This is an interesting idea, but I’m skeptical as I think it underestimates the difficulties in co-ordination. Givewell has had difficulty with volunteers due to unreliability. Another datapoint is the shift in .IMPACT (now Rethink Charity) from relying on volunteers to relying on paid staff. Volunteer hierarchical organisations will be hit by these issues doubly hard as they are relying on volunteers for both management and object level work. I would love to be proven wrong though.
Counting datapoints, for some time I worked on “translating” the community structure behind Wikipedia from the en: version to cz:; co-founded Czech Wikimedia chapter; led CZEA.
Wikipedia was created almost entirely by hierarchical volunteer structure, so you can take it as some sort of existential proof. (IMO possibly the most impressive thing about Wikipedia is the social technology behind it, and how much deliberate is it)
I agree that fully volunteer organisations are difficult, but something like 5 volunteers / 1 staffer is much easier. Also what makes large difference is volunteers working physically together vs. distributed online work. Also what is actually important is not so much whether people are getting payed, but how large fraction of attention/time can someone put into coordination. (I.e. a group of 10 volunteers where every member puts in 0.1FTE is much less effective than group of 6 volunteers on 0.1FTE + one coordinator on 0.4FTE)
Overall didn’t meant to suggest anything is easy; on the other hand in my opinion it is in general easier to get good in managing volunteers than, for example, to get hired for some of the most competitive jobs in EA orgs.
This is an interesting idea, but I’m skeptical as I think it underestimates the difficulties in co-ordination. Givewell has had difficulty with volunteers due to unreliability. Another datapoint is the shift in .IMPACT (now Rethink Charity) from relying on volunteers to relying on paid staff. Volunteer hierarchical organisations will be hit by these issues doubly hard as they are relying on volunteers for both management and object level work. I would love to be proven wrong though.
Counting datapoints, for some time I worked on “translating” the community structure behind Wikipedia from the en: version to cz:; co-founded Czech Wikimedia chapter; led CZEA.
Wikipedia was created almost entirely by hierarchical volunteer structure, so you can take it as some sort of existential proof. (IMO possibly the most impressive thing about Wikipedia is the social technology behind it, and how much deliberate is it)
I agree that fully volunteer organisations are difficult, but something like 5 volunteers / 1 staffer is much easier. Also what makes large difference is volunteers working physically together vs. distributed online work. Also what is actually important is not so much whether people are getting payed, but how large fraction of attention/time can someone put into coordination. (I.e. a group of 10 volunteers where every member puts in 0.1FTE is much less effective than group of 6 volunteers on 0.1FTE + one coordinator on 0.4FTE)
Overall didn’t meant to suggest anything is easy; on the other hand in my opinion it is in general easier to get good in managing volunteers than, for example, to get hired for some of the most competitive jobs in EA orgs.