One quick thought: those retreats seem extraordinarily expensive. EA Netherlands has organised four retreats since February last year. I haven’t checked the most recent one but, of the first three, the most expensive had a cost per person of EUR 260 (not including the cost of EA Netherlands spending time organising it). Granted, they were short retreats (arrive late on the Friday, leave Sunday afternoon before the evening meal), but it would be interesting to see how they compare to the events you looked at on the outcome measures you specified.
For example, for our ‘raw’ average number of connections, across all four retreats the figure is 4.6. So that’s approx 35% less than the EAGx events you looked at, and 30% less than the retreats you looked at, but our most expensive retreat cost approximately 80% less per person than the average CEP retreat.
I agree the retreats I looked at were on the more expensive end because of some travel grants because they were longer, as were the EAGx events (which means you should also expect the EAGx costs to go down). I think some recent EAGx events might come close to that cost-per-person.
I think another reasonable takeaway from this is “keep retreats cheap”, and perhaps I should’ve included that.
I want to chip in that several years ago it was very normal for retreat participants to chip in on the cost of the retreats. I think this is pretty normal in comparison settings (ie: student group retreats for clubs in the US) and would be excited about more groups doing a bit more of this (not necessarily all of them but I think this isn’t in the option space of some group organizers right now and should be). I think this gives participants a bit more stake in the retreat going well but that is not super evidence-based.
It is also, always possible to offer subsidies/financial assistance for anyone who might find the cost prohibitive. Although, it seems important to make it very easy and nonawkward for them to flag if they need assistance (ie: in the signup form explicitly say that people are in very different financial situations and you expect some people to need this.)
Yes good point! We haven’t done this yet (apart from the fact we expect participants to cover their own travel costs (easily done in NL with good public transport)) BUT for our ‘EA professionals’ retreat last autumn we did ask people to give an indication of how much they’d be willing to pay. I’ve included the results below.
And to give an idea of the respondents, here’s some more data:
Thanks for publishing this! Very helpful.
One quick thought: those retreats seem extraordinarily expensive. EA Netherlands has organised four retreats since February last year. I haven’t checked the most recent one but, of the first three, the most expensive had a cost per person of EUR 260 (not including the cost of EA Netherlands spending time organising it). Granted, they were short retreats (arrive late on the Friday, leave Sunday afternoon before the evening meal), but it would be interesting to see how they compare to the events you looked at on the outcome measures you specified.
For example, for our ‘raw’ average number of connections, across all four retreats the figure is 4.6. So that’s approx 35% less than the EAGx events you looked at, and 30% less than the retreats you looked at, but our most expensive retreat cost approximately 80% less per person than the average CEP retreat.
Thanks!
I agree the retreats I looked at were on the more expensive end because of some travel grants because they were longer, as were the EAGx events (which means you should also expect the EAGx costs to go down). I think some recent EAGx events might come close to that cost-per-person.
I think another reasonable takeaway from this is “keep retreats cheap”, and perhaps I should’ve included that.
I want to chip in that several years ago it was very normal for retreat participants to chip in on the cost of the retreats. I think this is pretty normal in comparison settings (ie: student group retreats for clubs in the US) and would be excited about more groups doing a bit more of this (not necessarily all of them but I think this isn’t in the option space of some group organizers right now and should be). I think this gives participants a bit more stake in the retreat going well but that is not super evidence-based.
It is also, always possible to offer subsidies/financial assistance for anyone who might find the cost prohibitive. Although, it seems important to make it very easy and nonawkward for them to flag if they need assistance (ie: in the signup form explicitly say that people are in very different financial situations and you expect some people to need this.)
Yes good point! We haven’t done this yet (apart from the fact we expect participants to cover their own travel costs (easily done in NL with good public transport)) BUT for our ‘EA professionals’ retreat last autumn we did ask people to give an indication of how much they’d be willing to pay. I’ve included the results below.
And to give an idea of the respondents, here’s some more data:
Thanks for sharing this, James!