I appreciate how this post adds dimension to community building, and I think the four examples you used are solid examples of each approach. I’m not sure what numbers I’d put on each area as current or ideal numbers, but I do have some other thoughts.
I think it’s a little hard to distinguish between movement support and field building in many community building cases. When someone in a university group decides to earn to give instead of researching global priorities, does that put them in movement support instead of the field? To what extent do they need to be involved in evaluating their giving to count as being part of the field? And when a group runs an intro fellowship, is that movement support or field building?
I’m still very excited about network development and wouldn’t change its fraction of the portfolio. I personally tend to get a lot of value out of meeting other people within EA and understanding EA orgs better. Networks facilitate field building and movement support. I’m also less excited about promoting the uptake of our practices by outside organizations. I think we’re at a pretty low percentage and should stay there. A project or two like this would be great, but I don’t think we need enough of it to round away from 5%, mostly because of tractability concerns. These projects are also supported by field building work.
Distinguishing between approaches at the level of the individual
I think it gets a little tricky at the level of the individual. But with your specific example, I’d classify an E2G individual on the basis of what they give to. If they give to HLI or GPI I’d say they’re field building. If they give to CEA I’d say they’re doing movement support and network development.
If they just give to AMF or whatever, i.e., an org doing ‘direct work’, I’d say they aren’t strictly speaking contributing to the specific social change EA is aiming for, viz., increasing the extent to which people use reason and evidence when trying to do good. And so I wouldn’t use the classification system I’ve laid out in this post to describe them.[1]
But that isn’t to say they aren’t an EA. I wouldn’t say you need to be pushing for the increased use of evidence of reason when doing good to be an EA, you just need to be adopting the approach yourself.
What does running an intro fellowship count as?
Based on little more than vibes, I’d describe running an intro fellowship as movement support rather than field building. This is because it isn’t directly pushing EA forward as a research field, nor is it providing a professional level of training for future researchers. It also fits quite well into this system for measuring the progress of social (protest) movements (see page 60).
Why I think movement support and promoting the uptake of practices is currently more valuable than networking
Yes for sure networking is important, I get a lot of value from it too, but when I’m talking with other EAs I often find myself saying/thinking, “Have you thought about asking someone who isn’t an EA for their opinion on this?”, and that to me is an indicator we spend too much time talking to each other. I also think there are lots of people who would benefit the EA movement who are not currently part of it, particularly people beyond the anglosphere and Europe.
Given these two beliefs, I think we should use more of our limited ‘social change budget’ on getting more people involved. This would also grow the pie, allowing us to do more of all the other stuff. To be more specific, I think we should massively scale up the intro fellowship. In 2021 we had about 60 people complete it in NL, in 2022 it was around 400. I think we should aim for thousands.
Re promoting the uptake of practices, personally, I’ve updated positively on this after seeing how often CE recommends interventions of this type (and the subsequent successes of its incubatees, e.g., LEEP).
For what it’s worth, I’d describe them as field building in the field of global health and development (with the social change being aimed for being something like: “improve the health and wellbeing of populations, particularly in low and middle-income countries”).
I quite like how you distinguish approaches at the individual level! I think focusing on which area they support makes sense. One lingering question I have is the relative value a donor’s donations vs. the value of their contribution toward building a culture of effective giving. I also think it’s at least somewhat common for people to get into other areas of EA after starting out in effective giving.
Agreed on the intro fellowship point as well! Long-term it supports field-building since plenty of participants filter through, but it’s more directly movement support.
I’m a little less sure on the networking point. I notice that because I’m exploring lots of EA-related areas in relatively low depth, I haven’t hit diminishing returns from talking to people in the community. I do imagine that people who have committed more strongly to an area would get more value from exploring more. I do agree that lots of people outside the traditional EA geographical areas could do fantastic work. Enabling this doesn’t seem very resource-intensive though. I would guess that EA Virtual Programs is relatively cheap, and it allows anyone to get started in EA. Maybe you’d like to see more traditional local groups, though, which would be more costly but could make sense.
I think the uptake of practices category can be separated into two areas. Area one would be promoting the uptake of EA-style thinking in existing foundations and the other work you list under “How I would describe EA’s current approach to social change”. Area two would be pushing for the implementation of policies that have come out of EA research in existing organizations, which is what LEEP and lots of animal welfare orgs do (and I suppose more biosecurity and AI people are getting into the regulatory space as well now). I only question the tractability of area one work, area two work seems to be going quite well! The main challenge in that domain is making sure the policy recommendations are good.
Ah that’s a very good point about the uptake of practices. I think when I wrote that I had area two in mind much more than area one, but I definitely didn’t make that clear. I’ll edit it :)
I appreciate how this post adds dimension to community building, and I think the four examples you used are solid examples of each approach. I’m not sure what numbers I’d put on each area as current or ideal numbers, but I do have some other thoughts.
