Being transparent about capacity

Epistemic status: medium, unsure if this is biased to what I have experienced, but think it is useful regardless.

I think that organisations and individuals should try be more transparent about their capacity, e.g. at conferences when people ask for volunteering / collaboration opportunities, a lot of orgs/individuals say yes, and then nothing ever really happens. 

For example, some members from EA Bath attended EAGx Amsterdam last year. One of the members was pretty excited about EA and using his skills to help in climate change / GHD. He met with a lot of people who offered him opportunities and collaboration, so he followed up with them all after the conference, but it resulted in them all ghosting him, which lead to him being less sure that EAG/ EAGx's were a good use of his time. I've had similar experiences too, with asking people if they have opportunities and them saying yes, and then I receive no reply when I email them.

I think that these people / organisations are genuinely excited for more people like me (students / entry-level) to get involved, but are also probably time constrained. Because of this I think it's super important that people are honest, even if it means saying no. And if they aren't excited about entry-level people working with them, then they should also be honest about this, and say that they are either not looking for anyone / looking for more senior people. 

I think it is good to say yes in general to things, if I didn't say yes to the previous Chair of EA Bath, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. But if you are >80% sure you are too time constrained to do something, I think it's wise to be transparent and/or redo your time budgets/allocations.