Hey EA Forum,
We're the EA group at Middlebury College in Vermont—three organizers (freshman, sophomore, junior) trying to figure out how to make EA stick on a small but ambitious liberal arts campus. We've run into the classic "attendance starts high, then drops off to like, two people and a cricket" scenario with our traditional reading groups and fellowships. Still, we know that Middlebury students have a whole lot of wealth and/or talent, and it’s really important to expose them to EA ideas and organizations and balance out the consistent presence of consulting/finance/etc. pathways.
This year, we decided to shake things up. We invited organizations to campus instead, hoping people might get excited about concrete career paths and inspiring ideas without feeling like it's just another thing on their overflowing reading list. We brought the Good Food Institute (GFI) to campus and had an awesome time meeting a representative who was a lot of fun, engaging, and basically our new best friend. However, turnout was still disappointingly low despite our enthusiastic marketing attempts (and the promise of free snacks!).
We've also been tackling campus dining halls, advocating for a switch to meat-free dining in at least one of our three halls. We recently organized a meatless dinner event to promote the idea, and that went relatively well! Progress-wise, one dining hall has agreed to reduce meat offerings significantly once a week—still far from our goal of making an entire dining hall completely meat-free, but it's something.
On the bright side, our ongoing tabling for Giving What We Can pledges has actually been pretty great—we've got about 80 pledgers now, which feels like a big win considering it's just us and a table. Almost all of those pledgers have agreed to just a 1% - 10% Trial Pledge, but the hope is that at least a few will now have an on-ramp to further EA exposure and a larger pledge.
Here's where we'd love your thoughts:
- Any tips on engaging busy students who want to "do good" but panic at the idea of adding another serious commitment?
- Have you found event formats or activities that click on similarly overscheduled liberal arts campuses?
- How can we leverage having three enthusiastic organizers across three different class years to build something that actually lasts (and maybe gets more consistent turnout)?
We're open to all ideas!
Thanks a ton—really appreciate your wisdom, empathy, or even just pity.
Cheers,
The Middlebury EA Crew
I have no immediate or useful feedback on this specific question, but just wanted to say that I'll be starting as an economics professor in the Fall at Middlebury. I'd be excited to meet and engage with y'all! If any of your identified bottlenecks are something a faculty member would be able to help with, keep me in mind :)