My guess is that the downsides of paid organizing would be diminished to the extent that the structure and compensation somewhat closely tracked typical university-student employment. I didn’t see anything in the UK report about what typical rates might be, but at least back in my day most students were at fairly low hourly rates. Also, paying people for fewer than (say) 8-10 hours per week would not come across to me as roughly replacement income for foregone typical university-student employment because I don’t think such employment is typically available in smaller amounts. [Confidence: low, I am somewhat older by EA standards.]
I believe an important piece of information here is that Open Phil did not provide funding for organizers spending less than 10 h/week organizing their groups (or at least that was the case when I was applying for funding), so I suppose most of the funded students were probably working on the topic a bit more than that (this is a guess, though)
It looks like they do, or at least did, allow funding for <10 hr/week:
“Group leaders may ask for funding for organizers working less than 10 hours per week using either form above, rather than having those organizers fill out a separate application.”
My guess is that the downsides of paid organizing would be diminished to the extent that the structure and compensation somewhat closely tracked typical university-student employment. I didn’t see anything in the UK report about what typical rates might be, but at least back in my day most students were at fairly low hourly rates. Also, paying people for fewer than (say) 8-10 hours per week would not come across to me as roughly replacement income for foregone typical university-student employment because I don’t think such employment is typically available in smaller amounts. [Confidence: low, I am somewhat older by EA standards.]
I believe an important piece of information here is that Open Phil did not provide funding for organizers spending less than 10 h/week organizing their groups (or at least that was the case when I was applying for funding), so I suppose most of the funded students were probably working on the topic a bit more than that (this is a guess, though)
It looks like they do, or at least did, allow funding for <10 hr/week:
“Group leaders may ask for funding for organizers working less than 10 hours per week using either form above, rather than having those organizers fill out a separate application.”
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/open-philanthropy-university-organizer-fellowship/