Onboarding Strategy for EA Groups

TL;DR

I founded an EA university group by myself in a country where only a handful of people had heard about EA. In just one year, the group grew from a single person into a close-knit community led by a 9-person organizing team and volunteers who host a multitude of programs.

The key to this was a strong onboarding process that helped members take ownership, build connections, and grow the group. Here are some actions that helped me to have a better onboarding process:

Actively look for people who could be Highly Engaged EAs (HEAs) in your events.
Have 1-1s with potential HEAs and make them think about group organizing.
Offer a low-barrier entry to the group organizing with “Trial Board Membership” or something similar.
Set the norms, values, and responsibilities of the group clearly from the very start.
Give real ownership.
Actively mentor the new organizers.
Hold semester planning meetings before the term starts. Continue with regular weekly meetings.
Host an in-depth fellowship for the onboarded members.
Share the EA Community Building resources with the onboarded members.
Regularly hang out as the organizer group.

Intro

Two years ago, I founded an EA group at a university where only a few people had heard of EA. As of today, someone else is the president who is leading four other board members and three moderators who are running six cohorts of intro fellowships, a career group, a precipice reading group, an accountability reading group, and other one-off speaker events, informal co-working sessions, etc. What makes me the most proud and happy isn't the number of programs we are running, but rather the group consists of people who are very good friends with each other.

The most important element that helped us arrive at this point was onboarding. Onboarding increased our capacity as a group, and enabled us to host more events. More importantly, onboarding helped people take responsibility, deepen their understanding of EA, build connections, and truly take ownership of the group. Those connections grew into friendships that make up the community.

Onboarding is the key to turning your university group from a couple of people to a real community. In this guide, I'll be sharing the onboarding methods I’ve used to make this happen.

Scouting

Most of your group's impact will come from members who take significant action to create impact, generally by pivoting into high-impact careers. Changing your career according to EA principles is something hard, complex, and very long-term. So, only people who are very excited about EA ideas will eventually end up taking these significant actions.

Most of your intro fellowship participants won't engage with your group and EA ideas after the program ends. Only a few people who are very excited about EA will stay. This is normal and not something to be worried about. EA is a set of beliefs that is not for everyone. They may disagree with key principles or have different priorities. So, your resources will be wasted if you use them for members who are not very engaged because they'll probably leave the group. To use your resources wisely, try to find potential highly engaged EAs . You'll be focusing your onboarding efforts on them.

Actively look for people who could be Highly Engaged EAs. Look for good signals of truth-seeking, high altruism, integrity, impartiality, strategic mindset, etc. Most of your onboarding efforts will be directed towards them.

1-1s

Do 1-1s with potentially highly engaged members. I don't know how much I can stress this enough. It is probably the most important element of onboarding.

Here are reasons why 1-1s are key for successful onboarding:

1-1s help you develop personal relationships:

Normally, you first see someone in the intro fellowships and later at socials or other events, but in all of these cases, the communication is in a group setting with limited time, thus limiting the depth of the conversation. 1-1s lets you get to know someone and learn about their experiences in the intro fellowship, their response to the readings and discussions, their goals in life, etc. It will help you actually develop a relationship with that person.

1-1s create an opportunity to appreciate the most engaged members.

I admire some EA newcomers who are mature, altruistic, responsible, ambitious, open-minded, and cool in general. They are "my people," who would really get me and make the world a better place. I feel really lucky to have them in my group, and I try to show my appreciation. It's important to make them feel valued because they genuinely are.

Many really cool, kind, and intelligent people do not get the appreciation they deserve. Their qualities and work are not seen. Expressing gratitude and offering opportunities creates strong relationships, makes the talent stay, and lets them do their magic. While I appreciate the value they bring, I also mention that we need people like them on the management team.

1-1s create an opportunity for potential HEAs to start thinking about group organizing.

Some of the students whom I wanted to onboard were hesitant. They did find organizing exciting but were concerned if they had enough capacity or skills needed. So, to give them some time to get used to the idea, I opened up the opportunity of group organizing early on in 1-1s. Mentioning the opportunity early made people think about possible projects they could do in the group and how they could balance it with other priorities. So open up the topic early, tell them they could be a great fit, answer their questions, and say you'd be happy to see them apply to be on the board.

