Previous director of EA Finland for 3+ years.
MSc Student in Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Aalto Business School (Finland).
Personal project in 2025: writing about effective giving in Finnish to give a spark for change in the long run.
Pet peeve: For posts relevant to the US only, state it. Preferably in the title.
I agree :) I have written 6 posts about effective giving during the past year on Substack. And the latest one, which also got the most views relatively (still only around 100), was about my personal donations in 2025.
Also, consider writing in your native or local language! Example: As far as I know, there are <10 people (or organisations) who have ever written about effective giving in Finnish, and Iām the only one doing it semi-consistently. Most people in my target audience in Finland are essentially fluent in English, but many prefer reading in Finnish if they can, as it might be faster and easier to connect. Iām also not writing anything particularly novel, so few EAs miss out on anything. But my content could be a way to spark the initial curiosity, so that people get the motivation to read more in English (in which thereās a lot more content that I often reference in my posts).
With some liberal roundings here and there, I donated:
50% Farmed animals (mostly through EA Funds)
30% Giving What We Can (mostly thinking it amplifies donations in global health and development, but Iād want to spend a day or two looking into it for real, and if another effective giving multiplier is more effective. The reports are waiting for me...)
10% Climate funds (Founders Pledge and Giving Green)
10% GiveDirectly and GiveWell
And for people landing on this post and looking for a coworking online space to join right away, check out EA gather town :) http://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āānxfhxwQg4HJ7KQz4A/āāea-coworking-lounge-space-on-gather-town (I used it more actively a couple of years ago but still like the idea and believe it has some active users.)
Here are my drafts:
Personal reflections on leading a national EA group for 3+ years. Iāll aim to publish this during the draft amnesty week, but I might also chicken out.
A post encouraging people to donate to effective giving organisations and comparing their multiplier effects, need for funding/ā ability to use the money for growth and which charities/ā cause areas get the boost if you donate to different meta charities. E.g., I expect donations to effektiv Spenden to result mainly in more donations for climate, but if you donate to Gi Effektivt, it only boosts GiveWell charities (not counting second-order effects of people getting into EA through these orgs). Anyone wanna work on this with me? Or steal the idea from me? :)
[Edit: I wonāt share my reflections yet.]
I actually did something similar: a 1-month internship in Kigoma, Tanzania, for an EA-inspired for-profit. I paid all costs apart from housing. I also think being an EA group organiser made it easy for them to take me. (Unfortunately?) I learned that it was not a great personal fit for me, but it was still a good experience, and I think the founders appreciated my contribution.
In retrospect and purely from an impact perspective, I guess that it would have been more impactful if I had donated the equivalent cost of my flight tickets and vaccines to them. With that money, my botec says that they could maybe have gotten 3-6x more than the value I produced, by hiring East African students for a total of 3-6 months worth of internships. If the money didnāt come from my pocket but from the university, like it did for Annika, that wouldnāt have been a counterfactual.
In retrospect, from a not-impact perspective, Iām happy I did the internship. I gained a lot from it.
For context, I live in Finland.
Iāve noticed local role models in your community are important in addition to the big-name leaders that you mentioned. Iām a community builder in Finland, and members of our community have often said that seeing and talking to people from the same country who do impressive stuff has helped them be more ambitious in their careers or even consider that they can have an impact instead of just being passive observers of EA.
PS. Hereās a list of past Forum posts related to EA Finland in chronological-ish order.
Thank you for the clarification Nicole!
Sounds like a great event! To give comparable stats for more similar events to the EA North than the international EAG conference, here are some stats from two events by EA Finland
- 3-day event with sleepover.
ā 32 attendees. (57% first-time retreat attendees.)
- Likelihood to recommend 8.9/ā10
- Shallow connections[1]: Avg: 6.6
- Deeper connections[2]: Avg: 5.2
Total costs excluding employee costs: 3,775ā¬ (3,214 GBP). Including employee costs: 4,275ā¬
Total cost per participant: 134ā¬
Cost per participant after participation fees: 76ā¬ (=65 GBP)
Cost per deeper connection[3]: 14,6ā¬ (=12,5 GBP). Same range as EA Northās 11 GBP
A 1-day event with 13 25-minute presentations by community members on any topic loosely related to EA. Topics included:
How I use AI tools to live a better life,
No Summer job? Want to do something together?
