High Impact Professionals Impact Report 2025

Read the full HIP Impact Report 2025

In 2025, High Impact Professionals (HIP) reached a pivotal moment. With a lean team and a growing global community, we helped more experienced professionals transition careers into high-impact work, grew more effective giving pledges, and connected highly needed skills to the world’s most pressing problems than ever before.

This year’s impact report shows what can happen when professionals are supported not just to care, but to act.

2025 Impact at a Glance

Read on for more details and be sure to download the full High Impact Professionals Impact Report 2025.

Impact Accelerator Program: Supporting High-Impact Career Transitions

The Impact Accelerator Program (IAP) remained HIP’s flagship program in 2025. Designed for experienced professionals exploring mission-driven career change, the program supported 210 participants across three cohorts.

Participants transitioned into roles at high-impact organizations including GiveWell, Malaria Consortium, GiveDirectly, FAR.AI, Epoch AI, and ProVeg. Others co-founded new nonprofits like Respira Health and Scale Welfare, joined boards, and entered competitive incubators such as Charity Entrepreneurship, fellowships, and careers in global health, AI safety, animal welfare, and more.

In total, HIP tracked 46 confirmed high-impact career transitions in 2025, with over 120 additional professionals actively progressing toward their next role. The Impact Accelerator Program totalled $2.2 Million Dollars in estimated counterfactual impact alone.

What makes the program especially durable is its alumni network. Of the 33 facilitators supporting IAP cohorts this year, 31 were alumni themselves, reinforcing a culture of peer mentorship and shared learning.

Know of someone interested in high impact work who might be a great fit? Refer them to the Impact Accelerator Program today.

Career Impact Track: Expanding High Impact Career Transitions

In 2025, HIP launched the Career Impact Track. This allowed us to support even more professionals with a more flexible pathway towards entering high-impact careers.

The program combined accountability partnerships, guided resources, and practical tools such as the HIP Career Planning Workbook. Across two rounds, more than 500 professionals participated, resulting in 19 new effective giving pledges, including four 🔸10% Pledges, and multiple career transitions still in progress.

This lighter-touch, yet still structured model allows HIP to reach significantly more professionals while complementing the depth of the Impact Accelerator Program.

Interested in exploring the Career Impact Track? Apply to the CIT program (combined with the IAP application) and grab the HIP Career Planning Workbook here.

Talent Directory: Connecting Professionals & High-Impact Organizations

The HIP Talent Directory continued to grow as a trusted resource for high-impact organizations seeking experienced talent in 2025.

Organizations value the directory’s emphasis on mission alignment and readiness to move, while candidates benefit from being proactively matched with opportunities they may not otherwise encounter.

As the base of quality candidates continues to grow, the Talent Directory is becoming an increasingly important part of the high-impact hiring ecosystem.

Be sure to check out the HIP Talent Directory for nonprofit job seekers and the HIP Talent Directory for recruiters.

Pledges: Effective Giving for Professionals As a Multiplier

Effective giving remained a central pillar of HIP’s impact in 2025, and the HIP Pledge Club has become an important pillar of our impact. Across programs and the broader community, 75 new giving pledges were made in 2025, including 18 🔸 10% percent pledges.

For the second consecutive year, conservative estimates show that pledges alone are projected to move more counterfactual funding into high-impact organizations than HIP’s entire operating budget.

In 2025, the HIP Pledge Club also celebrated its first anniversary and surpassed 100 total effective giving pledges, reinforcing effective giving as a durable complement to career transitions.

In-Person Community Connections

In 2025, HIP hosted and participated in both virtual and in-person conferences through workshops, talks, and facilitated meetups.These included major ecosystem events such as EA Global conferences, the Meta Coordination Forum, the Effective Giving Summit, and more. 

These gatherings created opportunities for professionals exploring high-impact career transitions to connect directly with other professionals creating global impact, HIP alumni, and partner organizations.  Meetups created fresh opportunities to share insights, build trust, and deepen engagement across the high-impact careers ecosystem. 

In total, HIP:

• Participated in eight conferences across North America and Europe

• Connected 60+ Impact Accelerator participants through in-person dinners

• Ran multiple workshops and invited talks, reaching 200+ participants.

• Facilitated new professional connections among 100+ experienced professionals

These in-person moments complement HIP’s structured programs by turning online relationships into durable networks that support long-term impact. 

Other Milestones: Laying the Path Towards Growth

Alongside program delivery, 2025 marked several milestones that increased HIP’s long-term capacity and credibility:

• Received a multi-year grant from Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy), extending HIP’s organizational runway

• Achieved Supported Program status with Giving What We Can

• Launched a new HIP website improved clarity and access to programs

• Launched new free career resources, which expanded reach beyond formal programs

• Hired two senior professionals, increasing team capacity heading into 2026

HIP also announced the release of a brand new book: The High-Impact Professional’s Playbook, written by HIP cofounder Devon Fritz. It distills years of experience supporting professionals through evidence-based career transitions into practical guidance for those seeking to do more good with their careers.

