There are many organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — focused on pressing problems, implementing effective and scalable solutions, run by great teams, and in need of people. If you can build skills that are useful for helping an organization like this, it could well be one of the most impactful things you can do.
In particular, organizations often need generalists able to do the bread and butter of building an organization — hiring people, management, administration, communications, running software systems, crafting strategy, fundraising, and so on. These skills can have a high impact because you can increase the scale and effectiveness of the organization you’re working at, while also gaining skills that can be applied to a wide range of global problems in the future.
It can be even more valuable to help found a new organization rather than supporting an existing one. In the past decades, several foundations have been established to fund evidence-based efforts to improve the world, such as the Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the Open Philanthropy Project. They often lack projects that meet their criteria, and if you can build up the skills required, there are tens of millions dollars in funding available.
Read more
Organization-building – article by 80,000 Hours
Founder of new projects tackling top problems – article by 80,000 Hours