At Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) we launch high-impact nonprofits by connecting entrepreneurs with the effective ideas, training and funding needed to launch and succeed. 

Each year our research team collates hundreds and hundreds of ideas for promising new charities. We scour the research, we talk to colleagues in partner organisations and we solicit ideas from academia. 

We then vet these ideas and whittle them down to the top ~3. We create detailed reports about these top ideas and then we recruit, train and fund entrepreneurs to take these ideas and make them a reality. In 5 years we've launched over 23 exceptional organisations. You can read more about charities we incubated here. 

In 2023 Charity Entrepreneurship will be researching two new cause areas: mass media interventions and preventative animal advocacy

We want your ideas!!!

Prize: If you give us an idea which leads to a new charity then you will win: A copy of the Charity Entrepreneurship handbook, a box of vegan cookies and $100 to a charity of your choice. And more importantly, a new charity will be started!

Notes: If multiple people submit the same idea we will give the award to the first submission. Max 5 prizes will be awarded. If you submit an idea already on our list, you are still eligible for a prize.

Please submit your ideas into this form by end of the day Sunday 12th March.

[SUBMIT]

Mass media

The cause area:

By ‘mass media’ intervention we refer to (1) social and behaviour change communication campaigns delivered through (2) mass media aiming to improve (3) human wellbeing. 

Definitions:

1. Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) – The strategic use of communication to promote positive outcomes, based on proven theories and models of behavior change (more here).

2. Mass media – Mass communication modes that reach a very large audience where any targeting of segmented audiences can be mass applied (e.g. would include online advertising that targets relevant audiences but not posters in health centers) (more here). Examples include: TV, Radio, Mobile phones, Newspapers, Outdoor advertising. 

3. Human wellbeing – For our purposes, wellbeing refers broadly to areas of human health, development and poverty. 

Headline metric

Our key metrics for the quantitative side of this research will be DALYs averted or % income increases. We will likely compare across these metrics using a moral weight formula. We may set our own moral weights or use recent moral weights by GiveWell (e.g. from here). Note that the use of this as a headline metric does not mean that other factors (autonomy, environmental effects, suffering not captured by DALYs) are excluded, although they may not be explicitly quantified.

Scope limitations

Currently, all interventions that could reasonably be considered mass media are in scope. If in doubt, assume it is in scope.

Example ideas

Note: there is no guarantee that any of the following ideas make it past the initial filter

• Promoting healthier diets 
• Promoting CBT tools for stress
• Messaging against tobacco use with resources for quitting
• Signposting to available support in cases of abuse, violence, etc.
• Anti-suicide campaigns
• Changing HIV attitudes
• Promotion cancer screening (cervical, breast, bowel, prostate, etc.)
• Information campaigns about criminal politicians
• Encouraging lower sugar consumption

Preventative animal advocacy

The cause area:

The focus this year is on intervention and policies that prevent future harms done to animals as opposed to solving current problems. We will be looking for interventions that as well as having some short run evidence of impact will prevent future problems i.e. have the biggest impact on farmed animals in the future, say 35 years from now. 

Definitions:

At this stage we are open to considering: i) a future where some animals live on farms with less suffering, ii) a future where some animal farming is significantly curtailed, iii) preventing a worse case future where there is a huge growth of animal farming.
We are particularly keen to identify interventions that prevent the growth of farming (e.g. in LMICs, of insects, etc) as we see this as a likely future with a high moral weight.
We caveat this by noting that additional scenario planning and futures work still needs to be done to better shape and inform our research.

Headline metric:

Estimated Charity Entrepreneurship’s "Welfare Points (WP)" impacted, and WP impacted 35+ years from now.

Scope limitations:

The scope of this is broad and almost any interventions count. Exceptions are:

• We will focus on farmed animals rather than wild animal welfare. We see farming as the current key systemic problem affecting animals. Interventions that have positive externalities on wild animals (such as moral circle expansion work) are in scope and these externalities will be considered.
• We will not look into alt proteins technologies as we expect that Charity Entrepreneurship has smaller comparative advantage in this area (for example as much of the work is for profit based) and comparatively a lot of resources goes into this area.

Example ideas:

Note: there is no guarantee that any of the following ideas make it past the initial filter

• Preventing take off of industries, eg. octopus farming or insect farming
• Limiting the growth of factory farming in LMICs eg. creating welfare standards in Africa to prevent intensive farming before it takes off
• Banning harmful practices (like genetic modification)
• Establishing sentience
• Policy changes with near and long-run effects eg. banning low welfare imports
• Documentaries in LMIC to build the animal rights movement 

 Please submit your ideas here: Submit your ideas

Also if you are interested in starting one of the ideas we already recommended, applications are now open to our 2023/2024 programs, apply by March 12, 2023.