I would love to see more EA’s succeed as entrepreneurs so that we’re less reliant on OpenPhilanthropy, not only so that we have more money, but also to balance out OpenPhilanthropy’s influence.
I would recommend that individuals are only allowed to hold leadership, board or governance positions in one EA organisation each.
I would heavily bet on this leading to worse governance as it would mean you couldn’t recruit someone who was demonstrating their competence by leading an EA organisation well to your board. And having such a person on your board could be of great assistance, especially for a new org.
One specific thing I appreciate about GiveWell is the policy that no one donor can fund more than 20% of their operating expenses. I think there is a particular need for certain work to be broadly funded; generally, that work is at places like GiveWell, RP, ACE, etc. and will have an significant influence on what else gets funded / gets done.
There’s probably a happy medium between a hard one-organization limit and having no rules on multiple board service / board overlap.
I’m actually not convinced that we need a policy here, especially since people have very limited time and I suspect if someone is on like 12 different boards then they will have very little influence at each org because they’re spreading their time so thin. But I don’t have board experience, so I could be wrong here.
We consider CEOs of large companies as being capable of steering the whole company for better or worse, and they can have far more staff and decision-making requirements than the whole EA nonprofit world combined.
If someone is on so many boards that they have minimal influence at each, that is an independent reason to limit their service and ask someone else to serve. I’m really impressed, for instance, by RP’s open call for board member applications.
I’m more concerned about someone being on the board / in leadership of 3-4 particularly important organizations than in 12.
To be fair to OpenPhil, it’s common to have a major donor in a board seat as a means of providing transparency/accountability to that donor...
I would have thought that board experience at a non-EA org would be very similar to board experience at an EA org, but interested to hear why this may not be the case.
I would love to see more EA’s succeed as entrepreneurs so that we’re less reliant on OpenPhilanthropy, not only so that we have more money, but also to balance out OpenPhilanthropy’s influence.
I would heavily bet on this leading to worse governance as it would mean you couldn’t recruit someone who was demonstrating their competence by leading an EA organisation well to your board. And having such a person on your board could be of great assistance, especially for a new org.
One specific thing I appreciate about GiveWell is the policy that no one donor can fund more than 20% of their operating expenses. I think there is a particular need for certain work to be broadly funded; generally, that work is at places like GiveWell, RP, ACE, etc. and will have an significant influence on what else gets funded / gets done.
There’s probably a happy medium between a hard one-organization limit and having no rules on multiple board service / board overlap.
I’m actually not convinced that we need a policy here, especially since people have very limited time and I suspect if someone is on like 12 different boards then they will have very little influence at each org because they’re spreading their time so thin. But I don’t have board experience, so I could be wrong here.
We consider CEOs of large companies as being capable of steering the whole company for better or worse, and they can have far more staff and decision-making requirements than the whole EA nonprofit world combined.
If someone is on so many boards that they have minimal influence at each, that is an independent reason to limit their service and ask someone else to serve. I’m really impressed, for instance, by RP’s open call for board member applications.
I’m more concerned about someone being on the board / in leadership of 3-4 particularly important organizations than in 12.
To be fair to OpenPhil, it’s common to have a major donor in a board seat as a means of providing transparency/accountability to that donor...
Thanks for your comment!
I would have thought that board experience at a non-EA org would be very similar to board experience at an EA org, but interested to hear why this may not be the case.
I think you mean “more money”
Thanks, corrected. Reasons why I shouldn’t multitask.