Hi Tessa, good question. I guess it depends on what type of university you're in. Your bio says that your an engineering student which suggests that there may be quite a few quantitatively minded peers, they are likely to appreciate the cost effective and scope sensitive focus of EA that many other altruistic areas lack. 

An EA focused group can have quite broad topics of discussion from global health to AI, and you could host events which critique or contrast EA principles against other forms of altruism e.g. "how does EA differ from Christianity?" as one of your early events but then have most themes stick to EA. I guess my answer is focus on where the demand is and what could bring people but remember that a lot of EA principles are fascinating for a broad range of people. Good luck! Building a chapter is an admirable thing to do :)

A delightful thing happened a couple weeks ago, and it gives an example for why more people should comment on the forum. 

My forum profile is pretty scarce, less than a dozen comments, most of them are along the lines of 'I appreciate the work done here!'. Nevertheless, because I have linked in some social media profiles and set my city in the directory, a student from a nearby university reached out to ask about career advice after finding me on the forum. I gave her a personalised briefing on the local policy space and explained the details of how to enter the UK civil service if she chose to do so. 

Some internet activites are like little seeds that take no effort to plant but may lead to something nice, even months later. 

I'd be doing less good with my life if I hadn't heard of effective altruism

I've taken the 10% pledge and now donate to high-impact charities. My experiences at EAGs have also inspired me to regularly share career opportunities with others and make connections when I think it could benefit someone's career path.

This is neat! If you're taking feature ideas I'd suggest a button to hide/reveal the final recommendation because users may want to set the sliders in a way to get the outcome they want to see. Stopping and thinking carefully on what the value of each slider should be is harder when you see the number of the final decision float around on the side!

Thank you for publicizing this! 

This post has phrased comms and 'amplifying' roles better than other resources that i've come across! I will use this post as a reference guide in my future discussions on these concepts 

Commenting to indicate that I'd be interested in reading such post!

Great post! It's clear that the journalist is skilled and a good investigator but im convinced by your case that he didn't fully engage with the nuance of existential risk. Thank you for putting light and your thoughts to this article! 

I wonder what are the most effective persuasion methods for charitable giving?

Donation choices are personal and potentially difficult to influence. Red Nose Day's website does have impact metrics so maybe they could be convinced:

"£20 could provide

- 80 meals at a UK community center

- 4 essential clothing items for a child

- 2 toiletry kits for a homeless youth

-  1 legal assistance package for a refugee family"

The forum previously discjssed redirecting foundation donations. Organizations like Effective Giving and Longview apparently do this work, but their involvement with fundraisers is unclear. 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XQDS5F4pRRxBododx/redirecting-private-foundation-grants-to-effective-charities 

Theres a cool new tool that produces cute graphics and vectors out of text. 

Yeah the quality of life in Poland is ahead of most of the world, and in most comparisons there's no equivalence in circumstances, The Poland vs developing economy GDP per capita differences range from ~10x (Nigeria) to 30x (Niger, CAR). 

I re-examined my Syria example and I think many of the returnees could feasibly be individuals with very poor economic prospects in their host countries—specifically, those in the bottom quartiles of incomes in Lebanon, Iraq, or Jordan, which collectively host 1.6 million Syrians. Some of these individuals may have also lived in camps, which total 275,000 people (though these two figures overlap). For them and those who have left in the past few months of fighting, returning to Syria could offer an opportunity to start better lives and they are likely to be the bulk of the 1 million returnees in the first 6 months.

My argument for returns was more focused on the idea that if these developing countries experience economic booms, people might choose to return there, even if the countries are still somewhat poorer. But this would be a more long-term consideration, its hard to predict and brain-drains by definition make this less likely to happen. Nevertheless, this scenario seems particularly relevant to modern South American examples, like Guyana, about 50% of Guyanese people are part of the diaspora. If Guyana's recent economic boom is sustained, well-redistributed, and if the government manages to defend their borders, (big asks I know) it could potentially bring many Guyanese back.

All the numbers are quite rough.