Many EAs are interested in helping to grow the EA movement but aren’t sure how to do it. Talking to friends about EA can sometimes work, but it can also feel sales-y and awkward. To help solve this problem and to help grow the movement, CEA is running a month-long experimental project that we’re calling Effective Altruism: Grow.
Here’s how it works: from now until the end of July, if you nominate someone to attend EA Global and they complete their application, we’ll send them a free copy of Will MacAskill’s book Doing Good Better in the format of their choice. If their application is successful, they’ll be eligible for extensive scholarships to help ensure that they are able to attend. Importantly, you can nominate people even if you’re not able to attend EA Global.
Effective Altruism: Grow takes advantage of three very powerful techniques in growing the movement: personal referrals, spending time with EAs, and introductory books about EA. If this project is successful, we may use a similar techniques for growing EA in the future.
As thanks, if you nominate 5 or more people using the link below, we will send you a free EA T-shirt. If you’ve already used the nomination system to receive a discount on your EA Global ticket, you can still get the T-shirt by nominating 5 new people.
Nominate here
Nomination leaderboard here
I like the idea of incentivizing people to talk to their friends about EA, and trying to get Will's book into their hands. But to me, EA global seems like a really bad fit for this campaign given that a) most of the content isn't geared toward newcomers b) capacity is already constrained (I believe), and c) if this campaign works and tons of people apply to EAG, many of those people will presumably have a rejection as one of their first interactions with the EA community.