Thank you! We're enjoying her :)
There's nothing stopping clients from going straight to EASE - that's part of why we make it publicly available: we want people to have easy access to qualified professionals. However, there are a few scenarios in which we can help:

1. They're not exactly sure what type of service they need, what to ask for, and what to expect from the engagement; I often find people asking for one thing when they really need another. We'll help them navigate that.
2. There are multiple service providers and they're not sure who to choose
3. We do have relationships with many more service providers - the ones on EASE are just the ones that have worked with EA clients before and are familiar (or part of) the space

So that's why we make the matchmaking service free. It's an easy way to provide value and make sure orgs get the right support.

I do hope that over time, we'll have enough trust from the community that our opinion will matter!

For any partners who work at similar organizations, their arrangement with their employers is their own affair; if they're working full time there, they're doing other work on the side (although I believe that the majority of the professionals have their own businesses).

Fiscal sponsorship and/or operations support go a really long way in bridging the gap between ideation and implementation, especially when the majority of executive directors don't have management experience. I highly support these types of services!

Looking at this from a systemic perspective, I wonder how we can prevent this situation from happening again. To clarify, the situation I refer to is intense criticism presented without consideration of the facts that requires significant resources to be directed towards defense in order to maintain credibility.

Writing and responding to discrediting posts consumes a lot of resources that counterfactually could have been used for more impactful purposes.

Additionally, it creates a lot of fear - I can only imagine the distress this situation caused Kat and NL. It takes a lot of personal strength and conviction to stand up to such negativity, and I fear that this kind of whistleblowing is more likely to push people away from doing the hard job of being a nonprofit entrepreneur.

I'd love to hear any suggestions about how to prevent this from happening again.

I completely agree with this. I've seen many worse scenarios play out in other organizations due to unprofessionalism, mostly due to lack of experience and the tendency to bootstrap and work in startup mode. While that approach is helpful in some cases, it causes a lot of dysfunction across many organizations and I'd like to see more efforts put into instituting professional norms within EA organizations. This is only a well publicized event - there are many worse ones that I've witnessed that aren't highlighted here. But that brings up another point that a few other commenters mentioned - are we creating an environment that: A) encourages the "move fast and break things" lack of professionalism approach But then: B) condemns them for making mistakes It seems to me that we cannot believe both. Either we supposed the first approach and accept that mistakes will be made, or we do not tolerate mistakes, but then discourage unprofessionalism. That, it seems to me, is the systemic issue surrounding this particular one.

Thanks for bringing that up. The copy is in the newsletter - we have a lot of great providers, and it's hard to get the formatting right here also, so we just direct everyone to the place where all the information is. Did you take a look at the link?

To me, a fellowship implies a higher degree of training and involvement than just a course. It's a combination of education and experience, and it seems to me to be the best word for it. And yes, the fact that it's something EAs tend to understand easily makes it a better word to use for that purpose. But I'm open for suggestions if you have better ones!

I like that phone metaphor better.... I think I'll switch to that! Thanks for the idea.

Thanks for posting this - in my sessions with varying EA orgs, I'm finding myself trying to prove the point of why they should be investing in branding and marketing as an effective way to increase funding potential and impact. In order to function like a non-profit not exclusive to EA funding, this is vital for the organization's survival. I'll definitely refer people back here as it comes up!

Do you have any insight into what type of efforts these funds are allocated towards?