We are excited to announce the Ambitious Impact Research Program.
This fellowship program is designed to equip participants with the tools and skills needed to identify, compare, and recommend the most effective charities and interventions. It is a full-time, fully cost-covered program that runs online for 12 weeks.
THE PROBLEM
PEOPLE
Many individuals are eager to enter research careers, level up their current knowledge and skills from junior to senior, or simply make their existing skills more applicable to work within impact-focused or organizations. At the same time, research organizations have trouble filling a senior-level researcher talent gap. There is a scarcity of specific training opportunities for the niche skills required, such as intervention prioritization and cost-effectiveness analysis, which are hard to learn through traditional avenues.
IDEAS
A lack of capacity for exhaustive investigation means there is a multitude of potentially impactful intervention ideas that remain unexplored. There may be great ideas being missed, as with limited time we will only get to the most obvious solutions that other people are likely to have thought of as well.
EVALUATION
Unlike the for-profit sector, the nonprofit sector lacks clear metrics for assessing an organization's actual impact. External evaluations can help nonprofits evaluate and reorganize their own effectiveness, and also allow funders to choose the highest impact opportunities available to them - potentially unlocking more funding (sometimes limited by lack of public external evaluation).
THE SOLUTION
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Ambitious Impact's Research Program addresses these challenges head-on. Over the course of 12 weeks, you participate in a fully cost-covered hands on program that provides you with the knowledge, practices, and tools necessary to rapidly and confidently produce high-quality, decision-relevant research. Your research outputs will drive better utilization of resources, funds, and talent, while building your own career capital and producing a portfolio of impactful research reports.
KEY PROGRAM FEATURES
Learn the fundamentals of impact-focused research. We will cover skills like creating Theory of Changes, Cost-Effectiveness Analyses, literature reviews, weighted-factor models, and more.
Learn the principles of making good research decisions; comparing and weighting different types of evidence, designing decision-making frameworks, and producing research that will be decision-relevant.
Work alongside AIM researchers to carry out decision-relevant research outputs that will help AIM identify the next cohort of incubated ideas.
Produce a portfolio of peer-relevant outputs.
Receive expert feedback and practical experience through real research projects.
Connect with established researchers and explore potential job opportunities.
WHO IS THIS PROGRAM FOR
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Motivated researchers who want to produce trusted research outputs to improve the prioritization and allocation decisions of effectiveness-minded organizations
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Early career individuals who are seeking to build their research toolkits and gain practical experience through real projects
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Existing researchers in the broader Global Health and Well-being (global health, animal advocacy, mental health, heath/bio security, etc.) communities who are interested in approaching research from an effectiveness-minded perspective
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS
​We aim to explore under-investigated and promising interventions, producing quality reports that reveal blind spots and low-hanging fruit to influence funding allocations and charities' strategic decisions.
Through this program, we enable excellent individuals to test their fit for this high-impact career path.
By skilling up a new cohort of highly employable and valuable researchers, we intend to supply effectiveness-minded organizations with the talent they need to scale better and faster.
WHAT DOES BEING A FELLOW INVOLVE
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Self-study of training modules on research skills immediately connected with practical projects.
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Frequent feedback on your projects from expert researchers.
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Regular check-in calls with a mentor for troubleshooting, guidance on research, and your career.
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Working on decision-relevant research reports that are part of AIM's current research agenda.
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Opportunity to connect with established researchers and explore potential job opportunities.​
WHAT ARE WE OFFERING
12 weeks of online training, consisting of roughly four weeks of self-directed learning, projects and workshops and eight weeks of hands-on work assisted by an AIM mentor.
"Shovel ready" research topics that are highly promising, yet neglected
Stipends to cover your living costs during, and potentially after, the program (Please reach out if you have dependents or childcare costs, to ensure financial constraints don't hinder your participation)
Our complete researcher's toolkit, including templates, methodologies, and resource access
Connections with established researchers
YOU WILL LEAVE WITH
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An understanding of generalizable research methodologies, and experience applying them.
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A portfolio of intervention reports.
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Experience contributing to AIM decision-making on intervention prioritization.
