As a college student, I volunteer a few hours a week at Faunalytics, an EA-aligned animal welfare advocacy/research group. I think volunteering with Faunalytics is a good candidate for a small-scale Task Y.
I started off by editing their old article archives and updating them to fit their new article formatting. It was pretty boring, but it was useful for Faunalytics because it let them publish their archived research summaries, and it let me show Faunalytics that I was committed and could be trusted with responsibility.
Sometimes I’d rewrite old articles that seemed poorly done, so after a few months, my supervisor liked my writing and moved me up to doing my own research summaries. Each week, I’d be assigned a paper about something relevant to animal or environmental advocacy. I’d write an 800 word summary in the style of a blog post, and Faunalytics would publish it to their library. Here’s some of what I wrote (the tagging system is buggy, it doesn’t list a lot of my articles).
I recently stopped doing research summaries for time reasons, but I’m now working with their research team on analyzing data from their annual Animal Tracker survey poll.
The parts I’ve really enjoyed about the work are:
The papers could be interesting, and I learned a bit about animal topics
I think most of what I wrote was informative and would be useful to e.g. animal activists who wanted to better understand a particular question. Examples: Does ecotourism help or harm local wildlife? What’s the relationship between domestic violence and animal abuse? (But, see below: informative and useful to some people is not necessarily the same as effective in doing good)
Writing research summaries is very engaging work, just the right level of difficulty, and my writing skills markedly improved
It can lead to other opportunities: They now trust me enough to let me do their data analysis project, which is really fun, educational, and (given that I’m a student) will be probably the most legitimate thing I’ve published once it’s done. I’d also be comfortable asking my supervisor for a recommendation letter for a job, and if I wanted to get more involved in EA animal rights, I think I’d be able to make connections through Faunalytics.
The parts that weren’t so great are:
On the whole, I’m not sure I’ve had much impact. If I were convinced that the majority of causes within animal welfare are effective, then I would probably think I’ve had a good positive impact. But I don’t think e.g. the environmental impacts of ecotourism are very important from an altruistic standpoint, which really decreases my value.
Being a low-commitment volunteer is simply a bad arrangement in a lot of ways. At least for me, doing something a few hours a week often leads to doing it zero hours a week, especially when it’s a volunteer relationship where you’ve made very little firm commitment and there’s no consequences for being late or failing to deliver. I think I combatted this pretty well by forcing myself to stick to deadlines, but I totally understand the GiveWell position of not accepting volunteers because they’re not committed enough.
On the whole, for anyone looking to explore working in EA more broadly, I think volunteering at Faunalytics is a great idea: the possibility of direct impact, mostly engaging work, and a strong opportunity to prove yourself and make connections that can lead to future opportunities. Check it out here if you’re interested, and feel free to message me with questions.
(Anybody have input on whether I should write a full post about my experience/advertising the opportunity?)
If you have time, turning this into a post would probably be good. I think it’s sometimes hard for people, especially college students, to imagine how they can start volunteering for EA orgs or what it looks like to “gain career capital.” Your story is a really good example of doing something useful and gaining skills starting from entry level.
As a college student, I volunteer a few hours a week at Faunalytics, an EA-aligned animal welfare advocacy/research group. I think volunteering with Faunalytics is a good candidate for a small-scale Task Y.
I started off by editing their old article archives and updating them to fit their new article formatting. It was pretty boring, but it was useful for Faunalytics because it let them publish their archived research summaries, and it let me show Faunalytics that I was committed and could be trusted with responsibility.
Sometimes I’d rewrite old articles that seemed poorly done, so after a few months, my supervisor liked my writing and moved me up to doing my own research summaries. Each week, I’d be assigned a paper about something relevant to animal or environmental advocacy. I’d write an 800 word summary in the style of a blog post, and Faunalytics would publish it to their library. Here’s some of what I wrote (the tagging system is buggy, it doesn’t list a lot of my articles).
I recently stopped doing research summaries for time reasons, but I’m now working with their research team on analyzing data from their annual Animal Tracker survey poll.
The parts I’ve really enjoyed about the work are:
The papers could be interesting, and I learned a bit about animal topics
I think most of what I wrote was informative and would be useful to e.g. animal activists who wanted to better understand a particular question. Examples: Does ecotourism help or harm local wildlife? What’s the relationship between domestic violence and animal abuse? (But, see below: informative and useful to some people is not necessarily the same as effective in doing good)
Writing research summaries is very engaging work, just the right level of difficulty, and my writing skills markedly improved
It can lead to other opportunities: They now trust me enough to let me do their data analysis project, which is really fun, educational, and (given that I’m a student) will be probably the most legitimate thing I’ve published once it’s done. I’d also be comfortable asking my supervisor for a recommendation letter for a job, and if I wanted to get more involved in EA animal rights, I think I’d be able to make connections through Faunalytics.
The parts that weren’t so great are:
On the whole, I’m not sure I’ve had much impact. If I were convinced that the majority of causes within animal welfare are effective, then I would probably think I’ve had a good positive impact. But I don’t think e.g. the environmental impacts of ecotourism are very important from an altruistic standpoint, which really decreases my value.
Being a low-commitment volunteer is simply a bad arrangement in a lot of ways. At least for me, doing something a few hours a week often leads to doing it zero hours a week, especially when it’s a volunteer relationship where you’ve made very little firm commitment and there’s no consequences for being late or failing to deliver. I think I combatted this pretty well by forcing myself to stick to deadlines, but I totally understand the GiveWell position of not accepting volunteers because they’re not committed enough.
On the whole, for anyone looking to explore working in EA more broadly, I think volunteering at Faunalytics is a great idea: the possibility of direct impact, mostly engaging work, and a strong opportunity to prove yourself and make connections that can lead to future opportunities. Check it out here if you’re interested, and feel free to message me with questions.
(Anybody have input on whether I should write a full post about my experience/advertising the opportunity?)
If you have time, turning this into a post would probably be good. I think it’s sometimes hard for people, especially college students, to imagine how they can start volunteering for EA orgs or what it looks like to “gain career capital.” Your story is a really good example of doing something useful and gaining skills starting from entry level.