The numbers that I am confused about are in the high 5 figures and low 6 figures, about an order of magnitude bigger than $10,000. I don’t think assuming a salary of $30/hour helps me understand or explain these numbers. I brought up volunteering vs. paid work in the OP, and I think this was probably misleading—sorry about that.
However, on that point:
I agree that we don’t want EA groups to only be run by the financially privileged. But this concern needs to be balanced against the fact that EA in general, and EA university group organizing in particular (probably) already selects for high SES people, and there may be better ways of making participation in EA accessible to everyone. There is already some level of SES barrier for college students maneuvering themselves into a position to start receiving funding for this work, so you are already getting a filtered sample by the time the money starts flowing. This is a difficult problem to solve, but I hope people are conscientious of it.
Yeah I wasn’t sure which grants you were referring to (haven’t looked through them all), but indeed that doesn’t seem to be explained by what I said.
I agree that EA already selects for high SES people and that offering funding for them to organize a group doesn’t negate this problem. Other steps are also needed. However, I know quite a few anecdotal cases of group organizers being able to organize more than they otherwise would have because they were being paid, and so this policy does concretely make some difference.
The numbers that I am confused about are in the high 5 figures and low 6 figures, about an order of magnitude bigger than $10,000. I don’t think assuming a salary of $30/hour helps me understand or explain these numbers. I brought up volunteering vs. paid work in the OP, and I think this was probably misleading—sorry about that.
However, on that point:
I agree that we don’t want EA groups to only be run by the financially privileged. But this concern needs to be balanced against the fact that EA in general, and EA university group organizing in particular (probably) already selects for high SES people, and there may be better ways of making participation in EA accessible to everyone. There is already some level of SES barrier for college students maneuvering themselves into a position to start receiving funding for this work, so you are already getting a filtered sample by the time the money starts flowing. This is a difficult problem to solve, but I hope people are conscientious of it.
Yeah I wasn’t sure which grants you were referring to (haven’t looked through them all), but indeed that doesn’t seem to be explained by what I said.
I agree that EA already selects for high SES people and that offering funding for them to organize a group doesn’t negate this problem. Other steps are also needed. However, I know quite a few anecdotal cases of group organizers being able to organize more than they otherwise would have because they were being paid, and so this policy does concretely make some difference.