Chief of staff at the Forethought Foundation (project of EV UK and EV US). Former ED of EA Norway.
eirine
Karma: 489
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.
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?
I actually attended the launch of this report in Oslo. I have three main points about this report: 1) The results aren’t really generalisable, yet they present the findings as if they were; 2) the actual findings of the report don’t directly say that fundraising campaigns need to change; 3) although it might be a ‘whataboutist’ argument, I’d really like for SAIH to focus on something else.
As the report itself states: “this is a study based on a very limited selection of informants, and we cannot generalise from the findings of this research. However, the findings provide an intersting, if restricted, insight into how aid comunications are perceived at the receiving end.” The data consists of 12 focus groups in 6 countries: Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa. The total amount of people interviewed was 74 people, 36 female and 38 male. The respondents are either beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries of SAIH’s research partners’ aid activities. Yet, in the concluding chapters (chapter 5 and 7), SAIH are calling for change based on the findings of the report. It feels a bit as if they have fallen into the same trap that the organisations they criticize fall into: generalising about Africa based on a few case studies in 6 countries.
Further, the findings themselves aren’t really telling us much other than common sense. First of all, a lot of the responses to the different questions were very varied. When the responses were similar, they seemed to report that using negative images of children were the most effective—and they would use the same type of pictures. Most of the respondents felt like the pictures used in the ten examples of aid campaigns were accurate, and that they would use similar pictures as well. If the respondents were to make a fundraising campaign of their own, a majority stated that they would also use negative pictures, and 38% said they would show the problem. They also thought that negative images and showcasing the problem was more likely to increase funds.
Lastly, as SAIH are called a ‘watch-dog’, it would be so great to see them focus on other aspects of the aid sector than fundraising campaigns. Yes, treating people with dignity and representing an accurate and diverse portrayal of developing countries is important … but is it really that important? The work SAIH has done through RadiAid has been great, and has resulted in many organisations changing how they portray developing countries. It would be so awesome to see this organisation who are great at making awareness campaigns look into other areas in the aid sector as well. I realise that this might be a poor argument, however, and think it’s likely that I’m affected by having dealt with this group on numerous occations. I think it comes from a place of being impressed with their work, and just wanting them to focus that on something I find more important.
Thank you for this suggestion! I think there are three main benefits of brainwriting: to generate ideas in a very short amount of time, to build on others’ ideas, and to have someplace to start when working on a project.
We’ve used it for getting ideas on articles we’d like to write and topics we’d like to discuss. We also use it before a meeting with someone if we’re a bit unsure about what we’d like the meeting to be about. Recently, we have decided on which indicators we are going to use to measure to what extent we are reaching our goals. We then used brainwriting to come up with ideas of different indicators, and built on those. Further, through brainwriting we tried to find alternatives to hosting a large conference that would give us the same outcomes.
We more or less use it whenever we are stuck on a project, when we need ideas, or when we’re unsure exactly what our thoughts are on something. I unfortunately don’t have a specific example of a project that was generated through this way, but hope this clarification and additional information has been useful :)
I did consider calling it “four coping mechanisms if you’re lonely at work” 🙃
Thanks for your feedback! We have ended up going for a 4-7 day camp for people with 1-2 years of experience. I’ve noted down your ideas for a future iteration of the camp.
And thanks for your offer! You’ve been very helpful so far, and it would be great to discuss more at a later time.
Thanks for explaining! I wasn’t familiar with the term, but I feel like I know understand better what it entails and the different ways it could look like.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment! We’ve noted down all your points, and found especially the one about signalling fit and thoughts on the role of national/local groups very interesting and valuable.
Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to be so thorough. I also appreciate how structured your comment is, and it makes it easy to follow. You bring up a lot of new points that we haven’t thought about before, and have made us think more about how we can better cooperate with MBA/ business graduates and HR managers. I also found your list of certificates particularly useful. I was wondering, could you explain more about what you call ‘partnership streams’?
A few days ago we published another post on this topic where we outline our plans for an operations camp this summer as a project to help reduce the operations talent gap in EA. It would be great if you get the chance to read over it and see if you have any input.
Just to check, does this link work for you? http://hexaco.org/hexaco-online
(Edit) Ah, sorry. So you don’t get the results from the website?
Interesting, do you think there are ways to practice or increase value-alignment/good judgment? For example by doing an internship at the organisation in question? Or having a practice period either at the organisation, or through a training programme organised by someone else?
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.