Thanks Ludwig for raising the conversation around governance. It’s something that is important to me and we’re exploring how we can improve on this (and will share later any changes we plan to make). Michael has just left another comment which covers most of what I’d say right now so I don’t have much more to add other than:
1. I’d to flag that I don’t believe this comment is accurate, and seems very uncharitable:
I believe this structure was set up so the EVF board has central control over EA strategy.
CEA was setup before there was [added:much of] an EA movement (the term “effective altruism” was invented while setting up CEA to support GWWC/80,000 Hours). In recent years, several organisations have approached EVF so they can receive the same kind of operational and legal support. Some of these organisations have met EVF’s bar for impact and thus been supported, and I’m aware some are in the process of spinning out of EVF after receiving initial support getting started.
2. In my experience leading GWWC for the past 2.5 years the EVF trustees have never “exerted influence” over our strategy.
During this time I have received helpful input from trustees (mostly working with Toby as our active trustee for 2 years, and with Toby and Will as founders, some advice from Nick on hiring researchers) from time to time. I am in regular contact with other organisation leaders inside of EVF as well as those outside of (in fact, I have much more contact and consultation with leaders of other effective giving organisations than I do with most other leaders of organisations within EVF or our board). My primary day-to-to-day contact is with my staff, donors, members and funders all who give a lot of input on the day-to-day of what we’re doing at GWWC.
To be frank, the hardest thing about having so many organisations as part of one charity is that it’s harder for a board to give lots of attention to the strategy of each organisation within it. It would be much easier (and IMHO more appropriate) to be critiquing the governance from the angle that not enough attention is given (due to a small number of busy people who’s expertise isn’t governance being spread too thin) rather than too much (in the form of exerting influence).
3. What exactly do you mean/have in mind by “GWWC members should demand control over their institution”?
I’m not sure what you mean by this and would be interested to know more.
On the suborgs not getting enough attention: I don’t know UK corporate law, but at least in my home jurisdiction, I believe non-profit boards can create committees of the board that can (1) include non-members, yet (2) exercise most of the full board’s powers to the extent delegated by the full board, as long as (3) a majority of the committee members are board members. So, at least where I live, EVF could establish a five-person committee for each suborg: three Board members + two non-Board members who are unique to that suborg. That committee could perform the bulk of board functions for the suborgs, and each suborg would gain two new board-type people to pay attention to it whose energies were not spread out among all the suborgs. That should give some of the advantages of each suborg having its “own” board without actually messing with the legal structure.
I guess the low-hanging fruit is that a five-person board is probably too small for an organization like EVF, and should probably expand to nine (or at least seven) over time.
CEA was set up before there was an EA movement (the term “effective altruism” was invented while setting up CEA to support GWWC/80,000 Hours).
I don’t think this changes the overall picture, but the EA movement existed before it had a name. The movement coalesced from a bunch of related ideas and projects, but I would say it existed before the legal incorporation of CEA. For example, GiveWell was started in 2007, GWWC in 2009, and 80k in early 2011.
1. Yes, seems like an unsupported belief I had. I added a pointer to your comments to the beginning of the post. At the very least, the board continues to uphold their influence over the community and EVF suborgs.
2. That’s great to hear! I did not expect them to use their power, but they clearly are able to, if they wanted to.
3. In my view, if GWWC wants to be a community organization, it should be controlled by the community. From a governance perspective, GWWC is as much a community as IKEA’s members program. Of course, the GWWC community exists socially, but it does not empower members to shape the organization.
In my view, if GWWC wants to be a community organization, it should be controlled by the community.
This seems like a very one-size-fits-all model of what a community is. GWWC is a community of people who commit to effective giving, that is what brings us together. I don’t particularly think that the members of GWWC being involved in it’s governance would make it more of a community.
It is certainly important for there to be some oversight to prevent e.g. accidentally hiring a CEO who takes things off the rails, but I for one am quite happy with the existing board and don’t see that it would be significantly improved by more “community involvement”.
Yeah, I contend that this is only my personal view, and others might be fine with it.