I also try to encourage and make them realize their abilities at this point. Many cool and capable people underestimate their abilities. I've onboarded people who ended up as amazing moderators, volunteers, or even presidents, and most of them had strong doubts that they had what it takes. They certainly had, and encouraging and giving them some project/event ideas could make them realize their abilities and take action.

Actively contact and send DMs potential HEAs to have 1-1s with you. Get to know them, appreciate the value they bring, and mention that they might be a good fit for group organizing in the near-future

Trial Board Membership

One idea that worked really well with my group was a concept I coined as “Trial Board Membership”. As it can be understood well from its name, a Trial Board Member is a position where someone takes on all of the board member's responsibilities for a limited time, generally two months. Like a regular board member, they own projects and attend weekly board meetings. At the end of the trial period, the board may decide not to further the board member's position, or the person can decide to stop being an organizer for the group. The trial period creates a way out for both parties.

There are two main advantages of the trial board member approach:

Making the commitment less scary
Committing to something is scary. Do I have enough time for it between all other classes and responsibilities? Could I perform well? What If I don't like it but get stuck in the role? These are very valid concerns a lot of students have when they are evaluating an opportunity. Even if the person has time, is competent, and would enjoy the role, they still ponder about it. With Trial Board Membership, these concerns have been relieved since it's just a demo. You can drop the role if you don't like it. Currently, we have an amazing president at the EA Koç who was a trial board member once. I believe she wouldn't have joined our group without an option for a trial.
Ensuring the right fit.
Not every person is a good fit to be an organizer. An organizer candidate who looks competent and enthusiastic about EA ideas can turn out to be unreliable, negligent, or just rude. It's very hard to remove someone from a position of responsibility after they become "usuals” of a place. The trial creates a safety system to find people with the right fit and prevent others from going beyond the trial.

How do you open the trial position?

After the first round of the intro fellowship, announce that applications will open for trial board membership for those considering group organizing. Organize a brief, relaxed meeting in a coffee shop on campus to explain the opportunities, expectations, and details. Personally invite individuals you identify through scouting, and reach out to all intro-program alumni through mail groups. Give a short presentation on the group's goals, potential impact, benefits of joining the board, responsibilities they can take on etc. Answer their questions and address their concerns. Give them some time to apply for the position.

Here is the AI-translated version of the presentation I've used.
Here is the Ai-translated version of the application form.

Use the Trial Board Member program (or something similar) to lower commitment barriers and filter for fit. Announce the program after the intro fellowship, host a casual meetup to share details, invite potential HEAs, and give some time for applications.

1-1s - For Trial Board Membership

After the presentation, talk again to the promising people you've found through scouting. A last encouragement could be motivating.

Ask them about their thoughts and concerns about joining the board and try to address their concerns without being too salesy or pushy. Before the meeting, search for some project/program ideas that could be exciting for that spesific person. Encourage them and emphasize you'll always be there to help and guide them if they join the board.

Encourage people to sign up for the trial program with 1-1s.

Good norms and practices at the very start

Some values, norms, and practices are very important for the success of an organization. Here are the ones I've used in my group:

Board Member Responsibilities:

Attending the weekly 2-hour board meetings and helping make decisions for the group.
Taking ownership of any project within the group.
Complying with the norms and values below.

Making up to weekly, on average, 5 hours of time commitment.

Group Norms:

Participate in all meetings, avoid being late to them, and explain the reason within personal privacy limits if you cannot attend due to unavoidable circumstances.
Golden Rule: Do not take on responsibilities that you cannot fulfill, fulfill your responsibilities, and inform the board as soon as you realize you cannot fulfill them.^[1]
Provide updates to the board group regarding the projects you own.
If any board responsibility is neglected, a polite warning will be given, and if the neglect continues despite the first warning, the board member will be suspended.
Values: Open-mindedness, democratic decision-making, a culture of compromise, teamwork, understanding, open communication and honesty, non-violence, accountability, ownership, and efficiency.

Sustainable Group Organizing Norms:

I've experienced burnout as a community builder. It just sucks. It's also bad for the group and could even lead you to leave EA for good. To have a healthy relationship with group organizing and with EA, it's wise to have preventative norms. The ones that we have were:

Take tasks and responsibilities that excite you.
Ensure your responsibilities are directly tied to your learning and growth.
Ask for help whenever you need it. Offer help if you see anyone who might need it.
If, for some reason, you want to stop doing group organizing, you can do so without hesitation.
- You can give a time-bound pause or leave the position entirely. You can turn back whenever you want to.
- We'd be very happy if you could still attend community events and engage with the group as a participant.