AND WE PROVIDE ONGOING SUPPORT
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Job search and application assistance to help you land a role in an impact-focused organization or research field.
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Access to concrete opportunities within the EA ecosystem and the wider research community.
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Membership in the CE community and access to our extensive network.
A TYPICAL DAY ON THE PROGRAM
Depending on your timezone, you could start your day with office hours, where you and your fellow researchers could discuss some challenges you have encountered or some of the new concepts. This is also a great time to ask your advisor questions.
After office hours, you could join a Pomodoro session with other participants to work on the today’s project.
After a lunch break, you could continue working on your project and maybe end your day with a social check-in with another participant.
Every week, there are also all-hands-on-deck meetings and optional social events that you can attend. Most of the program is facilitated in the social platform Gather, which allows us to create more of a community feeling, with this being a remote program.
APPLICATION PROCESS
1. WRITTEN APPLICATION
(~30 minutes)
3. IN-DEPTH
INTERVIEW
(~60 minutes)
2. TEST TASK
(~3 hours)
Sign up to our newsletter to hear when our next round of applications opens.
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We will contact you about the outcome of your application, regardless of whether you progressed to the next stage.
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Your time is valuable. We will only invite you to the next stage if you have a good chance of success. We are sadly unable to give individualized feedback to rejected candidates. However, we build our test tasks to be useful to you as a candidate as well as for us in vetting applicants.
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The entire application process will take no more than 10 hours for you, from start to finish.
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We have designed the process to help you learn more about what is important for a career in nonprofit research and weigh it against other career options and pathways to impact.
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We will accept around 10-15 participants per cohort.
TESTIMONIALS
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Zuzana Sperlova
The AIM Research Program has been a great experience. My skills in prioritization research and evaluation improved in just 2.5 months. Thanks to the new skills and also the confidence boost from the program, I got a job as a researcher at an animal advocacy organization. Doing the program helped me find an impactful career, and I made some great connections and friends.
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Moritz Stumpe
The AIM Research Program allowed me to practice my research skills on various highly relevant and interesting topics, enabling a lot of direct learning by doing. We also had enough time to reflect on areas where we want to develop further, our career paths, and related topics. I am happy that I could be part of such a great cohort of people, and hope to stay in touch with as many of them as possible.
Helene Kortschak
Ambitious Impact's Research Program was invaluable for equipping me with the skills to conduct impactful research as well as for connecting me to and learning from a community of smart, like-minded people dedicated to improving the world through research.
TEAM BEHIND THIS PROGRAM
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MORGAN FAIRLESS
Morgan is the Program Director of AIM Research, as well as the Director of AIM's research team. He holds an MSc in Public Policy & Administration and BSc in Politics & Philosophy, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Before joining AIM, he worked in international development consulting, student union leadership, and freelance writing and editing in social science.
Research Director
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VICKY COX
Senior Research Manager
(Animal Welfare)
Vicky is a Senior Research Manager of AIM's research team investigating and evaluating animal advocacy interventions. She is the advisor to the animal participants of the AIM Research Program.
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Before joining the AIM team, Vicky went through the CE Incubation Program. Prior to this, she was a research intern for AIM, primarily completing the priority country research for our recommended animal charities. She did this internship alongside her Maths with Actuarial Science degree at the University of Southampton, where she helped to found an effective altruism society. Vicky went vegan and became interested in effective altruism in 2016, after reading works by Peter Singer.
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FILIP MURÁR
Senior Research Manager
(Global Health & Development)
Filip is our Senior Research Manager working on systematically evaluating ideas for new charities to be incubated by the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program.
Before joining the AIM team, Filip was a Senior Research Advisor at The Behavioural Insights Team. He oversaw the design, delivery, and evaluation of quantitative behavioral science studies, with methodologies including online lab experiments, randomized controlled field trials, and machine learning predictive analytics. During his studies at the University of Cambridge and University College London, he led the Trinity Effective Altruism student group and co-founded Effective Altruism UCL.
AIM Research Program is a project of Ambitious Impact run by:
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Co-Founder and
CEO
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CPO
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COO
and the AIM Team.