Nordic EA group organiser retreat
End goal is not a healthy community, but more people who donate effectively or spend their career more effectively. Time or money. /Erik from Swedish community
I am given the permission to be open and to try things. Go for excitement!
Stratēģija
EA Denmark try to separate the organisation from community:
- Organisation does focused projects and create resources - giving games in high schools, charity handbook, etc.
- Community is enabled to do community things: socialize
To enable donating time and/or money to effective causes.
Our team fit with potenial EA community options: a professional community of grownups.
Key volunteer availability: priority is fun for organisers
Dažādības lekcija - event hosting inclusively
Group organiser’s job is to moderate for equel speaking times and good vibe.
Public events should be held in public spaces.
“candidates did not get the last interview because of a lack of good vibe. Such a personal thing to share in feedback” /Yta
EA is a very network based community
Ambassadors should spend time with newcomers:
Draugi Andrievs un Elons noteikti ir autisma spektrā. Droši vien liela daļa EA un eksakto cilvēku ir spektrā un tāpēc sociālās prasmes pieklibo:
60% of females do not want to engage in EA Sweden events
Their comments from responses:
Men use EA to do social events, women for professional development. (That’s because they don’t have time for bullshit!)
Intro kurss/karjera
I keep the intro both fun and boring to filter out party animals who would not really do anything.
/Bergen EA university group
We make rejection parties - post every rejection on slack and go out for beers when 10 rejections have been collected. That encourages applying to more stuff than we would do in a silo plus takes the pressure and negativity away from being rejected.
EA Sweden? have built a database of people working in effective fields and link with new people for mentoring.
EA Estonia got intro course participants this way:
Get 5min teaser before a normal lecture for students of phylosophy, math, economics. Contact professors you know and come in their lectures.
Advice for a good intro course
- a quiz after each section
- blue dot excercise - someone who listens to another who knows the topic and then listener explains
Agile coffee/new blood
Agile coffee is a method to quickly go through topics most are interested without wasting a lot of time in fruitless discussions.
When a new person joins a group
- quick reach out when people find you out (figure out al the funnels!)
- critical mass is key element
- whatsapp/telegram for surface level communications for people who don’t want to spend too much time online
Outreach
- meetups with related/general associations
- emailing faculty
- posting on channels audience uses
- reach out to people who did career courses in 2017-2019 to come to an event and bring a friend.
There is little reputation risk to engage with previously engaged people.
Donation platform
To get tot he value, we need to get a sense from EA Latvia community:
how much tax deduction would increase donations? Would EA community people would donate 20% more with 20% tax deduction?
Loucas from GWWC encourages having a platform, worth setting this up to talk about giving and as a tool for community building.
The work put in varies from place to place - from very little to a lot. GWWC has 3 people on the product team, in Estonia they have a volunteer who checks it.
Poland raised 11000 USD in less than a year. They were set up in March 2024.
EA Denmark = chat with Elliot and find their donation platform person as their setup organisation-wise is similar to us (one org under both EA and effective giving).
Estonian experience
A talk about the Estonian experience of Annette Targalt in EAGxNordics makes it look like this can be managed OK enough with volunteering capacity. They have had their fair share of luck and are looking really good.
Estonians have a cheap setup because they just list GWWC orgs. They donate from estonian bank account and just make a donation in GWWC platform.
Considerations and potential problems
- legal structure
- payment methods -what are the typical methods people in Latvia donate? are they easily supported in out of the box solutions? donorbox is relatively cheap and tax reports are automatic
- A lot of orgs have had problems hiring people and getting out of volunteer place.
- Denmark is moving to professionalising.
- Funders are interested in bigger markets with dedicated people working on it.
The only ones who have failed are Finland as their legalese did not go through, but they still built a website. A lot of places have thought about, but not committed to making it.
Idejas
- LU izgaismo nākotni kombinēt ar EA karjeras kursiem
- Riga Tech Girls friendship about AI safety
- coworking reizi nedēļā vai divās
- Intro pgrogramma kopā ar somiem
- career advising service design project for Finland
Resursi
EA grupas stratēģijas izveides dokuments
Resursu mape no pasākuma
Effective Giving knowledge hub
Biohazard safety camp in France. People got accepted. 5 from country will get Erasmus funding
Deep dives - effective learning materials about ethics
Replacing guilt book series
Dr Greger - food scientist
Pitch
Mikko’s pitch
Okay, so my basic pitch is something along the lines of:
“Effective Altruism is an international community of people who are interested in thinking how they could best use their limited resources to do the most good in the world. These limited resources can include money, career, education, or time. And around this idea many more specific organizations have been built, for example for finding the most effective charities, career planning, and community building.”
Then I also recommended seeing what the person would most like to insert into the “good”. To tailor the pitch for an area they seem especially passionate about. This can also involve asking what their major is, and then tailoring the pitch for that. For example, if they’re a computer science student, you could give a more specific example from AI Safety, or if a politics student, then talking about Great Power Conflicts as a focus area, if in health, Pandemics and Biorisks, etc.
And then if you are asked – and only if you are asked – what especially interests you, or what you are working for, then you can let your own passion show for your favourite cause area. Or if it happens that your passion is on the same area(s) as theirs was, let your passion show.
Something like that, roughly.
