Based on the posts I read, EA Philippines has always struck me as a really vibrant and enthusiastic community. I hope you achieve your funding aim.
You use manifund to fundraise, and I was wondering why you chose manifund over other platforms. I initially wanted to donate but have not, because it seems it would require me to register an account, and to convert money into some manifund account, both of which seem like a hassle. Maybe others, too, are put off by this.
Maybe you should add another way of financially supporting EA Philippines. If you do, let me know. I'll gladly make a small donation.
Hi there, Austin from Manifund here! I can't speak for the EA Philippines team, but some reasons we think our platform is a good way for raising donations:
For users like you, registering should be pretty fast, <2min (you can sign up with any email or Google account). And you can easily add money via credit card; we also support bank transfers, DAF, and crypto for larger donation sizes.
As we're set up as a 501c3, US-based donors can get a tax deduction for donating to projects that we host.
On Manifund, we have a network of donors who already have their budgets loaded on our site, and sometimes regrantors as well -- last year, our regrantors had $2m to recommend to projects.
One comparable project to EA Philippines might be AI Safety Camp, who launched with an EA Forum post like this one, and went on to raise $56k on Manifund!
We've established a track record of reliable payouts & operational support; we've paid out ~$3m to 128 projects over the last year or so.
I'd love to hear if you have any troubles using the Manifund platform; or if you have experiences with other platforms that you think serve this function better, as we're always trying to improve.
Thanks for this response, Austin. For me, three things that made me hesitant to use Manifund: (1) requires an account (2) when linking via a google account, the supabase address looks scammy as it is just 15 random characters. (3) I have to pay money into an account before pledging. Given not all projects may end up taking place, this makes me nervous about wasting money (i.e. if the project does not take place). Compare this to, e.g., Kickstarter, where you only need to pay if the project takes place, yet you can pledge without loading money into Kickstarter.
I do think of Manifund as a good fundraiser option; I do think that it is good to have multiple options listed for the reasons explained above.
(2) hm, we could pay $10/mo for the professional tier to change the supabase URL address, the Scrooge in me didn't think it was worth it but perhaps...
(3) interesting -- I don't think we've considered an option to let people pledge without funds added yet; will see if that makes sense.
Wise: I’ve sent you a direct message for this as it contains sensitive information. I’d also note Wise only allows receiving payments up to $7,100 per month.
Hope these are more straightforward! Really appreciate your interest in helping out too. :)
I'd strongly suggest creating a summary and linking to the full post as a Google doc or something. At present, the length will put off potential donors from even reading it.
Key questions to address in a summary:
Why are you the BEST opportunity to donate to within this cause area?
Why has EAIF decided to terminate your funding? If they think it's not cost-effective enough, why are they wrong?
What are you going to accomplish with the money?
Why should prospective donors believe you can execute?
FWIW, my gut tells me that this is likely a good use of funding. The team seems dedicated, willing to work for cheap, and sufficiently proactive to make a good go of it.
Thank you for your suggestion on adding a briefer at the beginning of our post. We’ve incorporated your suggestion. Our briefer can be accessed here https://bit.ly/EAPHStrategyFundraisingBriefer2024
To provide more context on why EAIF decided to terminate our funding:
EAIF told EA PH in August 2023 that they were very funding-constrained and are unable to fund projects that they would have funded in the past. They said if the funding context were different, they would conduct a deeper evaluation of the work EA PH did over the grant period. However, they didn’t expect to offer an additional grant even after a deeper evaluation, so they did not do a deeper evaluation. Given this and the new funding landscape, EA PH’s co-founders (Brian and Tanya) understood this decision and saw the need to rethink EA PH’s future and hire new directors that could lead and improve EA PH. With our new team and strategy, we expect to do impactful and cost-effective work. Moreover, we’re fundraising for salaries that are 40% lower per hour compared to EA PH’s previous salaries given the new funding landscape.
