I’m curious to compare the growth in funding to the growth in EA group size (uni, local, & regional/national groups). I suspect there was a lot of money put into community development with relatively muted response in growth.
It seems a lot of the community growth dollars went to students to organize on campuses or fly them to EA conferences. The students would have otherwise organized voluntarily and raised necessary funds through fundraisers, like most other university student groups. Many university groups have and continue to thrive without central EA funding support.
My local group got grant funding to pay for an organizer (not me) for roughly a year. We ran a few more events, but I haven’t see an appreciably difference in growth or attendance a year later. We have several volunteer organizers that do the job just fine.
I’m skeptical that paid organizers are necessary for any (uni, local, & regional/national) group until the group size reliably reaches 50-100+ at events, which nearly all groups don’t meet except in a few of the largest cities (NYC, London).
The community funding, particularly university groups and fellowships, is where a lot of the criticism of profligate spending in EA comes from. I suspect the harm in reputation is comparable or greater than the benefit from the funding. In hindsight it seems that those community growth dollars would have been much better spent on actual EA causes.
Yeah I think it would be fairly easy to look at difference in $ to uni / local / regional groups (I expect pretty confident that 40-75% goes to uni groups, likely closer to the higher end)
I’m curious to compare the growth in funding to the growth in EA group size (uni, local, & regional/national groups). I suspect there was a lot of money put into community development with relatively muted response in growth.
It seems a lot of the community growth dollars went to students to organize on campuses or fly them to EA conferences. The students would have otherwise organized voluntarily and raised necessary funds through fundraisers, like most other university student groups. Many university groups have and continue to thrive without central EA funding support.
My local group got grant funding to pay for an organizer (not me) for roughly a year. We ran a few more events, but I haven’t see an appreciably difference in growth or attendance a year later. We have several volunteer organizers that do the job just fine.
I’m skeptical that paid organizers are necessary for any (uni, local, & regional/national) group until the group size reliably reaches 50-100+ at events, which nearly all groups don’t meet except in a few of the largest cities (NYC, London).
The community funding, particularly university groups and fellowships, is where a lot of the criticism of profligate spending in EA comes from. I suspect the harm in reputation is comparable or greater than the benefit from the funding. In hindsight it seems that those community growth dollars would have been much better spent on actual EA causes.
Yeah I think it would be fairly easy to look at difference in $ to uni / local / regional groups (I expect pretty confident that 40-75% goes to uni groups, likely closer to the higher end)