What We Do

Effective Altruism New Zealand grows and supports the EA community in NZ. Our work has multiple aspects, including:

• Effective Giving— We promote effective giving and facilitate tax-deductible donations to high-impact charities. Our community currently donates around $0.8-1M NZD/year, of which we estimate at least a third is counterfactual. (I.e. would not be donated in our absence.)

• Careers Support— We offer 1:1 careers coaching, and maintain a NZ-specific job board featuring high-impact remote and NZ-based roles. Over a dozen Kiwis are now working in socially impactful careers in AI safety, community building, charity entrepreneurship and more. 

• Community Building—  We both promote EA ideas to those who might be interested and strengthen connections between existing EAs. For example, we give away books like Doing Good Better and run annual retreats for highly engaged EAs. We also provide support to the (independently run) city and university groups.

Our Team

EA NZ is currently run and managed by Rowan Clements (formerly Stanley). Rowan has been with EA NZ for approximately 5 years, and has previous experience as the operations manager for Family Empowerment Media. She was also one of the lead organisers for EAGxAustralia 2022, and has been heavily involved with the effective altruism community across Australia and New Zealand.

While Rowan is the sole manager of EA NZ’s operations on a day to day basis, the Effective Altruism NZ Charitable Trust is overseen by a board who provide additional support and advice. The current board of trustees includes Catherine Low, David Allis, Brian Walters, and Tom Hutton. 

Current Financial Position

We recently received a grant from Meta Charity Funders, to cover our core operations for the next year. Donors also have the option of supporting our operations when they donate to high impact charities through our system. These checkout tips currently cover around 10% of our monthly expenses. 

Plans for Further Funding

While our basic expenses are covered for the time being, further funding would allow us to improve and expand our systems. Projects we might pursue with different levels of funding include:

• $100-$1,000— Upgrade to a paid password manager for more secure and seamless handover

• $1,000-$5,000— Automate integration between our CRM and accounting system, eliminating ~5 hours/week of data entry

• $5-$10,000— Set up a planned giving programme to facilitate bequests. Gifts in wills are a major source of income for many nonprofits, and we’ve yet to explore this space.

• $10,000+— Hire additional talent to provide content creation and marketing support