This post is a link to a literature review conducted by myself (James Fodor) and Miles Tidmarsh to assist organisers of EA community groups in making decisions about how to better run their groups. Below is the introduction to the literature review. The full text pdf is available here.
Introduction
The purpose of this literature review is to summarise the extant literature concerning the evidence for effective methods and strategies for running local EA community and university groups. The focus is not primarily on running larger organisations that attempt to produce original EA research or organise larger scale activism, though some of the lessons contained herein may also be relevant to such organisations. The review focuses primarily, but not exclusively, upon evidence generated within the EA community, including qualitative and quantitative evidence produced by various local groups and organisers from around the world. The primary objective is to provide practical advice that will assist local group leaders in making decisions pertinent to the running of their group. The review covers several major areas of group activity: marketing, community, and management. It is intended that this review will be updated as more evidence becomes available.
Because much of the evidence is ambiguous, we have decided to include as much of the raw data as possible rather than present only our interpretation of it. Thus each subsection begins with our brief recommendation based on the evidence we have reviewed, followed by excerpts from the papers that informed this recommendation. Readers are encouraged to critically evaluate our conclusions on the basis of the evidence presented, given that they may interpret the evidence somewhat differently to us. Finally, we observed in the process of compiling this review that the evidence base for effectively running EA groups is not as extensive or as robust as we would desire it to be. We hope that producing this review may prompt others to publish more results or investigations into effective practises that could be of value to the wider EA community.
I think I nested this below Jon's comment in a reply so I will re-post as a new comment and retract the previous:
Hi there! Thank you for this write-up. Before starting this post, I want to be clear that I currently work for The Giving Games Project. I wish to add a couple of points and, if I may, offer some clarifications to this document.
"Giving Games" are a broad category of outreach activities, including "Speed Giving Games" (i.e. tabling activities where participants are asked where they would like to donate $1. Speed Giving Games, which I believe you are referring to in your review, are designed to offer an effective and exciting hook with the goal of gathering as many email addresses as possible so you can follow up into the future. They are not designed to provoke long-term behavioural change, they are designed to get as many people into the top of the funnel as possible with the expectation that many will not engage further. Eli Nathan here discusses this approach in the broader context of Fall Outreach events and mentions Oxford who follow-up with sign-ups throughout the academic year and appear to utilise (I welcome corrections here from the group) a "Get as many chances at a second pitch as possible" approach. As such, I might suggest you a) clarify that you are discussing "Speed Giving Games" not "Giving Games" (which are longer-events and used in a ton of different contexts) and b) clarify the aims of a "Speed Giving Game" verses a "Giving Game."
On long-term behavioural change and Giving Games. While Speed Giving Games alone are not designed to provoke long-term engagement, both Speed Giving Games and Giving Games can be combined with activities such as pledge weeks. An examples of this combination model is designed here ("We had a huge turnout of 110 students, which resulted in a total of $1,100 being donated to the three amazing charities, with Against Malaria Foundation receiving the highest number of votes. Ten students were inspired to take the 1% pledge. We felt it was really beneficial to have the Giving Game outside to involve people who otherwise might have not attended the event. It took no more than 15-20 minutes of their time and they were very receptive to One for the World’s mission! The Giving Game was a huge success that helped spread the message of effective giving.") Given Aaron's comment below, you may wish to amend or footnote the comment, unless he objects of course :)
On the Giving Game (not Speed Giving Games) impact, we describe here how we approach this here. We will release these results by the end of 2019.
As a meta point, I encourage you to reach out to me ([email protected]) if you would like testimonies on the impact of Giving Games (Speed or otherwise) or information on the Project more broadly, I am always happy to help and would have been able to point you at some of our most recent write-ups. Many of them are here.