Summary

• Non-Trivial and Leaf now graduate many hundreds of the most talented, altruistic teenagers in the world each year. We want to help you engage them in your impactful organizations and work, and we want your help doubling our scale!
  • Share our applications with talented students, or the adults around them. Before October 1: Leaf’s autumn cohort. After October 1: Non-Trivial's winter Research Foundations Program.
  • Come to us when you're recruiting for fellowships, projects, programs, or jobs aimed at university students or exceptional early-career applicants. We have a database of 500+ mapped alumni trajectories plus online communities of many hundreds more. We made >1,500 targeted referrals already this year.
  • Get in touch with [email protected] if you might be a fit to give a talk, judge projects, mentor students, or help expand our outreach.
• This year we've graduated 684 Leaf Finalists and 125 Non-Trivial Fellows - all highly credentialed, brilliant, or accomplished - plus >1,500 from our less-intensive programs.
• We’ve mapped 500+ recent alumni trajectories, which include:
  • dozens of publications;
  • authoring AI legislation signed into state law;
  • medals at ISEF, the International Olympiad of AI, and international and national math and science olympiads;
  • research at MATS, SPAR, ERA, Pivotal, Generator, and more;
  • founding youth impact and global health nonprofits operating across multiple countries;
  • starting and leading university EA and AIS groups;
  • field-building and leadership in AIS and biosecurity.
• We’ve secured a multi-year funding runway and are planning to reach 1,600 students in our flagship programs in the next year while setting the foundation for further growth.

The Context

Our recent success and preparedness to scale comes thanks to:

• securing a multi-year anchor funder in Carina Initiatives;
• increasing parent contributions via Leaf’s sliding scale tuition;
• an operational consolidation of Non-Trivial under Leaf Inc.’s 501(c)(3) umbrella (though still maintaining distinct programs);
• full-time leadership continuity from Jonah Boucher with advisory from Jamie Harris, Joy Weirsum, and Peter McIntyre;
• expanded responsibilities for long-time program facilitators including leadership of Leaf by Sam and Non-Trivial staff leadership and training by Ulyana and Schafer.

We’re excited to leverage our successful 2025-2026 school year of programs for a highly impactful 2026-2027 schedule of opportunities for talented, altruistic teenagers.

We have extensive application, participation, and outcome data on all the programs below available by request to [email protected].

Non-Trivial year-to-date:

• Research Foundations Program (February - March)
  • 532 acceptances from 3,823 applicants (13.9%)
    • Accepted students' median score on the SparkWave application puzzle test sat just below the 99.9th percentile for adults, higher than any prior cohort (despite excluding verified application dishonesty for the first time)
    • 417 completions (78.4%) with overall satisfaction of 8.4/10, willingness to recommend of 8.8/10 and perceived value of time at 8.7/10, all flat from 2025's despite a +7pp completion rate
    • Excellent safety record: no feedback form nor anonymous form reports of harm tied to content, ideology, or interpersonal dynamics
• Fellowship (June - August)
  • 137 accepted Fellows from 26 countries
  • 125 completed Fellowship projects (91.2%) with 9.2/10 likelihood to recommend (+75.6 NPS) and 9.0/10 good use of time
  • Awarded $21K in project grants to Fellows and $42K in award scholarships to winners, plus a new pool of $7K in special award prizes - and many hours of committed mentorship and support for awardees - from eight different partner orgs.
• Costs to run both programs: ~$300K

Leaf Courses year-to-date:

• Winter 2026 cohort:
  • 3,901 applicants, 11.2% acceptance rate
  • 320 certificate completions (87% of enrolled) with 8.6/10 likelihood to recommend
  • $45K in voluntary parent tuition revenue (sliding tuition scale with full free access given to all who requested, about 40%).  ~$10K in net profit (relative to costs specifically associated with running the cohort, not full organizational operating costs.)
  • 657 completed Independent Learners (all applicants are invited to complete a course on their own even if they are not accepted as a Finalist)
• Summer 2026 cohort:
  • 3,580 applicants, 13.5% acceptance rate
  • 364 certificate completions (76%) with 8.7/10 likelihood to recommend
  • $59K in parent tuition revenue, ~$18K net profit (relative to costs specifically associated with running the cohort, not full organizational operating costs.)
  • 470 completed Independent Learners

Cross-Org.

• Alumni outcomes:
  • >50% of alumni reporting university enrollment are at Ivy or global Top 10 schools
  • 40+ alumni with a named staff, organizer, or Fellow affiliation to an EA or AIS organization including MATS, SPAR, ERA, Pivotal Research, Redwood Research, SecureBio, Blueprint Biosecurity, ALLFED, Encode, PauseAI, the AI Futures Project, Giving What We Can, Effective Thesis, Macroscopic Ventures, and the Global Priorities Institute, plus uni. EA groups including Oxford, Berkeley, Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Warwick.
  • Won dozens of impact-focused, named external grants or fellowships including Emergent Ventures, Rise, Baret Scholars, Cosmos Institute, BlueDot Impact rapid grants, the Watson Civic Engagement Fellowship, the Goldwater Scholarship, Fulbright, the Don Lavoie Fellowship at Mercatus, Tilting Futures, and New Roots.
• Other ecosystem value generated:
  • Our staff roles at Leaf and Non-Trivial provided 42 impact-focused young adults with leadership training, mentorship and research experience, ongoing engagement with impact-focused thinking, career exploration, and income. Many of these staff leveraged this experience to improve or secure their work with other high-impact organizations or university EA/AIS groups.
  • 1,500+ individual alumni opportunity referrals to high impact organizations. Hundreds more via Discord posts to our alumni communities.
  • Brought 15,000+ newsletter subscriptions to six high impact organizations (eg. 80,000 Hours) via a newsletter signup question on our applications.
  • > 2,000 clicks-per-month on impact-focused opportunities via Leaf and Non-Trivial’s monthly newsletters.

How you can help us double our impact this school year:

• Before October 1, share the application to Leaf’s October 12 - November 22 autumn cohort with talented students or with their parents and teachers.
• After October 1, share the application to Non-Trivial’s winter Research Foundations Program.
• Reach out to us when you are recruiting university students or exceptional early-career applicants for fellowships, project proposals, or jobs.
• Get in touch with [email protected] about giving talks, judging projects, mentoring, etc. for our cohorts.