Please know, I am not being critical, just genuinely curious.
“We expect to have a particular emphasis on funding groups aiming to transition from being run by volunteers to being run by full-time, paid organizers.” Why? What more can a paid organizer do?
I’m thinking about myself, and I don’t see how paying me would significantly increase my time related to EA advocacy. For example, I plan to put up college student tailored posters in the academic buildings. After that, speaking to several large lecture halls before class starts (given permission from each prof). Although, in retrospect, I am more of an average joe EA (E2G on the brink of going from the GWWC 1% student minimum to the professional donation, 10%, and investing the rest).
$5k for renting out a facility? $100k for a group for what? A bigger facility? Or is it more like those fancy $500-a-plate dinners? Is there an EA organizer who’s put on a benefit-type dinner before? I mean, I presume that putting on such events need money to start with...
I think the idea is more targeted at groups which try to do more than putting up posters or give EA pitches. Organising high-quality talks, discussion meetups and doing long 1 on 1 conversations (career planning etc.), can be very time-consuming. In our local group, the biggest obstacle to improve further and to develop long-term projects is the fact that everyone has other things to do, like earn money to pay the rent. So in these cases, a grant could enable one or two highly motivated people to focus on EA community building full-time and increase the impact of the group substantially.
It may be that paid organisers simply increases the scale of the things they do already—eg. putting on more discussion groups, talks, workshops etc. though it could also be that having increased capacity enables groups to test promising strategies that they wouldn’t have previously been able to.
One reason for thinking that it should be possible for organisers to increase the scale of their activities (and for this to result in an increase in the value that the group produces) is that even the largest groups seem to reach a fraction of their target audience. If groups aren’t limited by the available target audience, and the grants process means that groups aren’t limited by organiser time or funding, it seems that groups are likely to be able to increase the value they produce.
Please know, I am not being critical, just genuinely curious.
“We expect to have a particular emphasis on funding groups aiming to transition from being run by volunteers to being run by full-time, paid organizers.” Why? What more can a paid organizer do?
I’m thinking about myself, and I don’t see how paying me would significantly increase my time related to EA advocacy. For example, I plan to put up college student tailored posters in the academic buildings. After that, speaking to several large lecture halls before class starts (given permission from each prof). Although, in retrospect, I am more of an average joe EA (E2G on the brink of going from the GWWC 1% student minimum to the professional donation, 10%, and investing the rest).
$5k for renting out a facility? $100k for a group for what? A bigger facility? Or is it more like those fancy $500-a-plate dinners? Is there an EA organizer who’s put on a benefit-type dinner before? I mean, I presume that putting on such events need money to start with...
I think the idea is more targeted at groups which try to do more than putting up posters or give EA pitches. Organising high-quality talks, discussion meetups and doing long 1 on 1 conversations (career planning etc.), can be very time-consuming. In our local group, the biggest obstacle to improve further and to develop long-term projects is the fact that everyone has other things to do, like earn money to pay the rent. So in these cases, a grant could enable one or two highly motivated people to focus on EA community building full-time and increase the impact of the group substantially.
It may be that paid organisers simply increases the scale of the things they do already—eg. putting on more discussion groups, talks, workshops etc. though it could also be that having increased capacity enables groups to test promising strategies that they wouldn’t have previously been able to.
One reason for thinking that it should be possible for organisers to increase the scale of their activities (and for this to result in an increase in the value that the group produces) is that even the largest groups seem to reach a fraction of their target audience. If groups aren’t limited by the available target audience, and the grants process means that groups aren’t limited by organiser time or funding, it seems that groups are likely to be able to increase the value they produce.