Tldr: I agree the ‘top of the funnel’ seems to not be growing (i.e. how many people are reached each year). This was at least in part due to a deliberate shift in strategy. I think the ‘bottom’ of the funnel (e.g. money and people focused on EA) is still growing. Eventually we’ll need to get the top of the funnel growing again, and people are starting to focus on this more.
Around 2015, DGB and The Most Good You Can Do were both launched, which both involved significant media attention that aimed to reach lots of people (e.g. two TED talks). 80k was also focused on reaching more people.
After that, the sense was that the greater bottleneck was taking all these newly interested people (and the money from Open Phil), and making sure that results in actually useful things happening, rather than reaching even more people.
(There was also some sense of wanting to shore up the intellectual foundations, and make sure EA is conveyed accurately, rather than as “earn to give for malaria nets”, which seems vital for its long-term potential. There was also a shift towards niche outreach, rather than mass media—since mass media seems better for raising donations to global health, but less useful for something like reducing GCBRs, and although good at reaching lots of people, wasn’t as effective as the niche stuff.)
E.g. in 2018, 80k switched to focusing on our key ideas page and podcast, which are more about making sure already interested people understand our ideas than reaching new people; Will focused on research and niche outreach, and is now writing a book on longtermism. GWWC was scaled down, and Toby wrote a book about existential risk.
This wasn’t obviously a mistake since I think that if you track ‘total money committed to EA’ and ‘total number of people willing to change career (or take other significant steps)’, it’s still growing reasonably (perhaps ~20% per year?), and these metrics are closer to what ultimately matter. (Unfortunately I don’t have a good source for this claim and it relies on judgement calls, though Open Phil’s resources have increased due to the increase in Dustin Moskovitz’s net worth; several other donors have made a lot of money; the EA Forum is growing healthily; 80k is getting ~200 plan changes per year; the student groups keep recruiting people each year etc.)
One problem is that if the top of the funnel isn’t growing, then eventually we’ll ‘use up’ the pool of interested people who might become more dedicated, so it’ll turn into a bottleneck at some point.
And all else equal, more top of funnel growth would be better, so it’s a shame we haven’t done more.
My impression is that people are starting to focus more on growing the top of the funnel again. However, I still think the focus is more on niche outreach, so you’d need to track a metric more like ‘total number of engaged people’ to evaluate it.
Tldr: I agree the ‘top of the funnel’ seems to not be growing (i.e. how many people are reached each year). This was at least in part due to a deliberate shift in strategy. I think the ‘bottom’ of the funnel (e.g. money and people focused on EA) is still growing. Eventually we’ll need to get the top of the funnel growing again, and people are starting to focus on this more.
Around 2015, DGB and The Most Good You Can Do were both launched, which both involved significant media attention that aimed to reach lots of people (e.g. two TED talks). 80k was also focused on reaching more people.
After that, the sense was that the greater bottleneck was taking all these newly interested people (and the money from Open Phil), and making sure that results in actually useful things happening, rather than reaching even more people.
(There was also some sense of wanting to shore up the intellectual foundations, and make sure EA is conveyed accurately, rather than as “earn to give for malaria nets”, which seems vital for its long-term potential. There was also a shift towards niche outreach, rather than mass media—since mass media seems better for raising donations to global health, but less useful for something like reducing GCBRs, and although good at reaching lots of people, wasn’t as effective as the niche stuff.)
E.g. in 2018, 80k switched to focusing on our key ideas page and podcast, which are more about making sure already interested people understand our ideas than reaching new people; Will focused on research and niche outreach, and is now writing a book on longtermism. GWWC was scaled down, and Toby wrote a book about existential risk.
This wasn’t obviously a mistake since I think that if you track ‘total money committed to EA’ and ‘total number of people willing to change career (or take other significant steps)’, it’s still growing reasonably (perhaps ~20% per year?), and these metrics are closer to what ultimately matter. (Unfortunately I don’t have a good source for this claim and it relies on judgement calls, though Open Phil’s resources have increased due to the increase in Dustin Moskovitz’s net worth; several other donors have made a lot of money; the EA Forum is growing healthily; 80k is getting ~200 plan changes per year; the student groups keep recruiting people each year etc.)
One problem is that if the top of the funnel isn’t growing, then eventually we’ll ‘use up’ the pool of interested people who might become more dedicated, so it’ll turn into a bottleneck at some point.
And all else equal, more top of funnel growth would be better, so it’s a shame we haven’t done more.
My impression is that people are starting to focus more on growing the top of the funnel again. However, I still think the focus is more on niche outreach, so you’d need to track a metric more like ‘total number of engaged people’ to evaluate it.