Random idea on the random idea: such an event (or indeed similar social opportunities for ETGers) could charge for participation and aim to fully cover costs, or even make a profit that gets donated.
EtGers have money they want to give away, and this is clearly a service that should be supporting them to address a need they have --> they should be willing to pay for it.
Also, if the service just focused on providing EtGers with fun, social connections, and a great community rather than ‘overfitting’ to what seems directly relevant to impact, I think it might be easier to make it successful and grow it. But then a bunch of the money would be spent on things that are quite disconnected from impact, and arguably shouldn’t be funded by Open Philanthropy, EAIF etc and would be better coming from EtGers personal/social/fun budgets rather than out of their donations.
Arguments against:
separate fuzzies and utilons… This might be blurring the boundaries and making it hard to optimise for either, or making it confusing for EtGers whether they should see it as a donation or not.
EtGers might underestimate the benefits of investing in themselves in this way (in the same way people often underinvest in their own mental health, productivity systems, etc) and offering it free or subsidised might better set incentives that accurately represent its value.
Random idea on the random idea: such an event (or indeed similar social opportunities for ETGers) could charge for participation and aim to fully cover costs, or even make a profit that gets donated.
EtGers have money they want to give away, and this is clearly a service that should be supporting them to address a need they have --> they should be willing to pay for it.
Also, if the service just focused on providing EtGers with fun, social connections, and a great community rather than ‘overfitting’ to what seems directly relevant to impact, I think it might be easier to make it successful and grow it. But then a bunch of the money would be spent on things that are quite disconnected from impact, and arguably shouldn’t be funded by Open Philanthropy, EAIF etc and would be better coming from EtGers personal/social/fun budgets rather than out of their donations.
Arguments against:
separate fuzzies and utilons… This might be blurring the boundaries and making it hard to optimise for either, or making it confusing for EtGers whether they should see it as a donation or not.
EtGers might underestimate the benefits of investing in themselves in this way (in the same way people often underinvest in their own mental health, productivity systems, etc) and offering it free or subsidised might better set incentives that accurately represent its value.