Part of the problem is there are not that many volunteer spots – even if this worked, it wouldn’t scale. There are communities and movements that are designed such that there’s lots of volunteer work to be done, such that you can provide 1000 volunteer jobs. But I don’t think EA is one of them.
I’ve heard a few people from orgs express frustration that people come to them wanting to volunteer, but this feels less like the orgs receive a benefit, and more than the org is creating a training program (at cost to themselves) to provide a benefit to the volunteers.
I agree that EA does not have 1000 volunteer jobs. However, here is a list of some possibilities. I know ALLFED could still effectively utilize more volunteers.
My claim is just that “volunteer at an org” is not a scalable action that it makes sense to be a default thing EA groups do in their spare time. This isn’t to say volunteers aren’t valuable, or that many EAs shouldn’t explore that as an option, or that better coordination tools to improve the situation shouldn’t be built.
But I am a bit more pessimistic about it – the last time I checked, many of the times someone had said “huh, it looks like there should be all this free labor available by passionate people, can’t we connect these people with orgs that need volunteers?” and tried to build some kind of tool to help with that, it turned out that most people aren’t actually very good at volunteering, and that it requires something more domain specific and effortful to get anything done.
My impression is that getting volunteers is about has hard as hiring a regular employee (much cheaper in money, but not in time and management attention), and that hiring employees is generally pretty hard.
(Again, not arguing that ALLFED shouldn’t look for volunteers or that EAs shouldn’t volunteer at ALLFED, esp. if my experience doesn’t match yours. I’d encourage anyone reading this who’s looking for projects to give ALLFED volunteering a look.)
The Middle of the Middle of the funnel is specifically people who I expect to not yet be very good at volunteering, in part because they’re either young and lacking some core “figure out how to be helpful and actually help” skills, or they’re older and busier with day jobs that take a lot of the same cognitive bandwidth that EA volunteering would require.
I think the *End* of the Middle of the funnel is more of where “volunteer at EA orgs” makes sense. And people in the Middle of the Middle who think they have the “figure out how to be helpful and help” property should do so if they’re self-motivated to. (If they’re not self motivated they’re probably not a good volunteer)
I’ll take your invitation to treat this as an open thread (I’m not going to EAG).
Why not tackle less ambitious goals?
What goals, though?
How about volunteering for an EA org?
Part of the problem is there are not that many volunteer spots – even if this worked, it wouldn’t scale. There are communities and movements that are designed such that there’s lots of volunteer work to be done, such that you can provide 1000 volunteer jobs. But I don’t think EA is one of them.
I’ve heard a few people from orgs express frustration that people come to them wanting to volunteer, but this feels less like the orgs receive a benefit, and more than the org is creating a training program (at cost to themselves) to provide a benefit to the volunteers.
I agree that EA does not have 1000 volunteer jobs. However, here is a list of some possibilities. I know ALLFED could still effectively utilize more volunteers.
My claim is just that “volunteer at an org” is not a scalable action that it makes sense to be a default thing EA groups do in their spare time. This isn’t to say volunteers aren’t valuable, or that many EAs shouldn’t explore that as an option, or that better coordination tools to improve the situation shouldn’t be built.
But I am a bit more pessimistic about it – the last time I checked, many of the times someone had said “huh, it looks like there should be all this free labor available by passionate people, can’t we connect these people with orgs that need volunteers?” and tried to build some kind of tool to help with that, it turned out that most people aren’t actually very good at volunteering, and that it requires something more domain specific and effortful to get anything done.
My impression is that getting volunteers is about has hard as hiring a regular employee (much cheaper in money, but not in time and management attention), and that hiring employees is generally pretty hard.
(Again, not arguing that ALLFED shouldn’t look for volunteers or that EAs shouldn’t volunteer at ALLFED, esp. if my experience doesn’t match yours. I’d encourage anyone reading this who’s looking for projects to give ALLFED volunteering a look.)
The Middle of the Middle of the funnel is specifically people who I expect to not yet be very good at volunteering, in part because they’re either young and lacking some core “figure out how to be helpful and actually help” skills, or they’re older and busier with day jobs that take a lot of the same cognitive bandwidth that EA volunteering would require.
I think the *End* of the Middle of the funnel is more of where “volunteer at EA orgs” makes sense. And people in the Middle of the Middle who think they have the “figure out how to be helpful and help” property should do so if they’re self-motivated to. (If they’re not self motivated they’re probably not a good volunteer)