The role
You would be the Campaign Manager for the International Campaign to End War and Disease, running the exact playbook the landmine ban and nuclear weapons ban treaties used: building a coalition of nonprofits in support of the 1% Treaty. One person, contacting organizations, explaining the case, asking them to join and to tell their members. That is the whole engine, and it is how a handful of people won two Nobel Peace Prizes and changed international law.
The idea in one line
Redirect 1% of global military spending to curing disease. The way you get there is by building a nonprofit coalition, exactly the way the landmine and nuclear treaties were built.
The problem
6,650 diseases have zero FDA-approved treatments. At current trial capacity (~15 new treatments/year), testing all plausible drug-disease combinations would take ~443 years.
Redirecting 1% of global military spending (~$27.2 billion/year) to pragmatic clinical trials ($929/patient vs. $41,000/patient traditional) increases trial capacity 12.3x, cutting the timeline from 443 years to ~36 years.
We know reallocation works because it already happened
The Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 ended WWII. The US cut real military spending from over $800 billion to $48 billion by 1948 (constant dollars), a ~94% cut. During that same window, NIH funding went from under $3 million to $50 million by 1950, then grew another 500% through the 1950s. The results: Salk polio vaccine, the DNA structure, the Framingham Heart Study. The most productive era of medical progress in history happened because resources moved from war to research. We are proposing the same reallocation at 1% of the scale.
We know how to make reallocation happen through treaties
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines started in 1992 with six NGOs. Jody Williams grew the coalition to 1,400 organizations in 90 countries in five years using email and a fax machine. 122 countries signed the Ottawa Treaty. She won the Nobel Peace Prize. ICAN did the same for nuclear weapons: five staff in a Geneva office built a coalition of 600+ organizations, 122 states voted yes, another Nobel Prize. The pattern is the same every time: one person contacts organizations, explains the case, asks them to join, asks them to tell their members.
Why this is one of the most cost-effective things a person can do
Anti-malaria bednets, the best direct intervention GiveWell funds, run ~$78-$130 per DALY averted. If the probability of this campaign eventually redirecting $27B/year is even 0.1%, and those trials avert 1 DALY per patient, the expected cost is about $1.23 per DALY. Even at 0.001% probability it is ~$123/DALY, still competitive with the best interventions in the world.
What you would actually do
Contact 8-10 organizations per day. Explain the 1% Treaty. Schedule calls with the interested ones. Get them to endorse at whatever level they will give: logo, statement, share, embed, or emailing their members. Ask each endorsing organization to email their members a link to a two-question survey. The survey asks how humanity should allocate resources between the capacity for violence and pragmatic clinical trials to cure disease, and whether they would support a global agreement to redirect 1% of military spending to trials.
Second track: persuade foundations to join a shareholder strategy. Foundations buy shares in military-industrial companies, then, as shareholders, make the fiduciary case to those companies' boards that a massive concentration on weapons is not in the long-term financial interest of shareholders given the disease burden dragging down returns and the negative expected value of increasing apocalypse capacity. The move: shift from low-margin weapons (~10% margins) into higher-margin biotechnology (20%+), and reorient lobbying toward disease eradication. Foundations can also donate those shares to nonprofits, which then run a coordinated shareholder letter-writing campaign to the boards.
Structure
This starts as a paid trial measured on the work you control: build and prioritize the target org list, contact a set number per week, get the survey live and collecting responses, and log the conversion data. Hit those and it converts to a full-time, longer-term seat. Endorsements are treated as data we learn from, not a quota you are penalized for, because organizations move on their own clock.
Who this is for
The single most important trait is being genuinely comfortable reaching out to strangers, making the case, and asking them to act, without flinching. Belief in the mission carries the rest.
Compensation
Full-time, competitive nonprofit salary, paid monthly.
How to apply
If you are viewing this on Optimitron, use the apply button on this page. Either way, you can reach us at m@warondisease.org with a short note about why this matters to you, plus a CV, LinkedIn, or anything that shows you can do the outreach.