Nice, thanks for sharing this! Good to know what the stumbling blocks are for folks :-)
Gleb_T
Karma: 577
Accomplishments Open Thread—August 2016
Excellent, based on the surprising number of upvotes on my comment above, lots of folks would find the university-oriented write-up useful
Excellent to hear about the EA Global workshop, and nice to hear about the focus on university groups—probably like the ones Boris wrote about above, I assume?
To answer your questions, the UU conference arrangement had a separate exhibit hall, and within the exhibit hall there were a number of areas. Plenty of people who went to the conference did not go to the exhibit hall, and of those who went, many did not go to the area where our table was (it was in an area for those interested in curriculum materials and other intellectual content).
At the SSA, the tables had a more central location, so most of those who went to the conference passed by the table locations at some point, but they did not have to go into the tabling area itself—they were visible but you had to go out of your way to engage with the tables.
Not sure about the numbers of people who passed by but didn’t engage, didn’t keep track of that. However, my general sense is that slightly more people from the SSA engaged than from UU.
Great idea!
As someone whose primary work in the movement focuses on outreach and movement-building, I think there should be clear indications of what level each piece is for (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Also, consider the Students for High-Impact Charity reading list.
While flow-through effects will still require significant analysis, it is important to make sure they do not paralyze our decisions.
Agreed, as not making a decision also has an impact. So does taking more time/energy than is salient for making the decision. I think different approaches should be used based on the decision involved and the goals one is trying to reach. For instance, if I make a feel-good donation of a few malaria nets to get my mood up while doing something worthwhile, that’s one sort of decision. If I make a major decision about where to invest significant resources, that’s another sort of decision altogether.
Great post, very helpful ideas! I think it’s especially important in light of the 2015 Survey Results post that 36% percent of EA participants felt that the EA community was not actively welcoming, and of those a quarter felt that the EA community was actively unwelcoming. This number is very similar to the outcomes of another question that makes me highly concerned, “Do insecurities about not being “EA enough” sometimes prevent you from taking action or participating more in the EA community?” The fact that 37% answered yes make this an obvious area of concern. Clearly, we as a community can be doing better at being welcoming!
Excellent job, thanks for taking the time to analyze the data so well. Kudos!
I’m glad the survey asked questions about how welcomed people feel. It’s really important to help people feel welcomed in order to motivate them to engage with EA well. It’s concerned to me that 36% percent felt that the EA community was not actively welcoming, and of those a quarter felt that the EA community was actively unwelcoming.
This number is very similar to the outcomes of another question that makes me highly concerned, “Do insecurities about not being “EA enough” sometimes prevent you from taking action or participating more in the EA community?” The fact that 37% answered yes make this an obvious area of concern, as the survey report correctly identified. I’d be highly interested in seeing what is the correlation between these two questions, and would be willing to bet money the correlation is not insignificant.
Of course, the likely number for these 2 questions is much higher, since many more of the people who feel this way would not take the survey. I think Julia’s recent post has some great ideas about how to address this issue.
I’d also like to see the correlation between those people who feel this way and the amount and proportion of income of donations. Like others, I’m concerned that the median number is only $330. Are the people who perceive a high obligation to give and insecurities about not being “EA enough” also the ones not donating much or are they donating more than the average EA? That would impact how to address the question of how to get the median donation up.
On the positive side, I see that the average proportion donated by EAs is 7.5% of their annual income, which is 350% higher than the average donated by Americans. Nice to see that number.
Overall, I think that being more welcoming would cause more people to be more positively engaged with the EA community, identify more strongly as EAs, and be more eager to give their money and time. This should be a win-win!
Thanks, and never too late to have some group members write up the Rutgers event. I think some student groups can use your experience to help inform their own events. More broadly, having these sorts of guidelines is an important component of the EA Marketing Resource Bank project, so if they write it up, the guidelines will have a long shelf life :-)
Promoting Effective Giving at Conferences via Speed Giving Games
Great to hear about everything you did!
I’m curious, what parts of the SHIC program did students found confronting? How did you handle it?
Thanks for sharing your experience, Pete, glad that your Facebook friends were so supportive :-) This is what generally tends to happen when folks share these videos on FB or other social media.
“Everyday Heroes of Effective Giving”: Catherine Low, Jo Duyvestyn, Peter Livingstone
Second the idea of an “exit interview/what we learned.” This would be helpful for the broader movement as a whole, to optimize operations/reduce mistakes.
After all, CEA is not the only organization that houses a number of units. As Evan pointed out in response to my comment below, SEA/EAF houses a number of orgs. So does .impact, with the Local Effective Altruism Network, Students for High-Impact Charity, etc.
Other orgs are taking on and collaborating on meta-projects, for example the EA Marketing Resources Bank, and it would be good to learn from CEA’s experience.
I appreciate the clear reasoning for the changes taking place. Glad especially to see the new prioritization of fundamental research, it’s something sorely lacking in the movement right now.
I’m curious how these changes will impact the collaboration of CEA with other EA meta-charities outside the CEA’s current umbrella. For example, the Local Effective Altruist Network and The Life You Can Save also support some local groups uniting Effective Altruists, and have been collaborating with GWWC around that. I and I imagine other forums readers have similar kinds of questions around CEA’s collaborations with Animal Charity Evaluators, Students for High-Impact Charity, Intentional Insights, .impact, Effective Altruism Foundation, Charity Science, etc.
Excellent progress, happy to hear about the gains you’ve made! I’d be really interested in the outcome of the experiment on folks changing their giving. In the Giving Games I’ve run, I can definitely say that based on a number of stories, people were quite moved by them, and continued to engage with EA-themed approaches to giving afterward. Would be glad to see whether the evidence bears this out.
Great article in HP, nice job getting it there! And as an academic myself, I’m glad to see you putting some funding into helping get them on board with providing evidence for animal advocates!
Looking forward to the report, eager to see what it will show!
Also very nice to see the donation processing, it will really help out with showing impact and tracking. Exciting!
Congrats on your internship, and will be excited to see the results of the EA survey!
I will be happy to fund the campaign (just donated) and spread the word. Both in my experience, and based on the evidence provided above, Giving Games are a wonderful means of moving people who never heard about effective giving before into the direction of more effective giving.