Consider paying me (or another entrepreneur) to create services for effective altruism

By Remmelt @ 2020-11-03T20:50 (+44)

td;lr A case for funding me based on feedback on services I run for the community. Aimed at donors who fund community building work at ≥ $5,000/year and invest ≥ 10 hours/year on due diligence.

I’m a non-profit entrepreneur in effective altruism. Over four years, I collaborated with charity staff and local organisers to offer services in niches that help us do more good.

Grantmakers made six grants to services I ran. Six EAs kindly transferred one-off donations for me to meet my rent. They gave me the opportunity to form community-building teams in effective altruism and AI safety, organise productive conferences and research retreats, and develop online tools and guides (see below).

Funders hesitated though to cover more than basic operational costs at the start of a new service; or after the fact, to review and compensate me for how useful the service was. Often, I didn’t get paid to do good work. 

When I can make it to the next paycheck and not worry over the near-term future, I can direct myself to be creative and productive. EA organisations invest in their staff when they raise salaries, revamp workspaces, and check in on how they are doing. Entrepreneurs too need a nourishing environment to develop their work. In conversations with fellow community builders and project initiators, twenty or so expressed stress, overwhelm, or exhaustion around overseeing their start-up and uncertainties over what to prioritise while not receiving funding and not knowing why (funders also mentioned bottlenecks to sharing actionable feedback).

Stable pay commensurate with a ¼ part-time EA salary (~€1,000/month) would free up my mental space to make deliberate strategic decisions and consistently manage promising services for the EA community. Currently, my runway is down to 1 month. I’ll receive Dutch small-business assistance soon though, which lasts until April 2021. 

If you’re a donor with some spare time, here’s a case for trying to evaluate work by entrepreneurs like me: gaps in infrastructure that fall outside the expertise of large EA organisations get neglected by default. Grantmakers lack bandwidth to assess unfamiliar niches and miss context on what services provide for targeted users. Most earn-to-givers follow charity recommendations or delegate to a centralised fund rather than build up their understanding of a specialised niche. EAs usually don’t pay more than break-even to use a service that enables them to do more good. Yet, entrepreneurs who spot unmet needs but can’t get paid to fulfill them won’t develop services that last.

Email me at remmelt{at}effectiefaltruisme.nl if you consider paying €1,000 or more for my work. If you can scroll down first and come up with any pointed questions, I’d really appreciate it.

Please don’t pay me for EA work because you liked me, because you know the people I know, because I kind of work on the right problem, or because I used elegant concepts.

That’s not the point of this post. I do hope it provokes you – to consider how you would couple feedback on services with funding for the entrepreneurs who create them. 

Personally, I want to be paid more based on

 

Future work

I prioritise safeguarding society’s long-term trajectory for the common good of all beings. I broadly (but not exclusively) focus on work that


Here’s how I can serve dedicated groups to do work there:

  1. Spot a gap as to where the community focuses its thinking and efforts. 
    2017 example: AI safety researchers focus on the scenario of a single self-improving AI and haven’t written about how interactions between negotiation agents acting on behalf of customers/interest groups would look like.
  2. Inquire into considerations on how large a gap is and how useful or tractable a service would be there, in comparison to others.  
    2019 example: what’s actually blocking EA community entrepreneurs from getting actionable feedback and funding for past work? 
  3. Sketch out an inventive solution. 
    2019 example: offer a discounted Asana task-management space to streamline the productivity of EA start-ups and their collaboration with other organisations. 
  4. Consult with advisors on a theory of change and onboard any collaborators to make that change happen. 
    2020 example: can we involve PhDs & their supervisors in AI Safety Amsterdam?
  5. Coordinate efforts to iteratively improve a service and review feedback on whether it actually helps our target users do more good.
    2020 example: how do I make my amateur research on group 'blindspots and brightspots’ understandable and potentially useful as a tool? 
  6. Routinise workflows; pay volunteers who were excellent at role; advise managers. 
    2020 example: should & how would we professionalise AI Safety Camp's management?

An alternative path: find a stable corporate job through which I can learn some skills. 
This is something I’m seriously considering.

 

Current services

I am facilitating formats that help EA-dedicated groups refine decisions and resolve bottlenecks towards doing more good.

My main focus is to

Furthermore, I

 

Past services 

See bullet points below for success cases. 
A broad pattern: I bring together EA collaborators to work out a service that enables us and dedicated others to resolve our uncertainties and bottlenecks to doing more good. With our guidance, others then form new teams to address more specific bottlenecks (to solving pressing problems through particular professions).  

Larger groups I initiated

At each group, a dozen or more of my teammates’ efforts were essential for developing our services. To gauge my share, ask them. 

Another reason to inquire into EAN and AISC (incl. CBG & LTFF grantmakers’ decisions) is that both groups have room for funding to professionalise further. I am not asking for funding here for these groups but for my individual entrepreneurial efforts.

 

Projects I supported

... by overseeing EA Netherlands projects:

... by coaching Dutch initiators:

... by coordinating volunteer roles and meetings for AI Safety Camp editions:
Note: project outputs are easier to measure but AISC seems to impact more through participants learning by trying research and picking up on the mindsets of others, and by considering their fit for paid roles

... through correspondence with international EAs:

Other services

Until early 2019, I attempted many other services that turned out to be only somewhat useful or had no pent-up demand. The exploration itself was useful. I did juggle between too many commitments that I stuck to for too long. I fell short in building consensus with partners, managing volunteers, and in marketing to newcomers. This wasted attention or left bad impressions for some people we’d want to involve. Since then, I’ve cut the number of projects I commit big to, prepare longer to question assumptions and handle contingencies, explain intentions more concisely and consistently, and listen more for personal perspectives and needs. 

 

 

Thanks for reading to the end! Let me leave you with this question:
→ How would you couple feedback on services better with funding for the entrepreneurs who create them?

Aaron Gertler @ 2020-11-05T13:30 (+16)

Note from the lead moderator:

I've moved this post back to "Personal Blog" (another moderator approved it for Frontpage originally) and will do the same for other posts of this type. This allows authors to publish and advertise them in other places without the posts taking up space on the homepage.

The Forum's moderators have discussed in the past whether job listings should ever appear on Frontpage; it was a close call, but we think a few such posts once in a while is okay. However, I expect that there are many more potential job applicants than potential grantmakers on the Forum, so posts like this are less likely to be relevant to a random reader than a job listing. Hence, posts like this should be "Personal Blog" unless they involve discussion of other topics as well.

(That said, this was a nice idea, and I hope the author gets some contacts out of it!)

Linda Linsefors @ 2020-11-07T13:19 (+11)

I am in favour of people asking for requests, including money. Even if these post are not of interest to most readers, I think they can be of grate value when read by the right person, but the chances of that goes down dramatically if the post are not on the front-page. 

On the other hand, we don't want the front-page to be filled up with various requests. It takes up space, and also don't look very good. But I do think there is a simple win win here.

Create a top level post called something like "Requests for funding and other favours", where people can leave their requests as comments. This will only take up a single line on the front-page, and it will more accessible for the people who are looking to donate.

gavintaylor @ 2020-11-04T13:51 (+14)

This might be the first example I've seen of an Open Inverse Grant Proposal. Good luck!

remmelt @ 2020-11-04T16:51 (+1)

Interesting! Let me watch it

JJ Hepburn @ 2020-11-11T06:49 (+3)

It seems like you are making contributions to lots of different projects. None of them large enough for you to get a sustainable income.

This is similar to a problem I see in academia a times. People may want to contribute to research, but refuse if they are not able to contribute enough to have their name on the paper (the currency of academia). There are of course people who provide a small amount of help on projects and are mentioned in the acknowledgments. It's like you have ended up only in the acknowledgements.

I find these situations quite frustrating. It usually makes me think of this quote from someone who probably won't mind if I don't credit them.

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

remmelt @ 2020-11-11T08:36 (+1)

This does resonate with me. There are quite some projects that I worked on making happen behind the scenes that I wouldn't want to stamp my name on. I've talked with others who mentioned similar bottlenecks (e.g. GoodGrowth people in 2019). 

Thank you for your good wishes, JJ!

JJ Hepburn @ 2020-11-11T06:57 (+1)

Thank you Remmelt for all of the work you have done. Personally I've got a lot of value out of participating in and helping organise the AI Safety Camp and getting to work with you.

I have been donating to Remmelts Patreon for over 2 years. This has been a relatively small cost to me and I feel like I have benefited more than I have contributed.