I think it’s a little hard to distinguish between movement support and field building in many community building cases. When someone in a university group decides to earn to give instead of researching global priorities, does that put them in movement support instead of the field? To what extent do they need to be involved in evaluating their giving to count as being part of the field? And when a group runs an intro fellowship, is that movement support or field building?
I’m still very excited about network development and wouldn’t change its fraction of the portfolio. I personally tend to get a lot of value out of meeting other people within EA and understanding EA orgs better. Networks facilitate field building and movement support. I’m also less excited about promoting the uptake of our practices by outside organizations. I think we’re at a pretty low percentage and should stay there. A project or two like this would be great, but I don’t think we need enough of it to round away from 5%, mostly because of tractability concerns. These projects are also supported by field building work.
Thanks for the post!
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Distinguishing between approaches at the level of the individual
I think it gets a little tricky at the level of the individual. But with your specific example, I’d classify an E2G individual on the basis of what they give to. If they give to HLI or GPI I’d say they’re field building. If they give to CEA I’d say they’re doing movement support and network development.
If they just give to AMF or whatever, i.e., an org doing ‘direct work’, I’d say they aren’t strictly speaking contributing to the specific social change EA is aiming for, viz., increasing the extent to which people use reason and evidence when trying to do good. And so I wouldn’t use the classification system I’ve laid out in this post to describe them.[1]
But that isn’t to say they aren’t an EA. I wouldn’t say you need to be pushing for the increased use of evidence of reason when doing good to be an EA, you just need to be adopting the approach yourself.
What does running an intro fellowship count as?
Based on little more than vibes, I’d describe running an intro fellowship as movement support rather than field building. This is because it isn’t directly pushing EA forward as a research field, nor is it providing a professional level of training for future researchers. It also fits quite well into this system for measuring the progress of social (protest) movements (see page 60).
Why I think movement support and promoting the uptake of practices is currently more valuable than networking
Yes for sure networking is important, I get a lot of value from it too, but when I’m talking with other EAs I often find myself saying/thinking, “Have you thought about asking someone who isn’t an EA for their opinion on this?”, and that to me is an indicator we spend too much time talking to each other. I also think there are lots of people who would benefit the EA movement who are not currently part of it, particularly people beyond the anglosphere and Europe.
Given these two beliefs, I think we should use more of our limited ‘social change budget’ on getting more people involved. This would also grow the pie, allowing us to do more of all the other stuff. To be more specific, I think we should massively scale up the intro fellowship. In 2021 we had about 60 people complete it in NL, in 2022 it was around 400. I think we should aim for thousands.
Re promoting the uptake of practices, personally, I’ve updated positively on this after seeing how often CE recommends interventions of this type (and the subsequent successes of its incubatees, e.g., LEEP).
Thanks again for your comment!
For what it’s worth, I’d describe them as field building in the field of global health and development (with the social change being aimed for being something like: “improve the health and wellbeing of populations, particularly in low and middle-income countries”).
I quite like how you distinguish approaches at the individual level! I think focusing on which area they support makes sense. One lingering question I have is the relative value a donor’s donations vs. the value of their contribution toward building a culture of effective giving. I also think it’s at least somewhat common for people to get into other areas of EA after starting out in effective giving.
Agreed on the intro fellowship point as well! Long-term it supports field-building since plenty of participants filter through, but it’s more directly movement support.
I’m a little less sure on the networking point. I notice that because I’m exploring lots of EA-related areas in relatively low depth, I haven’t hit diminishing returns from talking to people in the community. I do imagine that people who have committed more strongly to an area would get more value from exploring more. I do agree that lots of people outside the traditional EA geographical areas could do fantastic work. Enabling this doesn’t seem very resource-intensive though. I would guess that EA Virtual Programs is relatively cheap, and it allows anyone to get started in EA. Maybe you’d like to see more traditional local groups, though, which would be more costly but could make sense.
I think the uptake of practices category can be separated into two areas. Area one would be promoting the uptake of EA-style thinking in existing foundations and the other work you list under “How I would describe EA’s current approach to social change”. Area two would be pushing for the implementation of policies that have come out of EA research in existing organizations, which is what LEEP and lots of animal welfare orgs do (and I suppose more biosecurity and AI people are getting into the regulatory space as well now). I only question the tractability of area one work, area two work seems to be going quite well! The main challenge in that domain is making sure the policy recommendations are good.
Thank you for the detailed response!
Ah that’s a very good point about the uptake of practices. I think when I wrote that I had area two in mind much more than area one, but I definitely didn’t make that clear. I’ll edit it :)