Some confidentiality constraints have been lifted in the last few days, so Iām now able to share more information from the Community Health and Special Projects team to give people a sense of how this case went from our perspective, and how we think about these things.
To give a picture of how things happened over time:
Starting mid last year, our team heard about many of the concerns mentioned in this post.
At the time of our initial conversations with former staff/āassociates of Nonlinear, they were understandably reluctant for us to do anything that would let on to Nonlinear that they were raising complaints. This limited our ability to hear Nonlinearās side of the story, though members of our team did have some conversations with Kat that touched on some of these topics. It also meant that the former staff/āassociates did not give permission at that time for us to take some steps that we suggested. They also suggested some steps that we didnāt see as feasible for us.
At one point we discussed the possibility of the ex-staff writing a public post of some kind, but at that time they were understandably unwilling to do this. Our impression is that the impetus for that eventually coming together was Ben being willing to put in a lot of work.
Over time, confidentiality became less of a constraint. The people raising the concerns became more willing to have information shared, and some people made public comments, meaning we were able to take some more actions without compromising confidentiality. We were then able to take some steps including what we describe here, and pointing various people to the publicly available claims, to reduce the risk of other people ending up in bad situations.
We had been considering taking more steps when we heard Ben was working with theformer staff/āassociates on a public post. We felt that this public post might make some of those steps less necessary. We kept collecting information about Nonlinear, but did not do as much as we might have done had Ben not been working on this.
We continued to track Nonlinear and were ready to prioritise the case more highly if it seemed that the risk to others in the community was rising.
Catherine, you and Nicole are both CH team members who advise the EAIF and the LTFF. Given that CH āheard about many of the concerns mentioned in [Benās] postā in mid-2022, did either of you share those concerns with the EAIF team prior to that fund granting $73k to Nonlinear in 4Q22?
Youāve previously written that āmeta work like incubating new charities, advising inexperienced charity entrepreneurs, and influencing funding decisions should be done by people with particularly good judgement about how to run strong organisations, in addition to having admirable intentions.ā Since the grant was for work of that type (ā6-12 months of salary for 3 experienced EAs to set up an EA recruiting/āhiring agencyā), I would think the case for raising the concerns youād heard about with the EAIF management team would be particularly strong. If you did not share those concerns, what was the rationale?
I donāt know if the grant information is accurate (thereās a disclaimer on the page), but if it is, this is pretty shocking. I would appreciate clarification on this.
Catherine from Community Health here. I was aware of this grant application. After discussion with my colleagues in Community Health who were also aware of the same concerns about Nonlinear mentioned in this post, I decided not to advise EAIF to decline this application. Some of the reasons for that were:
The funding was for a project run by three other people (not Nonlinear staff), and I had no concerns about those people working on this project
The three people were not going to be living with Kat and Emerson, which made risks to them lower
At that stage, I had heard some but not all of the complaints listed in this post, so I didnāt have the same picture as I do now. The complaints were confidential, which constrained the possible moves I could make ā I wasnāt able to get more information, and I couldnāt share information with the EAIF team that might lead to someone identifying the complainant or Nonlinear guessing that someone complaining had affected their grant decision.
I could and did put some risk mitigation measures in place, in particular, by requiring the grant to be made on the condition that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, reducing the risk that the incubatees and Nonlinear would have different expectation of access to funds and ownership of the project (which was one of the problems Alice reported).
I didnāt request that EAIF send the money directly to the three people involved in the project, rather than Nonlinear, but I was pleased that it happened
Looking back, given the information and constraints I had at the time, I think this was a reasonable decision.
I could and did put some risk mitigation measures in place, in particular, by requiring the grant to be made on the condition that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, reducing the risk that the incubatees and Nonlinear would have different expectation of access to funds and ownership of the project (which was one of the problems Alice reported).
Just in case it wasnāt clear from Catherineās comment, if Catherine hadnāt recommended that we require an incubation contract, itās very unlikely that we would have asked for one. In light of Benās post, setting up this contract seems like a very good decision.
The EAIF did make a grant for $73kābut it was to a project that Nonlinear was incubating (not to Nonlinear themselves) - Iāll update the website to reflect this. Looking at the email thread for this grant now we actually made the grant out to a separate company (the new hiring agency) so the money never went through nonlinear and required (at com healthās advice) that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, responsibilities and decision making between the founders and Nonlinear.
Iāll let the com health team speak for themselves, but I think given the information that we had the grant was reasonable and looking back I am happy with the advice com health gave us.
Nonlinear has not been invited or permitted to run sessions or give talks relating to their work, or host a recruiting table at EAG and EAGx conferences this year.
And
Kat ran a session on a personal topic at EAG Bay Area 2023 in February. EDIT: Kat, Emerson and Drew also had a community office hour slot at that conference.
Community office hours are an event that organizers invite you to sign up for (not all EAG attendees can sign up). While not as prominent as a recruiting table or talk, they still signal status to the attendees.
Given that public comments were made as early as November, it seems that there was sufficient time to ensure they were disunited from the event in February. Additionally, even if you donāt table at EAG, you can still actively recruit via 1-1 meetings.
I think the lack of acknowledgement or explanation of how this choice happenedāand whether CHT sees this as a mistakeāworries me, especially now that the anonymity constraints have been lifted.
I agree with all of this, and hope the CH team responds. Iād also add that the video of Katās talk has a prominent spot on the EAG 2023 playlist on CEAās official youtube channel. That video has nearly 600 views.
Some confidentiality constraints have been lifted in the last few days, so Iām now able to share more information from the Community Health and Special Projects team to give people a sense of how this case went from our perspective, and how we think about these things.
Previous updates:
General statement
An incomplete list of actions weāve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations.
To give a picture of how things happened over time:
Starting mid last year, our team heard about many of the concerns mentioned in this post.
At the time of our initial conversations with former staff/āassociates of Nonlinear, they were understandably reluctant for us to do anything that would let on to Nonlinear that they were raising complaints. This limited our ability to hear Nonlinearās side of the story, though members of our team did have some conversations with Kat that touched on some of these topics. It also meant that the former staff/āassociates did not give permission at that time for us to take some steps that we suggested. They also suggested some steps that we didnāt see as feasible for us.
At one point we discussed the possibility of the ex-staff writing a public post of some kind, but at that time they were understandably unwilling to do this. Our impression is that the impetus for that eventually coming together was Ben being willing to put in a lot of work.
Over time, confidentiality became less of a constraint. The people raising the concerns became more willing to have information shared, and some people made public comments, meaning we were able to take some more actions without compromising confidentiality. We were then able to take some steps including what we describe here, and pointing various people to the publicly available claims, to reduce the risk of other people ending up in bad situations.
We had been considering taking more steps when we heard Ben was working with theformer staff/āassociates on a public post. We felt that this public post might make some of those steps less necessary. We kept collecting information about Nonlinear, but did not do as much as we might have done had Ben not been working on this.
We continued to track Nonlinear and were ready to prioritise the case more highly if it seemed that the risk to others in the community was rising.
Catherine, you and Nicole are both CH team members who advise the EAIF and the LTFF. Given that CH āheard about many of the concerns mentioned in [Benās] postā in mid-2022, did either of you share those concerns with the EAIF team prior to that fund granting $73k to Nonlinear in 4Q22?
Youāve previously written that āmeta work like incubating new charities, advising inexperienced charity entrepreneurs, and influencing funding decisions should be done by people with particularly good judgement about how to run strong organisations, in addition to having admirable intentions.ā Since the grant was for work of that type (ā6-12 months of salary for 3 experienced EAs to set up an EA recruiting/āhiring agencyā), I would think the case for raising the concerns youād heard about with the EAIF management team would be particularly strong. If you did not share those concerns, what was the rationale?
I donāt know if the grant information is accurate (thereās a disclaimer on the page), but if it is, this is pretty shocking. I would appreciate clarification on this.
Catherine from Community Health here. I was aware of this grant application. After discussion with my colleagues in Community Health who were also aware of the same concerns about Nonlinear mentioned in this post, I decided not to advise EAIF to decline this application. Some of the reasons for that were:
The funding was for a project run by three other people (not Nonlinear staff), and I had no concerns about those people working on this project
The three people were not going to be living with Kat and Emerson, which made risks to them lower
At that stage, I had heard some but not all of the complaints listed in this post, so I didnāt have the same picture as I do now. The complaints were confidential, which constrained the possible moves I could make ā I wasnāt able to get more information, and I couldnāt share information with the EAIF team that might lead to someone identifying the complainant or Nonlinear guessing that someone complaining had affected their grant decision.
I could and did put some risk mitigation measures in place, in particular, by requiring the grant to be made on the condition that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, reducing the risk that the incubatees and Nonlinear would have different expectation of access to funds and ownership of the project (which was one of the problems Alice reported).
I didnāt request that EAIF send the money directly to the three people involved in the project, rather than Nonlinear, but I was pleased that it happened
Looking back, given the information and constraints I had at the time, I think this was a reasonable decision.
Just in case it wasnāt clear from Catherineās comment, if Catherine hadnāt recommended that we require an incubation contract, itās very unlikely that we would have asked for one. In light of Benās post, setting up this contract seems like a very good decision.
The EAIF did make a grant for $73kābut it was to a project that Nonlinear was incubating (not to Nonlinear themselves) - Iāll update the website to reflect this. Looking at the email thread for this grant now we actually made the grant out to a separate company (the new hiring agency) so the money never went through nonlinear and required (at com healthās advice) that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, responsibilities and decision making between the founders and Nonlinear.
Iāll let the com health team speak for themselves, but I think given the information that we had the grant was reasonable and looking back I am happy with the advice com health gave us.
Thanks for clarifying that Caleb, that does seem substantially less problematic than granting to Nonlinear themselves.
Thanks for flagging the disclaimer (āPlease note that this page is in beta testing and grant data may not be accurateā), Iād missed that.
In your earlier post, you write:
Nonlinear has not been invited or permitted to run sessions or give talks relating to their work, or host a recruiting table at EAG and EAGx conferences this year.
And
Kat ran a session on a personal topic at EAG Bay Area 2023 in February. EDIT: Kat, Emerson and Drew also had a community office hour slot at that conference.
Community office hours are an event that organizers invite you to sign up for (not all EAG attendees can sign up). While not as prominent as a recruiting table or talk, they still signal status to the attendees.
Given that public comments were made as early as November, it seems that there was sufficient time to ensure they were disunited from the event in February. Additionally, even if you donāt table at EAG, you can still actively recruit via 1-1 meetings.
I think the lack of acknowledgement or explanation of how this choice happenedāand whether CHT sees this as a mistakeāworries me, especially now that the anonymity constraints have been lifted.
I agree with all of this, and hope the CH team responds. Iād also add that the video of Katās talk has a prominent spot on the EAG 2023 playlist on CEAās official youtube channel. That video has nearly 600 views.
Can you disclose the specifics of some or all of these steps and the reasons why you didnāt think they were feasible?