From my perspective, GWWC is a marketing project by EVF that builds and shapes a community centered on donating to EA causes (including EVF itself).
Structurally, this is the same type of user community that many for-profit companies cultivate. I do not join such communities, because I refuse to be a marketing vehicle.
More community involvement would lead to decisions that primarily represent the community.
This comment makes me feel like we’re living on different planets.
GWWC precedes EVF, it is not a “project by EVF”, it had its own existence beforehand and has its own leadership and direction. If anything, EVF exists to serve GWWC.
GWWC is not a marketing project, that doesn’t even make sense to me. EVF doesn’t have a product that it’s selling to people. The purpose of GWWC is exactly what it says on the tin: getting people to pledge to give more and more effectively. In what way is this marketing for EVF?
In what way do the decisions not currently represent the community? Indeed, all the people who work for GWWC are people who are committed to effective giving, i.e. are members of the community. Sure, if it was run by some unrelated people who had no interest in what we’re doing I’d be worried but… it isn’t?
This is exactly why I wrote this post. GWWC feels like an innocent community. But GWWC itself states at the bottom of their website that they are “a project of EVF”. This is fact, at least in a legal sense.
GWWC is a marketing project, and here’s why: GWWC tries to get people to donate more. They try to influence people’s spending so more of it goes to effective causes. To me, that’s the definition of marketing. The product they are selling is a Donation to EA Funds. It’s still marketing if a charity does it.
I don’t think the GWWC community is unhappy with current leadership, I also think they’re doing a fine job. After all, GWWC pledgees self-selected into it. My point is, that only works because the right people happen to be in power, and not because governance structures ensure this. The board of EVF could, for example, simply decide tomorrow, without involving the community, that GWWC should exclusively facilitate donations to playpumps.
I think you’re spot on on one disagreement. Let’s phrase it even more explicitly: You trust EVF to always make the right calls, even in 10 years from now. I don’t.
I believe I have good reasons to assume that even if they have good intentions, they might not act in the community’s favor.
Let’s phrase it even more explicitly: You trust EVF to always make the right calls, even in 10 years from now.
The quote above (emphasis mine) reads like a strawman; I don’t think Michael would say that they always make the right call. My personal view is that individuals steering GWWC will mostly make the right decisions and downside risks are small enough not to warrant costly governance interventions.
I believe I have good reasons to assume that even if they have good intentions, they might not act in the community’s favor.
To be clear, the point isn’t to act in the community’s favor, the point is acting in a way that benefits the good. (It’s possible this is what you actually mean and I’m misunderstanding).
That’s true, but before the brand “Effective Altruism” existed, there was no reason why starting an organisation using that name should have made the founders beholden to the will of every single participant in this community—you’d need to conjecture a pretty unreasonable amount of foresight and scheming to think that even back then the founders were trying to structure these orgs in a manner designed to maintain central control over the movement.
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
My model is that no one would try to formally stop this effort (i.e. via a lawsuit), though it would receive substantial pushback in the form of:
Private communication discouraging the effort
Organizers of the effort excluded and/or removed from coordinating fora, such as EA slack groups
Public writing suggesting that the effort be rolled into the existing EA movement
Attempts (by professional EAs) to minimize the funding directed to the effort from traditional EA funders (i.e. the effort would be viewed as a competitor for funding)
I’d disagree. Probably Good, a direct competitor to 80k, is overall supported by the community, though it gets less support than 80k.
CEA goes out of their way to solicit competition in their new update. But probably a competitor to CEA would not end up being fiscally sponsored by EVF, and would receive less support than EVF.
However, I think instead of starting new orgs, the EA community should first try to improve the ones we have today.
Probably Good is a reasonable counterexample to my model here (though it’s not really a direct competitor – they’re aiming at a different audience and consulted with 80k on how to structure the project).
It’ll be interesting to see how its relationships with 80k and Open Phil develop as we enter a funding contraction.
