I work for CEA, but this post isn’t intended as a fundraising post for CEA. The main beneficiaries I want to direct readers to are e.g. EA groups and EA communicators who might not have capacity for fundraising. I expect similar arguments apply to e.g. AIS, rationality and animal welfare community-building efforts but I know those spaces less well. There’s a version of this post where I pull actual donation numbers and iron out the details of what I’m proposing but this is not that version.
It’s difficult for funders to figure out which community-building efforts are successful. The reason your inbox is littered with surveys for every event, retreat and course you take part in is because we want to know if they’re working, and, ultimately, whether we should continue using EA resources to run them. Roughly, things work like this:
- Community builders (CBs) help new community members build their networks, plan their careers and have more impact.
- New community members let the CBs know how it helped them (thanks!)
- New members usually donate elsewhere (I think?), to whatever they consider to be most cost-effective. If new members think EA community-building efforts are important, some of that amount might go somewhere like EA Funds (or CEA or the Meta Funding Circle, or Giving What We Can).
- The EA Infrastructure Fund, for example, wants to figure out which CBs are most impactful. They ask the CBs for the information provided by community members to do this.
- In a perfect world, the CBs have this information, because everyone responds to surveys and we can accurately attribute a reasonable portion of all the new members’ impact to the right CB intervention.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and this process is imperfect, largely because information is hard to gather and communicate. If only 10% of community members respond to a survey (heaven forbid!), CBs and funders need to do a lot of guessing and extrapolation to figure out which CB efforts are impactful and who they’re impacting.
But community members have this information. They (usually) know exactly which person they met, which blog they read or which event they went to that helped them have more impact, by their own lights. Instead of members giving, say, 25% of their donations to the EA Infrastructure Fund, and hoping they can figure out which CB efforts are impactful, they could consider giving that amount (perhaps one large-ish donation for convenience) to the group, blogger or event organisers that helped them on their path to impact.
Of course, donations from community members are a relatively small portion of CB funding in the grand scheme of things. A lot of it is subsidised by funders like Open Philanthropy who want the community to grow and have more impact. But a donation to e.g. a small EA group or an independent blogger can make a big difference. I think even a small adjustment here can also serve as a valuable signal within the ecosystem. If EA [European country] reported getting a big boost in donations by asking their members to donate, that tells funders and other CBs that members are happy with their work and keen to support them. That’s also a good incentive for that group to do work that benefits their members.
Here are some assorted other benefits to more people donating to CBs that helped them:
- This would increase funding diversity for EA CB, providing more stability to groups. EA CB could become more self-sustaining and independent over time.
- It might lead to groups finding more EA-interested donors; perhaps those earning to give in their community who didn’t realise their local group would benefit from their support.[1]
Some caveats
- I’m not anti-EA Funds or other funds like it. I think EA Funds generally do a good job of identifying impactful opportunities. I’ve donated to them consistently for several years and I’ll probably continue to do so.
- Some people are richer than others, but that doesn’t correlate with how much impact they can have. This means that, under this model, CB efforts in wealthy countries might get more funding than they “deserve”, and CB efforts in LMICs will be underfunded. You might resolve this by giving some fraction of your CB donations to EA Funds (who then receive fundraising requests from LMIC groups in need).
What next?
I suggest donating some portion of your end of year donations or upcoming monthly donation to the community-building work that helped you have more impact. I think the smaller the better here; donations to CEA are very welcome (!) but if there’s a local group you used to attend with just one part-time organiser or a blogger with a “buy me a coffee” PayPal link, that might be a better target because they’ll notice it more, and it’s a stronger signal relative to the size of their work.
I plan to talk to my old university group, EA Warwick, and see if I can offer some funding for their activities next term. A decade of inflation might bite me here, but I recall that even a small pot of money for facebook ads or for food at events went a long way. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if other EA Warwick alumni could almost entirely fund the EA university group’s activities there each year.
- ^
Another benefit suggested by a colleague: Better incentives for larger, lower commitment, lower cost-per-member groups. Currently the funding structure doesn’t really incentivise this (I am guessing) because it’s harder to prove the value to casually involved members. However, for a group which receives small donations from users, there could be room in the market for things that cost ~$10/mo per person rather than ~$100+/mo.
Light musings, I work with Ollie but am sharing personal thoughts only.
I overall feel sympathetic to the argument that folks should consider supporting meta orgs, and I find the “tipping” model interesting! E.g. I liked this post about effective giving :) But I have some pushback.
Take the example of university groups. My model is that groups can change pretty dramatically over time due to organiser turnover. Alumni who think their university group positively impacted their trajectory would almost definitionally be funding an entirely new set of organisers by the time this impact has been realised. I have a strong prior that organiser fit is one of the most important variables in how successful a group is. So in many cases, I think you should model the current EA group at your alma mater as a pretty different project, with a less strong track record than you might think.
I think the above is a specific application of a general problem:
I think this all means I’m more sceptical than Ollie that the tipping model is the right approach, even though I agree it has nice qualities :) I expect this idea works better for long standing projects (e.g. city and national groups) that experience less turnover, or meta projects with shorter lag times for impact. I could see myself changing my mind here!
