Personally if GWWC central closed tomorrow, I expect most of the growth would stop. There would be a remaining constant trickle of members from the website (providing at most linear growth, whereas GWWC has been growing faster than linear, and most members don’t join just from reading the website alone). Initially there would be continued growth from the chapters too, but the numbers would start to shrink. You may get continued growth from the EA community promoting GWWC, but I expect it would be much smaller.
More concretely, GWWC staff right now pursue several channels to growth that wouldn’t happen without them:
Speaking to interested people one-on-one (few join just from written content alone; being made ‘the ask’ is really important)
Fostering chapters (e.g. giving them materials, arranging pledge drives, encouraging them, doing events) - most of this wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Seeking press attention to get new people involved—ditto, mostly wouldn’t happen otherwise.
And there’s lots of other things they could do at the margin to get even more growth e.g. boosting the conversion rate of the website.
Finally, like Michelle says, much of the continued growth there would be if GWWC closed is due to staff efforts in past years (e.g. developing chapters in the first place), so should be included at some point in your evaluation. It would be wrong to just ignore new members from this year who didn’t result from activities by staff this year. Future staff efforts can also be expected to generate members many years into the future.
In this sense, GWWC leverage ratio is a big underestimate of their effectiveness. Past efforts will actually generate a continued stream of members who aren’t being counted.
More concretely, GWWC staff right now pursue several channels to growth that wouldn’t happen without them:
Speaking to interested people one-on-one (few join just from written content alone; being made ‘the ask’ is really important)
Fostering chapters (e.g. giving them materials, arranging pledge drives, encouraging them, doing events) - most of this wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Seeking press attention to get new people involved—ditto, mostly wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Does GWWC have rough estimates of how many members each of these channels lead to? Or could you or other CEA staff hazard a guess, even rough?
Personally if GWWC central closed tomorrow, I expect most of the growth would stop. There would be a remaining constant trickle of members from the website (providing at most linear growth, whereas GWWC has been growing faster than linear, and most members don’t join just from reading the website alone). Initially there would be continued growth from the chapters too, but the numbers would start to shrink. You may get continued growth from the EA community promoting GWWC, but I expect it would be much smaller.
More concretely, GWWC staff right now pursue several channels to growth that wouldn’t happen without them:
Speaking to interested people one-on-one (few join just from written content alone; being made ‘the ask’ is really important)
Fostering chapters (e.g. giving them materials, arranging pledge drives, encouraging them, doing events) - most of this wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Seeking press attention to get new people involved—ditto, mostly wouldn’t happen otherwise.
And there’s lots of other things they could do at the margin to get even more growth e.g. boosting the conversion rate of the website.
Finally, like Michelle says, much of the continued growth there would be if GWWC closed is due to staff efforts in past years (e.g. developing chapters in the first place), so should be included at some point in your evaluation. It would be wrong to just ignore new members from this year who didn’t result from activities by staff this year. Future staff efforts can also be expected to generate members many years into the future.
In this sense, GWWC leverage ratio is a big underestimate of their effectiveness. Past efforts will actually generate a continued stream of members who aren’t being counted.
Does GWWC have rough estimates of how many members each of these channels lead to? Or could you or other CEA staff hazard a guess, even rough?