Unfortunately, we donât have the data compiled yet in a format that is easy to share, but I will put that on our list of things to publish in the future. But a couple of specific indicators:
There is no significant correlation between age of the participant/âexperience and charity success.
When we surveyed incubatees who had prior experience to establish how much they apply/âuse their prior knowledge vs how much they apply what they learned during the program or during running their charity, they say much more often that they regularly apply the charity-specific learning.
We also found that âexpertsââpeople with significant experience and credentials in a given cause area/âcharity idea, do not systematically outperform people who are new to the field but have other traits (e.g., being entrepreneurial or super impact-focused in the EA sense).
And there is also a practical element to itâoften EA-type charities are very, very specific (because of how the impact of charity ideas is distributed) and therefore there is no experience/âbackground you can get that will be as relevant to your organization as actually running the organization, e.g., there is no degree in shrimp welfare in Vietnamese or Indian farming systems :P If you are curious about that case in particular, Andres, Co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project recently interviewed with Rob and talked about his experience.
I agree with Rob that forgone impact is also an additional (very important) benefit of starting the organization earlier.
But Iâd expect people who start a charity earlier rather than seeking additional training first to be systematically different â to start with theyâre evidently more confident about their prospects, and that may be an indicator of higher underlying competence or enthusiasm
Yes, I think thatâs plausible, but we havenât found a significant correlation between confidence and charity success either. So even though higher confidence could contribute to the decision to start earlier, it will not necessarily show in charity outcomes. That being said, I also expect there to be a difference between people who start a charity without any support vs. the applicant to the CE program who knows that they will receive training, mentorship etc., and therefore, smoothing out the distribution of confidence in our sample, so the applicant-traits effect may be stronger in independent founders.
Unfortunately, we donât have the data compiled yet in a format that is easy to share, but I will put that on our list of things to publish in the future. But a couple of specific indicators:
There is no significant correlation between age of the participant/âexperience and charity success.
When we surveyed incubatees who had prior experience to establish how much they apply/âuse their prior knowledge vs how much they apply what they learned during the program or during running their charity, they say much more often that they regularly apply the charity-specific learning.
We also found that âexpertsââpeople with significant experience and credentials in a given cause area/âcharity idea, do not systematically outperform people who are new to the field but have other traits (e.g., being entrepreneurial or super impact-focused in the EA sense).
And there is also a practical element to itâoften EA-type charities are very, very specific (because of how the impact of charity ideas is distributed) and therefore there is no experience/âbackground you can get that will be as relevant to your organization as actually running the organization, e.g., there is no degree in shrimp welfare in Vietnamese or Indian farming systems :P If you are curious about that case in particular, Andres, Co-founder of Shrimp Welfare Project recently interviewed with Rob and talked about his experience.
I agree with Rob that forgone impact is also an additional (very important) benefit of starting the organization earlier.
Yes, I think thatâs plausible, but we havenât found a significant correlation between confidence and charity success either. So even though higher confidence could contribute to the decision to start earlier, it will not necessarily show in charity outcomes. That being said, I also expect there to be a difference between people who start a charity without any support vs. the applicant to the CE program who knows that they will receive training, mentorship etc., and therefore, smoothing out the distribution of confidence in our sample, so the applicant-traits effect may be stronger in independent founders.