“at EA Funds my impression is that they rarely give input on our grants, but, when they do, it’s almost always helpful”
This comment concerns me. I would have thought the community health team would never give input on a grant, only interact with funding bodies if there were red flags about an organisation that was either doing funding or getting funded. What kind of “helpful” advice have they given you?
”I don’t see a COI here, but if there is one I it would be great if you could share this with me.”
I might be missing something, but the potential for COI here seems obvious and quite high. Imagine you are applying for funds from an org which a community health team member is on the board, or an advisor of, while at the same time wanting to make a complaint or raise an issue about someone from that funding body. This would both make it harder
For someone to make the complaint, thinking it might compromise your chances of funding with the org
For the community health person to respond to the complaint, given the conflict of interest.
From the CHT website, of example projects
“Someone feels they were treated unfairly by an EA organization they worked at but isn’t sure they want to pass on feedback to the organization. They’re not sure what to do and want to talk over the situation with someone neutral.
If they are an adviser for an EA org, then they aren’t neutral any more.
For this reason I’m surprised CHT members have advisory roles with funding bodies
In general would have thought the community health team would only interact with funding bodies around community health issues. I think there’s a pretty strong argument for ring fencing the community health team, as their position as an impartial mediator or support person could be compromised by being part of any other org that could potentially be complained about.
At the vary least, I would have thought the head, or top couple of people from the CHT would have no other roles within funding organisations at the least , and perhaps no other official roles at all in wider EA due to potential COI.
The exception IMO would be that I would personally like the CHT to be part higher level boards like perhaps CEA, and also be involved “EA direction” meetings, where I think the value they could add would be higher than potential conflicts of interest (which would still be present)
Again though I might be missing something obvious here, as I’m not involved in any of this.
All else equal, I have an extremely strong preference to avoid recommending funding to people who CH suspects with high probability to have committed sexual assault, or are violent, or abuse EA resources/power for personal gain, or are terrible to their employees, etc.
I think funding is one of the very few levers EAs in practice have to enforce basic decency norms (others include public declarations of norms, stern talking-tos, Forum bans, bans from CEA events, spreading rumors along whisper networks, public callouts, police reports, etc).
And on a personal level, I’d feel terrible if I knew I repeatedly recommended funding to people who end up being pretty harmful, and I’d feel betrayed if other EAs allowed me to repeatedly make unforced errors in that direction out of a confused sense of propriety.
I’m in general pretty confused about what the community want out of the Community Health team. It seems like people want to hold CH accountable for not taking sufficiently strong actions against problematic actors, and then also hobble what little power they do have. Seems strange to me.
I agree that this is very valuable. I would want them to be explicit about this role, and be clear to community builders talking to them that they should treat them as if talking to a funder.
To be clear, in the cases where I have felt uncomfortable it was not “X is engaging in sketchy behaviour, and we recommend not giving them funding” (my understanding is that this happens fairly often, and I am glad for it. CHT is providing a very valuable function here, which otherwise would be hard to coordinate. If anything, I would want them to be more brazen and ready to recommend against people based on less evidence than they do now).
Is more cases like “CHT staff thinks that this subcommunity would work better without central coordination, and this staff is going to recommend against funding any coordinators going forward” or “CHT is pressuring me to make a certain choice such as not banning a community member I consider problematic, and I am afraid that if I don’t comply I won’t get renewed” (I’ve learned of situations like these happen at least thrice).
It is difficult to orient yourself towards someone who you are not sure whether your should treat as your boss or as neutral third party mediator. This is stressing for community builders.
This comment concerns me. I would have thought the community health team would never give input on a grant, only interact with funding bodies if there were red flags about an organisation that was either doing funding or getting funded. What kind of “helpful” advice have they given you?
The main way they give input on our grants is by reporting concerns about things we are interested in funding (e.g. red flags “a few people have reported this person making them feel uncomfortable so we’d advise against them doing in-person community building” as I said in my original comment). It sounds to me like we’re aligned on the kind of input com health might be well-placed to give.
Re your example COIs
Hmm, I am a bit confused about which way this goes. Re (1), I could imagine someone having that concern. I don’t think com health staff give us this kind of input so I’m not worried about it in practice but, I could imagine a grantee being worried about this.
Re (2), we don’t pay any of the advisors from com health but I could see a COI if com health team members believed that their reputation was tied to our organisation in some way.
I think that both of these potential COIs are pretty weak (but thank you for flagging them), but I’ll have a think about ways in which we might be able to further mitigate them.
I was interpreting your comment that they had separate advisory roles for orgs like yours outside of the community health sphere, which would be much more problematic.
If their advisory role is around community health issues that makes more sense, It still is a potentially problematic COI, as there is potential to breach confidentiality in that role. For example hope they have permission to share info like “we would advise against them doing in-person community building”, from the people who gave them that info. By default everything shared with community health should (I imagine) be confidential unless the person who shares it explicitly gives permission to pass the info on.
but I agree with you its not as much of a concern, although it requires some care.
