As a preliminary matter, I assume you read the fundraising document linked in this post, but for those reading this comment who haven’t, I think it’s a good indication of the level of transparency and self-evaluation we intend to have going forward. I also think it addresses some of the concerns you raise.
I agree with much of what you say, but as you note, I think we’ve already taken steps toward correcting many of these problems. Regarding metrics on the effective altruism community, you are correct that we need to do more here, and we intend to. Before the reorganization, this responsibility didn’t fall squarely within any team’s jurisdiction which was part of the problem. (For example, Giving What We Can collected a lot of this data for a subset of the effective altruism community.) This is a priority for us.
Regarding measuring CEA activities, internally, we test and measure everything (particularly with respect to community and outreach activities). We measure user engagement with our content (including the cause prioritization tool), the newsletter, Doing Good Better, Facebook marketing, etc., trying to identify where we can most cost-effectively get people most deeply engaged. As we recently did with EAG and EAGx, we’ll then periodically share our findings with the effective altruism community. We will soon share our review of the Pareto Fellowship, for example.
Regarding transparency, our monthly updates, project evaluations (e.g., for EAG and EAGx, and the forthcoming evaluation of the Pareto Fellowship), and the fundraising document linked in this post are indicative of the approach we intend to take going forward. Creating all of this content is costly, and so while I agree that transparency is important, it’s not trivially true that more is always better. We’re trying to strike the right balance and will be very interested in others’ views about whether we’ve succeeded.
Lastly, regarding centralized decision-making, that was the primary purpose of the reorganization. As we note in the fundraising document, we’re still in the process of evaluating current projects. I don’t think the EA Concepts project is to the contrary: that was simply an output of the research team, which it put together in a few weeks, rather than a new project like Giving What We Can or the Pareto Fellowship (the confusion might be the result of using “project” in different ways). Whether we invest much more in that project going forward will depend on the reception and use of this minimum version.
Creating all of this content is costly, and so while I agree that transparency is important, it’s not trivially true that more is always better. We’re trying to strike the right balance and will be very interested in others’ views about whether we’ve succeeded.
Would CEA be open to taking extra funding to specifically cover the cost of hiring someone new whose role would be to collect the data and generate the content in question?
Hey Josh,
As a preliminary matter, I assume you read the fundraising document linked in this post, but for those reading this comment who haven’t, I think it’s a good indication of the level of transparency and self-evaluation we intend to have going forward. I also think it addresses some of the concerns you raise.
I agree with much of what you say, but as you note, I think we’ve already taken steps toward correcting many of these problems. Regarding metrics on the effective altruism community, you are correct that we need to do more here, and we intend to. Before the reorganization, this responsibility didn’t fall squarely within any team’s jurisdiction which was part of the problem. (For example, Giving What We Can collected a lot of this data for a subset of the effective altruism community.) This is a priority for us.
Regarding measuring CEA activities, internally, we test and measure everything (particularly with respect to community and outreach activities). We measure user engagement with our content (including the cause prioritization tool), the newsletter, Doing Good Better, Facebook marketing, etc., trying to identify where we can most cost-effectively get people most deeply engaged. As we recently did with EAG and EAGx, we’ll then periodically share our findings with the effective altruism community. We will soon share our review of the Pareto Fellowship, for example.
Regarding transparency, our monthly updates, project evaluations (e.g., for EAG and EAGx, and the forthcoming evaluation of the Pareto Fellowship), and the fundraising document linked in this post are indicative of the approach we intend to take going forward. Creating all of this content is costly, and so while I agree that transparency is important, it’s not trivially true that more is always better. We’re trying to strike the right balance and will be very interested in others’ views about whether we’ve succeeded.
Lastly, regarding centralized decision-making, that was the primary purpose of the reorganization. As we note in the fundraising document, we’re still in the process of evaluating current projects. I don’t think the EA Concepts project is to the contrary: that was simply an output of the research team, which it put together in a few weeks, rather than a new project like Giving What We Can or the Pareto Fellowship (the confusion might be the result of using “project” in different ways). Whether we invest much more in that project going forward will depend on the reception and use of this minimum version.
Regards, Michael
Would CEA be open to taking extra funding to specifically cover the cost of hiring someone new whose role would be to collect the data and generate the content in question?