Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to be so thorough. I also appreciate how structured your comment is, and it makes it easy to follow. You bring up a lot of new points that we haven’t thought about before, and have made us think more about how we can better cooperate with MBA/​ business graduates and HR managers. I also found your list of certificates particularly useful. I was wondering, could you explain more about what you call ‘partnership streams’?
A few days ago we published another post on this topic where we outline our plans for an operations camp this summer as a project to help reduce the operations talent gap in EA. It would be great if you get the chance to read over it and see if you have any input.
Hi Eirin, I’m happy there were relevant points to add to the conversation!
To respond to your query:
Partnership Streams ‘Partnership Streams’ is a rather generic term which is applicable across many areas and types of businesses & institutions.
A partnership stream will be entirely specific to each partnership and have a purpose. This includes understanding of what each partner gives and receives from each other—and most importantly, why.
Some companies are well versed in developing partnerships and have a whole process in researching & developing new and existing partnership streams—be aware, a partnership needs to values match.
It’s good to consider all partnership streams of worth to be long-term investments in relationship building (like a marriage).
Current EA Movement Weak to Strong Partnership Streams | Universities Allowing On-Campus Hosting of EA Events In the case of the EA movement, I understand the undergraduate and university weak-partnership stream development comes from EA hosting information sessions, talks & events on campus in order to raise awareness of the movement and grow membership /​ interactions from the collegiate body.
This weak-partnership stream could be developed further into a strong /​ specific partnership within specific departments of universities as well as in direct communications with the office of Vice-Chancellor etc. with the following goals:
- Continuing to build EA awareness and membership growth within the student body.
- Raise awareness of EA in the university administration, alumni and executive bodies in order to;
1) Bring in membership, donations /​ work to give—from university employees.
2) Expose the EA movement to the business partners and donors of a given university.
3) Build a partnership with alumni donors & build out EA presence at alumni events.
4) Bring the EA movement to mind during an alumni’s career transition.
Disclaimer: I don’t know the details of how well connected the EA movement is with individual universities. We may already have well developed ties in certain universities—offering the social leverage to propose such partnerships on a case by case basis.
Considering assigning a go-to EA Member liaison for each university could be another worthwhile exercise in further building these partnership streams.
Partnership Stream | Example: Reaching Employed MBA Holders To keep with the example of reaching already employed MBA graduates with experience in business analysis /​ operations, there could be a few ways to interact:
1) Via Social Media | HR Strategy eg, LinkedIn HR firms regularly track and connect with individuals on LinkedIn in order to keep their talent pool healthy & to continue understanding the ever-changing business /​ job seeker demographics.
Some HR teams will be focussed on finding individuals who will match their experience, standards and values (starting with keyword searches) and literally cold-message an individual to gauge an individual’s interest in an offered position or at the very least, in staying in contact.
A dedicated EA working in a HR capacity could continue to build out this process starting with EA members on LinkedIn, then expanding to 2nd and 3rd level connections as well as cold-contacting relevant orgs & individuals.
A note on LinkedIn: LinkedIn has it’s own education /​ mentorship & advice platform, this may have some useful resources for EA orgs and EA members—though I haven’t explored it myself.
2) Selected Industry Events | EA Movement Booth /​ Talk If a certain industry event has been identified as a possible rich source of A) Potential new EA members, B) Potential new EA donors, C) Potential new EA employees and/​or D) Potential new business partnerships, then EA could host a booth or better yet, give a talk. This talk could be tailored to the event and the sort of industry professional attending (including what likely level of employment hierarchy they are placed). Having a call to action to get together & speak after the event to allow interested individuals to learn more about EA is key.
3) Direct Partnering with Firms To build a relationship with a firm (let’s use the example of McKinsey). This partnership could be one in which McKinsey offers a short-term business analysis consultation to an EA organisation as part of the charitable and giving back component of McKinsey’s corporate responsibility programme. This could also extend to McKinsey hosting a business analysis /​ operations workshop for EA (either for a specific EA team face-to-face or via video conference). Internally, an employee may wish to work with EA on a project as part of their own giving back strategy.
This could be seen as an EA partnership in terms of a charitable partnership /​ relationship building. No doubt the EA movement could foster this—as EA seems to have a favourable international reputation (especially in the effective measuring of charitable projects, research into existential risks and in offering education and career advice to those who are seeking an EA aligned life).