To quickly respond to your other points:
EA Philippines boasts a track record of community growth and tangible impact, including the establishment of student chapters, successful conferences, and numerous EA-aligned projects and organizations. Because of this, EA Philippines has demonstrated our capacity to effectively utilize funding to drive meaningful change and sustain impactful initiatives in both the Philippines and Southeast Asia. We believe we are well-positioned to execute our goals of introducing new members to EA, building skills and confidence, and providing in-depth knowledge and career preparation. We’ve detailed some of our arguments for this in the briefer above.
Thank you again, John, for your comment—this gave us a meaningful opportunity to reflect on how we can effectively communicate our goals as an organization. :)
Great work; I hope you'll succeed with the fundraiser! Do you have blockchain-based donation options like, e.g., Rethink Priorities offers? Ideally one of the major Ethereum layer 2s or Solana? Ty!
Hey Dawn! At Manifund we support crypto-based donations for adding to your donation balance; USDC over Eth or Solana is preferred but we could potentially process other crypto depending on the size you have in mind. We generally prefer to do this for larger donation sizes (eg $5k+) because of the operational overhead, but I'd be willing to make an exception in this case to help support the EA Philippines folks. More details here.
Oh, brilliant! USDC would also be my top choice. But I'm basically paying into a DAF, and so can't get a refund if this project doesn't succeed, right? That would have a high cost in option value since I don't know whether my second-best donation opportunity will be on Manifund. Is there a way to donate to Rethink Priorities or the Center on Long-Term Risk through Manifund? That would lower-bound the cost in option value.
In principle we'd be happy to forward donations to RP, CLTR or other charities (in principle any 501c3, doesn't have to be EA); in practice the operational costs of tracking these things mean that we don't really want to be doing this except for larger donation sizes.
Although since EA Philippines has set its minimum project threshold at a fairly low $500, I'd 95% expect them to succeed and that this wouldn't come up.
Hi Dawn, thanks for your interest in donating to EA Philippines! I'm unsure if I understood you correctly, but EA PH's minimum funding goal on Manifund is $500, as the team would appreciate any amount of funding. So I think if your donation is at least $400, then the project would indeed be funded, and you wouldn't need to be refunded. Let me know if this answers your concern!
Oh, great! I interpreted “This is an offer to donate this amount to the project on the condition that it eventually becomes active” to mean that the project might not become active for any number of reasons, only one of them being the funding goal.
Executive summary: EA Philippines, one of the most active EA groups in Southeast Asia, is seeking funding to sustain its operations and initiatives after its grant recently ended.
Key points:
EA Philippines has a strong track record of community building, organizing events, and supporting members in starting EA-aligned projects and organizations.
The group is seeking $43,000 in funding for 1 year to cover staff salaries, operational expenses, and key projects.
Planned projects include introductory and in-depth fellowships, a leadership retreat, student group resilience building, and a career planning program.
EA Philippines aims to introduce diverse new members, build member skills and confidence, provide in-depth EA knowledge, and prepare members for high-impact careers.
The current co-directors, Zian Bonoan and Sam Ackary, bring experience in EA organizing, operations, research, and advising.
Potential failure risks include issues in the global EA community deterring engagement, poorly communicating EA ideas, lack of volunteers, and internal disputes.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
(For an executive summary version of our post, feel free to check our briefer here.)
In light of the current funding constraints in the EA community, EA Philippines has had a difficult time securing the means to continue its usual operations for this year. This can mean less support for growing a highly engaged community of Filipino EAs.
We are seeking USD 43,000 as our preferred funding for 1 year of operations and a 2-month buffer. The minimum amount of funding we are seeking would be USD 28,000 for 1 year of operations. This will help us with our staffing as well as being able to produce valuable projects (e.g. introductory fellowship for professionals, career planning program, EA groups resilience building, leadership retreat, etc.) and guidance to encourage, support, and excite people in their pursuit of doing good.
You can help our community with a donation through our Manifund post[1] or through Paypal.
Outline of this post
Why donate to EA Philippines?
What are EA Philippines’ goals and how do we aim to achieve them?
Who is on your team?
What other funding is EA Philippines applying to?