Thanks Ludwig for raising the conversation around governance. It’s something that is important to me and we’re exploring how we can improve on this (and will share later any changes we plan to make). Michael has just left another comment which covers most of what I’d say right now so I don’t have much more to add other than:
1. I’d to flag that I don’t believe this comment is accurate, and seems very uncharitable:
CEA was setup before there was [added:much of] an EA movement (the term “effective altruism” was invented while setting up CEA to support GWWC/80,000 Hours). In recent years, several organisations have approached EVF so they can receive the same kind of operational and legal support. Some of these organisations have met EVF’s bar for impact and thus been supported, and I’m aware some are in the process of spinning out of EVF after receiving initial support getting started.
2. In my experience leading GWWC for the past 2.5 years the EVF trustees have never “exerted influence” over our strategy.
During this time I have received helpful input from trustees (mostly working with Toby as our active trustee for 2 years, and with Toby and Will as founders, some advice from Nick on hiring researchers) from time to time. I am in regular contact with other organisation leaders inside of EVF as well as those outside of (in fact, I have much more contact and consultation with leaders of other effective giving organisations than I do with most other leaders of organisations within EVF or our board). My primary day-to-to-day contact is with my staff, donors, members and funders all who give a lot of input on the day-to-day of what we’re doing at GWWC.
To be frank, the hardest thing about having so many organisations as part of one charity is that it’s harder for a board to give lots of attention to the strategy of each organisation within it. It would be much easier (and IMHO more appropriate) to be critiquing the governance from the angle that not enough attention is given (due to a small number of busy people who’s expertise isn’t governance being spread too thin) rather than too much (in the form of exerting influence).
3. What exactly do you mean/have in mind by “GWWC members should demand control over their institution”?
I’m not sure what you mean by this and would be interested to know more.
On the suborgs not getting enough attention: I don’t know UK corporate law, but at least in my home jurisdiction, I believe non-profit boards can create committees of the board that can (1) include non-members, yet (2) exercise most of the full board’s powers to the extent delegated by the full board, as long as (3) a majority of the committee members are board members. So, at least where I live, EVF could establish a five-person committee for each suborg: three Board members + two non-Board members who are unique to that suborg. That committee could perform the bulk of board functions for the suborgs, and each suborg would gain two new board-type people to pay attention to it whose energies were not spread out among all the suborgs. That should give some of the advantages of each suborg having its “own” board without actually messing with the legal structure.
I guess the low-hanging fruit is that a five-person board is probably too small for an organization like EVF, and should probably expand to nine (or at least seven) over time.
I don’t think this changes the overall picture, but the EA movement existed before it had a name. The movement coalesced from a bunch of related ideas and projects, but I would say it existed before the legal incorporation of CEA. For example, GiveWell was started in 2007, GWWC in 2009, and 80k in early 2011.
Thanks Jeff. Added “much of” to be more precise.
Hello,
Thanks for your work and this reply.
1. Yes, seems like an unsupported belief I had. I added a pointer to your comments to the beginning of the post. At the very least, the board continues to uphold their influence over the community and EVF suborgs.
2. That’s great to hear! I did not expect them to use their power, but they clearly are able to, if they wanted to.
3. In my view, if GWWC wants to be a community organization, it should be controlled by the community. From a governance perspective, GWWC is as much a community as IKEA’s members program. Of course, the GWWC community exists socially, but it does not empower members to shape the organization.
This seems like a very one-size-fits-all model of what a community is. GWWC is a community of people who commit to effective giving, that is what brings us together. I don’t particularly think that the members of GWWC being involved in it’s governance would make it more of a community.
It is certainly important for there to be some oversight to prevent e.g. accidentally hiring a CEO who takes things off the rails, but I for one am quite happy with the existing board and don’t see that it would be significantly improved by more “community involvement”.
Yeah, I contend that this is only my personal view, and others might be fine with it. From my perspective, GWWC is a marketing project by EVF that builds and shapes a community centered on donating to EA causes (including EVF itself).
Structurally, this is the same type of user community that many for-profit companies cultivate. I do not join such communities, because I refuse to be a marketing vehicle.
More community involvement would lead to decisions that primarily represent the community.
