Start a Mini-EA Group

Karla Still

Read the complete guide here

This guide for starting a mini-EA group is a slight modification of Markus Over’s Forum post “Start a Minimal Local Group for Passive Outreach” to fit the Finnish conditions. It is created by Effective Altruism Finland (eafinland@altruismi.fi)

This guide is for you, if…

  • you agree with the core principles of EA like scope sensitivity, scout mindset, tradeoffs and impartiality
  • there is not yet an EA group where you live
  • you could invest 1-3 hours within the next few weeks in creating one

Why start a group now?

Due to increased media attention more people hear about EA independently without having direct contact to a group. If interested people are actively looking for a local entry point to the EA community and don’t easily find one, their enthusiasm may fade. If, however, they find a way to connect with others, they’re much more likely to stick around and get more involved.

Objectives

The mini-group has one simple goal: being an entry point for people that come to the group on their own. You can set this up in 1-3 hours even if you don’t have the time to actually run a local group.

A minimal local group should primarily do the following:

  • Be easy to find online
  • Be easy to contact
  • Be responsive

Ideally, if people do contact the group, they should be able to take the next steps from there which could mean that you additionally organize a group kick-off event with the interested people to make some plans and distribute responsibilities and move the group beyond its minimal state.

Read the simple step-to-step guide for starting a group here.