However, just mentioning the norms and values above is not enough. You and others need to take them seriously.

In my case, very explicitly stating the norms and requiring others to consent to them at the very start worked well to make everyone take them seriously.

Explicitly telling the norms is needed since a lot of people have different “common sense” about volunteer work. Many clubs in my uni are poorly run, and it's relatively easy to be on the board while not doing anything at all. Some students just want to join student organizations for their CVs and don't want to do any work. Explicitly stating norms may lead to lower applications due to high standards; however, the ones who actually apply would be a much better fit for the position. Also, talented people seek places with good norms. So, stating the principles, especially the sustainable group organizing norms, is very good for attracting talent.

Disclosing norms and getting consent also makes it much easier to keep people accountable. It is tough to let go of someone from a friendly volunteer group. However, sometimes, it is needed because if someone doesn't fulfill their responsibilities and sees no warning or consequences, it reinforces a negative norm in the group. Plus, it's very demotivating for others when some are doing all the work and others are not. Warning and later letting someone go from the board is much easier and justified after getting their consent to commit to norms.

In my case this consent was taken in the application form. Applicants must select the "I'll commit to the expectations given above" option to be evaluated. Although this may seem like an overkill, as you've seen above, the norms and expectations above are commonsensical and necessary.

Set good norms, values, and responsibilities from the start. Get everyone’s active consent to ensure accountability.

Ownership

The main aim of onboarding is increasing the overall capacity, which can only be done by giving ownership. Ownership means giving individuals real authority and accountability over a task or a project. After onboarding, if you are still calling all the shots, doing all crucial work, and giving others just simple tasks, you are not increasing your capacity; you are just working more.

In the past, when I didn't explicitly communicate the ownership of their projects, people sometimes wouldn't do their tasks because they knew I'd do it for them. Now, I very explicitly tell the person: "You are the owner of this project; if you don't take action, no one will. I will help and mentor you along the way, but if something goes wrong, I won't fix it. All the success and the failure will be yours." Telling this will make organizers realize that if they don't take action, no one will, and if the project fails, everyone will know they were responsible. This is a very powerful motivator to take action.

More importantly, one of the most important elements for someone to enjoy their job is having autonomy. It is pretty frustrating when someone dismisses your decision on your own project and makes you do something else. Not having control over the task lowers motivation and attachment. The current president of our uni group told me that the idea of owning her own project was quite exciting and was a big motivator for her to apply to be a board member. Later, she also told me that the fact that she owned a project made her more emotionally connected to our group.

I know It's very scary to give someone ownership. However, in this case, it may be unnecessary. Worrying could have been more justified if your onboarded member were someone random. But remember, you scouted this person after their performance in the fellowships. They had 1-1s with you, accepted the norms/values/responsibilities of their position, and applied and were selected to be a trial board member. They are the very few people remaining who passed all these steps. Yes, they still can make mistakes, but that is okay. Also, don't forget you have a fantastic tool called mentoring. So use it and just don't be this guy:

^[2]

Give real ownership, even if it’s intimidating. Make it clear to the owner that if they don’t take action, no one will.

Mentorship

Another mistake I've made when onboarding new people was assuming everyone knew what they needed to do for their projects. It turns out 18-year-olds with no experience didn't know how to execute high-level programs about a topic (EA) they had just heard two months ago in an organization they'd just joined. As the person who knows the EA better and has done events before, you must guide others. Apart from the board meetings actively ask for quick 1-1s to help them get going for their tasks.

How to Mentor:

In the end, mentoring is mostly about asking the right questions. What is the program's aim? What are the possible options? What are the necessary steps to prepare the program (planning, outreach, syllabus, etc.)? What is the timeline for these actions and their deadlines?

Apart from all these questions, you can also offer them your experience and other resources from the EA Community. Share your group's old material: event plans, application forms, posters, marketing messages, and syllabi with them. Also, let them know the resources from the EA community, like the EA Groups Resource Center, EA Groups Canva, and Eindhoven Syllabi Collection, so they know where to look when they need it.

For more on mentoring, check the resources at the end of this post.

Mentor new board members through regular 1-1s. Ask questions to help them clarify their project steps, explore options, and define next actions.

