Stewardship in EA’s Most Important Era

After reading Abraham Rowe’s reflections around the new money in EA, I found myself wishing there were more concrete ideas for how we can make the most of the enormous opportunity ahead. I often hear stewardship discussed in the context of managing money or leading institutions. I think one neglected lever for stewarding the future of the EA movement is offering and asking for help. Below are four ways we might do this:

Sharing impactful roles and career resources with friends:

If you have a high-integrity friend who takes pride in doing great work, I encourage you to reach out to them about applying to impactful roles, even if they don’t identify as an EA.

Many of my co-workers joined Coefficient Giving because of its reputation as a great place to work and because it was a place they could help others — not because they had tons of prior EA context. Their contributions at the org are invaluable, and CG would not be able to do nearly as much if only “hardcore EAs” applied. ^[1]

There are more job opportunities now than ever before at EA orgs.^[2] Some orgs, particularly in AI safety, are increasing their salaries. This makes roles more attractive to people outside the movement, and candidates can apply to dozens of roles that fit what they’re looking for.

I think there has never been a better time to share job boards, open roles, and career transition programs like High-Impact Professionals or Consultants for Impact with people who you think highly of. 

Negotiating expenses

If your organization isn’t negotiating operating expenses (particularly those over $5,000 like office leases, retreat venues, SaaS subscriptions, bulk orders, or external professional services like legal or accounting), consider letting a student from a university EA group volunteer to negotiate on your behalf. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the savings nonprofits can achieve by tactfully asking to pay less. In my experience, this has saved an average of 40% on software subscriptions and 20% on other expenses. 

If you’re interested, please feel free to DM me. I would love to relay opportunities to students and train them on your behalf. They can do things like ghostwrite emails for your operations team or liaise directly with the vendor. This can be a great way for early career professionals to build a track record of helpful collaboration, which can make it easier for future employers to take a chance on them. 

Executive Assistance

Investing in a Chief of Staff or Executive Assistant can meaningfully increase your productivity. As anecdata, most senior staff members at Coefficient Giving (Director level or higher) work with a CoS or Exec Assistant. Our CEO has two! Here’s a non-exhaustive list of how CoS/ExA can help orgs and their leaders get more done:

• Drafting emails
• Scheduling meetings and lining up speaking engagements
• Taking certain meetings on a manager’s behalf and sending a summary
• Thought partnership and sense-checks, bringing high context on a manager’s work
• Acting as an extension of their boss’ memory, managing up, helping set priorities (from daily to annual).
• Drafting pieces of writing based on bullet points or voice memos
• Inheriting/owning part of their manager’s portfolio
• Supporting future hiring rounds (grading work tests, etc).

My sense is that some people in leadership positions don’t hire a CoS/ExA because they don’t feel they can spare the up-front time investment. New Cos/ExAs can take a couple months to acclimate to their manager’s working style, and managers themselves often need to build the muscle of working with a CoS or ExA.^[3]

But over the long run, these roles can be enormously valuable. I transitioned to a similar type of role soon after my now-manager joined CG. She was patient with me and great at delegating tasks based on what I could contribute. Over time, I’ve been able to draft dozens of grants for her review. She recently said that when we collaborate on grants, my work can reduce the amount of time she needs to spend by half or more. And supporting her has helped me develop skills I can bring to EA work for the rest of my career.

Requesting and sharing best practices

With so much ambition across the movement, some staff cover multiple functions. For example, one generalist might handle HR, recruiting, and visa logistics for their org all by themself. If processes feel clunky or you don’t know where to start, I recommend asking if others have dealt with similar issues. That could be on the EA Forum, the EA Anywhere or EA Operations Slack, or on coworking space slack chats.

Similarly, I think sharing your own pro-social writing can be valuable. A few examples I use or share regularly include: 

• Neel Nanda and Jemima’s advice for reaching out to busy people at EAG
• Aaron Gertler’s epistemic stories
• Middlebury EA’s breakdown of successfully pitching GWWC pledges at universities
• Sofia Balderson’s building your surface area for serendipity

How I’m trying to put this in practice:

• I do my best to reply to everyone who reaches out about careers at CG, even if sometimes this is just a quick note celebrating their pursuit of impactful work and sharing career resources with them. At the time of writing, this has worked out to roughly 1,200 messages and 600 calls/in-person meetings.
  • This might sound like a lot, but most written responses take 3 minutes and most calls are 15 minutes long. Altogether I’d guess this represents ~6 FTE weeks.
• I’ve successfully referred candidates to work at CG, and make a point to refer people to other orgs when I think they could be a strong fit.
• I help organize my university EA group as a grad student. This has been hugely energizing; the group was largely inactive the last couple years, and now we have 8 students interning at high-impact orgs, and >100 applicants + 10 facilitators for our summer EA discussion fellowship.
• I look for opportunities to introduce people to one another when it seems valuable (using  Constance Li’s great post on the art of super-connecting)
• I tell EAs when something they’re doing/considering puts themselves or the reputation of the movement at risk.
• I write up information that I think can grow the EA community’s impact (like this post!)
• I try to be the type of person I’d want someone to meet if they were forming their first impression of EA: welcoming, inclusive and kind. 

The levers I usually hear emphasized — donating, direct work, building career capital — matter a lot. I use them too. But I think offering and asking for help is underrated. Most of what I've described here is low-cost, high-upside, and available to almost anyone in the movement. If EAs started doing more of this, I think we'd be better positioned for what's ahead.

1. ^{^}

   My sense is that some orgs and community members are nervous about hiring someone who isn’t fully motivated by impact because they suspect that person won't make decisions that best serve the mission. I think the honest truth is that community growth will not be able to keep pace with hiring needs, particularly for senior roles. 

   Professionals who have a track record of delivering high-quality work and taking meaningful action in service of their teams — owning mistakes early, supporting colleagues' growth, bringing a consistently honest and productive attitude — make for enormously valuable employees. These are people that managers can trust and delegate important projects to.

2. ^{^}

   Coefficient Giving has quintupled in size since I joined four years ago, and is hiring at a greater rate by the day.

3. ^{^}

    In the beginning, a manager may feel that they would get less done with a CoS/ExA than without one.