“The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads.”
Ambitious Impacts graduates (including me) have in fact gone on to do a variety of things from operations to research and grantmaking.
But maybe I’m missing your point? I’ve generally found it a bit hard to understand that paragraph and other sections.
“Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones?”
This may have changed, but AIM did at least previously let candidates pitch their own ideas—I know of at least one person in my cohort that came in with their own project. Admittedly, this is rare, but that is probably what we should expect if as an applicant with an idea, you are up against a team of researchers with a cumulated expertise and experience of decades who have done several of these investigations, can compare ideas, have privileged access to data about how likely it is to find the right founders, obtain funding etc.