What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)
Concluding thoughts
Why Donate To EA Philippines
Track record
EA Philippines was founded in November 2018 by Kate Lupango, Nastassja "Tanya" Quijano, and Brian Tan. They made great progress in growing our community in 2019 and 2020, and the three of them received a community building grant (CBG) from CEA to work on growing the community from late 2020 until the end of 2021. Since then, EA PH has become one of the largest and most active groups among those in LMICs and Southeast Asia. The group has received grants from the EA Infrastructure Fund to fund us from 2022– 2023, with Elmerei Cuevas serving as our Executive Director during this period.
Since being founded, EA PH has:
helped start three student chapters in the top three local universities
organized a successful EAGxPhilippines conference being the 3rd most likely to be recommended among EAGs and EAGxs
had over 300 different people complete an introductory EA fellowship of ours or our student chapters)
had over 80 active members join EAG/EAGx conferences around the world including EAGxPhilippines (which also garnered 40 first-timer Filipinos)
had 2 retreats for student organizer leadership and career planning
members who have started promising EA projects (with a total of at least 14 EA-aligned organizations in the Philippines), such as the ones in the next section.
However, EAIF’s last grant to EA PH was only for 6 months (from April to September 2023), and they decided to just give the then team a 2-month exit grant rather than a renewal grant at the end of it. Due to the lack of secured funding, as well as wanting to rethink and redefine EA Philippines’s strategic priorities, EA PH’s board decided that it would be in the organization’s best interest to explore new leadership to pursue its refined direction. The new leadership would then have to fundraise for their salaries and EA PH’s operational expenses. The board led a public hiring round, and this led to them hiring us (Sam and Zian)[2] in late December to serve as interim co-directors of EA PH and to fundraise for EA PH.
EA-Aligned Organizations in the Philippines: Case Studies
Over the last few years, several EA PH members have started cause-specific organizations, projects, and initiatives. Below we highlight some
Animal Empathy Philippines
Animal Empathy Philippines was founded by Kate Lupango (co-founder of EA Philippines), Ging Geronimo (former volunteer at EA Philippines), and Janaisa Baril (former Communications and Events Associate of EA Philippines). The organization started with community building and now focuses on bringing farmed animal issues in the Philippines to the forefront and harnessing collective action to effectively help farmed animals in the Philippines. AEP has published a scoping report on alternative proteins and is currently completing its animal advocacy journey mapping and its swine welfare research project. They also represented the consumer sector in a national stakeholder consultation for the development of the local plant-based industry and the creation of a roadmap. They are supported by EA Funds, Animal Charity Evaluators, Humane America Animal Foundation, and the Open Philanthropy Project.
Phlourish Mental Health Initiative
Phlourish Mental Health Initiative is co-founded by Roc Bata, Joseph Cubar, and Shen Javier, all of whom are active members of EA PH. Phlourish is on a mission to test and scale evidence-based and cost-effective mental health interventions so they are accessible to Filipino adolescents. They are currently testing guided self-help workbooks, which is one of the interventions identified in Effective Altruism Philippines’ Mental Health Charity Ideas Research Project. Phlourish is a recipient of Mental Health Funding Circle’s Spring Grants Round.
WhiteBox Research
WhiteBox Research is an AI safety organization co-founded by Clark Urzo, Brian Tan, and Kriz Tahimic, all of whom are active in EA PH. WhiteBox aims to solve open research problems in AI interpretability and develop more AI safety researchers. Currently, they’re organizing a five-month, part-time fellowship for 13 people in Manila to master the fundamentals of mechanistic interpretability research.
Check out other EA Organizations/ projects active in the Philippines here.
EA PH Members: Case Studies
In the past years, several of our members took active steps to grow their EA journeys. Below we share some case studies of EA Philippines members.
Marifel “Ging” Geronimo
Ging Geronimo is a co-founder of Animal Empathy Philippines. She previously worked for the Philippines’ social and economic development planning and policy coordinating body and as a consultant for a multilateral bank. She first found out about EA by joining EA Philippines’ Intro EA discussion group in 2020 and started volunteering for us in 2021. She also took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2020.