The difficult part would be this—EA would most likely NOT be able to speak directly with a firm’s employees about coming to work at an EA organisation—that would fall under employee ‘poaching’ violations. Ultimately, companies don’t want to lose their talent. They want them to stay for as long as possible and to develop their value internally. So, partnering with the intent to poach employees is a no no.
However, it is not unethical to become a healthy presence and partner with organisations where an employee looking to do something else with a more values-aligned organisation would easily bring to mind the EA movement after having such exposure in a professional capacity. It would also help that they would know an EA member personally and/​or it would be easy to connect with them.
I’d also note that a corporate responsibility team can sometimes be scrambling for ideas as to who to connect with in terms of giving talks for internal corporate ‘breakfast’ events /​ speaking events. EA could be invited to do a series of direct talks to chosen companies & may be very well received.
Partnership Stream | Technology Company—Eg. Google Partnerships for Startups, Business, Marketing, Education & NFP’s Technology platforms will also partner with an organisation of whom it considers a relevant match in terms of industry, human /​ technical development and shared business goals*.
The level and type of partnership will vary according to the organisation and industry.
An example is Google Partnerships with technology startup incubators. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will do the same—offering things like credits, platform advice and technical trouble shooting, grants and discounts for members of an organisation or the organisation itself.
Partnering with an HR firm could also be a direction to explore—though there would need to be research done to learn more about this direction & it’s possibilities /​ opportunities for the EA movement.
*Please note, although a past business I worked at partnered with Google and I use G-Suite, I am not affiliated with or am advertising this or any other company mentioned at any point—these are only examples & cases. Partnership Stream | For Corporate Social Responsibility /​ Charitable Giving This is another topic—but I’ll add:
In terms of charitable giving, organisations will have varying levels of openness to partnering with the EA movement.
This falls under each company’s corporate social responsibility charter—which can cover partnering and donating (as a major donation or as individual employee elected contributions etc).
Companies pursue partnerships with charitable organisations with good reputations as part of their corporate social responsibility—and what better reputation than a movement of charities and organisations who’s core values include tracking and accountability of their projects /​ research findings?
——— I hope this helps Eirin!
Also thanks for the heads-up—I will read the new post & respond. I’ll also read & write a response to Operations Part 2.
Thanks for explaining! I wasn’t familiar with the term, but I feel like I know understand better what it entails and the different ways it could look like.
Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to be so thorough. I also appreciate how structured your comment is, and it makes it easy to follow. You bring up a lot of new points that we haven’t thought about before, and have made us think more about how we can better cooperate with MBA/​ business graduates and HR managers. I also found your list of certificates particularly useful. I was wondering, could you explain more about what you call ‘partnership streams’?
A few days ago we published another post on this topic where we outline our plans for an operations camp this summer as a project to help reduce the operations talent gap in EA. It would be great if you get the chance to read over it and see if you have any input.
Hi Eirin,
I’m happy there were relevant points to add to the conversation!
To respond to your query:
Partnership Streams
‘Partnership Streams’ is a rather generic term which is applicable across many areas and types of businesses & institutions.
A partnership stream will be entirely specific to each partnership and have a purpose. This includes understanding of what each partner gives and receives from each other—and most importantly, why.
Some companies are well versed in developing partnerships and have a whole process in researching & developing new and existing partnership streams—be aware, a partnership needs to values match.
It’s good to consider all partnership streams of worth to be long-term investments in relationship building (like a marriage).
Current EA Movement Weak to Strong Partnership Streams | Universities Allowing On-Campus Hosting of EA Events
In the case of the EA movement, I understand the undergraduate and university weak-partnership stream development comes from EA hosting information sessions, talks & events on campus in order to raise awareness of the movement and grow membership /​ interactions from the collegiate body.
This weak-partnership stream could be developed further into a strong /​ specific partnership within specific departments of universities as well as in direct communications with the office of Vice-Chancellor etc. with the following goals:
- Continuing to build EA awareness and membership growth within the student body.
- Raise awareness of EA in the university administration, alumni and executive bodies in order to;
1) Bring in membership, donations /​ work to give—from university employees.
2) Expose the EA movement to the business partners and donors of a given university.
3) Build a partnership with alumni donors & build out EA presence at alumni events.
4) Bring the EA movement to mind during an alumni’s career transition.
Disclaimer: I don’t know the details of how well connected the EA movement is with individual universities. We may already have well developed ties in certain universities—offering the social leverage to propose such partnerships on a case by case basis.
Considering assigning a go-to EA Member liaison for each university could be another worthwhile exercise in further building these partnership streams.
