Vision & Strategy
The Future Holds Hope for a World Without Suffering
The Compassionate Future Initiative (CFI) is advocating and mobilising for high-impact initiatives to reduce suffering in the near and distant future.
Our Vision
A future in which technologies, institutions, and social norms protect the wellbeing of all sentient beings, remain resilient against corruption, and are competitively advantageous relative to exploitative, exclusionary, or hostile systems.
To better understand suffering and wellbeing, we study the conceptual, biological, and psychosocial mechanisms underlying sentient experience. On that basis, we identify, develop, prioritise, and advocate for ambitious initiatives with significant potential to prevent large amounts of future suffering.
Mission
- Advocate and mobilise for high-impact interventions aimed at suffering prevention across cause areas, target groups and long timelines.
- Build a thriving community of resourceful, compassionate individuals, with diverse backgrounds, eager to help get thoughtful and ambitious projects off the ground, building a better future for all sentient beings.
- Foster collaborative networks across adjacent communities, initiatives, and fields to propagate compassionate care and accelerate impact.
Explore Our Work
(Navigate the Website's Structure & Content)
Start Your Impact Journey With Us
The following impact-oriented questions may help you to reflect on how you could best contribute and reduce suffering potentially along multiple cause areas and target groups.
- What are Crucial Considerations for impact of your project, donations or career plans?
- What are your considerations in regard to near-term impact, including importance, tractability, neglectedness (ITN), risk-benefit trade-offs, and counterfactuals?
- What is your SMART Theory of Change for your involvement? Please include consideration in regard to outcome robustness and implementation robustness.
- What are plausible long-term trajectories (evolution, obstacles, risks, benefits, and counterfactuals) over 10, 50, and 200 years?
- And what are your personal fit, motivation and development plans?
Feel free to contact us if you like to work through those questions together.
Community & Connection
Caring deeply about suffering can be challenging and at times isolating, as many choose to look away, to spare themselves the pain. That's why we want to foster this community. And hopefully, together, as a community, we will be able to apply effective and sustainable problem-solving methodology and reduce suffering not just in the near but also distant future.
If you want to support this mission and are interested to see and learn more, follow us on LinkedIn, the Effective Altruism Forum, Facebook and Discord.
Resources: Why to care about suffering the most
On the seriousness of suffering by Brian Tomasik (one of the most influential activist/writers in the broader community)
The Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics by Lukas Gloor
The Veil of Ignorance considerations by John Rawls
On the relevance of sentience and antispecisiem see Animal Ethics
The Ethics of Wild Animal Suffering by Ole Martin Moen
Library of books by the Center for Reducing Suffering
General resource page on Suffering-Focused Ethics (SFE)
This page was first published on 04 Mar 2022. Latest significant update was on 26 Mar 2026.