Rochelle “Roc” Bata
Roc Bata is the Founder and Executive Director of Phlourish, a local nonprofit that aims to scale cost-effective mental health interventions in the Philippines. She was previously the Chief Operations Officer of ClimateScience, a non-profit providing free resources on climate change and its solutions. Roc first found out about EA in 2018, and she went to her first EA Philippines event in 2019. She attended our Intro to EA discussion group in 2020, which motivated her even more to do more good with her career.
Alethea “Althy” Cendaña
Althy Cendaña currently works as an Operations Associate for Fish Welfare Initiative. As part of the international support team, she provides administrative and operational support for their main program in India. She previously worked as Associate Director EA Philippines and President of EA UP Diliman. Althy first found out about EA when she joined EA UP Diliman as its founding VP for Logistics and Internal Affairs in 2021. She also works as a research volunteer for the Shrimp Welfare Project.
Our board members can also be considered case studies of EA Philippines’ success:
Brian Tan is a co-founder of WhiteBox Research, where he leads their operations and marketing. He’s also a co-founder and board member of EA Philippines, and he worked full-time for EA PH on a grant in 2021. He was also a Group Support Contractor at CEA for two years, where he supported EA groups around the world. He first found out about EA in 2017 and helped start EA Philippines in 2018.
Raymund “Red” Bermejo is the Executive Director of Anti-Entropy which provides operations support to high-impact organizations as well as tools and resources for ops staff. He previously was the COO of a global tech consultancy firm for almost a decade. Red got engaged in EA by joining EA Philippines’ introductory discussion group in 2020. In 2022, he left his COO role and became an Associate Director for EA Philippines.
Tanya Quijano is currently a senior program officer at the Australian Embassy in the Philippines managing a 16 million USD policy development program. She co-founded EA Philippines in 2018 and served as a part-time community builder for EA PH from 2018–2023 to pursue outreach to professionals and continue to advise EA PH members in pursuing impactful careers.
What are EA Philippines’ goals and how do we aim to achieve them?
Funding breakdown
Our preferred funding amounts to USD 43,000 for 1 year of operations and a 2-month buffer for staff funding and routine operations. This will cover funding for the salaries of Zian Bonoan and Sam Ackary at 0.5 FTE each as co-directors, operational expenses (e.g. Tech Subscriptions, Events, Socials, Book Orders, Routine Volunteers, etc.), and funding all the projects mentioned in the Project Breakdown section.
The minimum amount of funding would be USD 28,000 for 1 year of operations. This would primarily entail changes in the projects we choose to run for the year.
We think EA Philippines is a cost-effective organization to fund considering the difference in the cost of living compared to EA groups in higher-income countries, making our projects and costs cheaper to run and sustain. You can refer to this budget breakdown for more information.
Project breakdown
In the next year, our core team hopes to achieve the following goals with the specified metrics for success for each project:
We recognize that these particular projects may not necessarily “reinvent the wheel.” However, these events are strategically chosen not only to sustain our uphill progress but to continue scaling up towards a diverse pool of individuals looking to do the most good they can. These projects will be designed as a funnel to the other; for example, we hope to initiate our projects in this order:
Introductory fellowship for professionals/Seeding a new EA chapter —> In-depth fellowship —> Career planning program —> Leadership retreat/EA groups resilience building
This chain model is a response to the need for impactful follow-ups after projects. Alongside these projects, routine activities such as career/chapter advising and monthly socials/meetups.
In these succeeding projects, we hope to maximize our pool of volunteers and potentially take on some interns who can assist in events management, administrative tasks, or community engagement. We expect to take in at least 5 volunteers for these initiatives, both students and professionals potentially sourced from our introductory fellowships or previously engaged members.
Objective 1. To introduce new and diverse members to EA PH
We believe it is essential to provide EA knowledge-building spaces to unique individuals actively looking for ways to create more impact with their resources. We plan to achieve this in two ways:
Introductory fellowship for professionals. In 2022 EA Philippines has hosted one cycle of IF for professionals (see syllabus here). We believe this is an important initiative to sustain considering that all introductory fellowship opportunities in the Philippines are geared for university students or fresh graduates. Additionally, given that we have previously conducted this program, our team has a model to work with and improve on for future cycles. Ideally, we would be accepting ~30 participants and aiming for a 60% graduation rate—the same metric we followed in our first cycle. While we only reached a 40% graduation rate for all monitored fellows, we were able to generate 17 graduates and around 14 members willing to be part of EA PH. We aim to exceed these numbers in the succeeding cycle. Additionally, we aim to channel these talents into existing EA-aligned organizations or to other EA PH events such as a career planning program.