“at EA Funds my impression is that they rarely give input on our grants, but, when they do, it’s almost always helpful”
This comment concerns me. I would have thought the community health team would never give input on a grant, only interact with funding bodies if there were red flags about an organisation that was either doing funding or getting funded. What kind of “helpful” advice have they given you?
”I don’t see a COI here, but if there is one I it would be great if you could share this with me.”
I might be missing something, but the potential for COI here seems obvious and quite high. Imagine you are applying for funds from an org which a community health team member is on the board, or an advisor of, while at the same time wanting to make a complaint or raise an issue about someone from that funding body. This would both make it harder
For someone to make the complaint, thinking it might compromise your chances of funding with the org
For the community health person to respond to the complaint, given the conflict of interest.
From the CHT website, of example projects
“Someone feels they were treated unfairly by an EA organization they worked at but isn’t sure they want to pass on feedback to the organization. They’re not sure what to do and want to talk over the situation with someone neutral.
If they are an adviser for an EA org, then they aren’t neutral any more.
For this reason I’m surprised CHT members have advisory roles with funding bodies
In general would have thought the community health team would only interact with funding bodies around community health issues. I think there’s a pretty strong argument for ring fencing the community health team, as their position as an impartial mediator or support person could be compromised by being part of any other org that could potentially be complained about.
At the vary least, I would have thought the head, or top couple of people from the CHT would have no other roles within funding organisations at the least , and perhaps no other official roles at all in wider EA due to potential COI.
The exception IMO would be that I would personally like the CHT to be part higher level boards like perhaps CEA, and also be involved “EA direction” meetings, where I think the value they could add would be higher than potential conflicts of interest (which would still be present)
Again though I might be missing something obvious here, as I’m not involved in any of this.
All else equal, I have an extremely strong preference to avoid recommending funding to people who CH suspects with high probability to have committed sexual assault, or are violent, or abuse EA resources/power for personal gain, or are terrible to their employees, etc.
I think funding is one of the very few levers EAs in practice have to enforce basic decency norms (others include public declarations of norms, stern talking-tos, Forum bans, bans from CEA events, spreading rumors along whisper networks, public callouts, police reports, etc).
And on a personal level, I’d feel terrible if I knew I repeatedly recommended funding to people who end up being pretty harmful, and I’d feel betrayed if other EAs allowed me to repeatedly make unforced errors in that direction out of a confused sense of propriety.
I’m in general pretty confused about what the community want out of the Community Health team. It seems like people want to hold CH accountable for not taking sufficiently strong actions against problematic actors, and then also hobble what little power they do have. Seems strange to me.
I agree that this is very valuable. I would want them to be explicit about this role, and be clear to community builders talking to them that they should treat them as if talking to a funder.
To be clear, in the cases where I have felt uncomfortable it was not “X is engaging in sketchy behaviour, and we recommend not giving them funding” (my understanding is that this happens fairly often, and I am glad for it. CHT is providing a very valuable function here, which otherwise would be hard to coordinate. If anything, I would want them to be more brazen and ready to recommend against people based on less evidence than they do now).
Is more cases like “CHT staff thinks that this subcommunity would work better without central coordination, and this staff is going to recommend against funding any coordinators going forward” or “CHT is pressuring me to make a certain choice such as not banning a community member I consider problematic, and I am afraid that if I don’t comply I won’t get renewed” (I’ve learned of situations like these happen at least thrice).
It is difficult to orient yourself towards someone who you are not sure whether your should treat as your boss or as neutral third party mediator. This is stressing for community builders.
**Just quickly responding to a few points **
The main way they give input on our grants is by reporting concerns about things we are interested in funding (e.g. red flags “a few people have reported this person making them feel uncomfortable so we’d advise against them doing in-person community building” as I said in my original comment). It sounds to me like we’re aligned on the kind of input com health might be well-placed to give.
Re your example COIs
Hmm, I am a bit confused about which way this goes. Re (1), I could imagine someone having that concern. I don’t think com health staff give us this kind of input so I’m not worried about it in practice but, I could imagine a grantee being worried about this.
Re (2), we don’t pay any of the advisors from com health but I could see a COI if com health team members believed that their reputation was tied to our organisation in some way.
I think that both of these potential COIs are pretty weak (but thank you for flagging them), but I’ll have a think about ways in which we might be able to further mitigate them.
Thanks for the reply
I was interpreting your comment that they had separate advisory roles for orgs like yours outside of the community health sphere, which would be much more problematic.
If their advisory role is around community health issues that makes more sense, It still is a potentially problematic COI, as there is potential to breach confidentiality in that role. For example hope they have permission to share info like “we would advise against them doing in-person community building”, from the people who gave them that info. By default everything shared with community health should (I imagine) be confidential unless the person who shares it explicitly gives permission to pass the info on.
but I agree with you its not as much of a concern, although it requires some care.