Giving Compass' Take:

• 80,000 Hours reveals a recent survey they conducted about the problems, needs and talent within the effective altruism (EA) community: If you have operations and research experience, brush off that resume!

• How can other nonprofit sectors conduct similar audits on their professions? What are the most effective recruiting tools in the EA world and elsewhere?

• Here are some ideas for improving funding for effective altruism.

What are the most pressing needs in the effective altruism community right now? What problems are most effective to work on? Who should earn to give and who should do direct work? We surveyed managers at organizations in the community to find out their views. These results help to inform our recommendations about the highest impact career paths available.

Our key finding is that for the questions that we asked 12 months ago, the results have not changed very much. This gives us more confidence in the results of our 2017 survey.

We also asked some new questions, including about the monetary value placed on our priority paths, discount rates on talent and how current leaders first discovered and got involved in effective altruism.

Below is a summary of the key figures, some caveats about the data’s limitations, an explanation of the survey method, and a discussion of what these numbers mean.

Some key findings:

  • Leaders said operations, management, and generalist researchers are the types of talent their organizations will need most of over the next five years.
  • They said the community as a whole will most need more government and policy experts, operations, machine learning/AI technical expertise, and management talent.
  • Most EA organizations feel more talent constrained than funding constrained. EA organizations rated themselves as 2.8/4 talent constrained and 1.5/4 funding constrained.

Read the full article about the most pressing talent gaps in effective altruism by Robert Wiblin and Howie Lempel at 80000hours.org.