agent18 comments on A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained

[agent18]

• In our “spot-check” [note, this is forthcoming research, which will likely be released within a week] of current roles and advertised roles at 27 animal advocacy nonprofits, fundraising was the skillset that was most notably overrepresented in animal advocacy job adverts (appearing to be important in 17% of identified job ads) relative to the number of current roles in the movement (appearing to be important in 10% of current roles);

I find this very hard to understand. My understanding is that 17% of “identified job ads” was related to fundraising. I don’t get the next part where you say talk about 10% of the current roles.

• this may imply that these roles are unusually hard to fill and that fundraising expertise is undersupplied in the community, relative to its needs. As discussed in our blog post on the spot-check, however, this research provides only very weak evidence on the question of what the movement’s greatest bottlenecks are.

I get it that fundraising is “over-represented” in animal advocacy jobs with 17% of job ads talking about it, but what are the percentages for the other skills? Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right? or Am I mistaken?

• There is evidence from a 2013 report that senior fundraisers are difficult to hire in US nonprofits generally. This makes it seem more likely that animal advocacy nonprofits face the same difficulty.

Very interesting report (especially the sample size of 2000 non-profits). Looking at the sample it looks like only 1% of all the 2000 odd organizations was from “philanthropy, volunteerism and Grantmaking”. And highest was human services, educational institutions and arts, culture, humanities. I think it can really skew the results. Your thoughts?

• The same report found evidence that smaller nonprofits may struggle to attract the most experienced fundraisers. Given that many animal advocacy organisations have small budgets, this provides another reason to expect that animal advocacy organizations will struggle to hire fundraisers, though this is only very weak evidence that this is a bottleneck for the movement.

Claims: Smaller nonprofit have fewer struggle to find most experienced fundraisers

Evidence:

DDs with no experience based on salaries

8% > 50k$

23% < 50k$

This above evidence is confusing me to verify the claim. As it directly doesn’t associate with small non profits but through some association in salary. But the following seems to be causing less confusion.

prospective donor research

24% have no experience for DDs in general
32% have no experience for DDs in small
32.25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back calculating)

Securing gifts

26% have no experience for DDs in general
38% have no experience for DDs in small
25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back-calculating)

I am concerned now by the wording “struggling”. This doesn’t seem to be too bad. Smaller nonprofits seem to have fewer people of experienced staff. But are they “struggling”? I am not sure. And as a result this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims. Agree. Am I mistaken?

[Jamie_Harris]

I find this very hard to understand.

This is useful feedback. I might need to work on the wording.

Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right?

I don’t think I agree with that—I think the important consideration is the number of identified advertised roles of a particular type relative to the number of identified currently filled roles of the same type. Not the number of advertised roles of type A relative to advertised roles of type B. But FWIW the full report is now published.

this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims

I agree its weak evidence; I think it’s the weakest of the 5 bullet points above. I find weak evidence useful.

[agent18]

Now I get what you were trying to say, I think. So you are saying you look at the ratio of “percentage of fundraising in latest job ads” vs “percentage of fundraising in current jobs”. That sounds like a smart proxy. Really interesting.

Thanks.