This is not a massive scale change, but it is something that can have a large effect nonetheless in my opinion.
I am currently a co-president of an EA club, and from my experience it seems every EA club has to start from scratch and figure most things out for themselves.
It would be very useful if there was some centralized repository of best practices for EA clubs that you could follow for optimal engagement/effect. Some specific areas I’m thinking about are meeting topics, organizational structure, EA speakers, etc...
One great initiative is the virtual EA programs that we can direct students to for a vetted curriculum.
This centralization would also be useful for other clubs that are trying to make some topic popular.
Have you had any support calls with CEA’s groups team and/or referenced the resources on the EA Hub? They have a large repository of best practices, a big speaker database, etc.
Clubs mostly had to start from scratch ~5 years ago, but these days, there’s so much more collective experience that you should be able to find good advice on just about anything.
One thing I could imagine being very helpful is some kind of ongoing local group “mentoring”. So instead of one or two single calls on strategy or bottlenecks, having some experienced person more deeply invested with any particular local group in need. Somebody who might (occasionally) participate at our virtual meetups, our planning/strategy calls, gets to know our core members, our situation, needs and problems, and can provide actionable insights on all of them.
The problem with calls I’ve had in the past is that it’s quite difficult to get accross everything relevant, so we might just focus on one or two issues, obtain some pointers to other people or resources who might be helpful, and some relatively generic advice. Not to say it isn’t useful—but it also doesn’t seem to be like a complete solution. I’ve also read most of the EA Hub resources on running a group, but tend to come out of these articles thinking “yup this makes sense” and not actually turning it into anything concrete. Which, again, is probably entirely my responsibility. But I could imagine I’m not the only time/energy constrained local group coordinator struggling with properly utilizing the existing resources.
On the other hand, such more involved support over longer time of course also comes with significantly higher cost, and I can’t tell whether that would be worth it.
This is not a massive scale change, but it is something that can have a large effect nonetheless in my opinion.
I am currently a co-president of an EA club, and from my experience it seems every EA club has to start from scratch and figure most things out for themselves.
It would be very useful if there was some centralized repository of best practices for EA clubs that you could follow for optimal engagement/effect. Some specific areas I’m thinking about are meeting topics, organizational structure, EA speakers, etc...
One great initiative is the virtual EA programs that we can direct students to for a vetted curriculum.
This centralization would also be useful for other clubs that are trying to make some topic popular.
Have you had any support calls with CEA’s groups team and/or referenced the resources on the EA Hub? They have a large repository of best practices, a big speaker database, etc.
Clubs mostly had to start from scratch ~5 years ago, but these days, there’s so much more collective experience that you should be able to find good advice on just about anything.
One thing I could imagine being very helpful is some kind of ongoing local group “mentoring”. So instead of one or two single calls on strategy or bottlenecks, having some experienced person more deeply invested with any particular local group in need. Somebody who might (occasionally) participate at our virtual meetups, our planning/strategy calls, gets to know our core members, our situation, needs and problems, and can provide actionable insights on all of them.
The problem with calls I’ve had in the past is that it’s quite difficult to get accross everything relevant, so we might just focus on one or two issues, obtain some pointers to other people or resources who might be helpful, and some relatively generic advice. Not to say it isn’t useful—but it also doesn’t seem to be like a complete solution. I’ve also read most of the EA Hub resources on running a group, but tend to come out of these articles thinking “yup this makes sense” and not actually turning it into anything concrete. Which, again, is probably entirely my responsibility. But I could imagine I’m not the only time/energy constrained local group coordinator struggling with properly utilizing the existing resources.
On the other hand, such more involved support over longer time of course also comes with significantly higher cost, and I can’t tell whether that would be worth it.