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I started a series on organizations working on burning problems that are also unusually good at growth, and what programs can learn from them. First one is Climatebase.
Some numbers: their newsletter grew from about 7,000 subscribers in 2021 to 150,000 in 2026. The fellowship, launched in 2022, has had 15,000+ applicants over its first seven cohorts and 4,500 alumni to date, accepting roughly one in five, at $1,990 a seat. Cohorts grew from about 450 to about 650 at the same price. Many free, funded programs struggle to fill at a fraction of that size.
I tried to understand why:
https://annapit.substack.com/p/free-should-mean-more-demand-so-why
Pushback welcome, and suggestions for who to look at next.
I wrote a case study on the School for Moral Ambition's storytelling. I came to SMA from EA, and many of its ideas sounded familiar. What surprised me was how far a new organization got with them. It seemed to reach people EA rarely reaches, with much less pushback than EA tends to get. That's an impression I can't measure.
I think SMA rewrites the usual nonprofit cast. The reader is the hero, a system is the villain, and history is the judge. Every cause comes with a named opponent, like the tobacco industry or tax rules that favor billionaires, and the reader stays off the list of suspects. Its food explainer goes after intensive animal agriculture, and veganism doesn't come up.
Is an easier version of these ideas a fair price for reaching people EA never reached? I'm unsure. Pushback welcome, and suggestions for who to look at next.
https://annapit.substack.com/p/hero-villain-judge-how-the-school?r=2fkhlo