All this is true, but I think alumni groups like I mentioned could actually add as little stability and consistency to the quality of university groups. My parallel could be something like the Oxford or Cambridge Union or a range of university associations or clubs. The management changes every year but they maintain quality and prestige. That model could transfer to EA groups too to some degree, especially once they have gained some pedigree after being active for 15 or 20 years.
Thanks!
There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of "EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won't".
I don't think that's correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn't have the capacity to invest in and support a group.
Reading again though, maybe what you mean is "the group that helped you might not be the best group to support any more". Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, your second comment is the message I meant to convey :)
One concern I've got about this model for funding EA groups is about the incentive structure this creates. While member donations could provide useful feedback, this might lead community builders to optimise for member satisfaction rather than impact. A group running popular social events might receive more donations than one doing the harder work of developing people's capabilities to tackle pressing challenges.
The ultimate measure of an EA group's success should be its ability to develop capable individuals who can contribute meaningfully to improving the world. This might require not running popular programs that increase immediate member satisfaction.
Hm, this strikes me as worrying about drought during a flood (is that a saying? It should be).
Currently, I'm pretty worried about funding diversity. A large number of EA groups rely on funding from a very small number of donors and, as covered in the post, it's hard for those funders to allocate funds efficiently. This pot also doesn't seem to be growing.
Moving a bit more in the direction of my post will help with this situation, but I'm not yet worried about a scenario where EA groups have costs (incl. several full-time staff and large events in many cases) covered by membership fees.[1] So, I still expect funders tracking impact to retain strong influence over the group's impact.
Also, as mentioned in my reply to Angelina, I don't think we should assume that members/alumni/smaller donors won't also care a lot about outcomes.
Unless my post is so wildly persuasive that it changes the culture of the entire ecosystem overnight and brings in millions of dollars. Disastrous.
I had a related concern that (if this funding model became more widespread) it could lead to overinvestment in more legible/obvious contributions relative to more behind-the-scenes ones. E.g. 80k gets lots of donations but Effective Ventures doesn't; a local group gets donations but the orgs who created the resources they reused and adapted (BlueDot, CEA, etc) doesn't.
(I still think on net I agree that it'd be cool to shift somewhat in this direction though. And I think more community building services should consider charging or making donations an opt-out rather than opt-in default.)
I love the idea of alumni (and maybe even alumni groups) taking on responsibility for funding uni groups. This could be an inspiring and super sustainable way to keep then funded indefinitely and free up funding elsewhere. Imagine the inspiration when the two people who funded your group come to speak about the cool stuff they have thought/done/given since they left uni
I think the inspiration / comradery / multiplier effects here could hugely boost the cost effectiveness of alumni donations
I've only skimmed this post, but I think this I agree with all of the main points. I would prefer EA meta orgs that provide benefits to people with money charged for some of their services. I do think the situation is significantly more complicated with orgs that receive substantial institutional funding so I think the original post applies a bit less to orgs like CEA, and more to specific EA groups or small-scale projects (including projects that the EAIF funds).
I suggested to various regional EA groups that they should try and cover some fraction of their costs from members, but there was quite a lot of negative push back (e.g. fundraising distracting them from their main jobs).[1]
EAIF is most interested in funding projects that shouldn't be funded via regular markets, or might not be noticed as being especially valuable (e.g. many public goods in the nonexcludable and nonrivalrous sense).
@Harri Besceli feel free to push back on any of this if it conflicts with your impression of how the EAIF does/should work.
I still think some version of this is workable but it's not a priority for the EAIF to figure out right now.
FWIW I completely agree that EA uni groups should be able to fund themselves a fair bit like most other uni groups and societies do. Definitely worth having 'scholarship' options for those who request it, but the default should be that these EA uni groups do whatever is 'normal' for socialites at their university. I also think that this would go some way to make EA seems less weird.
Agree
That's a shame. I think we're in a strange situation if non-profits / charitable projects don't think fundraising should be at least a non-trivial portion of their time. I also think fundraising forces projects to more clearly define their vision, goals, funding needs etc.
Perhaps I'd feel differently if they were several funders fighting over who gets to fund each EA Group, but that doesn't seem to be the case (at least not any more).
I like this idea, but wonder if CEA or another organization should take the lead on running something like this? Making donations to other people or informal groups is interpersonally and logistically complicated. For instance, people will often refuse a donation if offered it (or when their bank account is requested), and taking money from a person may feel like an obligation, or be misinterpreted. It could work better if they instead donate money to an org who allocates it for a person and contacts them to receive it (and donates it if they don't accept). That organization could also have a database of credible people/groups doing work and a general donation option for people who just want to fund movement building of a certain type.
More generally, I'd like to see more effort to proactively identify and fund people who are doing good movement/community building work. Examples: Talent scout type roles at CEA and some sort of community scan (e.g., a question in the annual community survey and post conferences about anyone who was exceptionally helpful) or input process (e.g., a form where you can notify CEA that someone was particularly helpful in a relevant way).
This could also help address certain oversights. For instance, in my experience, someone can have a lot of positive impact in many regional areas without getting noticed or appropriately supported, which can significantly reduce their impact. Catherine Low and Luke Freeman were once examples of such people.
I agree that there are drawbacks to interpersonal donations, but strongly disagree that building a complex overhead structure is a good idea. The problem exists, but the solution is worse.