Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Things EA Group Organisers Need To Hear, published by Kenneth Diao on April 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

"I really needed to hear that"

His eyes were downcast, his normally jocular expression now solemn. I had really said something that had spoken to him, that had begun to assuage some hurt which had before remained unacknowledged.

It's not your fault. Four words.

Later, I was listening to him tell someone else about everything he was juggling, listing off responsibility after responsibility, and asking them how he could do more.

This was when I realised that I needed to write about this, not just because it could help other people who are organising, but for myself. To tell myself the things I needed to hear and to really believe. As the meme goes: people always ask about what EA Organisers are doing, but they never ask how EA Organisers are doing. And in the (currently ~85) posts on the forum tagged EA Organising, I've seen barely any which really treat EA Organisers as ends in themselves.

To me, this is a damn shame, because they are some of the best ends-in-themselves I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

So, to the EA organisers out there: from a former organiser, these might be some things you need to hear.

It's Not Your Fault

Let me tell you my story.

I'd been organising for EA UW-Madison for a semester when I got "promoted" big-time. I'd been the outreach coordinator for a while, sending out newsletters and helping around here and there where help was needed. Suddenly, I was part of the exec team, essentially a co-President, and also President of the nascent animal advocacy spin-off organisation. And I was taking 5 classes.

I worked really hard. Not just objectively speaking or whatever. I put my entire being into the success of the clubs I was working for. Tabling, speech-giving, outreach, socials, speaker events, everything. I thought that if I just did more, if I just did it right, we would get a ton of new people. I'd have done an exceptional job and made my positive impact on the world. I'd have made an impact on our group that would last for years and years.

Unfortunately, that success did not come. Attendance of the events for both EA and animal advocacy dwindled, so that sometimes it was just me sitting in the office alone, hoping someone would drop by. Organisers got busy with school, and meetings became more sparse and sporadic. Sign-ups for the clubs (EA and animal advocacy) and both fellowships were abysmally low, and attendance was lower. We had one animal ethics fellowship group which none of the participants even finished.

Out of the new animal advocacy organisers I'd wanted to onboard, only one (and you know who you are; thank you so much) consistently showed up.

Adding insult to injury was that we had some successes - just not anywhere I was directly involved. Our AI Safety group exploded in popularity, and biosecurity also seemed to be doing well. The one animal advocacy event that had significant attendance was the one that I was not involved in organising. It felt like the common denominator of all of the failures was me. I even said once that I felt that everything I touched turned to dust. Somehow, it felt like it was my fault.

That feeling was really emotionally painful. It was, in terms understandable to EAs, a giant negative prediction error. I'd been told that we were doing some of the most effective and valuable work in the world. It had been implied that every convert to EA, every leader onboarded, every person flown to an EAG was lives saved. I'd been led to expect that my work would be serious and impactful and meaningful.

It certainly didn't feel that way at 7 PM on a Monday, sitting in the empty office and fiddling with the text color of one of our newsletter's headers. Most painful was that I had somehow internal...