I’m cross posting answers to some questions on the EA group organisers Facebook group below:
Have you found this to be significantly more successful than the 1% student version of GWWC?
In my personal experience, in terms of number of pledges, I would say yes. I’ve helped run Gwwc groups in Oxford (2011-2012) and Penn (2014-2017) and over those years I think we probably ‘caused’ 10-20 Gwwc pledges at Penn and <10 in my year at Oxford. The most established Oftw chapters seem capable of bringing in ~60-100+ each year. This compares favourably to the Gwwc groups I’ve been involved with, but probably not the most successful ones (eg Cambridge generated a huge number of Gwwc pledges through its pledge drive ~2.5(?) years ago). We also have some less established oftw chapters yet to hit those numbers.
In terms of deeper engagement with EA, I think a more general EA local group likely does a better job than a OFTW chapter on average. But overall I see the two approaches as complementary—Oftw to ‘broaden the funnel’ of engagement with EA and raise money, then a general EA group 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.
Do you ever see people increase their pledge from 1%? Or do you see people feeling content with only 1%?
We haven’t seen many people increasing their donation past 1% so far, and have found this default pretty sticky. In the last year, we’ve emphasised the at least 1% messaging more, and changed defaults in our sign up page to include 2% options. We’ve also started experimenting with ‘upselling’ some of our more engaged members to higher amounts, but our first attempts didn’t yield much. Overall, this is an area (and donor engagement more generally) that we haven’t done much with so far, and are hoping to improve a lot on now we have more capacity.
I’m cross posting answers to some questions on the EA group organisers Facebook group below:
In my personal experience, in terms of number of pledges, I would say yes. I’ve helped run Gwwc groups in Oxford (2011-2012) and Penn (2014-2017) and over those years I think we probably ‘caused’ 10-20 Gwwc pledges at Penn and <10 in my year at Oxford. The most established Oftw chapters seem capable of bringing in ~60-100+ each year. This compares favourably to the Gwwc groups I’ve been involved with, but probably not the most successful ones (eg Cambridge generated a huge number of Gwwc pledges through its pledge drive ~2.5(?) years ago). We also have some less established oftw chapters yet to hit those numbers.
In terms of deeper engagement with EA, I think a more general EA local group likely does a better job than a OFTW chapter on average. But overall I see the two approaches as complementary—Oftw to ‘broaden the funnel’ of engagement with EA and raise money, then a general EA group 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.
We haven’t seen many people increasing their donation past 1% so far, and have found this default pretty sticky. In the last year, we’ve emphasised the at least 1% messaging more, and changed defaults in our sign up page to include 2% options. We’ve also started experimenting with ‘upselling’ some of our more engaged members to higher amounts, but our first attempts didn’t yield much. Overall, this is an area (and donor engagement more generally) that we haven’t done much with so far, and are hoping to improve a lot on now we have more capacity.