The cost presumably doesn’t include the volunteer time to hand out the pamphlets? I would guess the time cost associated with pamphleting is much more than the time cost associated with online advertising, and that the difference there is even more significant than the pure monetary difference. (Particularly given that it sounds like there was quite a lot of coordination effort, as well as the actual handing out leaflets.)
On the other hand, if someone takes the trouble to go on the website from having been handed a leaflet, they seem plausibly much more likely to take further action than if they just clicked on a link online. Looking into the donations to top charities, as Zach suggests, could be indicative here (though I guess it would be very hard!).
Yeah, one of the main “unmeasurables” of the pilot was how much more of an impression a pamphlet, handed out by a real volunteer, can have on someone over an online add. This goes into the “touchpoint” theory, where it may take multiple exposures to an idea before someone bites; and maybe getting a pamphlet is a much stronger “touchpoint” than seeing an online add. I personally think that getting handed a pamphlet by a non-paid volunteer is a really powerful thing; and that’s the reason that (again personally) I think that it would be great to see someone in the EA movement give a pamphleting program another shot, along the lines I sketched in the lessons learned (branded on EA, including multiple organizations, with a stronger, repeated ask).
We ran cost numbers including volunteer time and pamphlet development expenses, but I decided to ignore those for the final writeup, mainly because; the way we envisioned the program, the leaflets would be handed out on a volunteer basis by college students not paid TLYCS staff; and the cost of developing the pamphlets would amortize to a minimal effect over the lifetime of an ongoing pamphleting program. It’s definitely a debatable decision though.
Thanks for writing this up, very interesting!
The cost presumably doesn’t include the volunteer time to hand out the pamphlets? I would guess the time cost associated with pamphleting is much more than the time cost associated with online advertising, and that the difference there is even more significant than the pure monetary difference. (Particularly given that it sounds like there was quite a lot of coordination effort, as well as the actual handing out leaflets.)
On the other hand, if someone takes the trouble to go on the website from having been handed a leaflet, they seem plausibly much more likely to take further action than if they just clicked on a link online. Looking into the donations to top charities, as Zach suggests, could be indicative here (though I guess it would be very hard!).
Yeah, one of the main “unmeasurables” of the pilot was how much more of an impression a pamphlet, handed out by a real volunteer, can have on someone over an online add. This goes into the “touchpoint” theory, where it may take multiple exposures to an idea before someone bites; and maybe getting a pamphlet is a much stronger “touchpoint” than seeing an online add. I personally think that getting handed a pamphlet by a non-paid volunteer is a really powerful thing; and that’s the reason that (again personally) I think that it would be great to see someone in the EA movement give a pamphleting program another shot, along the lines I sketched in the lessons learned (branded on EA, including multiple organizations, with a stronger, repeated ask).
We ran cost numbers including volunteer time and pamphlet development expenses, but I decided to ignore those for the final writeup, mainly because; the way we envisioned the program, the leaflets would be handed out on a volunteer basis by college students not paid TLYCS staff; and the cost of developing the pamphlets would amortize to a minimal effect over the lifetime of an ongoing pamphleting program. It’s definitely a debatable decision though.