I run Training for Good, an impact-focused career organisation incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship in 2021. We run fellowships that enable talented professionals to enter careers in policy and journalism such as the EU Tech Policy Fellowship and the Tarbell Fellowship.
Cillian_
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Introducing Training for Good (TFG)
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Opportunities for Impact Beyond the EU AI Act
Great work—excited to see so much growth across the podcast, one-on-one service & job board! I’m curious about web engagement though.
Web engagement hours fell by 20% in 2021, then grew by 38% in 2022 after we increased investment in our marketing.
This implies that engagement hours rose by ~10% in 2022 compared to 2020. This is less than I would have expected given the marketing budget rose from $120k in 2021 to $2.65m in 2022. I’m assuming it was also ~$120k in 2020 (but this might not be true). Even if we exclude the free book giveaway (~£1m), there seems to have been a ~10x increase in marketing here that translated to a 10-40% rise in engagement hours (depending whether you count from 2020 or 2021).
See quote from this recent post for context on marketing spend:
In 2022, the marketing programme spent $2.65m (compared to ~$120k spent on marketing in 2021). The bulk of this spending was on sponsored placements with selected content creators ($910k), giving away free books to people who signed up to our newsletter ($1.04m), and digital ads ($338k).
I can think of a bunch of reasons why this might be the case. For example:
Maybe the price of acquiring new users / engagement hours increases geometrically or something
It looks like marketing drove a large increase in newsletter subs. Maybe they’re engaging with the content directly in their inbox instead?
Maybe you expect a lag in time between initial reach & time spent on the 80k website for some reason (e.g. because people become more receptive to the ideas on 80k’s website over time, especially if they’re receiving regular emails with some info about it)
Maybe marketing mainly promoted podcast / 1-1 service / job board (or people reached by marketing efforts mainly converted to users of these services)
See screenshot from the full report for extra context on engagement hours, unique visitors & subscribers:Again, great work overall. I’d be really curious to hear any quick thoughts anyone from 80k has on this?
I think this comment would be much more helpful if it linked to the relevant posts about Leverage rather than just called Geoff a “known cult leader”.
(On phone right now but may come back and add said links later unless Guy / others do)
What’s the forum etiquette on advertising jobs?
Context: Training for Good is hiring for two exciting roles. I expect a bunch of great applicants to be here, right now, on this forum.
BUT I suspect that top level posts advertising jobs decreases the average user’s experience. Maybe that’s outweighed by the possibility of TFG reaching a top candidate (but I’m motivated to believe that so don’t really trust it). Plus, it feels like a tragedy of the commons type scenario. So I’ve decided to post it as ashort formquick take instead.
___________
Training for Good is hiring for two exciting roles. Come join us as a founding employee- Compensation: $40-60k, depending on location and experience.
- Location: Remote, with 3+ hours of overlap with UK working hours
- Closing date: 13th August 2023, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (we’ll be reviewing applications on a rolling basis until then)
- Responsibilities: You’ll be responsible for designing and delivering AI training programs to early-career journalists and EU policymakers. Within 3-6 months, we expect you will transition to leading one of our fellowship programmes.
- Compensation: $30-45k, depending on location and experience.
- Location: Remote, with 3+ hours of overlap with UK working hours
- Closing date: 13th August 2023, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (we’ll be reviewing applications on a rolling basis until then)
- Responsibilities: You’ll be responsible for leading, implementing, and innovating on Training for Good’s operational and administrative processes. The work is varied and includes organising in-person training weeks, managing financial operations, optimising vetting processes, and overseeing HR and legal procedures
Curious why you chose the name “the GPI” (Global Prosperity Institute)?
Seems ripe for confusion with GPI (Global Priorities Institute)
[Question] What are the most impactful roles that EAs are currently not entering (and why)?
Resources & opportunities for careers in European AI Policy
$1,000 bounty for an AI Programme Lead recommendation
Not sure why you unendorsed this.
I run Training for Good & also found this wild!
Fwiw this doesn’t line up with my experience at all as someone who previously participated.
(n = 1 but I’d be very surprised to hear that the sentiment you describe above was commonplace among people who previously participated)
We (Training for Good) are actually developing a grantmaker training programme like what you’ve described here to help build up EA’s grantmaking capacity. It will likely be an 8 week, part-time programme, with a small pot of “regranting” money for each participant and we’re pretty excited to launch this in the next few months.
In the meantime, we’re looking for 5-10 people to beta test a scaled-down version of this programme (starting at the end of March). The time commitment for this beta test would be ~5 hours per week (~2 hrs reading, ~2 hrs projects, ~1 hr group discussion). If anyone reading this is interested, feel free to shoot me an email cillian@trainingforgood.com