Chief of staff at the Forethought Foundation (project of EV UK and EV US). Former ED of EA Norway.
eirine
To PA or not to PA?
Four productivity techniques if you love working with others but work alone
Overview of projects at EA NTNU
Underpromise, overdeliver
So you want to do operations [Part one] - which skills do you need?
How to manage up using these delegation tips
I used to work at EA Norway, which is a fee-paying membership society, and thought it might be useful to share more on how our funding worked. This is just meant as an example, and not as an argument for or against membership societies. (Here’s a longer comment explaining how we organise things at EA Norway.)
I can’t speak to EA Norway’s current situation, as I no longer have any position at EA Norway (other than being a paying member). However, I can say what it was like in 2018-2021 when I was Executive Director (ED). The total income from the membership fee roughly covered the cost of the general assembly. Most of our funding came from a community building grant from the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA). However, the board made sure to fundraise enough from private donors for my salary. The two main reasons for this was to I) diversify our funding, and II) enable us to make longer term plans than CEAs grant periods.
When the board gave approval to accept the community building grant from CEA, we discussed that if at any point we did not want to follow CEAs guidelines and success metrics, we would pay back the remainder of the grant. This was definitely easier for us to say and truly mean when we had covered the ED’s salary from other sources, as it meant that if we were to return the funding, we would still have at least one employee. We never ended up disagreeing so much with CEA that we wanted to return the funds, though we were definitely very vocal about any disagreements we had with the groups team at CEA and did push for some changes.
Doing brainstorming better
So you want to do operations [Part two] - how to acquire and test for relevant skills
Yearly themes to guide your growth
This is very cool! Exciting results. We’ll definitely look into doing something similar in Norway. Thanks for writing this up and sharing.
I’m similar in some aspects: There are some things I find so boring or difficult to do that I need external accountability to do them.
In these cases, however, I wouldn’t use the stakeholder to hold me accountable, but rather a colleague, friend, or other mechanism.
In fact, there are some instances where you want to be ambitious and say you’ll do more than you think you do, e.g. when setting goals for yourself. However, I think that can backfire if you do it with a stakeholder.
Does that make sense?
Really love this, and definitely think you’re on to something—thanks for posting! I’d also add that if there are certain things that you don’t enjoy or find aversive, you should consider looking for co-organisers who find the those things fun and rewarding. Like with startups, you should generally be two instead of one. And for a lot of people, it’s also more fun to do things together than alone.
Thanks for sharing, this is great! I found it particularly useful to read how many hours you spend on each activity and the objectives and key results you’ve planned for 2020.
I was a bit surprised that you’ve used a quarter (250/932 hours) of your time on personally learning directly related to EA. How much do you think the hours you spent on learning have contributed to the positive outcomes of EA Toronto? You wrote “Finally, without independent learning, another wild guess seems to say that the other two thirds of EATO’s strategy updates and insights would not exist”. Does this mean that you partly focused on learning about strategy and evaluation?
Also super cool that you directed around 42,000 CAD to MF!!
Hi! Hope your meeting today goes well. I agree with Michal at the Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN) and Alex at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), and think those two groups are the best to reach out to.
I’m from EA Norway, and I think it would be exciting to set up a call to introduce ourselves and see if we can help at all. I think just saying hi and explaining what we’re doing in Norway and hearing what you’re doing in the Philippines could be useful. Email me at eirin@effektivaltruisme.no if you’d like to set up a call.
So great that you’ve revamped the site!!
Two heads up:
The feedback link in this post doesn’t work.
This url that’s linked to in the resources also doesn’t work.
Thanks for letting us know! I’ll make an edit to the post.
Thank you for your comments! You’ve particularly made us think about the length of camp for the first group. We’re now leaning towards something between 5-10 days. Your comment about potential risks is also greatly appreciated, and we will think carefully about how much we will make public moving forward.
I think this hypothesis is similar to the points made by 80k in their post on why although EA orgs really value their previous hires, especially in operations, there is still a large talent gap. It seems like part of the constraint has to do with the organisations’ ability hire new people. We’re also really interested in finding ways to reduce the constraint on EA orgs by seeing how we can reduce organisational costs through, for example, contributing to the filtering process or providing strong signals about a person. This is something we want to explore in the next posts in the series.
Do you have ideas to address and perhaps reduce the organisational constraints?
This is a tangent, but I thought I’d say a bit more about how we’ve done things at EA Norway, as some people might not know. This is not meant as an argument in any direction.
Every year, we have a general assembly for members of EA Norway. To be a member, you need to have paid the yearly membership fee (either to EA Norway or one of the approved student groups). The total income from the membership fee covers roughly the costs of organising the general assembly. The importance of the membership fee is mainly that it’s a bar of entry to the organisation, makes it clear if you’re a member or not, and it’s nice and symbolic that the fees can cover the general assembly. However, I think the crucial thing about how we’re organised at EA Norway isn’t that members pay a fee, but that the general assembly is the supreme body of the organisation.
During the general assembly, the attending members vote on an election committee, board members, and community representatives. During the general assembly, the members can also bring forward and vote on changes to the statutes and resolutions. Resolutions are basically requests members have for the board, that they’re asking the board to look into or comment on until the next general assembly. The general assembly also need to approve an annual report of activities and a financial report.
The election committee is responsible for finding candidates for the different positions, and nominate candidates to the board ahead of the next general assembly.
The board is responsible for setting a strategy for the organisation and assessing the Executive Director. Historically, the board has set 3-year strategies for the org, including objectives and metrics for those objectives. The Executive Director is tasked with carrying out that strategy and need to regularly report on the progress of the metrics to the board. Redacted meeting minutes from each board meeting are made available to the members in an online community folder.
Community representatives are available to members who want to raise small or big issues that they feel like they can’t raise elsewhere. They can’t have any other position at the organisation. Per the statutes, the community representatives are to be involved as early as possible in any internal conflict, breach of statutes or ethical guidelines, and other matters that might be harmful for the members or EA Norway.