“Our data shows that a founder who starts now and runs a charity for three years will outperform (at running a charity) someone who does two years work experience in a consultancy and then starts running a charity for a year. In short, start early and learn the most applicable things as you go along.”
I’d be super interested in seeing the detailed data here if possible!
If I had to guess I’d say this is right and the case is even stronger when you consider the foregone impact during the extended training process when someone isn’t directly doing any good.
But I’d expect people who start a charity earlier rather than seeking additional training first to be systematically different — to start with they’re evidently more confident about their prospects, and that may be an indicator of higher underlying competence or enthusiasm. That makes direct comparison between the groups difficult.
Unfortunately, we don’t 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/experience and charity success.
When we surveyed incubatees who had prior experience to establish how much they apply/use 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 “experts”—people with significant experience and credentials in a given cause area/charity 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 it—often EA-type charities are very, very specific (because of how the impact of charity ideas is distributed) and therefore there is no experience/background 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 I’d expect people who start a charity earlier rather than seeking additional training first to be systematically different — to start with they’re evidently more confident about their prospects, and that may be an indicator of higher underlying competence or enthusiasm
Yes, I think that’s plausible, but we haven’t 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.
I’d be super interested in seeing the detailed data here if possible!
Yes I’d love to read about this too.
If I had to guess I’d say this is right and the case is even stronger when you consider the foregone impact during the extended training process when someone isn’t directly doing any good.
But I’d expect people who start a charity earlier rather than seeking additional training first to be systematically different — to start with they’re evidently more confident about their prospects, and that may be an indicator of higher underlying competence or enthusiasm. That makes direct comparison between the groups difficult.
Unfortunately, we don’t 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/experience and charity success.
When we surveyed incubatees who had prior experience to establish how much they apply/use 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 “experts”—people with significant experience and credentials in a given cause area/charity 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 it—often EA-type charities are very, very specific (because of how the impact of charity ideas is distributed) and therefore there is no experience/background 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 that’s plausible, but we haven’t 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.