One thing I occasionally think about is how few “competitors” exist for CEA’s products/services. I feel a little odd using this kind of terminology in a non-profit context, but to put it simplistically: if anyone wants to start up a “competing” conference for do-gooders, they can do that. In a simplistic sense there isn’t anything stopping AIM, or GWWC, or High Impact Professionals, or you & I as individuals from putting on a Effective Altruism Annual Conference, or from hosting online introductory EA programs, or from providing coaching and advice to city and university EA groups.
There actually is a lot stopping people from doing this independently—if you would ever want to scale and get funding you basically have 3 sources of funders, and if they don’t approve what you are doing you won’t get to become a serious competitor
I’m probably less informed than you are, but depending on what you mean by “sources of funders” I disagree.
I think if you can demonstrate getting valuable results and want funding to scale, people will be happy to fund you. My impression is that several people influencing >=6 digit allocations are genuinely looking for projects to fund that can be even more effective than what they’re currently funding.
I’m fairly confident that if anyone hosted a conference or online program, got good results, had a clear theory of change with measurable metrics, and gradually asked for funding to scale, people will be happy to fund that.
I agree with you. Hypothetically, anyone can ‘compete’ by providing an alternative offering. But realistically there are barriers to entry. (I know that I wouldn’t be able to put on a conference or run an online forum without lots of outside funding and expertise.) Maybe we could make an argument that there are some competitors with CEA’s services (such as Manifest, AVA Summit, LessWrong, Animal Advocacy Forum) but I suspect that the target market is different enough that these don’t really count as competitors.
Of all the things that CEA does, running online intro EA programs would probably be the easiest thing to provide an alternative offering for: just get a reading list and start running sessions. Heck, I run book clubs that meet video video chat, and all it takes in 15-45 minutes of administrative work each month.
On a local/national level, maybe university/city group support could realistically be done? But I’m fairly skeptical. My informal impression is that for most of what CEA does it wouldn’t make sense for alternative offerings to try to ‘compete.’
I’d say the key thing CEA is providing is infrastructure/assets rather than product/services and that tends to be the kind of thing to centralise where possible. Ie. EA forum, community health, shared resources/knowledge, distribution channels etc.
Events are closer to product/services and. AIM has done conferences in the past but they aren’t open to wider groups like EAGxs.
The blocker for those orgs is probably capacity—both AIM and GWWC are <20 people, HIP is 2 people, EA UK [1] is 0.8 FTE. For me personally, I do run a lot of events but my frustration is that the barrier to entry is pretty high because of existing network effects, the fact that they do have know-how and that I basically have to do a ton of my own marketing and maintain my own mailing list to run GWWC events.[2]
We could compete but why are we doing that? This is not a zero sum game for impact, it is very positive sum. There’s so much work to be done.
One thing I occasionally think about is how few “competitors” exist for CEA’s products/services. I feel a little odd using this kind of terminology in a non-profit context, but to put it simplistically: if anyone wants to start up a “competing” conference for do-gooders, they can do that. In a simplistic sense there isn’t anything stopping AIM, or GWWC, or High Impact Professionals, or you & I as individuals from putting on a Effective Altruism Annual Conference, or from hosting online introductory EA programs, or from providing coaching and advice to city and university EA groups.
There actually is a lot stopping people from doing this independently—if you would ever want to scale and get funding you basically have 3 sources of funders, and if they don’t approve what you are doing you won’t get to become a serious competitor
I’m probably less informed than you are, but depending on what you mean by “sources of funders” I disagree.
I think if you can demonstrate getting valuable results and want funding to scale, people will be happy to fund you. My impression is that several people influencing >=6 digit allocations are genuinely looking for projects to fund that can be even more effective than what they’re currently funding.
I’m fairly confident that if anyone hosted a conference or online program, got good results, had a clear theory of change with measurable metrics, and gradually asked for funding to scale, people will be happy to fund that.
Ah sorry I should have just said “3 main / larger scale funders” (op, eaif + meta funding circle). Funders from those groups include individuals.
But I was also unclear in my comment—I’ll clarify this soon.
I agree with you. Hypothetically, anyone can ‘compete’ by providing an alternative offering. But realistically there are barriers to entry. (I know that I wouldn’t be able to put on a conference or run an online forum without lots of outside funding and expertise.) Maybe we could make an argument that there are some competitors with CEA’s services (such as Manifest, AVA Summit, LessWrong, Animal Advocacy Forum) but I suspect that the target market is different enough that these don’t really count as competitors.
Of all the things that CEA does, running online intro EA programs would probably be the easiest thing to provide an alternative offering for: just get a reading list and start running sessions. Heck, I run book clubs that meet video video chat, and all it takes in 15-45 minutes of administrative work each month.
On a local/national level, maybe university/city group support could realistically be done? But I’m fairly skeptical. My informal impression is that for most of what CEA does it wouldn’t make sense for alternative offerings to try to ‘compete.’
EAGx conferences are technically not organized by EAG but they are supported by it, so I’m not sure if they count as “competitors”
Yeah, I could see a reasonable argument either way for that.
CEA seems to maintain control over most high-level aspects of EAGx, so I don’t think this counts as competition.
I’d say the key thing CEA is providing is infrastructure/assets rather than product/services and that tends to be the kind of thing to centralise where possible. Ie. EA forum, community health, shared resources/knowledge, distribution channels etc.
Events are closer to product/services and. AIM has done conferences in the past but they aren’t open to wider groups like EAGxs.
The blocker for those orgs is probably capacity—both AIM and GWWC are <20 people, HIP is 2 people, EA UK [1] is 0.8 FTE. For me personally, I do run a lot of events but my frustration is that the barrier to entry is pretty high because of existing network effects, the fact that they do have know-how and that I basically have to do a ton of my own marketing and maintain my own mailing list to run GWWC events.[2]
We could compete but why are we doing that? This is not a zero sum game for impact, it is very positive sum. There’s so much work to be done.
I’m on the EA UK board
I think the death of Facebook has had an underrated impact on EA Community Building—its actually so much more effort now to run events.