The Nonlinear Library EA - Examples of success from city and national groups by Naomi N
Aug 26, 2024
07:34
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Examples of success from city and national groups, published by Naomi N on August 26, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Since I started in my position of Community Building Grants (CBG) manager at CEA, a program focused on a subset of city and national EA groups, I noticed that not everybody has an understanding of what city and national groups are doing, and how they could be impactful.
With this post I would like to highlight a few examples of successful city and national groups (from the CBG program, as I am most familiar with these groups), hoping that this will shine more light on what these kinds of groups do, and how this might lead to impact[1].
How city and national groups produce value
In general, we think city and national EA groups can have impact through different theories of change[2]:
1. Supporting talent to work on top causes
2. Incubating and accelerating local/university groups and other EA projects
3. Building local infrastructure (such as operational support for local grantees)
We currently believe that most impact of city and national groups comes through the first mechanism, and that ultimately the third route to value feeds into the first theory of change. For building local infrastructure, we think city and national groups are very well placed, but also that the amount of activities that can be highly impactful in this area diminishes quickly.
We think that the second theory of change is high variance and heavy-tailed, and that success probably depends on the local group leaders.
There are a few other ways how city and national groups can create value, the most notable being moving donations to effective charities. Currently we think that this can sometimes make sense as a secondary priority, but that there are probably initiatives that are better placed to have an impact here than city and national groups. Some of the efforts under 2. & 3.
do focus on supporting effective giving, for example groups that play a role in incubating effective giving initiatives, or that create local infrastructure to support donations by providing the possibility of tax deduction.
Success stories
Below are a few success stories for each of these three theory of changes:
Supporting talent
Generally, city and national groups spend most of their time on activities that are aimed towards supporting talent to work on the most pressing problems.
Examples of these activities are: individual career consultations, fellowships, retreats, actively making introductions between members, meetups and events. In some of the groups, the group leaders organise these activities themselves, while in other instances they engage volunteers to execute them.
Some success stories related to this theory of change:
For example, Andy Jones (member of technical staff at Anthropic) said: "It's hard to characterise how EA London accelerated me. Safety wasn't on my radar at all before getting involved. EA London provided a community of folk I respected who thought this was important. I came for the friends, stayed for the impact."
Another example, from an EA DC member:
EA DC is the main reason that I think working in US policy is a long-term viable option for me. Without EA DC in my life, I would not have planned to stay in DC for more than a few years. I would have thought of my time in DC as a tour-of-duty in US AI policy, basically buying a lottery ticket to get something impactful done in this neglected area. Because EA DC lets me live in the community I want while pursuing this career path, I am much more likely to make a long-term career in US policy.
When we did an analysis of the past impact of the CBG program, we also noticed that some of the program's value seems to have come from accelerating the group leaders themselves (rather than their members). It's unclear to us what the di...
Since I started in my position of Community Building Grants (CBG) manager at CEA, a program focused on a subset of city and national EA groups, I noticed that not everybody has an understanding of what city and national groups are doing, and how they could be impactful.
With this post I would like to highlight a few examples of successful city and national groups (from the CBG program, as I am most familiar with these groups), hoping that this will shine more light on what these kinds of groups do, and how this might lead to impact[1].
How city and national groups produce value
In general, we think city and national EA groups can have impact through different theories of change[2]:
1. Supporting talent to work on top causes
2. Incubating and accelerating local/university groups and other EA projects
3. Building local infrastructure (such as operational support for local grantees)
We currently believe that most impact of city and national groups comes through the first mechanism, and that ultimately the third route to value feeds into the first theory of change. For building local infrastructure, we think city and national groups are very well placed, but also that the amount of activities that can be highly impactful in this area diminishes quickly.
We think that the second theory of change is high variance and heavy-tailed, and that success probably depends on the local group leaders.
There are a few other ways how city and national groups can create value, the most notable being moving donations to effective charities. Currently we think that this can sometimes make sense as a secondary priority, but that there are probably initiatives that are better placed to have an impact here than city and national groups. Some of the efforts under 2. & 3.
do focus on supporting effective giving, for example groups that play a role in incubating effective giving initiatives, or that create local infrastructure to support donations by providing the possibility of tax deduction.
Success stories
Below are a few success stories for each of these three theory of changes:
Supporting talent
Generally, city and national groups spend most of their time on activities that are aimed towards supporting talent to work on the most pressing problems.
Examples of these activities are: individual career consultations, fellowships, retreats, actively making introductions between members, meetups and events. In some of the groups, the group leaders organise these activities themselves, while in other instances they engage volunteers to execute them.
Some success stories related to this theory of change:
For example, Andy Jones (member of technical staff at Anthropic) said: "It's hard to characterise how EA London accelerated me. Safety wasn't on my radar at all before getting involved. EA London provided a community of folk I respected who thought this was important. I came for the friends, stayed for the impact."
Another example, from an EA DC member:
EA DC is the main reason that I think working in US policy is a long-term viable option for me. Without EA DC in my life, I would not have planned to stay in DC for more than a few years. I would have thought of my time in DC as a tour-of-duty in US AI policy, basically buying a lottery ticket to get something impactful done in this neglected area. Because EA DC lets me live in the community I want while pursuing this career path, I am much more likely to make a long-term career in US policy.
When we did an analysis of the past impact of the CBG program, we also noticed that some of the program's value seems to have come from accelerating the group leaders themselves (rather than their members). It's unclear to us what the di...