Project summary

Filipino Effective Altruists have a real track record of turning locally-generated research into action — organizations across biosecurity, animal welfare, AI safety, alternative proteins, and mental health have been founded by Filipinos (see some of them here), several of them sparked by research produced within the community. I've seen this firsthand, and this is a part of what motivates me to work on this project.

Historically, cause area exploration here has started from global frameworks like the 80,000 Hours problem profiles. My working hypothesis is that this leaves blind spots, specifically cause areas that are neglected, tractable, and highly relevant to the Philippines, but that don't surface easily in a global prioritization exercise. Based on my work as a community builder for four years, I also suspect that Filipinos are already drawn to some of these areas (politics, governance, education, corruption) but lack the legitimization, community, and structured support to act on them.

The central question driving this project is: what are the highest-impact opportunities available within the Philippines, and what would it take to act on them? This is a deliberately broader frame than asking what Filipino EAs are currently drawn to or what the local EA community needs. If this work also pulls more Filipinos into launching impactful initiatives, that's a valuable outcome, but it is a secondary effort. The primary goal of this project is to identify areas of impact.

This project operates on the premise that the most valuable cause area work sits at the intersection of two criteria: genuine impact potential by rigorous standards, and real capacity for action within the Philippine context. Neither alone is sufficient. A cause area that is globally high-impact but has no credible local actors to pursue it produces research that goes nowhere. A cause area that Filipinos feel strongly about but lacks tractability or neglectedness produces work that feels meaningful but doesn't move the needle. The discovery phase is designed to find where those two things overlap, and to test whether that overlap is rich enough to warrant a full LPR. As such, this initial discovery phase aims to create a sample cause area profile report and a validation report on what the next phase of this LPR can look like.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

This project has one overarching goal: to investigate what the highest-impact opportunities available within the Philippines are, and what it would take to act on them. To achieve this, I will run a structured pre-project discovery phase across four stages over 6-8 weeks:

• Phase 0 (Week 1, ~3-6 hours): Finalizing project design, interview questions, and a list of 10-12 interviewees spanning EA Philippines members, Filipinos on the verge of starting initiatives, people outside the EA community doing impactful work in underexplored areas, and development sector leaders in the Philippines

• Phase 1 (Weeks 2-5, ~15-20 hours): Conducting 8-12 structured conversations focused on what high-impact cause areas are being systematically missed by global EA frameworks, and whether the Philippines has the conditions and comparative advantage to act on them

• Phase 2 (Weeks 5-6, ~12-15 hours): Updating my working hypothesis based on findings and drafting one sample cause area profile report as proof of concept

• Phase 3 (Weeks 7-8, ~3-5 hours): Writing a short validation report summarizing findings, conclusions, and recommended next steps
  

How will this funding be used?

The total ask for this project is USD 940, covering 6-8 weeks of part-time work at 2-4 hours per week. The breakdown is as follows:

• Researcher time: USD 690 (~46 hours at USD 15/hour) — covering all four project phases, including interview design, conducting and synthesizing 8-12 conversations, drafting the sample cause area profile, and writing the final validation report

• Transport and logistics: USD 150 — for in-person conversations where relevant, primarily within Metro Manila

• Research tools: USD 100 — primarily transcription tools to ensure interview findings are captured accurately and can be reviewed by advisors

I am intentionally putting forth a lean ask, as the goal of this phase is not to produce a comprehensive Local Priorities Research project but to do the foundational investigative work that determines whether and how a more ambitious project is worth pursuing. If funding falls short of the full amount, a minimum version of this project remains viable, and will likely focus on a smaller set of interviews with domain experts and producing a single sample cause area profile rather than a full validation report.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

This project is led by Sam Ackary (LinkedIn). Sam previously co-directed EA Philippines for two years and has led multiple fellowship and community programs for the group, including an introductory & in-depth fellowship, a community building workshop, a leadership retreat, and others (see our progress update from 2024-2025 here; updated report to come soon). She has contributed to research and currently works in tobacco control and health policy at the Ateneo School of Government in Manila, where her work has directly informed policy instruments within a two-year horizon. Through Ateneo, Sam has published ~6 works in peer reviewed journals with direct policy translation through the Philippine Department of Health.

In the past, I have also successfully fundraised ~USD 43.7K for EA Philippines together with my former Co-Director Zian Bonoan (see our Manifund post here).

The findings of this pre-project phase will be reviewed by an advisory group of approximately 10 Filipinos who have founded impactful initiatives as members of EA Philippines.

For full disclosure, Sam is taking this on as an independent project, not as a project by EA Philippines. 

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The most likely cause of failure is that findings end up too inconclusive to support a clear recommendation. I am currently balancing a full-time job, and at 2-4 hours a week for this project, there is a real risk that conversations stay at the surface level, or that the sample of interviewees skews too heavily toward EA-adjacent people who share similar priors, producing findings that feel validating but might not actually test the hypothesis well. If this happens, the validation report would not give EA Philippines or future funders enough to act on. For now, the ask is intentionally modest since this is the discovery phase–however, should we transition into a more comprehensive LPR with backed funding, a higher level of commitment would be dedicated to the project.

To mitigate these risks, findings will be reviewed by at least two independent advisors before any conclusions are drawn, and the interview process will use a consistent question framework across all respondents to reduce the risk of confirmation bias shaping the synthesis.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

I have not raised any external funding in the last 12 months.