My projects on AI control: LLMs Schelling coordination & training monitors
Mental health as a global health problemāand what philosophers can do about it
From combustion engines to climate change science. My EA Journey
My EA journey and thoughts on career advising
Some stats:
21 attendees. (5 firstcomers.)
āHow likely would you join a similar event in 6 months if organisedā Avg 4.7/ā5
Feeling welcome and included: 8.6/ā10
Qualitative feedback:
Most often mentioned value received (in open field) was
Social needs (6/ā12)
Getting to know people better (6/ā12)
Learning new things/ā new ideas (4)
A couple also mentioned getting feedback to their projects and increased motivation
Cost:
Total costs: 790ā¬ (290ā¬ food costs + ~500ā¬ employee salary costs)
Cost per attendee: 38ā¬/āparticipant (=32 GBP)
Cost per connection is hard to count based on the feedback gathered.
āHow many people did you have a 5+ minute discussion with for the first time?ā
āHow many, if any, people that you didnāt know well before the retreat would you now be comfortable asking a favor from?(e.g., someone who might reach out for collaboration, connect you to a job opportunity, etc.)ā
Excluding participation fee, including employee cost.
If we apply for funding after June 1st, how likely is it that we can get a response from the EA infrastructure fund by mid-August if we state that need in the application?
In the post āFunds and CEA are mergingā, it was said:
EA Funds will be accepting and evaluating grant applications throughout the merger and spinout process, so you can continue to submit applications. [ā¦] Grant requests submitted to EA Funds after 9 May will not be processed until at least 1 August.ā
Because it says that the applications will be evaluated continuously, I had interpreted āprocessingā to mean the due diligence and payout, not evaluation. But in this post, I get the impression that the pause is more comprehensive because of
We likely wonāt evaluate all applications by 1 June, but we will prioritize time-sensitive and promising applications and aim to complete evaluations for those before the pause
I strongly believe that cultivating a habit of giving, even with small amounts, helps build a long-term culture of altruism
I strongly agree with this! Before I had a stable income, Iād set aside 1ā¬ a month to a separate bank account for charity. Usually, Iād wait a year or more to donate the accumulated money somewhere. (For context, Iām from Northern Europe.)
Nice idea! Iāll share this with the Finnish EA community to ask if someone wants to volunteer.
Thank you for continuing to share these! I likely would have donated less to the AWF if you didnāt share public reports.
Did you see GWWCās 2025 strategy post?
(1) Iām also a bit confused about the difference between charitable projects and hosted funds. First, I thought it means itās not possible to donate to funds via GWWC website, but after reading it again, I interpreted it as a change happening rather back-end and wonāt impact recommendations. Instead, it would be a change in the oversight GWWC promises for the funds. Have I understood it correctly?
I just found that Sebastian Schwiecker had written a blog post on the same topic.
Because of
I was hoping there were good EA blog posts on this topic, but after spending a while with EA Forum search and Google I didnāt find any.
ā¦ Iām leaving this link here :) https://āāeffektiv-spenden.org/āāblog/āāwie-viel-soll-ich-spenden/āā
I put more weight on social moral changes (or ācultureā) because we already have (at least on the market in Finland) many cheap, tasty, nutritional and good texture plantbased proteins. E.g. in the university canteens, the plant-based option can often have the equivalent nutritional content (regulated by the state so that the canteens get meal subsidies), and thereās nothing wrong with the taste, but most of my classmates still choose the animal-based option out of familiarity or habit. A good example of this is my friend who, on the first day in uni, accidentally took the vegan choice, which is usually first in the line. She shared with everyone that this is such well-cooked chicken and didnāt believe me when I said itās soy, not chicken. She seemed very puzzled, maybe a bit regretful, I assume because it didnāt match her identity to eat plant-based.
Vegan nuggets manage well in blind taste tests, have almost reached price parity, and most people claim they want to eat more plant-based for climate and health reasons; yet we havenāt seen a significant shift towards them (said a plant-based lobbyist I talked with).
This is mostly anecdotal, though, and I guess I could make similar arguments the other direction too but for now I lean towards cultural/āmoral change being more important. BUT, it doesnāt mean itās necessarily the most effective thing to work on on the margin.