Partnership Stream | Example: Reaching Employed MBA Holders
To keep with the example of reaching already employed MBA graduates with experience in business analysis /​ operations, there could be a few ways to interact:
1) Via Social Media | HR Strategy eg, LinkedIn
HR firms regularly track and connect with individuals on LinkedIn in order to keep their talent pool healthy & to continue understanding the ever-changing business /​ job seeker demographics.
Some HR teams will be focussed on finding individuals who will match their experience, standards and values (starting with keyword searches) and literally cold-message an individual to gauge an individual’s interest in an offered position or at the very least, in staying in contact.
A dedicated EA working in a HR capacity could continue to build out this process starting with EA members on LinkedIn, then expanding to 2nd and 3rd level connections as well as cold-contacting relevant orgs & individuals.
A note on LinkedIn: LinkedIn has it’s own education /​ mentorship & advice platform, this may have some useful resources for EA orgs and EA members—though I haven’t explored it myself.
2) Selected Industry Events | EA Movement Booth /​ Talk
If a certain industry event has been identified as a possible rich source of A) Potential new EA members, B) Potential new EA donors, C) Potential new EA employees and/​or D) Potential new business partnerships, then EA could host a booth or better yet, give a talk. This talk could be tailored to the event and the sort of industry professional attending (including what likely level of employment hierarchy they are placed). Having a call to action to get together & speak after the event to allow interested individuals to learn more about EA is key.
3) Direct Partnering with Firms
To build a relationship with a firm (let’s use the example of McKinsey). This partnership could be one in which McKinsey offers a short-term business analysis consultation to an EA organisation as part of the charitable and giving back component of McKinsey’s corporate responsibility programme. This could also extend to McKinsey hosting a business analysis /​ operations workshop for EA (either for a specific EA team face-to-face or via video conference). Internally, an employee may wish to work with EA on a project as part of their own giving back strategy.
This could be seen as an EA partnership in terms of a charitable partnership /​ relationship building. No doubt the EA movement could foster this—as EA seems to have a favourable international reputation (especially in the effective measuring of charitable projects, research into existential risks and in offering education and career advice to those who are seeking an EA aligned life).
The difficult part would be this—EA would most likely NOT be able to speak directly with a firm’s employees about coming to work at an EA organisation—that would fall under employee ‘poaching’ violations. Ultimately, companies don’t want to lose their talent. They want them to stay for as long as possible and to develop their value internally. So, partnering with the intent to poach employees is a no no.
However, it is not unethical to become a healthy presence and partner with organisations where an employee looking to do something else with a more values-aligned organisation would easily bring to mind the EA movement after having such exposure in a professional capacity. It would also help that they would know an EA member personally and/​or it would be easy to connect with them.
I’d also note that a corporate responsibility team can sometimes be scrambling for ideas as to who to connect with in terms of giving talks for internal corporate ‘breakfast’ events /​ speaking events. EA could be invited to do a series of direct talks to chosen companies & may be very well received.
Partnership Stream | Technology Company—Eg. Google Partnerships for Startups, Business, Marketing, Education & NFP’s
Technology platforms will also partner with an organisation of whom it considers a relevant match in terms of industry, human /​ technical development and shared business goals*.
The level and type of partnership will vary according to the organisation and industry.
An example is Google Partnerships with technology startup incubators. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will do the same—offering things like credits, platform advice and technical trouble shooting, grants and discounts for members of an organisation or the organisation itself.
Partnering with an HR firm could also be a direction to explore—though there would need to be research done to learn more about this direction & it’s possibilities /​ opportunities for the EA movement.
*Please note, although a past business I worked at partnered with Google and I use G-Suite, I am not affiliated with or am advertising this or any other company mentioned at any point—these are only examples & cases.
Partnership Stream | For Corporate Social Responsibility /​ Charitable Giving
This is another topic—but I’ll add:
In terms of charitable giving, organisations will have varying levels of openness to partnering with the EA movement.
This falls under each company’s corporate social responsibility charter—which can cover partnering and donating (as a major donation or as individual employee elected contributions etc).
Companies pursue partnerships with charitable organisations with good reputations as part of their corporate social responsibility—and what better reputation than a movement of charities and organisations who’s core values include tracking and accountability of their projects /​ research findings?
———
I hope this helps Eirin!
Also thanks for the heads-up—I will read the new post & respond. I’ll also read & write a response to Operations Part 2.
Thanks for explaining! I wasn’t familiar with the term, but I feel like I know understand better what it entails and the different ways it could look like.