EA - A Summary of Profession-Based Community Building by Sean Lawrence

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Summary of Profession-Based Community Building, published by Sean Lawrence on December 20, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.TLDR: there are now a notable number of profession-based community building organisations in EA and below you will find the key activities, team structure, and ways to get involved for several of the most active organisations.SummaryThere has been a significant increase in the number of organisations catering to specific professions – profession-specific organisations (PSOs) – over the past 12-24 months and we want to update the community on who some of these organisations are and what they seek to provide for their members and the broader EA community.Please note that this list is not fully comprehensive. It should be treated as a partial snapshot of some of the organisations that exist in this space and a window into some of the ways in which they are doing community building in a profession-specific context. If your profession isn’t listed on this post then you may find an organisation that does cater for it on High Impact Professional’s Professional Groups Directory, which is a more comprehensive resource for finding professional groups (see their EA forum post). If you run a PSO that isn’t on the High Impact Professionals’ Workplace and Professional Groups Directory, please email Devon or book a call with him. Additionally, High Impact Professionals can help nascent PSOs through strategic support, reviewing grant proposals, making introductions, and more so don’t hesitate to get in touch!If you run a PSO and would like to be added to this post, please copy and fill out this template and send it to Sean.The What and Why of Profession-Specific OrganisationsPSOs focus their organisational mission and scope on supporting a specific profession, or group of related professions, with tailored content and programming to help members of that field learn more about EA and how they can contribute to the shared project of doing the most good in the world. Additionally, PSOs provide a community of like-minded professionals to help increase network effects amongst members, limit value-drift and make the EA space more welcoming to professionals overall.GoalsWe think this post could be valuable to:Increase the awareness of existing PSOs and their activities. Recent EAGs have given some of us the impression that members of the EA community are unaware that there are active community building efforts targeting professionals and what each group's target focus and mechanisms of engagement are.Summarise the methods for engagement with professionals. This post may help to motivate nascent professional-specific groups, highlight commonalities in PSO’s approaches so organisers can collaborate, and/or highlight gaps in approaches that could be filled.Help grow the membership of organisations.Inspire people to start groups for neglected professions. By seeing that there are already a lot of professional groups around, we hope that others see this as a viable way to have an impact in their profession.List of Profession-Specific Organisations(Please note that this list is not fully comprehensive)Last updated: 21st December 2022EA Architects and PlannersWhat do we do?We seek ways in which architects, urban designers, and planners can use their unique skills to get involved in EA causes and to have a greater positive impact. We are NOT focused on finding high-impact work within architecture and planning, but rather, explore a wide range of opportunities where architectural or design thinking may lead to more effective ways of doing good.As we research ways in which this might be achieved, we are updating the Career Options for EA Architects and Planners database to help others find inspiration.Our aim is to a) create an environment that support...