Hello. Ex-community builder here sharing my two cents. Some ideas you might want to consider are:
Supporting people leaving the filed to stay on as mentors/advisers/trustees. I stopped full time community building in London in 2017 but have stayed on in an advisory/Trustee capacity for EA London ever since. Boosting the status of this and making it easy and fun for people to do or expecting this of people would then help future community builders have someone to talk to on a regular basis who knows their region/community and can offer support.
Try hiring people mid-career. I have noticed a trend of mid-career-ites who have got board of their jobs or made their money/prestige points who want to move onto something else. They are often keen for very interesting work and/or more impact, and I think might be willing to stick around for longer – there is less pressure to try out other things at that stage, you’ve already done it. The one mid-career community builder I know (David at EA London) has stayed in the role for about 5 years now and is still going strong (♥).
Support with the boring tasks. Each person will have different boring tasks but whether it is fixing a website or doing taxes support would be nice.
Good luck with this. Looks like you have many things to try!!
I really like the mentoring idea. My intuition is that many would be up for this, if it was easier.
Hiring mid-career CBs also seems like a good idea, both because they are likely to stick around longer and have more life experience / career capital and might be able to give more relevant guidance, contacts etc. Though I think it is good to have young people in many contexts.
Support with boring tasks would be beneficial and I do think it could be done “centralized”, like Markus Amalthea Magnuson is doing with altruistic.agency.
Hello. Ex-community builder here sharing my two cents. Some ideas you might want to consider are:
Supporting people leaving the filed to stay on as mentors/advisers/trustees. I stopped full time community building in London in 2017 but have stayed on in an advisory/Trustee capacity for EA London ever since. Boosting the status of this and making it easy and fun for people to do or expecting this of people would then help future community builders have someone to talk to on a regular basis who knows their region/community and can offer support.
Try hiring people mid-career. I have noticed a trend of mid-career-ites who have got board of their jobs or made their money/prestige points who want to move onto something else. They are often keen for very interesting work and/or more impact, and I think might be willing to stick around for longer – there is less pressure to try out other things at that stage, you’ve already done it. The one mid-career community builder I know (David at EA London) has stayed in the role for about 5 years now and is still going strong (♥).
Support with the boring tasks. Each person will have different boring tasks but whether it is fixing a website or doing taxes support would be nice.
Good luck with this. Looks like you have many things to try!!
Thank you for the input!
I really like the mentoring idea. My intuition is that many would be up for this, if it was easier.
Hiring mid-career CBs also seems like a good idea, both because they are likely to stick around longer and have more life experience / career capital and might be able to give more relevant guidance, contacts etc. Though I think it is good to have young people in many contexts.
Support with boring tasks would be beneficial and I do think it could be done “centralized”, like Markus Amalthea Magnuson is doing with altruistic.agency.