{"items": [{"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833699028342?comment_id=833720016282", "anchor": "fb-833720016282", "service": "fb", "text": "There definitely are EA orgs successfully using volunteers, they just don't get enough public credit.

For the most personal example, Charity Science Health has a volunteer program that I run. We have about 50 volunteers and I definitely think that at least 10 of them do highly valuable work that greatly exceeds the time spent managing them. Overall, I think the program has been very valuable and greatly exceeded my skeptical expectations.

I know Tee at SHIC and Georgie Mallett at .impact have also had tons of success with recruiting volunteers, some of whom run entire projects. I can't say for sure, but I feel like these two organizations would be vastly different and vastly worse if not for volunteers helping out very part-time. Tee in particular has been very adept at using non-EA volunteers in a way I have not seen done at any other EA organization.

It also seems that Sentience Politics has built a quite large and seemingly successful volunteer program, though it's a bit hard to tell and I'm not sure how much of their volunteer-created research they've actually published yet.

The EA Forum is all volunteer run, as you mention, and seems to be doing quite well.

Not all volunteer experiences I've had have been positive, though. When I tried to get volunteers together for .impact projects in the past I've been quite disappointed. I think it helps to have some hurdles in the beginning to make sure people go through before spending serious time with them, to make sure they're committed. It also helps to have a lot of numbers and be very willing to part ways with an unproductive volunteer, since it really is a numbers game to get the best people.", "timestamp": "1482468577"}, {"author": "Tee", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833699028342?comment_id=833793578862", "anchor": "fb-833793578862", "service": "fb", "text": "Will not be offended if this approaches TL;DR territory

Thanks for flagging this Peter. Jeff, you beat me to this. I've been thinking pretty seriously about the value of volunteer work for a little over a year now since taking a job at Charity Science and then transitioning to SHIC. I'd love to speak with you more about this. Could have responded to nearly all of it, but I tried to keep it breif-ish.

(Disclaimer: there's a lot here to unpack, and I'm going to hedge a lot of my response until our interim report comes out with data on much of this, including volunteer consistency and longevity, ratios on volunteer management hours relative to volunteer output etc. I'll probably expand more on what I've said here in that report. Also, this is an n of 2 (CS & SHIC) and there may be a number of factors as to why my experiences with volunteers were markedly better than most EA orgs.)

\"It turns out that having volunteers is a bunch of work...\"

> Absolutely, but with the right systems in place and clear expectations, I believe they're certainly worth having. The real question here, in my opinion, is the relative worth of a volunteer hour between organizations of differing sizes. For a resource-constrained organization like SHIC, volunteers were central to where we are today (report on where we are forthcoming). For a larger org (GiveWell), and I would even question this, it may not be worth the time to coordinate volunteers if you have an abundance of paid staff.

\"...enough that at this sort of organization it typically takes more staff time to manage them than the volunteers save\"

> From what I've seen working exclusively with volunteers for a year, I don't see how this could possibly be true. It sounds like one of those things that people say, (and believe me, I've heard it a lot in EA) but it just couldn't be.

Actually tracking volunteer output would put this assertion to rest. Graphic design is an obvious example where we've received quality work that would have taken us ages to produce and would have been incredibly low quality if done in-house. I have literally had a volunteer put in 25-30 hrs. a week for at least a few months. That's an outlier, but nonetheless...

\"Volunteers are putting in their spare time, which may be pretty variable, so you can't allocate tasks to volunteers that are time-sensitive. And most things are time sensitive.\"

> This more closely resembles what I've found, although I might take issue with the idea that 'most things are time sensitive'. I think most people in management have a pretty fuzzy idea of what 'time-sensitive' means to them, but I guess that's a different discussion.

Yes, volunteers are highly variable, and this is something SHIC has had to navigate since we've started. There are a number of ways to mitigate this, and I can go into that in a separate post if you'd like. The important takeaway here for me has been that, our attitude toward volunteers has always been this \u2013 if we fail to leverage volunteer power sufficiently, that's on us and our management style, rightly or wrongly. This outlook has led us to push for numerous ways to tap into volunteer power that have worked very well. Similar to communication breakdowns, I think there's a real danger in throwing up your hands and saying \"they just don't get it\" or \"they just can't do it\".

\"People feel a personal connection to the organization, and when they stop showing up to volunteer they often feel guilty and send money instead. But I would hope we wouldn't need this in EA?\"

> I feel like this is a cynical interpretation of the likely dynamics at play. There may be some of this going on, but I'm not sure that's the dominant mechanism. When we launched our crowdfunding campaign, the vast majority of our donors in the beginning were volunteers (including donations of >$100). What was most interesting about that is the vast majority of those volunteer donors were actively working for us at the same time. This may be flattering, but I'm more inclined to believe that people who volunteer for SHIC become more committed by see the value in what we do firsthand.

We will be releasing more details on how volunteers have actually become a central component of our outreach strategy for bringing people into the EA fold.

Again, happy to speak on this more for anyone who's interested. Thanks for bringing this up, Jeff.", "timestamp": "1482517435"}, {"author": "Benjamin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833699028342?comment_id=833965564202", "anchor": "fb-833965564202", "service": "fb", "text": "I think a key factor is whether you're in execution mode or figuring out what to do mode, and how complex the work is.

When it comes to executing, so long as you have relatively simple tasks, you can get a lot of value from volunteers so long as you have well-run volunteer program. (Highly skilled advisors are also extremely useful - I'm not classing them as \"volunteers\" in what follows)

However, if you have complex tasks (e.g. GiveWell's research) you can't easily delegate it to volunteers. It's better to find really able staff and spend months training them up until you trust them.

Second, if you're still trying to figure out what projects are most effective, then all your work is complex. You need the \"founders\" trying stuff themselves to figure out what works. This is why YC strongly advises against hiring in the early days of a startup.

I think many EA orgs fall into a trap of hiring too early, or setting up a volunteer system too early, because they're thinking in marginal terms rather than optimising for long-run growth. I feel like we made this mistake at 80,000 Hours in 2013, and I wrote about it in some depth in our annual reviews.

Volunteers can be a route to having more impact over the short-term, but it means the \"founders\" spend their time managing volunteers rather than improving the programs, talking to users, and figuring out what's most effective. If the founders had done this instead, then the organisation would have better chances of dramatically more impact in the long-term.

Volunteers (and having a large team in general) also make the organisation less nimble, so it's hard to switch priorities into something more effective. It also means you do less to build long-run capacity, because your staff are constantly turning over.

I'd much prefer a team of 4 super-able, highly focused, people, all in an office together, and prepared to focus on the project for the next three years, to 12 volunteers, even if those volunteers were good as far as volunteers go.

https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/evaluations/
https://80000hours.org/.../take-the-growth-approach-to.../", "timestamp": "1482600626"}]}