To use an analogy from accounting: recruiting and fundraising are operating expenditure. You need to make the investment every year to get the same returns. Community building is more like capital expenditure—you’re investing in assets from which you expect future value to flow.
Surely recruiting is a capital expenditure in this framework?
So recruiting isn’t capital expenditure because the entity does not own or control its employees. Employees can resign whenever and, unless they are also shareholders, they don’t have a stake in maximising the profitability of the enterprise (beyond retaining their job).
Maybe my analogy isnt actually great here—maybe I’m the better analogy is shareholders. Or maybe I’m a hammer viewing everything as a nail 😂
I like Matt Reardons comparison to sports culture :
EA can learn a lot from sports culture, particularly the sense that everyone is on the same page in wanting the team to win no matter what. The primary aspect of this I’m drawn to is that sports fans very rarely ask “what’s in it for me, personally?” On this analogy, I think it’s a mistake for EA orgs to present themselves as recruiting players (direct workers) rather than fans (donors). If you focus on recruiting fans, the players recruit themselves! And you have fans instead of varyingly-disgruntled passed-over players.
He uses the term “recruiting” here but I don’t think you need to recruit fans, you just need the sport to be enough fun to watch and for there to be existing fan infrastructure and culture to absorb new people.
I see my role as community builder as a someone building and maintaining infrastructure for other fans and giving them support if they’re interested in going pro.
Surely recruiting is a capital expenditure in this framework?
Great clarification question
So recruiting isn’t capital expenditure because the entity does not own or control its employees. Employees can resign whenever and, unless they are also shareholders, they don’t have a stake in maximising the profitability of the enterprise (beyond retaining their job).
Maybe my analogy isnt actually great here—maybe I’m the better analogy is shareholders. Or maybe I’m a hammer viewing everything as a nail 😂
I like Matt Reardons comparison to sports culture :
https://open.substack.com/pub/frommatter/p/12-theses-on-ea?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=diohx
He uses the term “recruiting” here but I don’t think you need to recruit fans, you just need the sport to be enough fun to watch and for there to be existing fan infrastructure and culture to absorb new people.
I see my role as community builder as a someone building and maintaining infrastructure for other fans and giving them support if they’re interested in going pro.
The infrastructure and the culture is the asset.
@Gemma 🔸, I had not seen that sports metaphor but it’s so good! Thanks for sharing!