I think this gets to the big flaw in the current appeal from a design perspective -
the idea of the hotel is too new and cannot demonstrate impact on an aggregate scale (unlike say cash transfers) in an easy to understand way.
Therefore people look for specific examples of what people are doing at the hotel to reassure them of the impact
But as there are numerically few residents so far and the first residents had little competition to be accepted, many are not seen as competitive to what funders would independently decide to fund so they don’t make the hotel look good. (At least as they have been presented)
4)therefore the pitch is either that the hotel will continue to attract stronger applicants and/or get better at selecting good funding opportunities in the future so that they are doing some valuable intermediate role for the ultimate funders but a) no evidence has been given as to why the hotel staff are likely to be good at that role and b)trust has already been destroyed by the fact that funders now are looking at the first “lowest quality” residents and not finding them attractive.
The best thing by far imo the hotel could do is present the current and past residents in a way which explains why they have done valuable things at the hotel and why they could not have done them without the hotel. I don’t think they have done this well at all but my knowledge of a few of the residents suggests that there are good stories to tell here. Hopefully the planned post on this will give the hotel an injection of new interest from funders.
For more on our residents to date, and how the hotel has helped them, here are some case studies. See also: outputs.
funders now are looking at the first “lowest quality” residents and not finding them attractive
I think this is unfair. I have not had any potential funders specifically say this. I actually think that the quality of residents is already pretty high (and this is under-appreciated from the outside). I also disagree with the notion of the first residents necessarily being of low quality just by way of not having strong competition to be accepted; there might even be a “debut album effect” in that there is a glut of good people (“songs”) ready for the initial release. I know I’ve personally been pleasantly surprised more than once with guests who I were a bit unsure of originally but was happy to take a chance on. There is also the consideration that it takes a certain amount of pioneer spirit to join a new project and community early in its life, and that this is positively correlated with agency and via that, value creation.
selecting good funding opportunities… no evidence has been given as to why the hotel staff are likely to be good at that role
See our pitch doc (that we’ve recently circulated to interested people) for more detail on our Staff/Trustees. Ultimately, most of the grant makers in charge of the EA Funds have gained their experience through being actively involved in EA and making funding decisions (donations) over many years. We are not that different. See my record of EA donations here*. Also, as Vipul says, we have skin in the game here.
*”EA Hotel” is the money I’ve put in as of 29th March 2019, not including purchasing the building. Meta note: would be good if it was possible to make pages on app.effectivealtruism.org/dashboard/pledge/donations publicly viewable. Is this feature planned?
I think this gets to the big flaw in the current appeal from a design perspective -
the idea of the hotel is too new and cannot demonstrate impact on an aggregate scale (unlike say cash transfers) in an easy to understand way.
Therefore people look for specific examples of what people are doing at the hotel to reassure them of the impact
But as there are numerically few residents so far and the first residents had little competition to be accepted, many are not seen as competitive to what funders would independently decide to fund so they don’t make the hotel look good. (At least as they have been presented)
4)therefore the pitch is either that the hotel will continue to attract stronger applicants and/or get better at selecting good funding opportunities in the future so that they are doing some valuable intermediate role for the ultimate funders but a) no evidence has been given as to why the hotel staff are likely to be good at that role and b)trust has already been destroyed by the fact that funders now are looking at the first “lowest quality” residents and not finding them attractive.
The best thing by far imo the hotel could do is present the current and past residents in a way which explains why they have done valuable things at the hotel and why they could not have done them without the hotel. I don’t think they have done this well at all but my knowledge of a few of the residents suggests that there are good stories to tell here. Hopefully the planned post on this will give the hotel an injection of new interest from funders.
For more on our residents to date, and how the hotel has helped them, here are some case studies. See also: outputs.
I think this is unfair. I have not had any potential funders specifically say this. I actually think that the quality of residents is already pretty high (and this is under-appreciated from the outside). I also disagree with the notion of the first residents necessarily being of low quality just by way of not having strong competition to be accepted; there might even be a “debut album effect” in that there is a glut of good people (“songs”) ready for the initial release. I know I’ve personally been pleasantly surprised more than once with guests who I were a bit unsure of originally but was happy to take a chance on. There is also the consideration that it takes a certain amount of pioneer spirit to join a new project and community early in its life, and that this is positively correlated with agency and via that, value creation.
See our pitch doc (that we’ve recently circulated to interested people) for more detail on our Staff/Trustees. Ultimately, most of the grant makers in charge of the EA Funds have gained their experience through being actively involved in EA and making funding decisions (donations) over many years. We are not that different. See my record of EA donations here*. Also, as Vipul says, we have skin in the game here.
*”EA Hotel” is the money I’ve put in as of 29th March 2019, not including purchasing the building. Meta note: would be good if it was possible to make pages on app.effectivealtruism.org/dashboard/pledge/donations publicly viewable. Is this feature planned?