If 'veg*n' isn't a word that everyone uses yet, I think there should be a different one. It's hard to not read it as a misspelling of 'vegan.'

It seems kind of weird that things recede after seven years. Like, if it were a willpower thing I'd expect it to be shorter. I'm not just going to decide after a few years that my eating habits are too hard to keep up.

Did you see anything about people saying why they started eating animal stuff again?

I have a degree in computer science and experience with explosives. I am not brilliant at research and poor at interacting with people. My current COA is to become a software engineer for the money. Do I appear to be making some dumb oversight.

Thanks for replying. Have you run into much issues with underage members not being allowed in pubs?

Minor complaint: It felt like you spent most of the space going over obvious (to me, at least) things like how to use Facebook/Meetup. The only reason I've not started a group in my area is because I have no idea what would happen at events. This article did not do much to clarify.

Unrelated: Question: Why do you recommend Facebook, specifically, to start with?

I have trouble imagining this working. I would expect that people interested in EA would generally be behind the same sort of political candidates. I'm not sure how easily you could pursuade someone not already interested in EA in the benefit of this scheme. The most generous of my coworkers seem to think of donating as something you just do, rather than an effort to improve the world. (I once had someone seriously try to convince me to donate to an organization that would help send people like [specific disabled veteran] to a water park.) I would expect most people to see campaign donation as a sort of personal support, and not get behind arguments about usefulness and such. Who exactly would you be targetting with this?

Does anyone have any experience with fundraising? When I search Google, I just find sites about buying their stuff and reselling it, which doesn't seem like it would be very useful for just one person.

One thing I've considered is simply begging for donations, getting permission to stand outside a store and pass out flyers on the weekend. If printing 1 flyer costs $0.50, it wouldn't be that hard to make back my costs. I'm told I look a lot younger than I am, so there's a chance I could get mistaken for a high schooler, and get the 'oh, that's adoralbe' effect going for me. Also, by going to a different store in a different area each time, I can repeat it for quite awhile without anyone seeing me too much that I'm just old and familiar.

Another thing I've considered is doing a thing for money, but I'm not really sure how this would work. Let's say, to be specific, that I want to run 100 miles in 1 month to raise money for SCI. Why would me running 100 miles make anyone more likely to donate, and how do I get them to do so? I've considered asking a gym to let me put up a poster or something. Would it be better to ask other people to run, to just say what I'm doing a put a link to the donation page? Would asking the gym itself to sponsor me work? I'm not sure how it would benefit them at all, though.

Or, since somehow people can raise money through playing video games together, maybe somehow monetizing getting a group together to rigorously work through, say The Art of Computer Programming with full solutions and explanations to all problems. That seems unrealistic, for reasons I'm not sure of. Maybe the 'too good to be true' heuristic. But I don't really have enough experience with this sort of thing to trust my intuition in any way.

So in other words, prefer activities that help more people with less work?

Very helpful, thanks! I'd not heard of the OPP before.

I'm a bit confused on the last bullet, though. What would making a difference in the for-profit world look like? I mainly don't understand why scalability is important, or really what it is.

I'm Jon. Working on a degree in computer science, and trying to figure out what I can do besides earning to give. Basically just spending my time/energy figuring out how to study harder/better so I can get a better-paying job when the time comes.

I'm considering using National Novel Writing Month to try fundraising for SCI, but I'm not sure how well I'd be able to pull it off without having any friends.