Thanks for sharing that. A lot of the above rings true to me, and it is a great summary of all the costs that that a prospective volunteer might not realise. I’ve managed volunteers working on several EA projects, and been a volunteer myself on many EA and non-EA projects. However, I think EA volunteers are on average more reliable and more competent than volunteers in general - (I can think of many possible reasons, but don’t have a good idea what reasons are dominant), and for my projects the volunteers have been remote, which avoids some of the costs. I think volunteer impact could be one of those heavy-tailed distributions. Out of all the volunteers I’ve onboarded, the median volunteer hasn’t provided much if any value, but there are a few volunteers that are gold, and made having volunteers well worth it overall for me. I haven’t yet noticed any pattern that helps me work out in advance who those golden volunteers will be unfortunately!
Thanks for sharing that. A lot of the above rings true to me, and it is a great summary of all the costs that that a prospective volunteer might not realise. I’ve managed volunteers working on several EA projects, and been a volunteer myself on many EA and non-EA projects. However, I think EA volunteers are on average more reliable and more competent than volunteers in general - (I can think of many possible reasons, but don’t have a good idea what reasons are dominant), and for my projects the volunteers have been remote, which avoids some of the costs. I think volunteer impact could be one of those heavy-tailed distributions. Out of all the volunteers I’ve onboarded, the median volunteer hasn’t provided much if any value, but there are a few volunteers that are gold, and made having volunteers well worth it overall for me. I haven’t yet noticed any pattern that helps me work out in advance who those golden volunteers will be unfortunately!