Ariel, a lot of what you’ve said here shows that you have humility, a growth mindset, and a care for the greater good that outweighs your ego. Examples: being open about the incident with your members and asking for their feedback, same thing on this forum, being thoughtful about your approach and willing to work on yourself. Those traits make great community organizers.
You got a group that clearly relies on you. Community organization is an auction market (people step up and fill needs based on who’s available at the time and has what skills and remaining gaps can be filled by others) as opposed to a winner takes all market (there a single metric and can only be one best eg. in many entertainment and sports professions.) Different aspects of community organization as a community grows require different skills. It sounds like you have the skills to maintain what you already have and you’re running into challenges with something new, which is natural.
Grant seeking is a different skill set than community organizing, and you’ve only gotten feedback about being confrontational in a grant seeking context. Even there, that’s not much feedback since it’s from two people from one grant from one org. I’m not familiar with how the EA grant process works but most proposals for most grants (across the board, not just EA) get rejected. I’m not sure what kind of support you got for your second grant. I’ve worked with nonprofit leads who sought plenty of support for both grant writing and prepping for conversations with decision makers. It’s up to you how much you want to develop vs delegate this skill.
Also, something that’s not considered confrontational to people in one country might be in another. It could help to talk to people from the countries where the decision makers reside to learn about the local norms. You can also bring people along to your 1-1s to handle different kinds of topics. If people give you feedback that you’re confrontational in the future, you can also ask them what about your behavior came off as confrontational.
It sounds like your question got Alice thinking. It’s unfortunate that she didn’t respond to your message. As you said, she might not have seen it. I usually try to get people’s contact info on multiple platforms (and message them on multiple platforms if they don’t respond on one) to make it easier to get their attention.
Once you hit a ball to someone else’s court, it’s out of your control whether it comes back in a way that helps you and your group, stays on their side of the court, or eventually comes back in a way that helps others rather than you and your group. Some people are good at driving these conversations in directions where they’re more likely to benefit their groups and might be worth learning from. That said, there’s a lot of manipulative advice out there and I admire your for taking a direct, curiosity based approach instead. At the end of the day, the progress we make in educating others and probing their critical thinking doesn’t always benefit us directly but can still better the world.
It’s smart that you’re already focusing your attention on decision makers with aligned values eg. EA. It’s hard when you have a hard time finding sponsors even within groups you see as your tribe. You mentioned being an EA newcomer. Things might get easier as you get more of a lay of the land. You might find people who hear your points more easily and connect you with other people and orgs who can help. It sounds like you’ve already found a good amount of support eg. for your second grant. People who make big wins happen for communities eg. grants get a lot of praise but it’s the people who keep showing up for their communities in the meantime who hold them together.
Ariel, a lot of what you’ve said here shows that you have humility, a growth mindset, and a care for the greater good that outweighs your ego. Examples: being open about the incident with your members and asking for their feedback, same thing on this forum, being thoughtful about your approach and willing to work on yourself. Those traits make great community organizers.
You got a group that clearly relies on you. Community organization is an auction market (people step up and fill needs based on who’s available at the time and has what skills and remaining gaps can be filled by others) as opposed to a winner takes all market (there a single metric and can only be one best eg. in many entertainment and sports professions.) Different aspects of community organization as a community grows require different skills. It sounds like you have the skills to maintain what you already have and you’re running into challenges with something new, which is natural.
Grant seeking is a different skill set than community organizing, and you’ve only gotten feedback about being confrontational in a grant seeking context. Even there, that’s not much feedback since it’s from two people from one grant from one org. I’m not familiar with how the EA grant process works but most proposals for most grants (across the board, not just EA) get rejected. I’m not sure what kind of support you got for your second grant. I’ve worked with nonprofit leads who sought plenty of support for both grant writing and prepping for conversations with decision makers. It’s up to you how much you want to develop vs delegate this skill.
Also, something that’s not considered confrontational to people in one country might be in another. It could help to talk to people from the countries where the decision makers reside to learn about the local norms. You can also bring people along to your 1-1s to handle different kinds of topics. If people give you feedback that you’re confrontational in the future, you can also ask them what about your behavior came off as confrontational.
It sounds like your question got Alice thinking. It’s unfortunate that she didn’t respond to your message. As you said, she might not have seen it. I usually try to get people’s contact info on multiple platforms (and message them on multiple platforms if they don’t respond on one) to make it easier to get their attention.
Once you hit a ball to someone else’s court, it’s out of your control whether it comes back in a way that helps you and your group, stays on their side of the court, or eventually comes back in a way that helps others rather than you and your group. Some people are good at driving these conversations in directions where they’re more likely to benefit their groups and might be worth learning from. That said, there’s a lot of manipulative advice out there and I admire your for taking a direct, curiosity based approach instead. At the end of the day, the progress we make in educating others and probing their critical thinking doesn’t always benefit us directly but can still better the world.
It’s smart that you’re already focusing your attention on decision makers with aligned values eg. EA. It’s hard when you have a hard time finding sponsors even within groups you see as your tribe. You mentioned being an EA newcomer. Things might get easier as you get more of a lay of the land. You might find people who hear your points more easily and connect you with other people and orgs who can help. It sounds like you’ve already found a good amount of support eg. for your second grant. People who make big wins happen for communities eg. grants get a lot of praise but it’s the people who keep showing up for their communities in the meantime who hold them together.