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About Us
Our Mission
Impact Academy is a non-profit organization that enables people to become world-class leaders, thinkers, and doers who are using their careers and characters to solve some of the most pressing problems and contribute to the best possible futures.
To fulfil our mission and deliver the best interventions possible, we will use an experimental approach, conduct applied research, and share our findings. Additionally, we will provide grants to our fellows and others who share our aims.
Our History
Impact Academy was founded in February 2023 by Vilhelm Skoglund, Sebastian Schmidt, and Lowe Lundin after having run Future Academy - a six-month ambitious educational program.
Our Team
Support Us
We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without all the great people who help us. We’re truly grateful for all your support and encouragement. Here are a few ways you can help us:
Make a donation
We provide our services free of charge, so we are dependent upon the support of generous donors. To learn more about our funding needs, please reach out to Vilhelm.
Recommend someone to work with us
Our biggest bottleneck right now is finding more staff and advisors who are an excellent fit with our team and mission. Recommendations are highly appreciated, and if someone you recommend ends up getting a job, we are happy to consider giving you a bounty.
Share our content on social media
Invite your friends to follow us on LinkedIn.
Stay updated
Stay updated on our progress as an organization to learn about how else you can help.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
How is Impact Academy funded?
Impact Academy is funded by various different sources, but most of our funding comes from a family foundation in Sweden - Charlottes och Fredriks Stiftelse. We have also received support from Open Philanthropy, a large philanthropic organization in the United States. Previously, one of our projects received funding from the Future Fund.
Why are you doing what you are doing?
Many people want to work to form a better future, but most university degrees and career advice doesn’t even discuss the core challenges humanity is facing or the question of how to make the most good through your life and career. Further, research shows that there are huge differences in impact between attempts to do good and that some highly pressing problems are neglected. Thus, almost all fail to have as much impact as they could and we are putting our future at risk.
Impact Academy is a response to this challenge. Our aim is to become a world-class source of motivation and support for talented students and young professionals interested in creating a flourishing future - helping them create meaningful lives where they fulfil their potential to contribute.
What is effective altruism, and how does it relate to Impact Academy?
The short answer: Effective altruism (EA) is a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice. Read more here.
Impact Academy is inspired by the ideas of effective altruism and collaborates with many organizations in the community, but we are totally independent and pursue distinct venues for doing good.
The slightly longer answer: Everyone wants to do good, but many ways of doing good are ineffective. The EA community is focused on finding ways of doing good that actually work.
This led to many ideas like the following:
- It’s critical to pay attention to how many people are affected by a particular intervention. When we do this, it seems that some ways of doing good are over 100 times more effective than others.
- We should focus on problems that are important, neglected, and tractable.
- We can do a lot of good with our careers.
- New technologies might threaten to wipe out life on earth, and reducing this risk might be a key priority.
- Some sentient beings are ignored because they don't look like us or are far away.
Impact Academy is inspired by the ideas of effective altruism and collaborates with many organizations in the community, but we are totally independent and pursue distinct venues for doing good. E.g. we put a particular focus on doing issues related to the far future and think EA puts too little attention on non-consequentialist notions of doing good.