Is EA growing? A concrete study idea to find out (and a $100 offer for implementation)
The publication of “Doing Good Better” by Will Macaskill
The publication of “The Most Good You Can Do” by Peter Singer
EA Global
GiveWell announcing its new top charities + associated mass media
Giving What We Can’s pledge drive
Google searches for “effective altruism”
Visits to the EA Forum
Amount of posts on the EA Forum
Number of people who have joined the EA Facebook group
Number of posts on the EA Facebook group
Visits to the GWWC website and sign-ups to their newsletter
Number of Giving What We Can pledges
Visits to the GiveWell site and sign-ups to their newsletter
Visits to 80,000 Hours website and sign-ups to their newsletter
Visits to effectivealtruism.org and sign-ups for the EA newsletter
Number of mentions in the press by people unaffiliated by EA
Number of people who have created an EA Profile or put themselves on the map of EAs
Visits to TLYCS website
Signups to TLYCS newsletter
$2 to anyone who suggests an event or variable to look at that I merit is worth considering
$10 to anyone who improves this study design itself in a way that causes me to update this document
$100 to whomever successfully implements this study and publishes the results publicly (though email me at peter@peterhurford.com if you intend to do so, to avoid duplication of effort).
- How many hits does hits-based giving get? A concrete study idea to find out (and a $1500 offer for implementation) by 9 Dec 2016 3:08 UTC; 16 points) (
- Essay contest: general considerations for evaluating small-scale giving opportunities ($300 for winning submission) by 20 Jan 2017 3:57 UTC; 15 points) (
- Effective Altruism Forum web traffic from Google Analytics by 31 Dec 2016 21:23 UTC; 10 points) (
- The Effective Altruism Newsletter & Open Thread – March 2016 Edition by 6 Mar 2016 17:48 UTC; 1 point) (
The main things I’ve noticed at 80k:
We had some very cool people contact us after reading Will’s book, who were potential staff members.
EAG has been useful for finding staff. Mostly because EAO had such a large team in the Bay, they ended up knowing and checking out lots of potential hires who I didn’t already know. The list of applications to EAG was also a little useful.
I think we get slightly more traffic because the EA community promotes us more (e.g. more FB likes of posts because the EA FB group is larger; EA newsletter recommends our posts), but it’s not a big factor in traffic growth.
The student groups helped us get lots of newsletter subs. We got 7-8k at the start of this academic year, vs. 3k last year. (though we also put a bunch more effort into it)
We also get a lot of benefit in being able to introduce new people to members of the community, and my sense is that the quality of the introductions we’re able to make keeps improving.
I’d suggest further factors:
1) Visits to TLYCS website; 2) Signups to their newsletter; 3) Growth of fans on their FB page; 4) Growth of followers on their Twitter profile; 5) Number of people using their Impact Calculator; 6) Number of people taking the TLYCS pledge
1) Visits to GWWC website; 2) Signups to their newsletter; 3) Growth of fans on their FB page; 4) Growth of followers on their Twitter profile
1) Visits to GiveWell website; 2) Signups to their newsletter; 3) Growth of fans on their FB page; 4) Growth of followers on their Twitter profile
80K 1) Growth of fans on their FB page; 2) Growth of followers on their Twitter profile
Number of new EA local groups (LEAN can provide numbers, I’m sure)
Visits to effectivealtruism.org
Signups to EA newsletter
Signups to EA Local newsletter
Unsolicited email contacts sent to EA meta-charities
Donations to top GiveWell-ranked charities
Donations to EA meta-charities
Good idea. I’ll add that.
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I’ll add that too. Is GWWC active on Twitter though? I think visits and newsletter sign-ups are likely good enough.
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Also a good idea. Do you know which FB page they have? Are they active on Twitter? Again, I think visits and newsletter sign-ups are likely good enough.
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My best guess is that these local groups would be driven mainly by LEAN’s activities and less by the growth of the movement as a whole. I’d expect to be an important metric of movement growth but more of a lagging metric or an input rather than an output metric to track.
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Good idea.
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Which newsletter is that?
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This sounds really hard to track.
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My guess is that these would be lagging metrics that would be harder to track in time, but they’d definitely be good things to have on any EA growth dashboard.
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(Let me know if you want me to PayPal you $2 or donate it wherever you wish.)
Here’s the GWWC Twitter: https://twitter.com/givingwhatwecan
Here’s the GiveWell Twitter: https://twitter.com/GiveWell
Here’s the GiveWell FB: https://www.facebook.com/GiveWell.org/?fref=ts
Here’s the link to the EA local newsletter: https://eahub.org/groups/resources/newsletter
Donate to Intentional Insights: http://intentionalinsights.org/view/donate
Emailed you about it—I’m interested. Is anyone else already planning on doing this?
Replied. You’re the first person to offer to do the analysis.
Good idea. I’d also be interested in data on how many meetups and talks EA give in different cities and what impact that has. If more meetups and talks in a city translate into significantly more growth that would seem to be a good reason to put more resources into such activities.
That seems pretty plausible to me but I don’t know how to collect that data. Do you have any ideas?
LEAN is capturing it in our annual questionnaire for group organizers.
Great! What patterns have you spotted so far?
We’ll share the full results soon, including all non-confidential raw data. :)
One approach is to run an experiment. You choose a number of similar cities and then randomly increase the number of meetups and talks in one of them. Then you measure, e.g. whether this translates into more members in the local EA FB group (provided such a group exists), more people at physical meetings, etc. (I’m sure there are other ways to measure this; that’s just off the top of my head.)
Such an experiment could also be used to test the much-discussed idea of whether fast growth is risky. If it turns out that the faster-growing chapters cause problems in some way, that might be a reason to think that the EA movement should not grow fast, or at least that it should not try to grow fast using the method used in the experiment. If, on the other hand, they don’t cause any problems, that is a reason for the movement to try to grow faster. (I favour faster growth, I should add.)
On Meetup you can get data on how many members have joined, how many members have looked at the page in the last three months and how many have said they are going to events.
Do you know if it’s possible to get that data across all EA meetups?
LEAN is capturing it in our annual questionnaire for group organizers, and also our monitoring and evaluation of meetup.com accounts in particular (many of which we provide).
Although certainly not the comprehensive or rigorous information you are looking for, google trends can provide some interesting insights on a broad scale. For example, while effective altruism is showing strong growth in terms of search frequency, it is still searched for 7 times less frequently than Peter Singer: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&q=Effective+altruism,+/m/05xnb&cmpt=q&tz=Etc/GMT%2B8&tz=Etc/GMT%2B8&content=1
May be you could look on translation of main articles into different languages?
Like the rate at which that happens? What kind of data would you envision collecting?