Seeding a new EA chapter. A motivated university student member of the EA PH community expressed interest in opening an EA chapter outside of Metro Manila—specifically in the Mindanao region. This member expressed confidence in taking on three co-founders and eight new members. We see supporting this budding EA chapter as an exciting opportunity to pursue, especially with local EA organizations such as Healthy Futures Global. With an EA chapter in Mindanao, we can help create talent to support these organizations. Additionally, much of the activities of EA Philippines has been centered on Metro Manila audiences. Our team finds seeding a new chapter outside of Metro Manila to be a compelling opportunity to expand the EA movement into other parts of the Philippines. EA Philippines would be providing mentoring to the co-founders and connecting them with existing EA group support programs.
Objective 2. To build the skills and confidence of EA PH members to pursue/sustain EA-aligned initiatives
Our members have initiated various local EA initiatives ranging from spearheading projects to leading registered nonprofits. We believe it is important to both 1) support our existing members leading these initiatives and 2) encourage aspiring members looking to initiate a local EA endeavor. We have two key projects we believe can accomplish this:
Leadership retreat. Retreats are an incredibly high-impact opportunity. EA Philippines has not yet conducted a similar program to a leadership retreat. We hope to explore this leadership retreat through one of either ideas: 1) helping existing founders lead organizations better through strategy setting, fundraising, delegation skills, etc. or 2) helping aspiring founders by exploring topics such as co-founder fit, project ideation, etc. In either idea, our goal is to facilitate a participant-driven program design. We have at least 14 cause/topic specific organizations based in the Philippines led by amazing EAs, offering a wide opportunity to support these EAs. With this number of organizations (and considering that we can expect around 2-3 EAs on average from each of these orgs), our ideal turnout would be 20-30 participants for a leadership retreat.
Student groups resilience building. While EA PH is not completely hands-on with our university chapters, we provide regular support in terms of advising and resources such as books. In our observations with our three university chapters, we recognize that recruiting organizers is a significant challenge. We hope to address this by providing a space where university organizers convene and share ways in which resilience can be sustained in their respective chapters. Additionally, if we could support the fruition of a new EA chapter in Mindanao, we could provide this same opportunity for their organizers.
Objective 3. To introduce high-fidelity models of EA for in-depth EA knowledge
EA Philippines, along with our university chapters, offer several entry points into the EA knowledge space. Our goal is to elevate this further by offering more high-fidelity avenues for in-depth EA knowledge. We plan to facilitate an in-depth EA fellowship targeted towards those who have accomplished an introductory fellowship provided by either our university student chapters or by EA Philippines’ professional’s introductory fellowship. Previously, EA Philippines conducted an in-depth reading group (see syllabus here) An in-depth EA fellowship can offer members an opportunity to engage in EA more profoundly.
Objective 4. To prepare EA PH members for pursuing a high-impact career
A common concern in our community is the need for a follow-up to EA introductory-level opportunities. We believe offering a program for career support and development is a viable fit for this need. We believe it is essential to help members further apply EA principles to their careers. To achieve this, we plan to pursue a career planning program. In the past, EA Philippines has provided career support by offering advising and hosting a career planning retreat tailored for students and professionals. Shifting from a retreat program to a continuous 6-week program allows us to provide our members' long-term focus, flexibility, and structured guidance as opposed to having these
Aside from our four objectives, our team is considering the possibility of registering EA Philippines. EA Philippines is aiming to solidify our credibility in the local context to open avenues for a wider network of opportunities. We recognize that with this established credibility comes more opportunities for sustainable funding, networking, trust in the organization, and attracting more talent (which increases the pool of potentially high-impact EAs in the Philippines). Out of all these benefits, we see the opportunity for sustainable funding of particular interest. Registration can reduce friction or barriers associated with accepting funding from potential grantors/donors. This is important for EA Philippines to continue scaling up as more and more.
