I'm the Operations Manager at Momentum and a community builder based in the Bay.
I previously worked in consulting, recruiting and marketing. I have a BA in Sociology and focused on social movement theory and structural functionalism.
Currently building career capital and doing meta and operations EA projects on the side.
/'vɛðehi/ or VEH-they-hee
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Momentum is hiring a product manager and software engineers, with rolling applications for UX designers and partnerships managers. We work in-person in San Francisco and we can help with visas. We're looking for mission-aligned, talented people who are excited to move fast and break things.
We're a venture-backed, EA startup that aims to increase effective giving by building donation pages that emphasize creative, recurring donations tied to moments in your life (e.g. offset your carbon footprint when you buy gas, or give to AI alignment every time you scroll Facebook) and we use behavioral science to nudge new donors to support EA charities. Read more about us here.
Open roles
You can see all of our open roles here, but we’d love to hear from you even if you’re not a perfect fit for anything listed. We’re actively recruiting for:
- Product Manager: We’re hiring our first dedicated product manager. We’re looking for someone to work closely with design, growth, and tech to conduct user interviews, build roadmaps, specify features, and more.
- Software Engineer: We’re looking for engineers to meet our growing tech needs. If you have over two years of professional experience, we likely have use for you. We’re hiring mid to senior level engineers on frontend, backend, and full-stack.
More about our hiring.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can write a comment, send an email to ari@givemomentum.com, or apply to an open role.
Apply to join the EAGxIndia 2023, the Future Forum and the EAGxBerkeley 2023 teams. The application takes 15 minutes and the deadline is Tuesday May 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Time. We are also seeking (separate application) volunteers to run EAGxSingapore 2022. Read more.
These roles are a great fit for someone who:
- Wants to test their fit for event management, operations and community building
- Depending on team structure:
- Has the capacity to take on 5-10 hours of flexible work per week leading up to the conference
- Is able to work full- or near-fulltime 2 weeks before the conference
- Could be good fits for any of the following (specific needs will vary based on the location)
- Strategy (Goals, Metrics)
- Project management (Budgeting, Team lead, Evaluation
- Production (Venue, Catering, AV, Health & Safety)
- Admissions (Application review, Stewardship)
- Content (Speaker Selection & Liaison, Swapcard Manager)
- Communications (Emails, Marketing, PR, Website)
- Is organized, reliable, and handles crisis situations well
Logistics
- Pay: All positions are paid, exact compensation will vary by event. EAGx organizers are paid the standard CEA contractor rate, read more here.
- Location
- The EAGxBerkeley and India roles are mostly remote—you don’t have to be based in India or the Bay. You’ll likely be expected to attend 1-2 pre-event retreats and a requirement that all core team members are in-person at least 1 week before the event. All else equal we would prefer to have people in similar timezones for better coordination.
- The Future Forum would prefer in-person roles, in June and July, based in the Bay Area. They can compensate some of the travel cost.
- Team structure: Team structures are very flexible and depend on the applicants we get and their strengths.
Apply to join the EAGxIndia 2023, the Future Forum and the EAGxBerkeley 2023 teams. The application takes 15 minutes and the deadline is Tuesday May 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Time. We are also seeking (separate application) volunteers to run EAGxSingapore 2022. Read more.
These roles are a great fit for someone who:
- Wants to test their fit for event management, operations and community building
- Depending on team structure:
- Has the capacity to take on 5-10 hours of flexible work per week leading up to the conference
- Is able to work full- or near-fulltime 2 weeks before the conference
- Could be good fits for any of the following (specific needs will vary based on the location)
- Strategy (Goals, Metrics)
- Project management (Budgeting, Team lead, Evaluation
- Production (Venue, Catering, AV, Health & Safety)
- Admissions (Application review, Stewardship)
- Content (Speaker Selection & Liaison, Swapcard Manager)
- Communications (Emails, Marketing, PR, Website)
- Is organized, reliable, and handles crisis situations well
Logistics
- Pay: All positions are paid, exact compensation will vary by event. EAGx organizers are paid the standard CEA contractor rate, read more here.
