Is it your impression with Giving What We Can cahpters that them being upfront with the 10% Giving Pledge is a good introduction to effective altruism and taking it on as a lifestyle? Perhaps in being unambiguous about the commitment, people visiting GWWC chapters are more likely to realize whether or not they’re really willing to make that commitment, and stick around. This could be contrasted with other word-of-mouth outreach, whether “hard” or “soft” sells, which haven’t seemed to have been as succesful.
Hi Evan, I’m afraid I don’t know that much about that. I’d imagine it would depend on what types of events they’re running, how many people come along to these and how many people within the group have already taken the pledge. I think that EA involves thinking about a lot of different ideas, often quite theoretically, which is great, but for some people it’s important to also have some clear call to action/emphasis on things they can do in practice, so talking about the pledge could be valuable.
tl;dr I’m throwing all my thoughts on chapter management/growth and word-of-mouth because I’m helping friends launch a university chapter with great ambition. From what I can tell, the best results come from systematic and coordinated local university/GWWC chapters for hard commitments; fundraisers and awareness which scale well on social media, like Causevox fundraisers and discussion groups, to increase interest and awareness; ongoing online hubs like LW or EA Hub for gradual but consistent winning over.
Yeah, that’s the acting hypothesis. I’ll also ask Jon Courteny about it, because it interfaces with whole chapters more. Based on his and your reports, GWWC chapters are a system which most reliably generates new members. It’s easier to gauge based on number of members which come from each chapter, how much they pledge. Your work at GWWC and talking to as many members as possible isn’t a proper outreach experiment, but the aggregation of all that experience does impart unto you lessons about what works.
Second after GWWC chapters, it seems the best new way to build effective altruism are university chapters. I’m impressed with what’s been achieved independently in the United States, at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton. There are fewer hard numbers, but the executives at the Harvard EA club have brought people into effective altruism and onto effective careers who otherwise wouldn’t have done so. I suspect this is true for the other clubs. It’s a shame I’m not at EA Global this year, because then I could talk to everyone at once. However, I think in the wake of the event, I could coordinate a complete resource list for building and managing effective altruism chapters.
Experiments through .impact, Animal Charity Evaluators, and just word-of-mouth trials effective altruists do themselves haven’t made much dint. I’m noticing a pattern where more coordination and a system which minimizes confusion and presents a unified and coherent whole, like at a university or GWWC chapter, faciliates understanding and the choice to embrace effective altruism if one wants. Our experience at the Vancouver effective altruism meetup is it’s difficult to get people to stick around. There is no (semi-)formal delineation of responsibility for planning, and when a newcomer arrives, they’re bombarded with messages spanning all cause areas and types of action. I suspect this might be the same of other unaffiliated meetups around the world, as outside of ones near Oxford or the Bay Area, I’ve not encountered reports of wildly successful independent hubs. The one exception seems to be Melbourne.
Other outreach efforts for effective altruism happen online. They’re succesful at a slower rate, but robustly scale. One example is LessWrong and the rationalist community; another is the Effective Altruism Hub; a third is how woven Facebook is with effective altruism outreach online. Charity Science also does all types of fundraising, advocacy, and outreach experiments, but there aren’t strong results yet for anything outside of birthday/holiday fundraisers.
Is it your impression with Giving What We Can cahpters that them being upfront with the 10% Giving Pledge is a good introduction to effective altruism and taking it on as a lifestyle? Perhaps in being unambiguous about the commitment, people visiting GWWC chapters are more likely to realize whether or not they’re really willing to make that commitment, and stick around. This could be contrasted with other word-of-mouth outreach, whether “hard” or “soft” sells, which haven’t seemed to have been as succesful.
Hi Evan, I’m afraid I don’t know that much about that. I’d imagine it would depend on what types of events they’re running, how many people come along to these and how many people within the group have already taken the pledge. I think that EA involves thinking about a lot of different ideas, often quite theoretically, which is great, but for some people it’s important to also have some clear call to action/emphasis on things they can do in practice, so talking about the pledge could be valuable.
tl;dr I’m throwing all my thoughts on chapter management/growth and word-of-mouth because I’m helping friends launch a university chapter with great ambition. From what I can tell, the best results come from systematic and coordinated local university/GWWC chapters for hard commitments; fundraisers and awareness which scale well on social media, like Causevox fundraisers and discussion groups, to increase interest and awareness; ongoing online hubs like LW or EA Hub for gradual but consistent winning over.
Yeah, that’s the acting hypothesis. I’ll also ask Jon Courteny about it, because it interfaces with whole chapters more. Based on his and your reports, GWWC chapters are a system which most reliably generates new members. It’s easier to gauge based on number of members which come from each chapter, how much they pledge. Your work at GWWC and talking to as many members as possible isn’t a proper outreach experiment, but the aggregation of all that experience does impart unto you lessons about what works.
Second after GWWC chapters, it seems the best new way to build effective altruism are university chapters. I’m impressed with what’s been achieved independently in the United States, at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton. There are fewer hard numbers, but the executives at the Harvard EA club have brought people into effective altruism and onto effective careers who otherwise wouldn’t have done so. I suspect this is true for the other clubs. It’s a shame I’m not at EA Global this year, because then I could talk to everyone at once. However, I think in the wake of the event, I could coordinate a complete resource list for building and managing effective altruism chapters.
Experiments through .impact, Animal Charity Evaluators, and just word-of-mouth trials effective altruists do themselves haven’t made much dint. I’m noticing a pattern where more coordination and a system which minimizes confusion and presents a unified and coherent whole, like at a university or GWWC chapter, faciliates understanding and the choice to embrace effective altruism if one wants. Our experience at the Vancouver effective altruism meetup is it’s difficult to get people to stick around. There is no (semi-)formal delineation of responsibility for planning, and when a newcomer arrives, they’re bombarded with messages spanning all cause areas and types of action. I suspect this might be the same of other unaffiliated meetups around the world, as outside of ones near Oxford or the Bay Area, I’ve not encountered reports of wildly successful independent hubs. The one exception seems to be Melbourne.
Other outreach efforts for effective altruism happen online. They’re succesful at a slower rate, but robustly scale. One example is LessWrong and the rationalist community; another is the Effective Altruism Hub; a third is how woven Facebook is with effective altruism outreach online. Charity Science also does all types of fundraising, advocacy, and outreach experiments, but there aren’t strong results yet for anything outside of birthday/holiday fundraisers.