Who is on your team?
What's your track record on similar projects?
Zian
Zian Bonoan (LinkedIn) currently serves as the Co-Director of EA Philippines. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Ateneo de Manila University. Besides being active in the Effective Altruism space, Zian also works as a part-time market researcher in GoDoc, a software company specializing in developing applications for medical practitioners.
Much of her work is centered within EA, having recently helped organize EAGxPhilippines in October, last year. Her experience here includes producing all graphics used before and during the conference, coordinating with several suppliers for the timely production of needed materials, and crafting an appropriate marketing strategy to pique the interest of EAs primarily within the Philippines and in Asia. Her interest in EA started within her university group, EA Blue, where she also served as the Vice President for Communications. She also provides communications and graphic design support for EA university and city groups on a freelance basis. Some of her previous clients include EA for Christians, Stanford EA, and a handful of EAGxs among others.
Sam
Sam Ackary (LinkedIn) currently serves as the Co-Director of EA Philippines. She graduated in 2023 from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in BS Health Sciences and a minor in Sociology. After graduating from university, Sam began working in the health and development space. She currently works at the Ateneo School of Government as a Research and Project Assistant for their Tobacco Control and Governance Program under the Ateneo Policy Center division.
In the EA space, Sam served as the Secretary-General of Effective Altruism Blue in her last year of university. Her milestones as a Secretary-General include spearheading the creation of an organizational constitution, mentoring an Associate Secretary-General, and systematizing an event evaluation system. She also has experience in EA operations work as a Research and Project Assistant with Anti-Entropy, directly reporting to Red Bermejo, Executive Director and a board member of EA Philippines. Sam has explored other EA opportunities by joining a Virtual Program reading group for The Precipice, volunteering for EAGxPhilippines, and facilitating EA topic discussion spaces for EA Blue.
How the work will be split
The following breakdown of roles and responsibilities are divided between Zian and Sam:
Zian
Career advising
Events organizing and management
Communications
Operations (finances, administrative tasks)
Sam
Career advising
University chapter advising
Events organizing and management
Community health
Volunteer/intern management
While Zian and Sam are early in their careers, they can provide value to university students or fresh graduates initiating their professional careers. Both Zian and Sam are backed by rich work experience gained through both professional work in the EA and non-EA space through student organizing for EA, internships, freelance work, and part-time jobs. With these experiences in hand, Zian and Sam can provide young EA members with advice regarding seeking high-impact work experiences, maximizing networking opportunities, and developing career goals.
What other funding is EA Philippines applying to?
While the Co-directors currently receive a small stipend from the savings of the previous core team, this runway is projected to run out by the end of April. We will be putting out a call for funding on the EA Forum shortly after this is posted. Around the same time, we will be passing in an application for CEA Group Support Funding after Zian became a CEA Certified Organizer last February. We will also be applying for funding from Meta Charity Funders and the EA Infrastructure Fund which we intend to put out by mid to late March. Finally, we are considering seeking funding locally although we currently have no funders in mind for this.
As of this time, we have received USD 2000 from Brian and Red ($1000 each) which will be placed into paying Zian and Sam part-time stipends for the next couple of months.
What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)
Issues in the global community put EA in a bad light
Outcome: People who would normally be excited about EA ideas might look to the issues of the global EA community. This may influence their view of EA and lead them to disengage or even take on a negative view of EA regardless of the progress and welcoming community the Philippines has.
Mitigation: Provide a space in the EA PH community where people can discuss and ask their questions about concerns they may have. It would also be best practice for us to be as transparent and honest as possible about EA PH’s stances on such events while also promoting or defending EA/EA Philippines locally.
The information we put out is not valuable or communicates EA poorly
Outcome: Very talented people who go through our programs may disengage with EA or engage with EA for reasons other than doing good effectively. EA Philippines may also end up progressively moving away from the ideas of EA or producing programs that ultimately do not lead anyone to pursue tangible actions of their own.
