I somewhat agree with 2, although I would phrase it slightly differently.
The local maximum for outreach is a function of the quality of the organizing, the quality of the students, and the size of the student body. (Quality of students as potential org members, not in any objective sense). The latter two are essentially fixed, but organizing quality can shift dramatically over time. The form of the organization could also matter, but I feel this is pretty similar across EA groups and within groups over time. (I would love to see evidence that I’m wrong on this). Organizing quality has diminishing returns, but many orgs aren’t necessarily anywhere near this.
Without knowing Yale EA’s situation at all, I would be willing to guess that they had a substantial return on outreach due to an increase in organizing quality, which wasn’t previously close to diminishing returns, and which paid particularly large dividends thanks to very high student quality.
I somewhat agree with 2, although I would phrase it slightly differently.
The local maximum for outreach is a function of the quality of the organizing, the quality of the students, and the size of the student body. (Quality of students as potential org members, not in any objective sense). The latter two are essentially fixed, but organizing quality can shift dramatically over time. The form of the organization could also matter, but I feel this is pretty similar across EA groups and within groups over time. (I would love to see evidence that I’m wrong on this). Organizing quality has diminishing returns, but many orgs aren’t necessarily anywhere near this.
Without knowing Yale EA’s situation at all, I would be willing to guess that they had a substantial return on outreach due to an increase in organizing quality, which wasn’t previously close to diminishing returns, and which paid particularly large dividends thanks to very high student quality.