RP and others offering incubation support and grants might also help. The EA infrastructure fund drive probably helps but most people still don’t know much about how to set up and run an organisation. I think that charity entrepreneurship has a good model to learn from in that regard. You get in, you learn, then if it goes well you will usually get funded. [emphasis added]
Actually, this makes me think, maybe it would be great if Charity Entrepreneurship’s next “round” was focused on EA consultancies, rather than on a particular cause area? Their usual process seems potentially well-suited to this; they can survey relevant stakeholders regarding what needs exist and what might be best for filling them, do some additional shallow investigation of various ideas like those listed in Luke’s post, then attract people and help them set these things up.
At first glance, it seems at least plausible that:
an EA funder would be happy to fund this whole process
this process would result in, say, ~3 orgs that will provide a fair amount of value at good cost-effectiveness for at least 2 years, & 1 org that might eventually grow up to be something kinda like RP.
Maybe I’ll contact CE to see what they think. I’d also be interested to hear if anyone thinks this would be a bad idea for some reason.
(I also think people applying to EA Funds, trying to learn from or get advice from RP, and/or trying to get funding and support in other ways would be good. But I agree that this won’t always be “enough”.)
Edit: Someone downvoted this, which seems reasonable if they mean to say “I do think that this would be a bad idea”, but then I’d be quite interested to hear why they think so.
I really like this idea, as you might have guessed. The best solution of all probably involves RP working in collaboration with CE where you merge RP’s experience of consulting for EA orgs with CE’s ability for training up new people to set up organisations. I think that RP could also think about how to i) get more people in to learn about their processes and ii) how to support those people to take that knowledge and found new research organisation that focus on different regions, topics or methods but can keep much of the prior learning
Actually, this makes me think, maybe it would be great if Charity Entrepreneurship’s next “round” was focused on EA consultancies, rather than on a particular cause area? Their usual process seems potentially well-suited to this; they can survey relevant stakeholders regarding what needs exist and what might be best for filling them, do some additional shallow investigation of various ideas like those listed in Luke’s post, then attract people and help them set these things up.
At first glance, it seems at least plausible that:
an EA funder would be happy to fund this whole process
this process would result in, say, ~3 orgs that will provide a fair amount of value at good cost-effectiveness for at least 2 years, & 1 org that might eventually grow up to be something kinda like RP.
Maybe I’ll contact CE to see what they think. I’d also be interested to hear if anyone thinks this would be a bad idea for some reason.
(I also think people applying to EA Funds, trying to learn from or get advice from RP, and/or trying to get funding and support in other ways would be good. But I agree that this won’t always be “enough”.)
Edit: Someone downvoted this, which seems reasonable if they mean to say “I do think that this would be a bad idea”, but then I’d be quite interested to hear why they think so.
I really like this idea, as you might have guessed. The best solution of all probably involves RP working in collaboration with CE where you merge RP’s experience of consulting for EA orgs with CE’s ability for training up new people to set up organisations. I think that RP could also think about how to i) get more people in to learn about their processes and ii) how to support those people to take that knowledge and found new research organisation that focus on different regions, topics or methods but can keep much of the prior learning
.