Board Meetings

If done effectively, board meetings can make everything easier for your group. I'll discuss two types of meetings and how they can help you:

Semester planning meetings:

These are meetings where you plan the whole semester before the classes start.
To have effective meetings, start by using a semester planning document (OSP), make everyone write/comment on it, and have 2-3 meetings to finalize the document. Write down details of responsibilities, timelines, deadlines, action items, etc.

Finalize the complete semester plan before it starts. This gives you time to understand the details, set priorities, and coordinate with everyone's availability and interests. Planning during the semester is harder due to the need for quick action. Early planning also ensures event harmony with exam periods and prevents mid-semester crises. With everything aligned in advance, you can focus solely on execution.

Regular Weekly Meetings:

These are meetings where you talk about day-to-day operational strategy and changes in the semester plan.
To have effective meetings, find a time that would work for everyone every week, create an agenda, remind people about the meeting, and execute the meeting.

Regular weekly meetings create a flexible space to talk about anything you need: sharing updates from programs, asking for help, appreciating each other, etc. These meetings also create an accountability structure. You can start the meetings by asking everyone about the progress in their projects, and knowing this motivates everyone to get things done before the meeting. You can also make everyone put time-constrained action items in the last 15 minutes of every meeting for the next week. In our case, regular meetings also allowed us to see each other more often. Our relationship improved, and we felt more like a team.

Hold semester planning meetings to map out the entire semester in advance, ensuring clear responsibilities and timelines. Follow up with regular weekly meetings to track progress, provide updates, and maintain accountability, keeping everyone aligned and focused.

In-Depth EA Program

Host an in-depth EA program for your onboarded members.

I regret not doing this. In my group, the onboarded board members had only completed the intro fellowship. They started organizing other events, such as reading groups, socials, and one-off events, just after finishing the intro.

However, intro fellowship is just a shallow glance at the EA ideas and the community (as it's in its name). Community organizers are responsible for introducing EA ideas and the growth of their community. I believe the content of the intro fellowship is relatively shallow for this kind of responsibility. So, host or help someone host an in-depth EA program for your onboarded members.

Bonuses

These are smaller ideas you can use for your group.

Make new organizers read EA CB resources

Over the last 10 years, EA Uni groups have learned many important lessons/best practices through trial and error. This accumulated knowledge is very useful because some of the best practices in group organizing can be unintuitive, especially for people new to EA. Reading and discussing these resources in weekly meetings helped us align on a common strategy and allowed us to apply the best practices of the global community.

How you can read the resources together:

Every week, send resources beforehand for others to read and discuss them later in the regular meetings.
In the onboarding application form, you can make people commit to reading a list of resources.
You can use the EA Groups Resource Center's "Things organizers can't miss" parts to read and discuss.

Whatsapp Groups

Create different WhatsApp groups to increase engagement between board members.

Some WhatsApp groups we've used:

General Board Chat: This is a general space for discussing the group's day-to-day operations, such as updating others on events, deciding on meeting times, making basic decisions, etc.
Announcements: A place to write and share up-to-date important information like post deadlines, meeting dates, the timeline of events, responsibilities, action items, etc.
Random/Casual Chat: A relaxed place to share anything, such as sending memes, jokes, etc.
Ideas: This is an easy, nonjudgmental place to write ideas before forgetting them. We check all of them during semester planning.
Co-working: If you are going to study, you write the time frame and place here and invite others to work together.
Resources/Opportunities: A place to share resources/opportunities.

Board Special Casual Events

You form better connections when you see people more often. Being friends with cool people is amazing in itself for personal reasons, but it also makes group organizing much easier. So, organize casual events for board members only.

Find ways to make everyone on the board hang out together regularly. For us, these were ad-hoc co-working sessions. But you can consider eating lunch/dinner together, playing board games, getting drinks after an event/meeting, taking a pottery class, going to a holiday/retreat together,

Resources

I hope the methods above will help your group scale. They were all tested and turned out to work well in my case. However, take them with a pinch of salt. Every group is different, so don’t hesitate to change the ideas to fit your unique situation.

I'd love to chat with you if you're planning, going through, or just thinking about onboarding. Feel free to reach out via email or book a call directly without mailing first. Have a very low bar for reaching out!

Mail: gturker21@ku.edu.tr

Calendy: https://calendly.com/gturker21/guneyvirtualcoffee

Also, definitely out these resources if you want to learn more:

Special thanks to Emre Kaplan for their feedback and encouragement.

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Copied from Eindhoven Onboarding Guide.
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Illustration courtesy of Joss from World Building IRL.

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