Thanks Naomi for this post! I think there’s some good advice here. I think the advice would be more persuasive though and would stick with me more if you cited examples from your personal experiences.
I think you could cite anonymous examples (or to check with the volunteers if they’re willing to have you put potentially de-anonymizing details). It would be good to know of stories of volunteers feeling really good because of the advice here, or feeling really bad because this advice wasn’t implemented yet at the time. Just wanted to give this feedback!
Thank you for the feedback, I hadn’t included examples indeed because of the potential personal details, but I like the suggestion to make them anonymous.
Anecdotally, I encountered the following example the most often*:
“Alice started to organize the global priorities reading club two months ago. The idea for the reading club started during a conversation at the monthly (online) social, where she chatted about an EA forum posts that argued in favor of more global priorities research. Bob mentioned that EA FictitiousExample should do something related to global priorities research and Alice suggested the reading club. Because her conversation partners, Bob and Denise, were excited about the idea, Alice started organizing the club.
However, two months later, Alice is not that excited anymore. The first meetup of the reading club was a success: 10 people showed up and they had an interesting conversation. However, during the second meetup, only 2 people attended and both Bob and Denise had another commitment. The discussion stalled and one participant dominated the conversation with long, not necessarily related, stories. Last week, they had the third meetup and even though Bob and Denise attended and the discussion was alright, two people showed up late and during the last twenty minutes the group mainly discussed the new card game ‘EA against humanity’. At the moment, Alice doesn’t have inspiration for suitable articles for the reading club and started to doubt the goal of the meetups. She doesn’t have much time to think about it anyway, as her exams are starting in two weeks.”
I think that this is a moment when a volunteer often disengages and where certain elements might increase the likelihood of the continuation of Alice’s involvement. Three things a volunteer manager could do here:
Helping Alice to see the importance and meaning of her work by discussing the relation between her reading club and the strategy of the community (or in more general terms: the ‘overall good’ that could be reached). This could be done by, for example, highlighting the bottleneck of global priorities researchers and the reading club being a place for exploring the topic before members would consider changing their career. Another, often quite powerful, method is to let Alice come up with reasons herself.
Helping with accountability and structuring the task. As Alice is busy with her exams, it is easy for her to avoid thinking about the reading club and just focus on her exams. Planning a 1-1 to discuss the club and find out how Alice could be supported could help her. Maybe she never realized that, if she doesn’t have inspiration for new articles to discuss, she could ask Bob and Denise to pick topics for the next meetups.
Showing appreciation for the club and explicitly pointing towards things that were going well.
*This is a fictional example, created from a compilation of conversations I have had.
Thanks Naomi for this post! I think there’s some good advice here. I think the advice would be more persuasive though and would stick with me more if you cited examples from your personal experiences.
I think you could cite anonymous examples (or to check with the volunteers if they’re willing to have you put potentially de-anonymizing details). It would be good to know of stories of volunteers feeling really good because of the advice here, or feeling really bad because this advice wasn’t implemented yet at the time. Just wanted to give this feedback!
Hi Brian,
Thank you for the feedback, I hadn’t included examples indeed because of the potential personal details, but I like the suggestion to make them anonymous.
Anecdotally, I encountered the following example the most often*:
“Alice started to organize the global priorities reading club two months ago. The idea for the reading club started during a conversation at the monthly (online) social, where she chatted about an EA forum posts that argued in favor of more global priorities research. Bob mentioned that EA FictitiousExample should do something related to global priorities research and Alice suggested the reading club. Because her conversation partners, Bob and Denise, were excited about the idea, Alice started organizing the club.
However, two months later, Alice is not that excited anymore. The first meetup of the reading club was a success: 10 people showed up and they had an interesting conversation. However, during the second meetup, only 2 people attended and both Bob and Denise had another commitment. The discussion stalled and one participant dominated the conversation with long, not necessarily related, stories. Last week, they had the third meetup and even though Bob and Denise attended and the discussion was alright, two people showed up late and during the last twenty minutes the group mainly discussed the new card game ‘EA against humanity’. At the moment, Alice doesn’t have inspiration for suitable articles for the reading club and started to doubt the goal of the meetups. She doesn’t have much time to think about it anyway, as her exams are starting in two weeks.”
I think that this is a moment when a volunteer often disengages and where certain elements might increase the likelihood of the continuation of Alice’s involvement. Three things a volunteer manager could do here:
Helping Alice to see the importance and meaning of her work by discussing the relation between her reading club and the strategy of the community (or in more general terms: the ‘overall good’ that could be reached). This could be done by, for example, highlighting the bottleneck of global priorities researchers and the reading club being a place for exploring the topic before members would consider changing their career. Another, often quite powerful, method is to let Alice come up with reasons herself.
Helping with accountability and structuring the task. As Alice is busy with her exams, it is easy for her to avoid thinking about the reading club and just focus on her exams. Planning a 1-1 to discuss the club and find out how Alice could be supported could help her. Maybe she never realized that, if she doesn’t have inspiration for new articles to discuss, she could ask Bob and Denise to pick topics for the next meetups.
Showing appreciation for the club and explicitly pointing towards things that were going well.
*This is a fictional example, created from a compilation of conversations I have had.