with operational disadvantage because the advantage stems from who profits rather than how the business operates.

Before our work, virtually no one—except Thankyou’s Daniel Flynn—discussed this mechanism. More importantly, I’ve shown how this creates a philanthropic multiplier opportunity—provided that economic actors like consumers, employees, suppliers, etc, have a non-zero preference for the charities these businesses support. This implies PFG is more than a ‘nice business model’, but rather an ‘optimal philanthropic strategy.’

The Infrastructure

The Secret Weapon

One breakthrough: finding Santiago, my paid team member in Mexico who does work on the website, social media, Commissions for a Cause, and whatever else I need (he’s remarkable at figuring stuff out). Unlike managing volunteers (which often created negative ROI when exhausted), Santiago is remarkably agentic. He figures out what projects need and executes independently. One paid hour of his self-directed help beats ten hours trying to coordinate volunteers.

The Real Cost

Developing new theory while lawyering full-time meant eliminating recreation almost entirely. No hobbies. No leisure. Every non-work hour became PFG time. Personal relationships suffered deeply—partners, friends, and family all competed with a project I believe could save thousands of lives. How do you balance that? The guilt flows both directions: time spent on relationships feels like lives lost, time on PFG feels like abandoning the people who matter most.

I’m a lawyer living paycheck to paycheck—not from lifestyle inflation, but from funding infrastructure. No emergency fund. Minimal student loan payments. Every spare dollar goes to the project.

For years, I prioritized the project over health. My diabetes management collapsed. Exercise abandoned. The logic seemed sound: every hour at the gym was an hour not advancing PFG, and delays meant preventable deaths.

I’ve battled severe depression. The weight of seeing a solution clearly while lacking resources to implement it is crushing. Knowing that every month of delay represents real suffering—malaria deaths, factory farming, poverty—while I draft legal briefs instead of building infrastructure. The depression compounds when projects with fractional impact potential get funded because they fit neat categories.

The Funding Catch-22

Building a world where profits serve effective charities takes years of deep work—not just developing theory, but creating infrastructure, proving models, and changing minds. But you can’t get funding without showing the full vision already working. You can’t build that vision without time. You can’t get time without funding. It’s a perfect circle.

I spent months developing joint marketing and certification plans, only to hit wall after wall seeking funding for infrastructure. The response was always some variation of “show us more evidence first”—evidence that requires the very resources I’m seeking. Meanwhile, I watch less ambitious projects with better pedigrees get millions because they fit into recognized categories or come from the right institutions.

The dismissals follow predictable patterns. “Why not just earn-to-give?” they ask. But building the actual pathways for profit redirection is more valuable than personal donations when you understand how to unlock billions for charity. “Why not join an EA org?” Because my specific expertise is architecting the PFG ecosystem—I’d be wasting that unique knowledge doing work others can do. “Is this really neglected?” Show me another framework that could systematically redirect $100 billion annually to effective causes.

Each dismissal assumes the existing paths are sufficient. They’re not. Not for everyone, and not for every transformative idea.

Lessons from Five Years in the Trenches

For Part-Time Builders

  1. The volunteer paradox is real. Without payment, you can’t set expectations. Some volunteers were exceptional and added a lot of value, but they were the exception. Most needed guidance I couldn’t provide. Find paid help like Santiago—someone who identifies what needs doing and figures out solutions.

  2. Accept brutal trade-offs. Recreation disappears. Financial security vanishes. Health requires fierce boundaries (I learned too late). Depression from seeing solutions you can’t implement is common.

  3. Focus on spreading ideas. Articles and talks scale infinitely. You don’t need to build everything yourself. Accept 5-year timelines for paradigm shifts.

For EA Leadership

  1. Expand recognized categories. People developing high-impact projects while maintaining other careers are valid contributors. Theory development outside academia matters. Not everyone fits the standard paths of earning-to-give, working at EA organizations, or academic research.

  2. Create bridge funding. $50-200K can transition a part-time builder to full-time. Value intellectual contributions, not just credentials. Support builders before they burn out.

For the Community

Question what gets heard. Why do some frameworks get attention while others don’t? What are we optimizing for—pedigree or potential?

Moving Forward

Despite depression, financial strain, and feeling outside EA’s recognized categories, I continue. Because the framework shows how to redirect billions to effective causes. But it shouldn’t require destroying yourself to build something valuable.

The bigger question: How many potential breakthroughs are we missing because they come from people outside the standard EA paths?

A Call to Expand Our Circle

Every month we delay building PFG infrastructure because it doesn’t fit neat categories represents billions that could fund malaria nets, deworming, and direct cash transfers remaining with shareholders.

But this isn’t just about PFG. It’s about all the lawyers, teachers, engineers, and others with transformative ideas who can’t get heard because they don’t fit the mold.

If you’re building outside standard paths: You’re not alone. Your work matters even if it doesn’t fit the boxes.

If you have a carefully-considered idea: You’ve done the red-teaming. You’ve examined the arguments. You still believe it’s your best path to impact. Don’t let dismissive responses from established voices silence you. The courage to persist despite isolation might be exactly what the world needs. Start small, gather evidence, find even one ally—but start.

If you have influence in EA: Consider how your organization could create pathways for non-traditional contributors.

Everyone: When someone shares work that doesn’t fit standard categories, evaluate its potential impact, not its conformity.

The breakthroughs we need might come from the margins. Your idea might be the one we’re waiting for. Don’t let the categories stop you.

Brad West🔸23 Jul 2025 15:27 UTC
84 points
9 comments5 min readEA link