Amplify creative grants

A creative media small grants program supported by Hear This Idea.

Amplify is a program aiming to make grants to podcasts and other creative media projects that spread ideas to help humanity navigate this century. The first round of applications for Amplify has closed, and we announced the grantees in March 2023. We’ll announce if we plan on running another round.

See the grantees →

What is Amplify about?

We’re interested in supporting projects that look to cover topics related to (i) reducing existential risk, (ii) helping fix pressing global problems, and (iii) putting humanity on a positive long-term trajectory. More details on all three below.

We want to amplify ideas associated with effective altruism and longtermism, but you don’t need to be actively engaged with effective altruism to apply.

We’re excited to support projects (new and existing) in English and other languages — sharing important ideas with new, global, audiences.

Although the first round of applications has closed, you can express interest in future rounds by following this link.

The rest of this page explains more details about why we’re running this program, and what we were looking to support.

We want to support podcasts and other media with a plan for impact

We are interested in supporting podcasts and other creative media projects, new and existing, which care about:

We want to support projects about — or relevant to— important problems. But we’re especially excited about applicants who have thought carefully about how their project could actually help make progress on these problems.

Here are some ways that an impactful podcast or creative media project might do that:

We are especially excited about projects which have specific audiences in mind, particularly those that are currently more neglected; like podcasts for non-English language speaking communities.There’s no limit to how niche or technical your project could be — you don’t need to appeal to everyone as long as you can offer something really useful for some people!

We are unlikely to fund projects which aim to be very general introductions to effective altruism, which claim to speak on behalf of effective altruism, or do general community building, unless they have an additional reason for existing (they are for an under-served audience, or they bring a valuable new perspective).

Grants can cover time, equipment, or help

With grants from $500 to $10,000, we can help you:

We also encourage you to apply with more ambitious or scalable ideas in mind — such as a grant to cover many months of work; or even support a multi-person project.

Our grantees will have access to a supportive community of creators. Grantees will also be invited to join a Slack community where they can share ideas and best practices, seek collaboration, and coordinate outsourcing work. Other possible benefits are online mixer events, seminars, and, perhaps, the formation of a more permanent podcast network.

We will adjust any (optional) benefits to suit the needs of the grantees.

Concrete examples of projects we’d be excited to see

Here are some illustrative (imaginary) podcast pitches we’d feel good about supporting:

We’re also open to funding non-podcast creative projects which have impact in a similar way, for example:

Some existing podcast projects for inspiration:

See the grantees →