I have been procastinating writing it up for 6 months so i thought...... at least do a quick take :) sludge is real and I am just really bad at finding time to write on the EA forum 

<<Because of this, while the nonprofit sector may indeed be approaching saturation in some areas, there are still pockets where additional high-quality talent could be really impactful.>> 
I completely agree with this, which is why AAC continues to highlight and work on this issue. My earlier comment may have come across more bluntly than intended. I feel we’ve perhaps overcorrected toward the idea that non-profit roles are the main or even the only path to driving meaningful impact for animals (both within AAC and more broadly I have observed in the EAA space). In doing so, we’ve often overlooked other promising career opportunities, such as roles directly within the system, that could potentially have an even greater impact, particularly because at least right now, they’re so neglected. Too often, I hear these alternative paths framed mainly as ways to build career capital before pivoting back into the non-profit sector, rather than recognising that they can be impactful in their own right (unless they’re earning-to-give roles).  

 

Hey Kieran! I guess you're thinking about fish and invertebrate welfare as the more talent-constrained subcauses (correct me if I'm wrong?) but I'm curious which kinds of profiles or job types you think are more talent-constrained than others? Also interested in your take, @lauren_mee 🔸 !

Thank you, this is really useful.

From what I’ve seen, it’s partly job-market driven, partly from feedback we get from placed candidates and hiring organisations, and partly from talking to people in impactful roles outside the nonprofit sector.

There’s simply a natural ceiling on the number of truly high-impact jobs within nonprofits. The more top talent we attract, the more competitive those roles become, and the harder it is to find placements where the marginal hire is making a significant difference. My best estimate is that globally there may be fewer than 20 such roles per year (some might argue up to 50), which is far less than we’d like.

One response could be to start more high-impact charities. That can work, but only to a point. Funding is only available for a small number of ideas, and many new organisations end up having little impact while still diverting talent and funding from stronger opportunities.

This is why I think we need to move the conversation away from concentrating talent inside a relatively small number of NGOs, and towards distributing it wherever it can have the most systemic leverage. There is a huge range of opportunities in areas like retailers, food companies, government, media, and policy, where skilled, mission-aligned people can have a transformative effect for animals. These routes are much less well mapped out, but the more I look into them, the more convinced I am that some of the most significant wins for animals are happening in these spaces. Often, the people making them happen are the only mission-aligned person in the room, and without them nothing would have moved forward at all.

This links to the idea of community capital. Our community’s value is not limited to who works for NGOs, although I think for most people that is not the case and that's a narrative i would like to challenge. 

That said, there is still a strong case for getting more talented people into nonprofit roles that are consistently hard to fill, where the marginal hire can have an outsized impact. If an organisation cannot fill a role, it may end up hiring someone who is not ready for the responsibility or having to run another lengthy recruitment process, both of which carry real costs.

Finally, a more uncomfortable point. Simply putting a talented person into a high-impact NGO role does not guarantee meaningful change. The reality is that there is a lot of variation. Some people genuinely transform the organisations they join. Others are absorbed into bureaucratic systems and find it difficult to make any major shifts. We tend to assume the first outcome will be the norm, but in practice the variation is greater than we like to admit.

So yes, part of the problem is a ceiling in nonprofit opportunities. But an equally important factor is that high-impact work is not confined to the nonprofit sector at all. We should be thinking about where our skills, networks, and influence can be deployed for the greatest possible effect, wherever those opportunities might be :)

Kevin I was hoping you would disagree with me! 

I think part of the reason there is no guide is because it’s still quite uncertain and most people doing it are pioneers and want to stay anonymous. But on policy careers we will launch a new career guide soon.