- Location
- The EAGxBerkeley and India roles are mostly remote—you don’t have to be based in India or the Bay. You’ll likely be expected to attend 1-2 pre-event retreats and a requirement that all core team members are in-person at least 1 week before the event. All else equal we would prefer to have people in similar timezones for better coordination.
- The Future Forum would prefer in-person roles, in June and July, based in the Bay Area. They can compensate some of the travel cost.
- Team structure: Team structures are very flexible and depend on the applicants we get and their strengths.
I like the rebranding. 10/10.
(small side note: I'd suggest changing the title of this post to be more specific so people know that you're requesting feedback, rather than giving feedback on the EAIF application)
Hi Ariel, Thanks for sharing this document and asking for feedback publicly!
A few thoughts on your application:
General principles :
- It may in fact be better for you to spend some more time building a track record by doing a small project with very narrow goals (e.g. 1 outreach project or 1 program). Happy to brainstorm what that might be.
- In your application, I'd also encourage you to focus on just 1 minimum viable project that will help you build a track record
- It's okay to be narrow if you're deliberate about it, and point to the scope for expansion later. You don't need to cover everything at once.
What I see as the most promising strategy based on your application (and my extremely limited knowledge of Romania):
- Leaning into your comparative advantage to do outreach to the tech sector (and balancing the risks of founders effects while you do so by doing targeted outreach to avoid non-tech people from being excluded - maybe by giving the project a more specific name e.g. EA Romania Tech outreach or something)
- At the same time, I wouldn't underestimate the challenges of recruiting in the tech sector, even if you're part of it. I might spend more time in your application talking about what recruiting strategies you would use
- Establishing a schelling point / person (you) for EAs in Romania via monthly meetups & 1-1s
Strategy feedback :
- Right now, your application consists of too many goals and your strategy also has a lot of sub-items which I don't think are realistic to accomplish well in 6 months. I think if you narrowed your focus and chose 1-2 goals, as well as reduced your strategy section to maybe 3-5 core activities (at most), this would be better.
- Areas to narrow or cut :
- I don't see obvious benefits of setting up a legal entity / NGO in Romania at such an early stage
- I don't know if donations are necessarily the right thing to focus on right now - if your group is producing impact, EA funders would be likely to fund it (that being said, it's good perhaps for your org's sustainability to have multiple donors, I just wouldn't focus on this)
- I'm not sure how much value a website or content creation would bring at this stage - I could imagine copying an existing group's site and changing the language could be more than sufficient.
- Since it's in your 1 line summary, it seems like you think this is important. If so, I'd make more of a case for it in the application.
- It's not clear to me how you would support students (outside of general meetups & 1-1s), maybe you could mention that you would forward them to existing resources (e.g. CEA's UGAP program)
Feedback on the application itself (vs. the strategy)
- I would make the "what we have accomplished" section a bit more easy to understand. For example, what role did you play in getting 4 participants to EAGxPrague or the intro fellowship? Did you have 1-1 calls, encourage people to attend etc. I also wouldn't lead with followers on social media - to me that is a vanity metric. I'd be more interested in how active your local WhatsApp group is, or if people are actively working on independent projects.
- I left a comment or two in the google doc as well.
I hope this is helpful!
+1 to a polls feature! Add to forum feature thread?
Thanks this is helpful, and potentially a useful top-level post
I think the challenge is that the recent changes can be described in a number of different ways:
- Object level changes to fields, disciplines or industries that we focus on which is priorities shift
- Changes in (attitudes and behaviors) regarding spending which maybe could be described as lifestyle shift (and relatedly, increasing importance ascribed to EA time, which could be a bit of a values shift)
- A more ambitious and less risk averse attitude, which maybe is a culture shift
I'm not quite sure how I'd summarise these changes with 1 phrase or word, but these things in combination does create a certain... "aesthetic" that feels coherent - I could create a "2022 EA starter pack" meme that would probably capture the above pretty accurately.
I don't have an answer, but I appreciate you raising this ahead of time and think it would be great if we could have well thought out answers and resources for this.