(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:

• It seems like the roles you've identified require working in-person in the relevant countries (entrepreneur, government worker, maybe policy for taking meetings).
  • Are many/most diaspora individuals are open to moving?
  • Would this 'requirement' to move significantly decrease the amount of people available to reach?
• Intuitively, the "1000 engage deeply --> 50 make career changes" seems high. I'd be surprised if 1 in 20 people who read a website (even thoroughly) later go on to make a career switch.
  • I'd (randomly) put it closer to 1/50 or 1/100.
  • However, maybe I'm not accounting enough for the audience being already predisposed to changing careers.
  • I'm not sure if the link to the 80K reports has info on this. I read the most recent report but couldn't see anything relevant.
• What would be your success metrics for your MVP? Is it something like 'the website/articles get a lot of organic traffic' or 'the articles are shown to people and they find them useful / high-quality'?
  • The former seems more open to random variation; the latter harder to do.

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! :-)

I've just come across this post (7 years after initial publication I think). Would be really interesting to hear if any of these people are still significantly involved with EA (directly via community engagement, or indirectly via job roles / donations to pressing causes). 

Hey Daria! 3 questions from me:

1. Why do you think this is the most effective thing people can donate funds to right now? (Why do you think it’s more effective than these charities, for example: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
2. What data can you provide to back this up? (Ideally numerical data/stats)
3. How much funding would each of the organisations linked be able to use effectively?

(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)

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 the most downvoted post I’ve seen on the forum so far. Why?

One key concern: Ideas all seem good, but it’s unclear to me if any/all are Attention Hazards / Opportunity Costs. Even if they are good, is the resources investment counterfactually harmful?

Not sure TWE you considered this, or what breadth of expert views/consensus this doc got in order to account for this.

(Sorry for negativity on what is a cool idea :-) )

Thanks for writing this post, currently reading as part of OSP syllabus. My thoughts below:

Epistemic Status: Pure armchair Philosophy, informed by 2 years within a uni group as participant. Will be involved with group running this year, interested to see if/how this updates any of the below.

Backchaining: This seems excellent.

Goals: On an individual level, SMART goals are amazing. I'm concerned that, on the group level, SMART goals are over-specific and counterproductive. More specifically (pun intended), the SMART framework will (almost) inevitably lead to Goodharting due to the specificity/measurability requirements.

Outsourcing: Excellent. Possible from signposting too many people towards specific group/opportunities and overwhelming them.

Personal Development: I love the sentiment of "you should treat yourself like one of your members that you are responsible for helping", but disagree practically acting towards yourself in the same manner as another group member is the best idea. Partly because you can't be sufficiently objective, partly because an external/second perspective gives a lot of value. It seems to me that asking a co-leader / experienced exec to take (some) responsibility for your (the leaders) personal development is a much better way to do this.

Safeguarding Values: Love this idea. It should be a forum post if it isn't already, and I want the link if it already is!

Opportunity vs Obligation: I strongly prefer (and feel more motivated by) an opportunity framing. BUT I don't know if this is a general reaction or personal one. Perhaps both are required, and some people are much more likely to put the obligation onto themselves, whilst others need more external 'pressure' on this. Unsure if there is any research on this (quantitative or qualitative).

Socials and Development: Great. One line that struck me is "We’ll then often have a social straight after". I suspect that separating the social/development, but having them very close by (spatially and temporally) is significantly better than having them on different nights (say). Mainly because helps balance the twin considerations of a social dynamic and an action focus. Don't know if this is true.

Resources: All look super useful.

What’s the best (ie. influenced you the most) criticism or development of your ‘key ideas’?

Specific papers/references/links would be ideal!

(By ‘key ideas’ I’m thinking things like speciesism, your concept of persons or drowning child argument, but answer based on whatever you would yourself put in this category)