How to increase your odds of getting accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program

We’re often asked what you can do to increase your odds of being accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) Incubation Program. While each person’s answer will be different given their background and traits, here are the three most common things people can do:

1. Do a self-initiated project with no oversight.

2. Teach yourself and practice good decision-making.

3. Think rigorously and seriously about impact

1. SHOW THAT YOU CAN DO THINGS ON YOUR OWN

Most people’s lives neither encourage nor support self-direction. Typical education models always tell you what to do, where to be, and how well you’re doing. Same goes for the usual job, with a manager who will fire you if you don’t do the things they tell you to do, to a certain standard, by a certain date. You may have some flexibility within that framework, but the scope for action is relatively narrow. Entrepreneurship is entirely different. You are staring at a blank canvas. The only external accountability you have is in the distant future. You might only talk to a donor once a year. And you can’t cram a whole year’s worth of work into a week before you talk to them. It’s not like school where you can get by with cramming if you’re talented enough. You need to do work every day even though nothing bad will happen in the immediate future if you don’t. What’s more, there’s nobody telling you which things need to be done in the first place. You could work on strategy, hiring, management, M&E, or even moving to Hawaii if you felt it was the best call. You have to pick the direction. Most people have little experience with autonomy. When they’re faced with it, they’re filled with immense discomfort at the uncertainty. That’s why so many people postpone thinking about what to do after their education, often by simply getting another degree. The good news is that these are all learnable. You just have atrophied initiative muscles due to disuse. All you have to do is practice. Once you do, the discomfort becomes smaller, and can be replaced by an exhilarating feeling of empowerment and freedom. However, if you’ve never done it before, you may not be good at it. You have to learn how to motivate yourself when nobody else is helping you. You have to learn how to pick a good direction when there’s no existing structure. That’s why we look for people who have experience doing this. It’s more likely that they’ll be able to handle charity entrepreneurship: they’ve done this before and are not jumping into the deep end straight away. Possible actions

• Online course. The simplest thing to do is start and finish an online course on something that you want to learn. This is relatively straightforward, but is a good way to dip your toes in the water. We give people a lot of points for listing an online course on their applications. Some courses that might be interesting and useful are:

  • MIT course on program evaluation by Nobel Prize-winning economists and founders of the randomista movement, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

  • Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) courses on evaluating social programs

  • Quantitative modelling

• Altruistic project. Pick something that could be accomplished in one to six months that would make the world a better place. Start the project, and finish it. Ideally, use a good decision-making process to decide on what to do -- see this, or the list in the next section, to help you out. Not only will it increase your odds of getting in, but will also reduce suffering in the meantime. Some examples might be running a community fundraiser for an effective charity or starting a campaign to convince your university to buy cage-free eggs.

2. LEARN AND PRACTICE GOOD DECISION-MAKING

Your success in life is determined by the direction you travel in and how efficiently you get there. However, often people focus on the latter, improving their capacity and productivity, while neglecting the former, thus getting nowhere fast. Making good decisions is a key factor in making sure you’re picking the right way to go. This is crucial for charity entrepreneurship since, as mentioned above, you’ll be facing a blank canvas in terms of what to do. Many people are not very good at decision making, their lives mostly characterized by bumbling around, stumbling upon things that are good enough. When asked why they chose a particular degree or career, they’ll say, “I don’t know. I guess I was good at it and liked it and I was accepted.” Their process was opportunistic rather than deliberate. Fortunately, decision making is not a personality trait but a skill that can be developed. The broad two steps to follow for this are to:

1. Learn about good decision-making practices

2. Practice them

Learning is relatively straightforward. There are many resources on how to think about decisions. We’ve listed some below. Putting them into practice is harder. The biggest trick is remembering to do them in the first place. Unlike with some habits, usually there’s no obvious trigger, since “make a decision” is hardly a concrete thing. Most of the time, making a decision doesn’t feel like a decision. It just feels like life. However, there are a few situations where you can practise and hone your skills. These include choosing a:

• Cause area

• Way to use your spare hours at school or work to further that cause area (see the project above)

• Career

• Charity to donate to

• Personal budget

• Degree

• Job

• Skill to learn

• Place to live

Possible actions

1. Read the following:
   

   1. Using spreadsheets to make decisions.

   2. How long to spend researching/learning compared to doing

      1. Optimal stopping

      2. Time capping

   3. Steelman solitaire

   4. Practice changing thought patterns. The post is about using thoughts to be happier, but can be cross-applied to any other habit of mind.

   5. Cluster approach

   6. Algorithms to Live By

   7. AI to Zombies.
      

2. Make friends with and surround yourself with people who are good decision makers. This is often the best way to internalize habits.
   

3. Apply these processes to the areas listed above.

3. THINK RIGOROUSLY ABOUT IMPACT (AND ACTING MEANINGFULLY)

We look for people who think well about how to maximize their impact using reason and science. Much of this comes down to good decision-making, but a lot of it is also absorbing the lessons and thoughts that have already been discovered or expressed in the community. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We look for people who have shown real commitment to understand and think critically about the best practices in terms of creating impact.

Much of the material we recommend is associated with effective altruism (EA), which is best thought of as a set of tools and concepts for thinking more scientifically and systematically about doing good. Engaging with these ideas can be very helpful, even if you don’t identify with the label.

We look for people who have shown a genuine commitment to understanding and critically engaging with best practices in creating impact. What does this look like? There are three different paths, and you’ll ideally follow all three of them.

1. Consume knowledge. Read widely from relevant sources—both within EA and beyond. This could include books, blog posts, research reports, and talks. Also make sure to learn deeply about the specific cause areas you’re interested in. There’s no strict threshold, but roughly 300 hours of focused engagement is a useful benchmark. There are plenty of resources outside of EA that are important to have for context.

2. Act. Put ideas into practice. Theory without action (and vice versa) is limited. Examples include: volunteering, interning at mission-driven organizations, donating and reflecting on your decisions, writing about your thinking, starting a project, or contributing to a local group.or start one if none exists in your area).

3. Community. Engage with others who are also thinking about how to do good effectively. Conversations, collaboration, and exposure to different perspectives can significantly accelerate your learning and impact.

Possible actions

• Sources of knowledge:

  • All of our articles

  • The CE reading list

  • EA Forum

    • Try sorting by “most upvoted of all time” and working your way through

  • EA Global conference talks

  • 80,000 Hours podcast

  • Cause X Guide

  • Introduction - Peter Singer’s course on effective altruism

  • Books

    • The Life You Can Save

    • Doing Good Better

    • Poor Economics

    • Animal Liberation

    • Failing in the Field

    • Future Babble

    • Black Swan

    • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

    • How to Measure Anything

    • Grit

• Actions

  • Figure out where to donate and do so. Perhaps write up your thought process and share it with the community for feedback and inspiring others to do the same.

  • Start a project aimed at doing good

  • Volunteer or intern with a relevant organization

  • Run events or initiatives in your local community (e.g. talks, reading groups, fundraisers) CE offers remote talks to EA groups

• Community

  • Join or participate in a local group

  • Contribute to online discussions (e.g. EA Forum or relevant communities)

In summary, there are many things you can do to increase your odds of being accepted into the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program. Even if you don’t get in on the first go, your life, skills, and impact will in all likelihood be improved by these actions. Hopefully this helps you, and we look forward to seeing your application!