Great post! Just FYI the link here is not publicly accessible:

Constance Li has put together a longer list of orgs 

Yes, but there is still overlap in their work! It makes sense for orgs to find their nieche, but my stronger claim is that even if they didn't, it would still be good to have double the amount of fieldbuilding orgs, assuming they are doing good work.^[1]

 (I think people who think this is wrong have the intuition of fieldbuilding being a zero-sum game, while in reality, we have a large amount of untapped talent, and orgs just don't know how to reach them.)

1. ^{^}

   This is dependent on funding availability, though - the background assumption here is that funders (OP) can't give away money fast enough for some kind of fieldbuilding work (such as MATS)
   
   If MATS was struggling for money, I would rather have them get the marginal dollar than another org that is doing something very similar but at an earlier stage. (but you could argue against this. One might want to invest into something speculative if they think it has the potential to outperform MATS on the long run)

That said, I'd be wary duplicating existing programs; ie. the AI Safety Fellowship becoming a knock-off MATS.

This theme comes up a lot in AI Safety, and I really don't think the reasoning is sound behind it. (See my post on a related topic).

Imagine you could snap your finger and create another organisation like MATS. Wouldn't you want that, conditional on the org doing things just as well (or eventually becoming one that does things just as well)?

MATS is well-funded (having received a grant of over $30M recently, I believe), so it's not as if they can magically absorb the money that could go to startup fieldbuilding projects. (Not to mention that smaller projects tend to be more cost-effective as long as they are good).

Imagine we lived in a world where 80k is still the only organisation doing career support. 

Now we have HIP, Successif, Probably Good etc. These orgs are a blessing for the field, and if we could have twice as many of them, that would be great.

An addition point by them:
"The way I see it, the funders should be rejecting (or suggesting adaptations) to funding applications that don't have enough in there for marketing and comms."

An EA-aligned marketing professional reached out to me with these thoughts and I got the permission to share it anonymously:

"It is frustrating that this debate about the value of marketing is still happening. I spent at least two years trying to convince the movement to take marketing seriously and invest in it properly, and it eventually felt like a losing battle. I stepped back because nothing was shifting.

It is disappointing to see the same issues persist and to hear that you are still struggling to secure funding. And that our main funders continue to underestimate work that is essential."

Disclaimer: I'm friends with Attila, CEEALAR's new director.

I have been to the EA hotel 2 times before Attila took on the director role. 

At my last visit, he had been involved for just three months, and I was really blown away by how much he had transformed the place already, in terms of finding quick fixes for inefficiencies and building their back-end digital (and physical!) infrastructure.

Being an experienced professional, his 10+ years of experience in management in the corporate and non-profit world is exactly what CEEALAR and the broader EA community need. 

I know the rest of the managers reasonably well, too, and I'm really impressed by their level of competency, understanding of the EA landscape and of fieldbuilding strategy.

One thing that might be worrisome to individual donors and institutional players is the perceived risks that come with the EA hotel. "Mixing" a coworking and living space can lead to tricky interpersonal dynamics.^[1] As far as I know, there has never been a serious issue around this; however, I would also feel really confident in the current team's ability to handle even very tricky or serious situations.

1. ^{^}

   Altough it's worth pointing out that these spaces are quite well seperated. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be in different buildings.

I guess the crux here is how self directed a given individual is? If they are already working/volunteering full time then they probably would benefit much less from such a program. Individuals seeking to transition can benefit from this structure, especially if they are on the younger side. For better or worse, a self-contained program also makes a stronger case for funders, as they will have a more concrete grasp of what they are buying.

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and the encouragement, Adam! I really appreciate it!

Thank you for this thoughtful comment David!

funders are often not interested in funding work which is supporting smaller, more peripheral or less established groups (and to be clear, this seems to be a matter of 'most orgs don't meet the bar' rather than 'all but a few smaller groups do meet the bar')

A small number of small orgs do meet the bar, though! AIS Cape town, EA Philippines, EA & AIS Hungary (probably at least some others) has been funded consistently for years. The bar is really high though for these groups, and I guess funders don't see enough good opportunities to support to justify investing more resources into them through external services. (Maybe this is what you meant anyway but I wasn't sure)

we have also been told by more than one funder that if our work is supporting core, well-resourced orgs, then those orgs ought to fund it themselves, and you shouldn't need central funding.

That's on point. The notion we have been trying to get across is that by showing orgs the value of marketing, we can nudge them to budget these resources in for future fundraising rounds. Our goal is to make the field self-sustaining over time, but that seems to need external funding for most orgs right now. Hopefully, we can achieve this trajectory change for orgs more and more, but this is a slow process.

Perhaps explained by (i) even well-resourced orgs don't have large amounts of unrestricted funds that they can spend on whatever unforseen expenses they want

I didn't think of this explicitly before, but I think this explains a large fraction of orgs we interacted with. Thanks for sharing!