What are some examples of direct work student groups can do? My understanding was that most groups wanted to do direct work for many of the reasons you mention (certainly I wanted that) but there weren’t any opportunities to do so.
I focused on field building mainly because it was the only plausible option that would have real impact. (Like Greg, I’m averse to doing direct work that will knowably be low direct impact.)
An example is that EA Yale will likely be helping Rethink with reporting on the EA survey. Also see a lot of what EA NTNU has been up to. Richenda will have to forgive me because my memory is fuzzy on this, but I remember hearing of a university group that pressured a college make their annual donations to effective charities. All of these seem high-value to me and are not mutually exclusive with pledges, career changes etc.
You’re right that often there aren’t good opportunities for groups to do anything direct, and so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whether LEAN can help in this regard. I think that a lot of the reason that groups struggle is to do with coordination. For instance, I received an email with a long list of voluntary activities from an EA org after I published this post. So definitely part of the issue is providing better conduits between organisations and groups. The reason this is difficult is because groups are often so transient. But if more projects were to be listed on places like http://www.eawork.club/ that might result in a pipeline emerging.
The main thing, though, is finding ways to help organisers seek out opportunities specific to their areas. As we’ve all been agreeing in these comments, it isn’t always going to be the right thing for a group to do. But I frequently speak to groups that have good opportunities literally fall into their laps based on specificities of their location and context. And there are also really good examples of organisers who were able to find aligned groups, organisations etc. in their community to collaborate with. So some of what we can do involves writing up good examples of how people went about this to help organisers who are casting about for additional opportunities. And yes of course, if a group has an alternative that is higher impact, then this wouldn’t be needful. It varies from group to group, who their audience is and what the most effective course is.
Since so many GWWC signers are into software development and engineering, it makes sense that someone in the industry could start a weekly group that involves helping students and potentially doing freelance work online.
What are some examples of direct work student groups can do? My understanding was that most groups wanted to do direct work for many of the reasons you mention (certainly I wanted that) but there weren’t any opportunities to do so.
I focused on field building mainly because it was the only plausible option that would have real impact. (Like Greg, I’m averse to doing direct work that will knowably be low direct impact.)
An example is that EA Yale will likely be helping Rethink with reporting on the EA survey. Also see a lot of what EA NTNU has been up to. Richenda will have to forgive me because my memory is fuzzy on this, but I remember hearing of a university group that pressured a college make their annual donations to effective charities. All of these seem high-value to me and are not mutually exclusive with pledges, career changes etc.
You’re right that often there aren’t good opportunities for groups to do anything direct, and so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whether LEAN can help in this regard. I think that a lot of the reason that groups struggle is to do with coordination. For instance, I received an email with a long list of voluntary activities from an EA org after I published this post. So definitely part of the issue is providing better conduits between organisations and groups. The reason this is difficult is because groups are often so transient. But if more projects were to be listed on places like http://www.eawork.club/ that might result in a pipeline emerging. The main thing, though, is finding ways to help organisers seek out opportunities specific to their areas. As we’ve all been agreeing in these comments, it isn’t always going to be the right thing for a group to do. But I frequently speak to groups that have good opportunities literally fall into their laps based on specificities of their location and context. And there are also really good examples of organisers who were able to find aligned groups, organisations etc. in their community to collaborate with. So some of what we can do involves writing up good examples of how people went about this to help organisers who are casting about for additional opportunities. And yes of course, if a group has an alternative that is higher impact, then this wouldn’t be needful. It varies from group to group, who their audience is and what the most effective course is.
Helping out at a fundraiser, esp. supporting an effective charity like AMF or SCI
Volunteering as a group either locally or collectively on eawork.club
Doing contract work online (though UpWork for example)
Since so many GWWC signers are into software development and engineering, it makes sense that someone in the industry could start a weekly group that involves helping students and potentially doing freelance work online.