This comment makes me feel like we’re living on different planets.
GWWC precedes EVF, it is not a “project by EVF”, it had its own existence beforehand and has its own leadership and direction. If anything, EVF exists to serve GWWC.
GWWC is not a marketing project, that doesn’t even make sense to me. EVF doesn’t have a product that it’s selling to people. The purpose of GWWC is exactly what it says on the tin: getting people to pledge to give more and more effectively. In what way is this marketing for EVF?
In what way do the decisions not currently represent the community? Indeed, all the people who work for GWWC are people who are committed to effective giving, i.e. are members of the community. Sure, if it was run by some unrelated people who had no interest in what we’re doing I’d be worried but… it isn’t?
This is exactly why I wrote this post. GWWC feels like an innocent community. But GWWC itself states at the bottom of their website that they are “a project of EVF”. This is fact, at least in a legal sense.
GWWC is a marketing project, and here’s why: GWWC tries to get people to donate more. They try to influence people’s spending so more of it goes to effective causes. To me, that’s the definition of marketing. The product they are selling is a Donation to EA Funds. It’s still marketing if a charity does it.
I don’t think the GWWC community is unhappy with current leadership, I also think they’re doing a fine job. After all, GWWC pledgees self-selected into it. My point is, that only works because the right people happen to be in power, and not because governance structures ensure this. The board of EVF could, for example, simply decide tomorrow, without involving the community, that GWWC should exclusively facilitate donations to playpumps.
Perhaps our real disagreement is whether or not we are in a high-trust regime or not: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vXq4ADWzBnwR2nyqE/keep-ea-high-trust
I think we clearly are, and so this kind of attitude is costly and unnecessary.
I think you’re spot on on one disagreement. Let’s phrase it even more explicitly: You trust EVF to always make the right calls, even in 10 years from now. I don’t.
I believe I have good reasons to assume that even if they have good intentions, they might not act in the community’s favor.
The quote above (emphasis mine) reads like a strawman; I don’t think Michael would say that they always make the right call. My personal view is that individuals steering GWWC will mostly make the right decisions and downside risks are small enough not to warrant costly governance interventions.
To be clear, the point isn’t to act in the community’s favor, the point is acting in a way that benefits the good. (It’s possible this is what you actually mean and I’m misunderstanding).
The coinage of a name for a movement is different from the establishment of that movement.
That’s true, but before the brand “Effective Altruism” existed, there was no reason why starting an organisation using that name should have made the founders beholden to the will of every single participant in this community—you’d need to conjecture a pretty unreasonable amount of foresight and scheming to think that even back then the founders were trying to structure these orgs in a manner designed to maintain central control over the movement.
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
My model is that no one would try to formally stop this effort (i.e. via a lawsuit), though it would receive substantial pushback in the form of:
Private communication discouraging the effort
Organizers of the effort excluded and/or removed from coordinating fora, such as EA slack groups
Public writing suggesting that the effort be rolled into the existing EA movement
Attempts (by professional EAs) to minimize the funding directed to the effort from traditional EA funders (i.e. the effort would be viewed as a competitor for funding)
I’d disagree. Probably Good, a direct competitor to 80k, is overall supported by the community, though it gets less support than 80k.
CEA goes out of their way to solicit competition in their new update. But probably a competitor to CEA would not end up being fiscally sponsored by EVF, and would receive less support than EVF.
However, I think instead of starting new orgs, the EA community should first try to improve the ones we have today.
Probably Good is a reasonable counterexample to my model here (though it’s not really a direct competitor – they’re aiming at a different audience and consulted with 80k on how to structure the project).
It’ll be interesting to see how its relationships with 80k and Open Phil develop as we enter a funding contraction.
I don’t follow what you’re pointing to with “beholden to the will of every single participant in this community.”
My point is that CEA was established as a centralizing organization to coordinate the actions and branding of the then-nascent EA community.
Whereas Luke’s phrasing suggests that CEA drove the creation of the EA community, i.e. CEA was created and then the community sprung up around it.