My Career Plan: Launching Elevate Philanthropy!

This Substack was originally started as a way for me to publicly evaluate career options, but as my more astute readers will have noticed, I am writing more and more about philanthropy and less about career selection. At this point, I am confident that philanthropy is the best area for me to work in, and I have a clearer sense of what I plan to do in the area.

Broad Area: Philanthropy

Over time, I have become increasingly convinced that philanthropy is the right area for me. I think this applies both broadly to many people considering impact and more specifically to me from a personal fit perspective.

Broadly, I find the area exciting for a few reasons. Much like starting a charity incubator (my most recent project), I think the market is both large and non-competitive. Most philanthropic ecosystems and meta-organisations evolved fairly organically, and as such there are many gaps and opportunities for improvement. The effective giving ecosystem is both large and growing, and I think it is common for a philanthropic advisor to be able to influence significantly more funds than they could earn to give, particularly if their strengths are in communication.

From a personal fit perspective, there are substantial opportunities for impact, and my background and connections make me well placed to make a big difference. Despite not even having publicly launched, I have back-to-back monthly promising projects lined up, each with significant estimated impact, each with higher impact than my upper bound estimates of my ability to earn via for-profit founding (my next highest career option). I think philanthropic advising also benefits from having a more pluralistic worldview which I am highly sympathetic to.

Over the last few months, I have listed dozens of philanthropy-focused ideas on this blog, so even if you know the area, that still leaves a lot of open ground as to what I am doing. However, I am most excited about a particular way of working, at least over the next ~six months.

Approach: Consulting Towards Common Good Projects

I am particularly excited about time-bound projects that take between 30 and 300 hours, especially projects that create a common good. By this, I mean outcomes that benefit multiple philanthropic actors in the ecosystem. One example might be creating an external evaluation system for a single foundation but publishing the methods and strategies so that multiple other foundations can also use them. Another example is when AIM created the metric of SADs, which is now used not only by AIM but also across the animal welfare space.

For these common good projects, I want at least one actor that is guaranteed to get large value from the work, while also plausibly affecting two or three additional important actors. I think many projects fit this model, as philanthropic actors often struggle with the same small set of questions and challenges. In general, I prefer problems that can be solved in a more ecosystem-focused way. For example, if a philanthropist wanted advice on a specific cause area, I am more excited to build a system that pairs philanthropists with philanthropic advisors than I am to give that advice directly. This makes my work much closer to strategic consultancy than it is to grant advising (although I have connected many people to great folks who do grant advising directly).

Ultimately, I am primarily concerned with the net impact a project has across all actors, but I have found these consulting common good projects to be particularly promising low-hanging fruit. I also expect shorter, more consultant-like projects to provide substantial learning value, informing both my organisation and future ones (for example, those launched out of the AIM philanthropy round).

Mechanism: Founding a Philanthropic Consultancy (Elevate Philanthropy)

After some thought about the best approach, I determined that launching an independent philanthropic consultancy would be the best path forward. I deeply respect many of the existing actors in the space, but I think the common good mechanism is easier to achieve outside an existing organisation than from within one. I also miss founding and working in small teams and want to remain nimble in choosing which common good projects to pursue. I currently expect the team to stay small (three to six people) and highly focused on a few projects at a time (perhaps 10 to 20 over a year), with the intention of doing each to a high standard.

You can check out my new website, and I always enjoy hearing from philanthropists and grantmakers about ideas that should be pursued. That said, I should note that I am fairly oversubscribed for the next six months.

P.S. What is next for this Substack? I plan to publish a few more career pieces that I have written but not yet shared, but I expect the bulk of future writing will focus on ecosystem and philanthropic topics.