I think most grants to university, city, or national groups fund work that would have been done just as effectively by volunteers. Some of the university grants are particularly egregious, given how nearly all other college clubs exist just fine without paid organizers. “We are a student group interested in the most effective causes, and oh by the way funding us to organize this group for a semester is of similar levels of effectiveness as preventing 3 kids dying from malaria in poor countries.” I can think of few things more effective at turning people away from EA than college students learning the EA organizer is paid lots of money for it.
(I don’t work for the EAIF, and have limited visibility into their past decisionmaking)
Hmm, I think it’s fairly likely that the added value of having people devote significant time to university organizing (over what you could realistically get with volunteers) has higher EV via getting more future donations or via future hires than direct donations.
Do you disagree with this characterization of the expected consequences, or is the disagreement non-consequentialist in nature?
Separately, I also expect college club organizers to mostly be too young and relatively unknown entities for grantmakers that the “dole out to their friends” concern should be pretty minimal.
I think EAIF vastly overstates the effectiveness difference between paid vs. unpaid organizers, and dismisses the reputational risks of having paid organizers. Many college groups thrive without paid organizers, and EAIF-level of funding paid organizers only start being necessary once groups sizes reach 100. I don’t think there are any EA college groups that large, and they can fund-raise for it. I think the reputational harm—that EA is for self-serving grifters—causes far more damage than the marginal benefit from paid recruitment. It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively.
The EAIF isn’t supporting university groups anymore (though I don’t think it’s implausible that we will start doing this again in the future).
I think we have a pretty good sense of which uni groups and activities tend to produce people that go on to do high-impact work. I don’t think that is the only metric on which we should assess uni groups, but it’s an important one. I do think that groups wth paid organisers tend to have more measurable impact than groups without (though ofc there are selection effects). The groups also generally seem larger and more productive.
I think the reputational harm effects that you pointed out exist, but I don’t think they are particularly large. My personal view is that people should be compensated for doing challenging work that produces large amounts of altruistic value and I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many EA groups do have a large positive impact e.g. the Rethink Priorities and Open Phil surveys.
EA Funds would like to do more retroactive investigation into the effectiveness of past grants, if you have ideas on which metrics would convince you that paid organizers are effective vs ineffective use of marginal resources, that’d be really appreciated! But of course there’s no expectation that you’d do our work for us either!
I don’t think I fully understand the reputational argument. The most naive interpretation of “It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively” is that you’re simply assuming the conclusion. If the EV of having paid organizers is very low (or worse, negative), then of course this will be a hypocritical message to send to others. But if the EV is high (or at least higher than counterfactuals), then your actions are in line with your moral beliefs.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure EAIF organizers do, or at least did, believe their grants are cost-effective. But as you say, they might well be wrong,
Many college groups thrive without paid organizers
Do you have good specific examples? Impressive college groups that lead to highly talented young people doing positively impactful projects would be great to emulate!
I think most grants to university, city, or national groups fund work that would have been done just as effectively by volunteers. Some of the university grants are particularly egregious, given how nearly all other college clubs exist just fine without paid organizers. “We are a student group interested in the most effective causes, and oh by the way funding us to organize this group for a semester is of similar levels of effectiveness as preventing 3 kids dying from malaria in poor countries.” I can think of few things more effective at turning people away from EA than college students learning the EA organizer is paid lots of money for it.
(I don’t work for the EAIF, and have limited visibility into their past decisionmaking)
Hmm, I think it’s fairly likely that the added value of having people devote significant time to university organizing (over what you could realistically get with volunteers) has higher EV via getting more future donations or via future hires than direct donations.
Do you disagree with this characterization of the expected consequences, or is the disagreement non-consequentialist in nature?
Separately, I also expect college club organizers to mostly be too young and relatively unknown entities for grantmakers that the “dole out to their friends” concern should be pretty minimal.
I think EAIF vastly overstates the effectiveness difference between paid vs. unpaid organizers, and dismisses the reputational risks of having paid organizers. Many college groups thrive without paid organizers, and EAIF-level of funding paid organizers only start being necessary once groups sizes reach 100. I don’t think there are any EA college groups that large, and they can fund-raise for it. I think the reputational harm—that EA is for self-serving grifters—causes far more damage than the marginal benefit from paid recruitment. It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively.
The EAIF isn’t supporting university groups anymore (though I don’t think it’s implausible that we will start doing this again in the future).
I think we have a pretty good sense of which uni groups and activities tend to produce people that go on to do high-impact work. I don’t think that is the only metric on which we should assess uni groups, but it’s an important one. I do think that groups wth paid organisers tend to have more measurable impact than groups without (though ofc there are selection effects). The groups also generally seem larger and more productive.
I think the reputational harm effects that you pointed out exist, but I don’t think they are particularly large. My personal view is that people should be compensated for doing challenging work that produces large amounts of altruistic value and I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many EA groups do have a large positive impact e.g. the Rethink Priorities and Open Phil surveys.
EA Funds would like to do more retroactive investigation into the effectiveness of past grants, if you have ideas on which metrics would convince you that paid organizers are effective vs ineffective use of marginal resources, that’d be really appreciated! But of course there’s no expectation that you’d do our work for us either!
I don’t think I fully understand the reputational argument. The most naive interpretation of “It completely undercuts the message of using resources effectively” is that you’re simply assuming the conclusion. If the EV of having paid organizers is very low (or worse, negative), then of course this will be a hypocritical message to send to others. But if the EV is high (or at least higher than counterfactuals), then your actions are in line with your moral beliefs.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure EAIF organizers do, or at least did, believe their grants are cost-effective. But as you say, they might well be wrong,
Do you have good specific examples? Impressive college groups that lead to highly talented young people doing positively impactful projects would be great to emulate!
This recent post from Dave, a university EA group leader, is quite relevant.