The book draws directly from lessons learned through HIP’s programs and is designed to help professionals navigate career change towards high impact. The Playbook covers topics such as choosing the best career path, considering effective giving, and translating values into action.

A full launch is coming January 26, 2026, so be sure to spread the word!

Mistakes & Learnings

The HIP Impact Report wouldn’t be complete without pausing to recognize our learnings. As High Impact Professionals continues to grow, 2025 surfaced several important lessons that are shaping how we operate, measure impact, and plan for scale.  Recognizing & adapting from these learnings will allow us to refine our approach for 2026 and beyond.

Key Learning #1:  Impact Measurement.

Career Transitions:  Some planned career transitions from 2024 materialized differently than expected: four expected IAP roles didn't come to fruition, while three roles from the Talent Directory were subsequently added. We’re working to streamline reporting for partner organizations, while balancing accuracy against the administrative burden placed on them.

Incubators and Fellowships:  Previously included within career transition counts, we created their own category to improve clarity and consistency in 2025. For example, four IAP alumni secured places in the 2026 Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, which are not yet counted as career transitions.

Pledges:  Following an updated Giving What We Can analysis of counterfactual pledge impact in 2025, we adopted more conservative assumptions for both 🔸10% Pledges and 🔹Trial Pledges. This resulted in a 50% reduction in estimated pledge impact, backdated to 2024, which lowered previously reported impact by over $70k.

Combining the above updates, we land at 35 high impact career transitions and a 2024 counterfactual impact of $1.6M, resulting in a conservative impact multiplier of 11.7x.

Key Learning #2:  Organizational Capacity. 

Overall capacity remained tight: in 2025, we supported 210 participants across programs with 33 volunteer facilitators and a core team of just 1.6 FTE. In retrospect, not increasing team capacity earlier was likely a mistake, as it could have enabled greater impact during the year.

Entering 2026 with expanded capacity, we expect to improve execution and increase both high impact career transitions and effective giving pledges.

These learnings reinforce HIP’s commitment to intellectual honesty, continuous improvement, and conservative impact evaluation as we scale.

Looking Ahead to 2026

In 2026, High Impact Professionals will focus on scaling our impact by bringing more experienced professionals into the high-impact careers ecosystem and offering better, more sustained support as they move from interest to action.

1. Scale up High-Impact Career Transitions & Giving Pledges

• Scale core programs in both participation and impact, using increased reach and more scalable program components, aiming to support a total of 300+ IAP participants.

• Improve alumni support, enabling more career transitions and pledges through stronger long-term engagement, including ongoing group and 1:1 support.

• Strengthen HIP’s team and delivery capacity, with a Director of Programs, Director of Marketing, and an expanded volunteer facilitation network.

• Maintain a data-driven approach to impact measurement, continuing to refine methodologies over time.

2. Grow the Top of the Funnel

• Increase visibility of HIP and high-impact careers, including through the launch of the book “The High-Impact Professional’s Playbook” and related public events.

• Expand access to high impact entry points, including free resources and lighter-touch programs that help professionals explore impact before committing to deeper engagement.

• Strengthen ecosystem support, widening talent and giving pipelines for high-impact organizations.

HIP’s goal is to enable thousands of experienced professionals to use their skills, money, and networks to create substantially more positive impact.

Get Involved in 2026

We are grateful to everyone who contributed to HIP’s work in 2025: our funders, partners, board members, advisors, program facilitators, volunteers, and program participants. Our impact is driven by people across the community who choose to act on their values and support others to do the same.

If you’d like to get involved in 2026, congratulations! Here are a few ways you can do so:

• Explore a high-impact career by applying to the Impact Accelerator Program yourself and/or refer experienced professionals who could benefit from the program

• Make an effective giving pledge through the HIP Pledge Club

• Partner as an organization seeking experienced, mission-aligned talent through the Talent Directory

• Buy the book:  The High-Impact Professional's Playbook is launching January 26. Order your copy and help spread the word

• Check out our Free Resources to help kick start your journey

• Donate to HIP to help scale programs and reach more professionals globally. For larger gifts, please reach out to our Executive Director Nina directly.

Thank you for taking the time to read the High Impact Professionals Impact Report 2025, and for following our journey. By supporting HIP, you help experienced professionals turn intention into impact – across Global Health, Animal Welfare, AI Safety, and beyond.

Finally, a big thanks to our funders and supporters, who helped make everything we do possible:

To download and read more, check out the full High Impact Professionals Impact Report 2025.