Mitigation: Establish a deep understanding of EA knowledge among the core team so that projects and operations are designed in such a way that communicates EA ideas as clearly and accurately as possible. This can mean expecting core team members to regularly put aside the time to read through EA material, stay updated with developments across the global EA community, retain involvement and connection with the wider EA community outside of the Philippines, etc. Projects would also be designed in such a way that encourages following through with personal actions from the participants besides being a source of information.
We can’t get enough volunteers
Outcome: Some of the projects we’ve carefully selected and planned for will have to be deprioritized or restructured and therefore some goals may ultimately not be attained.
Mitigation: Selecting volunteer involvement to be in roles that are more suitable to university students who also happen to be the biggest group and have also shown to be the most eager to take part in such activities.
Internal disputes deter people from participating in the community
Outcome: Internal conflicts can produce an environment that feels unwelcoming and distracts from the goals of EA therefore the loss of more talented people in the EA space.
Mitigation: Continue providing the means for people to voice out concerns and have a point person for community health support to make sure this is not overlooked.
Concluding thoughts
EA Philippines humbly seeks your support to sustain and expand our impactful initiatives. With a proven track record of fostering a vibrant community and catalyzing meaningful change, EA Philippines has emerged as a leader in Southeast Asia. However, the recent conclusion of our grant underscores the urgent need for sustainable funding to support our operations and initiatives. Your contribution will enable us to sustain our staffing, produce valuable projects, and provide essential guidance to our community members. Your support is not just an investment in EA Philippines; it's an investment in the future of effective altruism in the Philippines.
We look forward to your generosity — your support will drive the current and future effective altruists in the Philippines!
Should you have any questions or clarifications, you can contact either Sam ([email protected]) or Zian ([email protected]) and they'd be happy to help!
How to donate through Manifund: 1. Create a Manifund account (should take <2 minutes) 2. You can add money via credit card, or bank transfers, DAF, and crypto for larger donation sizes 3. Go to the EA Philippines post on Manifund and donate there
US-based donors can get a tax deduction for donating on Manifund.
The board initially hired Sam and Zian as Co-Associate Directors and Mark Romero as Executive Director. However, last January, Mark’s Canadian residency application got approved. Given this, Mark decided to resign from the position, and Sam and Zian stepped up as Co-Directors. See more about this here.
Based on the posts I read, EA Philippines has always struck me as a really vibrant and enthusiastic community. I hope you achieve your funding aim.
You use manifund to fundraise, and I was wondering why you chose manifund over other platforms. I initially wanted to donate but have not, because it seems it would require me to register an account, and to convert money into some manifund account, both of which seem like a hassle. Maybe others, too, are put off by this.
Maybe you should add another way of financially supporting EA Philippines. If you do, let me know. I'll gladly make a small donation.
Hi there, Austin from Manifund here! I can't speak for the EA Philippines team, but some reasons we think our platform is a good way for raising donations:
I'd love to hear if you have any troubles using the Manifund platform; or if you have experiences with other platforms that you think serve this function better, as we're always trying to improve.
Thanks for this response, Austin. For me, three things that made me hesitant to use Manifund:
(1) requires an account
(2) when linking via a google account, the supabase address looks scammy as it is just 15 random characters.
(3) I have to pay money into an account before pledging. Given not all projects may end up taking place, this makes me nervous about wasting money (i.e. if the project does not take place). Compare this to, e.g., Kickstarter, where you only need to pay if the project takes place, yet you can pledge without loading money into Kickstarter.
I do think of Manifund as a good fundraiser option; I do think that it is good to have multiple options listed for the reasons explained above.
Thanks for the feedback!
(2) hm, we could pay $10/mo for the professional tier to change the supabase URL address, the Scrooge in me didn't think it was worth it but perhaps...
(3) interesting -- I don't think we've considered an option to let people pledge without funds added yet; will see if that makes sense.
Hello, thanks for dropping a comment on something others would likely want to know more about!
To answer your questions:
Hope these are more straightforward! Really appreciate your interest in helping out too. :)
Thanks, much appreciated. Sent a donation via Paypal.
We received your donation, thank you so much @mhendric! We sincerely appreciate your support. :) <3