Personally, I see oftw as complementary to existing EA outreach, in particular local EA groups. I think Oftw can be very effective in ‘broadening the funnel’ of engagement with EA and raising money, then a general EA group provides a platform for those who become most engaged in EA, particularly in non-poverty cause areas. I think a OFTW pledge drive can help with engagement too, by giving concrete, tangible actions for members to work on.
In terms of how this works in practice, there are a couple of cases that have taken different approaches here. At Penn, the Oftw groups have operated pretty independently from the penn EA group—they have organised some events together, sometimes join each others’ discussion groups and socials, but the core organisers haven’t overlapped much. They’ve also focused on different populations I think (Oftw on MBA, law students and the broad undergrad body, the EA group focusing more on a smaller group of people very engaged in EA). At HLS, I think Oftw operates more as a ‘project’ of the general EA group, and the core organising team has a lot of overlap. To avoid crowding out or duplicating effort, I think some collaboration is desirable, but I think either of these approaches can work well.
This is correct about HLS. We think that OFTW outreach has generally been a good way to build name recognition for EA—if you ask people what we do, they know about OFTW because it’s a big, very visible effort. I think there’s some risk that they think we’re limited to poverty work (a general EA problem), but I don’t think this is an unavoidable consequence of our partnership with OFTW—it’s because our other programming has so far been less visible.
It’s also a good way for us to stratify our programming (both for our members and for involving non-members) so that we have meaningful interaction with both EA-sympathetic “normal” (i.e., not EA career things) people and career-minded EAs.
Thanks Peter, Josh.
Personally, I see oftw as complementary to existing EA outreach, in particular local EA groups. I think Oftw can be very effective in ‘broadening the funnel’ of engagement with EA and raising money, then a general EA group provides a platform for those who become most engaged in EA, particularly in non-poverty cause areas. I think a OFTW pledge drive can help with engagement too, by giving concrete, tangible actions for members to work on.
In terms of how this works in practice, there are a couple of cases that have taken different approaches here. At Penn, the Oftw groups have operated pretty independently from the penn EA group—they have organised some events together, sometimes join each others’ discussion groups and socials, but the core organisers haven’t overlapped much. They’ve also focused on different populations I think (Oftw on MBA, law students and the broad undergrad body, the EA group focusing more on a smaller group of people very engaged in EA). At HLS, I think Oftw operates more as a ‘project’ of the general EA group, and the core organising team has a lot of overlap. To avoid crowding out or duplicating effort, I think some collaboration is desirable, but I think either of these approaches can work well.
This is correct about HLS. We think that OFTW outreach has generally been a good way to build name recognition for EA—if you ask people what we do, they know about OFTW because it’s a big, very visible effort. I think there’s some risk that they think we’re limited to poverty work (a general EA problem), but I don’t think this is an unavoidable consequence of our partnership with OFTW—it’s because our other programming has so far been less visible.
It’s also a good way for us to stratify our programming (both for our members and for involving non-members) so that we have meaningful interaction with both EA-sympathetic “normal” (i.e., not EA career things) people and career-minded EAs.