I think if anyone was best able to make a claim to be our customers, it would be our donors.
CEA receives many fewer resources from its donors than from the community. Again, CEA would not really have a job without the community. An organization like CEA would totally exist without your big donors (like, the basic institution of having an “EA leadership organization” requires a few hundred k per year, which you would be able to easily fundraise from a very small fraction of the community, and even at the current CEA burn-rate the labor-value of the people who are substantially directing their life based on the broader EA community vastly eclipses the donations to CEA).
Your donors seem obviously much less important of a stakeholder than the community which is investing you with the authority to lead.
CEA receives many fewer resources from its donors than from the community. Again, CEA would not really have a job without the community. An organization like CEA would totally exist without your big donors (like, the basic institution of having an “EA leadership organization” requires a few hundred k per year, which you would be able to easily fundraise from a very small fraction of the community, and even at the current CEA burn-rate the labor-value of the people who are substantially directing their life based on the broader EA community vastly eclipses the donations to CEA).
Your donors seem obviously much less important of a stakeholder than the community which is investing you with the authority to lead.