Could you tell more about the engagement metric? What was the questions asked to the respondents? Wondering if it about engagement with other EAs or local groups or generally with EA ideas and how the different levels are defined
My blockers for donating more: 1) Not being confident that I give to the very best program(s). I feel dissatisfied about my current donation behavior. I’d like to have a stronger personal hierarchy of the charity recommendations by GWWC. Now I give roughly 1/3 of my pot to GiveWell (because of their strong evidence base), 1/3 to either ACE’s recommended charities fund or Humane League (because of neglectedness in animal welfare funding), and 1/3 to Founders Pledge Climate change fund (as a relatively safe longtermist bet). These also seem highly cost effective to me, but the true reason I’m dividing my donations equally between them is not because I think all charities could have an equally big impact on the margin, but because I haven’t put enough effort into thinking what my values are, how I’d prioritize across cause areas, and how strongly I believe the recommended charities within the fields can effectively solve the problems they are focusing on. If I was more confident that the expected value of my donations is as I high as it could be with the information I have available, I would likely feel motivated to donate even more. I’d be happy to hear how other people who might have put more thought into it donate and why - so any resources are welcome!
2) Uncertainties about the trade-offs of donating. Should I increase my donations or are there potential self-development or volunteer opportunities that increase my impact long-term? Example: I’m currently in Tanzania for 2 months volunteering for an EA-minded company. I’ve only been here for 2 weeks, so I don’t know if it is an effectively altruistic use of my money, and it is hard to quantify in advance. When deciding to go on this trip months ago, I was quite sure that donating the cost of the plane ticket would’ve been more virtuous, but my curiosity drove me to go anyway. Now I’m not as sure anymore what would've been more virtuous, but in general I would bet more on donating to evidence-based charities than investing in myself.
I believe answering to 2 is easier if I get clarity to 1
I've been thinking along the same lines but wouldn't have verbalised it as well as you. Thank you for writing this up!
I assume that especially in countries with less EA presence of direct impact orgs, the local EA communities can play an vital role in supporting people to get more engaged with EA ideas and potentially become leaders of their own high-impact projects.
I thought having many different forms of engagement at each stage was implicit to the funnel model as well, but having it explicit as "action, ideas, and diverse connections" seems like a useful framework. I'll think more about what this could mean in practice for us in my group
It would indeed be interesting to see impact assessments across groups and projects to get a rough idea of the expected value of different projects and improve intuitions on community building.
Here is now EA Finland's Start a Mini EA Group in Finland document. Tried to make it as detailed as possible to make it easy to do and added some more bonus activities like setting up posters at your campus.
Great idea! Somehow I hadn't thought about the value of inactive groups vs no group.
I know a few university cities in Finland with only 1-2 EAs who don't have time to commit to running a group many hours a week. I will ask them if they'd be interested in this and do a ~10-step manual on how to set up a mini group and how EA Finland can support them. (Maybe calling it a contact group 🤔) Maybe an incentive to start the group (in addition to having a bigger impact) could be that they automatically get invited to EA Finland's organizers only-events and retreats.
Adding to Yonatan Cales comment, I think I would add just a few bullet points in the manual on what to do (or not do) to avoid having a negative impact. There are lots of good posts and EA community building resources about what could go wrong and how to avoid that but I think most of them are relevant only later, when a group is committing >1 hour a month to community building.
Could you tell more about the engagement metric? What was the questions asked to the respondents? Wondering if it about engagement with other EAs or local groups or generally with EA ideas and how the different levels are defined
My blockers for donating more:
1) Not being confident that I give to the very best program(s). I feel dissatisfied about my current donation behavior. I’d like to have a stronger personal hierarchy of the charity recommendations by GWWC. Now I give roughly 1/3 of my pot to GiveWell (because of their strong evidence base), 1/3 to either ACE’s recommended charities fund or Humane League (because of neglectedness in animal welfare funding), and 1/3 to Founders Pledge Climate change fund (as a relatively safe longtermist bet). These also seem highly cost effective to me, but the true reason I’m dividing my donations equally between them is not because I think all charities could have an equally big impact on the margin, but because I haven’t put enough effort into thinking what my values are, how I’d prioritize across cause areas, and how strongly I believe the recommended charities within the fields can effectively solve the problems they are focusing on. If I was more confident that the expected value of my donations is as I high as it could be with the information I have available, I would likely feel motivated to donate even more. I’d be happy to hear how other people who might have put more thought into it donate and why - so any resources are welcome!
2) Uncertainties about the trade-offs of donating. Should I increase my donations or are there potential self-development or volunteer opportunities that increase my impact long-term?
Example: I’m currently in Tanzania for 2 months volunteering for an EA-minded company. I’ve only been here for 2 weeks, so I don’t know if it is an effectively altruistic use of my money, and it is hard to quantify in advance. When deciding to go on this trip months ago, I was quite sure that donating the cost of the plane ticket would’ve been more virtuous, but my curiosity drove me to go anyway. Now I’m not as sure anymore what would've been more virtuous, but in general I would bet more on donating to evidence-based charities than investing in myself.
I believe answering to 2 is easier if I get clarity to 1
I've been thinking along the same lines but wouldn't have verbalised it as well as you. Thank you for writing this up!
I assume that especially in countries with less EA presence of direct impact orgs, the local EA communities can play an vital role in supporting people to get more engaged with EA ideas and potentially become leaders of their own high-impact projects.
I thought having many different forms of engagement at each stage was implicit to the funnel model as well, but having it explicit as "action, ideas, and diverse connections" seems like a useful framework. I'll think more about what this could mean in practice for us in my group
Thank you for your kind words!
It would indeed be interesting to see impact assessments across groups and projects to get a rough idea of the expected value of different projects and improve intuitions on community building.
I found this a bit hard to read maybe because my biology literacy isn't strong enough. I also skipped the details...
I didn't quite understand why iron deficiencies are "very bad". Here's how I understood it. Is this what op refers to as very bad? 1)
Do you mean bad on a society scale or is it pointed at the reader?
Thanks for the update! It would be interesting to get more statistics on CEA. Like
(Maybe these exist elsewhere?)
The last four paragraphs are well said👌
Thanks for writing this post! Very interesting
Here is now EA Finland's Start a Mini EA Group in Finland document. Tried to make it as detailed as possible to make it easy to do and added some more bonus activities like setting up posters at your campus.
Great idea! Somehow I hadn't thought about the value of inactive groups vs no group.
I know a few university cities in Finland with only 1-2 EAs who don't have time to commit to running a group many hours a week. I will ask them if they'd be interested in this and do a ~10-step manual on how to set up a mini group and how EA Finland can support them. (Maybe calling it a contact group 🤔) Maybe an incentive to start the group (in addition to having a bigger impact) could be that they automatically get invited to EA Finland's organizers only-events and retreats.
Adding to Yonatan Cales comment, I think I would add just a few bullet points in the manual on what to do (or not do) to avoid having a negative impact. There are lots of good posts and EA community building resources about what could go wrong and how to avoid that but I think most of them are relevant only later, when a group is committing >1 hour a month to community building.