Light musings, I work with Ollie but am sharing personal thoughts only.
I overall feel sympathetic to the argument that folks should consider supporting meta orgs, and I find the “tipping” model interesting! E.g. I liked this post about effective giving :) But I have some pushback.
Take the example of university groups. My model is that groups can change pretty dramatically over time due to organiser turnover. Alumni who think their university group positively impacted their trajectory would almost definitionally be funding an entirely new set of organisers by the time this impact has been realised. I have a strong prior that organiser fit is one of the most important variables in how successful a group is. So in many cases, I think you should model the current EA group at your alma mater as a pretty different project, with a less strong track record than you might think.
I think the above is a specific application of a general problem:
The EA meta ecosystem changes pretty quickly, and smaller projects change more rapidly than large ones
Success stories usually come with pretty long lag times — It takes years for people to change their minds about important questions, decide to take action, and for those decisions to actually cache out into doing good for the world.
By the time someone has gone through this transition, the ecosystem has probably changed enough that the project which first helped them along might not recognizably exist anymore, or new meta projects might have an even greater impact.
I think this all means I’m more sceptical than Ollie that the tipping model is the right approach, even though I agree it has nice qualities :) I expect this idea works better for long standing projects (e.g. city and national groups) that experience less turnover, or meta projects with shorter lag times for impact. I could see myself changing my mind here!
All this is true, but I think alumni groups like I mentioned could actually add as little stability and consistency to the quality of university groups. My parallel could be something like the Oxford or Cambridge Union or a range of university associations or clubs. The management changes every year but they maintain quality and prestige. That model could transfer to EA groups too to some degree, especially once they have gained some pedigree after being active for 15 or 20 years.
There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of “EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won’t”.
I don’t think that’s correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn’t have the capacity to invest in and support a group.
Light musings, I work with Ollie but am sharing personal thoughts only.
I overall feel sympathetic to the argument that folks should consider supporting meta orgs, and I find the “tipping” model interesting! E.g. I liked this post about effective giving :) But I have some pushback.
Take the example of university groups. My model is that groups can change pretty dramatically over time due to organiser turnover. Alumni who think their university group positively impacted their trajectory would almost definitionally be funding an entirely new set of organisers by the time this impact has been realised. I have a strong prior that organiser fit is one of the most important variables in how successful a group is. So in many cases, I think you should model the current EA group at your alma mater as a pretty different project, with a less strong track record than you might think.
I think the above is a specific application of a general problem:
The EA meta ecosystem changes pretty quickly, and smaller projects change more rapidly than large ones
Success stories usually come with pretty long lag times — It takes years for people to change their minds about important questions, decide to take action, and for those decisions to actually cache out into doing good for the world.
By the time someone has gone through this transition, the ecosystem has probably changed enough that the project which first helped them along might not recognizably exist anymore, or new meta projects might have an even greater impact.
I think this all means I’m more sceptical than Ollie that the tipping model is the right approach, even though I agree it has nice qualities :) I expect this idea works better for long standing projects (e.g. city and national groups) that experience less turnover, or meta projects with shorter lag times for impact. I could see myself changing my mind here!
All this is true, but I think alumni groups like I mentioned could actually add as little stability and consistency to the quality of university groups. My parallel could be something like the Oxford or Cambridge Union or a range of university associations or clubs. The management changes every year but they maintain quality and prestige. That model could transfer to EA groups too to some degree, especially once they have gained some pedigree after being active for 15 or 20 years.
Thanks!
There seems to be an assumption here along the lines of “EA funders will continually track the impact of EA university groups and steer them well, while alumni donors won’t”.
I don’t think that’s correct. EA funders are busy and have to make decisions about groups with limited context and information. You might even get alumni donors who care more about the quality of the organisers, the long-term outcomes and operations of the group relative to the EA funder who has many options available, and doesn’t have the capacity to invest in and support a group.
Reading again though, maybe what you mean is “the group that helped you might not be the best group to support any more”. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, your second comment is the message I meant to convey :)