As AIM's Co-founder and CEO, I'm running an AMA to answer any questions you may have about our Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program (including our newly announced third round focused on increasing the impact of philanthropy), lessons from co-founding and running Ambitious Impact, and more.
The 2026 Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program
Ambitious Impact has applications open for our flagship program, the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, until October 5th.
This program supports driven and talented individuals in launching high-impact charities based on rigorous research. We provide training, mentorship, co-founder matching, and seed funding (average £100k) to bring evidence-based charity ideas to life.
In 2026, we will run three rounds of the program for the first time ever. Two of these rounds will continue our proven focus on farmed animals and global health. The third will be a special edition dedicated to increasing impact in the philanthropic sector.
- Feb-Apr: Animal Welfare, Global Health & Wellbeing, and Climate Co-benefits
- Jun-Jul: Impactful Philanthropy
- Sep-Oct: Global Health & Wellbeing
You can read more about the program in this earlier EA Forum post. Please consider applying!
A personal AMA
Answers to questions can be subjective. I do not want to claim to speak for every AIM team member. As such, I want to clarify that I’ll answer from my perspective. I think this has multiple notable benefits:
- My answers can be more candid since I don't have to worry (as much) that I'll say something others may significantly disagree with
- Application season is busy! This saves coordination time when agreeing on how to respond to tricky questions.
- You can ask me questions through this AMA that go beyond AIM's core activities.
A little about me
For the past ~ seven years, I have been the CEO of Ambitious Impact. In these last years, I have primarily focused on high-level strategy across all departments and mentorship and training for the participants of the Incubation Programs.
Before founding AIM, I co-founded Charity Science, a meta-organization that increased the amount of counterfactual funding going to high-impact charities. Subsequently, I co-founded Charity Science Health, a nonprofit that increased vaccination rates in India using mobile phones and behavioral nudges.
I also write a Substack where I post about my interest in philanthropy, career optimization, and the non-profit ecosystem, among other things.
Things you could ask me
Any questions you may have about…
- the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program & reasons to pursue this program (even if you are an experienced founder)
- lessons from co-founding and running Ambitious Impact & our track record launching orgs reaching 1B+ animals and 75m+ people
- why Ambitious Impact now is focusing on increasing the impact of philanthropy, the sort ideas that we are excited to see launched through it
- my thoughts on EA, impactful careers, and cause-plurality vs. cause prioritization
Or anything else where I might be a good person to ask.
How to ask questions
- Please post each question as a separate comment.
- I’ll reply to comments, likely on September 20th
Small reward for your time
We will send a digital copy of the Peter Singer-endorsed handbook How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit, which I co-authored, to the authors of what I consider to be the five most interesting questions.
Thanks for doing this AMA, Joey! I’m curious about Ambitious Impact’s experience with outreach and participant recruitment for your accelerator.
– What have been the biggest challenges in finding and engaging the right applicants?
– Which approaches or channels have you tried so far, and what’s worked best (or least well)?
– Looking ahead, how do you see participant recruitment and scaling evolving — what do you expect to double down on in the future?
– More broadly, what do you think are the common challenges accelerators or fellowship programs face when it comes to effective participant recruitment?
What have been the commonalities between the most successful charities created through the programme so far?
Looking back at your journey from Charity Science to Ambitious Impact, what's one major strategic assumption you made early on that turned out to be completely wrong? How did that realization change your approach to launching new charities?
Which makes for a better applicant: A researcher with no entrepreneurial skills, or an entrepreneur with no research skills?
What clear advantages come through creating a charity through AIM, compared to starting a charity independently?
In ecosystems without strong accelerators, it’s hard to find mentors who understand both ambition and local constraints. At the same time, many of the brightest minds in Nigeria leave academia or the nonprofit space due to survival pressures. From your experience, what mentorship structures and co-founder matching practices are most critical to replicate in regions like Nigeria to help leaders retain talent and build resilient organizations?
In places like Nigeria, systemic barriers (weak infrastructure, scarce funding, policy gaps) often mean impact takes much longer to show. From your own leadership journey, what practices or mindsets have helped you sustain vision and motivation over the long term—and how might these lessons translate for founders working in Global South contexts where “quick wins” are rare?