Okay, so GWWC, LW, and GiveWell, what are we going to do to reverse the trend?
Seriously, should we be thinking of this as “these sites are actually getting less effective at recruiting EAs” or as “there are so many more recruitment pipelines now that it makes sense that each one would drop in relative importance” or as “any site will naturally do better in its early years as it picks the low-hanging fruit in converting its target population, then do worse later”?
GWWC’s membership has steadily grown in the recent years, so it’s not that GWWC isn’t getting more people to give significantly and effectively! I think this highlights broader questions about what the focus of the current effective altruism community is, and what it should be.
GWWC team members have advocated for a “big tent” effective altruism where everyone who wants to do good effectively should feel that they can be a part of the community—but anecdotally we hear sometimes that people who are primarily interested in giving don’t feel like the broader effective altruism community is the right place for them. (So this might be why there is a decreasing trend seen in the survey)
I’d like to see that trend reverse, and GWWC continues to push for an inclusive EA community, where a spectrum of involvement is respected and celebrated but we can’t do it all ourselves! We’re only one part of the community, and I think it would take an increased focus on the “big tent” approach from other key organisations to help this be corrected.
GWWC team members have advocated for a “big tent” effective altruism where everyone who wants to do good effectively should feel that they can be a part of the community—but anecdotally we hear sometimes that people who are primarily interested in giving don’t feel like the broader effective altruism community is the right place for them
Thanks for the comment. I would add that we also found signs related to this in our recent survey on responses to the FTX crisis (e.g. that there was divergence between more longtermist and more neartermist members of the community, with the latter less satisfied and more concerned in various ways).
We’ll be discussing these issues in more detail in our forthcoming post about community satisfaction, retention and mental health.
I think the elephant in the room might be OpenPhil spending at least $211m on “Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)”, including 80k spending $2.6m in marketing in 2022.[1]
As those efforts get results I expect the % of EA growth from those sources to increase.
High uncertainty, but for LW and ACX users I’m not sure about the view that they have of CEA spaces. My impression is that for LW users it mightplausibly be negative, so they might spend relatively less time in the places where this survey was advertised (which are mostly CEA-run / OpenPhil Longtermist Community Growth—funded).
I think that’s negligible compared to the $200m effort in longtermism community growth from OpenPhil, and again I’m really uncertain about this, but there might be a lot of EAs (e.g. GiveWell donors) that might have become relatively less likely to respond to these surveys
I think this is one case where it’s useful to also look at the absolute numbers from each source across years rather than the percentages. (Usually the absolute totals risk being very misleading/confusing, because the total numbers of respondents from different surveys varies a lot, e.g. 2020 was a nadir, with just over 2000 respondents, whereas in 2022 we recruited over 3500).
The raw numbers show similar numbers from GiveWell across years, whereas GWWC’s raw totals do seem lower than their peak in earlier years. So it doesn’t seem to simply be the case that they’ve been outpaced by faster growth from 80K or others.
Also worth noting that the 2020 podcast jump was significantly contributed to from the Sam Harris episode taking the GWWC Company Pledge (which was also a significant shift in his advocacy moving forward). This involved a lot of work behind the scenes from our side but would be attributed here as “finding EA (and GWWC)” from the podcast.
Also in ~2017 GWWC chapters were converted to EA groups so that also explains some of the difference (GWWC chapters used to be a way that people found out about EA in-person which was largely supplanted by EA groups so that now people find out about GWWC in-person via EA groups).
Both really important points, Luke! I think the shift from GWWC Chapters to EA groups is not obvious to many people in the community and represents some of the wider shift we’ve seen!
Or, for GiveWell and to a lesser extent GWWC, “changes in EA’s focus over the years have made it less likely that the population interested in GiveWell would be engaged enough in the EA meta to see and complete the survey?”
Okay, so GWWC, LW, and GiveWell, what are we going to do to reverse the trend?
Seriously, should we be thinking of this as “these sites are actually getting less effective at recruiting EAs” or as “there are so many more recruitment pipelines now that it makes sense that each one would drop in relative importance” or as “any site will naturally do better in its early years as it picks the low-hanging fruit in converting its target population, then do worse later”?
GWWC’s membership has steadily grown in the recent years, so it’s not that GWWC isn’t getting more people to give significantly and effectively! I think this highlights broader questions about what the focus of the current effective altruism community is, and what it should be.
GWWC team members have advocated for a “big tent” effective altruism where everyone who wants to do good effectively should feel that they can be a part of the community—but anecdotally we hear sometimes that people who are primarily interested in giving don’t feel like the broader effective altruism community is the right place for them. (So this might be why there is a decreasing trend seen in the survey)
I’d like to see that trend reverse, and GWWC continues to push for an inclusive EA community, where a spectrum of involvement is respected and celebrated but we can’t do it all ourselves! We’re only one part of the community, and I think it would take an increased focus on the “big tent” approach from other key organisations to help this be corrected.
Thanks for the comment. I would add that we also found signs related to this in our recent survey on responses to the FTX crisis (e.g. that there was divergence between more longtermist and more neartermist members of the community, with the latter less satisfied and more concerned in various ways).
We’ll be discussing these issues in more detail in our forthcoming post about community satisfaction, retention and mental health.
I think the elephant in the room might be OpenPhil spending at least $211m on “Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)”, including 80k spending $2.6m in marketing in 2022.[1]
As those efforts get results I expect the % of EA growth from those sources to increase.
I also expect EA™ spaces where these surveys are advertised to over-represent “longermism”/”x-risk reduction” (in part because of donor preferences, and in part because they are more useful for some EAs), so that would impact the % of people coming to these spaces from things like GiveWell.
High uncertainty, but for LW and ACX users I’m not sure about the view that they have of CEA spaces. My impression is that for LW users it might plausibly be negative, so they might spend relatively less time in the places where this survey was advertised (which are mostly CEA-run / OpenPhil Longtermist Community Growth—funded).
I think that’s negligible compared to the $200m effort in longtermism community growth from OpenPhil, and again I’m really uncertain about this, but there might be a lot of EAs (e.g. GiveWell donors) that might have become relatively less likely to respond to these surveys
Some of it in late 2022, but I think the main point still stands
I think this is one case where it’s useful to also look at the absolute numbers from each source across years rather than the percentages. (Usually the absolute totals risk being very misleading/confusing, because the total numbers of respondents from different surveys varies a lot, e.g. 2020 was a nadir, with just over 2000 respondents, whereas in 2022 we recruited over 3500).
The raw numbers show similar numbers from GiveWell across years, whereas GWWC’s raw totals do seem lower than their peak in earlier years. So it doesn’t seem to simply be the case that they’ve been outpaced by faster growth from 80K or others.
Also worth noting that the 2020 podcast jump was significantly contributed to from the Sam Harris episode taking the GWWC Company Pledge (which was also a significant shift in his advocacy moving forward). This involved a lot of work behind the scenes from our side but would be attributed here as “finding EA (and GWWC)” from the podcast.
Also in ~2017 GWWC chapters were converted to EA groups so that also explains some of the difference (GWWC chapters used to be a way that people found out about EA in-person which was largely supplanted by EA groups so that now people find out about GWWC in-person via EA groups).
Both really important points, Luke! I think the shift from GWWC Chapters to EA groups is not obvious to many people in the community and represents some of the wider shift we’ve seen!
Or, for GiveWell and to a lesser extent GWWC, “changes in EA’s focus over the years have made it less likely that the population interested in GiveWell would be engaged enough in the EA meta to see and complete the survey?”