Thanks a lot for writing this Haven and for the kind Hive shout out!
I see where you are coming from. When I started at Veganuary in my early twenties, it was my first online only job and it felt pretty surreal. Meeting with my colleagues once a month felt amazing, and we even did a few actions in person in London which was great. Apart from my personal experience, I also get that in-person movement building is valuable overall.
Having said that, as a non-profit founder, all I want is realiable hard-working people who are agentic, coachable and get things done for the work we need to get done right now. I feel like we still don’t have enough vetted people who someone can vouch for: really skilled generalists who get great work done on time. Some non-profits are ok with scrappy generalists, but some will need experience.
A hybrid of your approach (that could be logistically easier to implement) could be (for example): running a hiring round to select highly agentic and motivated scrappy generalist students, placing them in a non-profit that needs them to work online (because that’s where most of the work is), and then placing them in hubs for socialising in the movement and participating in the actions that are happening. They could take on a lead role in organising protests/Revolutionist nights and the like, while they are in the hub, while working 9-5 in an effective online charity. They don’t necessarily need to switch hubs due to cost and inconvenience.
A failure mode of this approach still is that there are probably people who are not graduates and have more experience, and will be more valuable to the non-profits.
>>A hybrid of your approach (that could be logistically easier to implement) could be (for example): running a hiring round to select highly agentic and motivated scrappy generalist students, placing them in a non-profit that needs them to work online (because that’s where most of the work is), and then placing them in hubs for socialising in the movement and participating in the actions that are happening. They could take on a lead role in organising protests/Revolutionist nights and the like, while they are in the hub, while working 9-5 in an effective online charity. They don’t necessarily need to switch hubs due to cost and inconvenience.
I like this suggestion! Also seems like a good way to MVP this idea more. Let’s think more about this
Thanks a lot for writing this Haven and for the kind Hive shout out!
I see where you are coming from. When I started at Veganuary in my early twenties, it was my first online only job and it felt pretty surreal. Meeting with my colleagues once a month felt amazing, and we even did a few actions in person in London which was great. Apart from my personal experience, I also get that in-person movement building is valuable overall.
Having said that, as a non-profit founder, all I want is realiable hard-working people who are agentic, coachable and get things done for the work we need to get done right now. I feel like we still don’t have enough vetted people who someone can vouch for: really skilled generalists who get great work done on time. Some non-profits are ok with scrappy generalists, but some will need experience.
A hybrid of your approach (that could be logistically easier to implement) could be (for example): running a hiring round to select highly agentic and motivated scrappy generalist students, placing them in a non-profit that needs them to work online (because that’s where most of the work is), and then placing them in hubs for socialising in the movement and participating in the actions that are happening. They could take on a lead role in organising protests/Revolutionist nights and the like, while they are in the hub, while working 9-5 in an effective online charity. They don’t necessarily need to switch hubs due to cost and inconvenience.
A failure mode of this approach still is that there are probably people who are not graduates and have more experience, and will be more valuable to the non-profits.
>>A hybrid of your approach (that could be logistically easier to implement) could be (for example): running a hiring round to select highly agentic and motivated scrappy generalist students, placing them in a non-profit that needs them to work online (because that’s where most of the work is), and then placing them in hubs for socialising in the movement and participating in the actions that are happening. They could take on a lead role in organising protests/Revolutionist nights and the like, while they are in the hub, while working 9-5 in an effective online charity. They don’t necessarily need to switch hubs due to cost and inconvenience.
I like this suggestion! Also seems like a good way to MVP this idea more. Let’s think more about this