Hey! Firstly - massive kudos for this post and your marketing efforts. That's a LOT of work done in total. A couple of thoughts:
Here are some less important/certain factors that I think you could also take into account with your model:
Thanks for writing this Siobhan, and sorry this comment is very late. I currently see a few key issues (this comment), and a couple of broader concerns (future comment).
Combining these, the new cost effectiveness is (1/5 * (19.8/29.7) * 2 * £4450 = ) £1190 averted per professional per year, which is £1680-£2520 per DALY.
I think it's possible that I've misunderstood some/all of these, so would appreciate sanity checks from others.
(Standard caveat, still only a single experience and not necessarily representative of all groups)
Some updates a year on:
General point: I did several things whilst 'strategising' (before term), then forgot about them in the 'implementation' (during term). For example, I made SMART goals each term, but only remembered them during the semester review. Would strongly recommend setting aside ~1hr per month, to read through your TOC and articles like this, in case you miss things.
Backchaining: I didn't do enough of it.
SMART Goals for groups: I made them, didn't hit most of them, and didn't put too much stock in them. I think the specific numbers on goals (ie. 40 applications vs 30 applications) isn't too important, because it's not (fully) within your control and doesn't much change what you do (you would advertise the same either way). However, having the 'broad goals' (X applicants) frames the actions you take (advertising), so those are useful as part of the backchaining process.
SMART Goals for individuals: Tentatively EXTREMELY important. From experience, a semi-common failure this year was engaged members not doing much specific. Each person having goals gives: 1. Incentive to make progress; 2. Opportunity to meet/1-1 to check progress; 3. Clearer idea of what everyone is aiming towards.
It's also really hard to do without sounding like you're giving people homework. I think it's very useful to create a (sub?)group culture where the default expectation is that everyone has a goal they're working on at all times. Suggestion:
1. Get your top 3 engaged organisers
2. Each set goals, have an accountability call/meeting each week to discuss progress (and actually hold each other accountable, the vibe should be 'friendly, but if I haven't done the thing I'm actually going to feel bad/embarrassed about it at the meeting')
3. Add highly engaged people to the call/meeting slowly (like 1-2/month) until it becomes a norm among a set group.
Outsourcing: Valuable - do it!
Personal Development: Personally, I should have spent ~3hr/wk less on EA organising and applied for jobs instead. Still strongly agree with having someone else be responsible for your development (Vice-Prez being responsible for Prez).
Safeguarding Values: Thanks for the link - article is now on my reading list! This didn't come up much this year, but will be a good personal reminder for me next year.
Opportunity vs Obligation: I think whenever you use an obligation framing, you should couple it with an opportunity framing. For example: "You really should give 10% of your income" is bad, sad and off-putting; "You really should give 10% of your income, because you can save several lives!" is better. (This second option might just be an opportunity framing in disguise).
Socials/Development: Agree socials should come soon after events. We didn't do this well enough.
Resources: EA Groups Resource Centre should be your top group organiser bookmark. OSP was very useful before term, and less useful (but still net-positive) during term time, depending on if there were any issues to discuss.
Hey Ben, here's some semi-critical thoughts I had reading this:
Take this with salt - I don't have experience in any relevant fields. I also think it's a cool idea and worth exploring further! :-)
Hey Daria! 3 questions from me:
(These are the sort of questions that readers of this forum tend to care about most, so the fact that your post doesn’t address them much is probably some/most of the reason it’s been downvoted, in case you were confused)
I received a DM from someone who wishes to remain anonymous, but made the following points in answer to the question:
Considered writing a similar post about the impact of anti-realism in EA, but I’m going to write here instead. In short, I think accepting anti-realism is a bit worse/wierder for ‘EA as currently’ than you think:
Impartiality
It broadly seems like the best version of morality available under anti-realism is contractualism. If so, this probably significantly weakens the core EA value of impartiality, in favour of only those who you have a ‘contract’. It might rule out spatially far away people, it might rule out temporally far away people (unless you have an ‘asymmetrical contract’ whereby we are obligated to future generations because past generations were obligated to us), it probably rules out impartiality animals or non-agents/morally incapable beings.
‘Evangelism’
EA generally seems to think that we should put resources into convincing others of our views (bad phrasing but gist is there). This seems much less compelling on anti-realism, because your views are literally no more correct than others. You could counter that ‘we’ have thought more and therefore can help people who are less clear. You could counter that other people have inconsistent views (“Suffering is really bad but factory farms are fine”), however there’s nothing compelling bad about inconsistency on an anti-realist viewpoint either.
Demandingness
Broadly, turning morality into conditionals means a lot of the ‘driving force’ behind doing good is lost. It’s very easy to say “if I want to do good I should do X”, but then say “wow X is hard, maybe I don’t really want to do good after all”. I imagine this affects a bunch of things that EA would like people to do, and makes it much harder practically to cause changes if you outright accept it’s all conditional.
Note: I’m using Draft Amnesty rules for this comment, I reckon on a few hours of reflection I might disagree with some/all of these.
This is a great resource, very detailed and something I think all group organisers should be aware of! Great work on it.
Two questions: