EA - More Centralisation? by DavidNash

Link to original articleWelcome 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: More Centralisation?, published by DavidNash on March 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryI think EA is under centralisedThere are few ‘large’ EA organisations but most EA opportunities are 1-2 person projectsThis is setting up most projects to fail without proper organisational support and does not provide good incentives for experienced professionals to work on EA projectsEA organisations with good operations could incubate smaller projects before spinning them outLevels of CentralisationWe could imagine different levels of centralisation for a movement ranging from fully decentralised to fully centralised.Fully decentralised, everyone works on their own project, no organisations bigger than 1 personFully centralised, everyone works inside the same organisation (e.g. the civil service)It seems that EA tends more towards the decentralised model, there are relatively few larger organisations with ~50 or more people (Open Phil, GiveWell, Rethink Priorities, EVF), there are some with ~5-20 people and a lot of 1-2 person projects.I think EA would be much worse if it was one large organisation but there is probably a better balance found between the two extremes then we have at the moment.I think being overly decentralised may be setting up most people to fail.Why would being overly decentralised be setting people up to fail?Being an independent researcher/organiser is harder without support systems in place, and trying to coordinate this outside of an organisation is more complicatedThese support systems includeHaving a managerHaving colleagues to bounce ideas off/moral supportHaving professional HR/operations supportHealth insuranceBeing an employee rather than a contractor/grant recipient that has to worry about receiving future funding (although there are similar concerns about being fired)When people are setting up their own projects it can take up a large proportion of their time in the first year just doing operations to run that project, unrelated to the actual work they want to do. This can include spending a lot of the first year just fundraising for the second yearHow a lack of centralisation might affect EA overallBeing a movement with lots of small project work will appeal more to those with a higher risk tolerance, potentially pushing away more experienced people who would want to work on these projects, but within a larger organisationHaving a lot of small organisations will lead to a lot of duplication of operation/administration workIt will be harder to have good governance for lots of smaller organisations, some choose to not have any governance structures at all unless they growThere is less competition for employees if the choice is between 3 or 4 operationally strong organisations or being in a small orgWhat can change?Organisations with good operations and governance could support more projects internally - One example of this already is the Rethink Priorities Special Projects ProgramThese projects can be supported until they have enough experience and internal operations to survive and thrive independentlyPrograms that are mainly around giving money to individuals could be converted into internal programs, something more similar to the Research Scholars Program, or Charity Entrepreneurship’s Incubation ProgramThanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.