Promoting Effective Giving at Conferences via Speed Giving Games
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Promoting Effective Giving at Conferences via Speed Giving Games


Conferences provide an impactful opportunity to promote effective giving. This is the broad take-away from an experiment with promoting effective giving at two conferences in recent months: the Unitarian Universalist (UU) General Assembly and the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) National Convention. This experiment was run by Intentional Insights (InIn), an EA meta-charity devoted to promoting effective giving and rational thinking to a broad audience, with financial sponsorship from The Life You Can Save.

The outcomes, as described below, show that conferences can offer high-impact, cost-effective opportunities to communicate effective giving messages to important stakeholders. An especially promising way to do so is to use Speed Giving Games (SGG) and encouraging people who participate in SGG to hold full-length Giving Games (GG) when they return back to their home, since GGs are excellent means of promoting effective giving.

This article will aim both to describe our experiences at the UU and SSA conferences, and serve as a guide to others who want to promote effective giving via conferences. The article is thus divided into several parts:

  • Evaluating the demographic group you want to target

  • Evaluating the potential impact and cost of the conference

  • Steps to prepare for the conference

  • Outcomes of the conference

  • Assessment of the experiment and conclusions

 

Picking the Right Conference: Consider Demographics

Before deciding on a conference, make sure you target the right demographic. We at InIn, in agreement with The Life You Can Save, picked the two conferences mentioned above for a couple of reasons.

First, the UU and SSA both unite people we thought well-suited for promoting effective giving. Members of these organizations already value both improving the world and using reason and evidence to inform their actions.

Our work at the SSA is part of our broader effort, in collaboration with The Life You Can Save and the Local Effective Altruist Network, to promote effective giving to secular, humanist, and skeptic groups. We do so by holding GGs targeted to their needs, through appearing on podcasts and writing articles in secular venues about effective giving; and through collaborating with a number of national and international organizations within the secular, humanist, and skeptic movements. Besides the SSA, this includes the Foundation Beyond Belief, United Coalition of Reason, American Humanist Association, International Humanist Ethical Union, and others.

The UU religious denomination is a more experimental focus. It builds upon the success of the above-mentioned project, and expands promoting effective giving to people who are still somewhat reason-oriented, even if reason is less central for them. Yet UU members are strongly committed to action to improve the world, generally more so than members of the secular, humanist, and skeptic movement. Thus, we at InIn and The Life You Can Save decided to try targeting them as well.

Second, picking the right demographic also means having at least some people who are familiar with the language, needs, desires, and passions of the niche group you are targeting, and have some connections within it. Knowing the interests and language of the demographics is really valuable for understanding how to market the concept of effective giving to those demographics. Having people with connections within that demographic allows you to approach them as an insider, giving you instant credibility when talking about a new concept unfamiliar to new audiences.

For the SSA, we had it easy, due to our extensive connections in the secular/skeptic/humanist movement. The SSA Executive Director is on the Intentional Insights Advisory Board, and our members regularly appear on podcasts and write for venues within that movement, and many of our members attend local humanist/secular/skeptic groups.

We had fewer connections in UU, but the ones that we did have were sufficient. Our two co-founders and some of our members attend UU churches. Intentional insights creates curriculum content for the UU movement, appear on relevant podcasts and write for major venues. This proved to be more than enough familiarity from the perspective of knowing the language and interests.

 

Picking the Right Conference: Consider Impact and Costs

After choosing the right demographic, consider and balance the potential impact and effectiveness of each conference.

Number and influence of attendees:

Both the UU and the secular/skeptic/humanist movements hold a number of conferences. Fortunately, a single annual conference unites the whole UU movement, with over 3,500 UU leaders from around the world coming. Moreover, the people who come to the UU General Assembly constitute the most active members of the movement – Ministers, Religious Education Directors, church staff,lay leaders and prominent writers – in other words, those most capable of spreading effective giving ideas in the UU world.

The SSA event has many fewer people, just over 200 attendees. However, many movers and shakers from the secular/skeptic/humanist movement attend the conference. This makes it attractive from the perspective of spreading effective giving ideas in the movement.

Impact of your role at conference:

First, most conferences have tabling opportunities for exhibitors, and as an exhibitor, you can hold SGGs at your table. We did that both at the SSA and UU, and I doubt we would have gone to either without that opportunity, since we found it to be very effective at promoting effective giving.

Caption: Intentional Insights table at the Secular Student Alliance conference (courtesy of InIn)

Second, if you have an opportunity to be a speaker and can promote effective giving at your talk, this raises the impact you can make at a conference. That said, unless you can focus your talk on effective giving or at least give out relevant materials and sign-up sheets, simply mentioning effective giving may not be that impactful. It all depends on how you go about it, and whether the concept is relevant to your talk and memorable to the audience. I was a speaker at the SSA, and worked effective giving into my talk without focusing on it, as well as distributing relevant materials about effective giving.

Third, consider whether you have specific networking opportunities at a conference that are really helpful for promoting effective giving. For instance, this might involve having many small-group or one-on-one meetings with influencers where you can safely (and without seeming pushy) promote effective giving. At both the SSA and UU, we had pre-scheduled and spontaneous meetings with notable people, which allowed us to promote effective giving concepts.

Costs: One of the fundamental aspects of effective giving is cost-effectiveness, and it is important to apply this metric to marketing effective giving.

For the experiment with promoting effective giving at conferences, we at InIn decided to collaborate with The Life You Can Save on the most low-cost opportunities. Thus, one of the reasons we chose the UU and SSA conventions is that they both happened in Columbus, where InIn is based. InIn provided the people who ran the table and did the networking, and The Life You Can Save covered fees for conference registration, tabling, and other miscellaneous fees.

The UUA conference registration is around $450 per participant, and $800 for a table. Fortunately, as InIn is a member of a UU organization through which we promote Giving Games and other InIn materials, we got a discounted table, at $200. Miscellaneous fees included parking and food, around $20/day per participant per day. We had 2 people at the conference each day, so for the 5-day conference, that was $200. We also had about $175 in marketing costs to design and print flyers. We registered only one person, as we got one free participant with a table, so the total cost came out to $1025.

The SSA conference registration is around $135 per participant, and $150 for a table. As a speaker, I got a free registration. Parking and food cost $140 for the 3-day conference, and marketing costs came out to $150, for a total of $340.

 

Prepare Well

To prepare for the conferences, we at InIn brainstormed about the appropriate ways to present effective giving at both conferences. We then prepared talking points relevant to each audience, and coordinated with all people who would table at both conferences to ensure they knew how to present effective giving to the two audiences well.

As an example, you can see the GGs packet adapted to the language and interests of the SSA here and UU here. The main modifications are in the “Activity Overview” section, and these changes represent the broad difference in the kind of language we used.

Besides the language, we put a lot of effort into designing attractive marketing materials for our table. We created a large sign, visible from a long distance away, with “Free Money” in red. People are attracted both to the color red and to the phrase “Free Money,” and it is highly important to draw attention in the busy context of a conference.

Caption: SGG activity overview for both UU and SSA conferences (courtesy of InIn)

A professional designer we paid created a nice layout for the SGG activity at our table. SGGs involve having people make a decision between two charities. In SGGs, participants who come to the table are given a 1-minute introduction to the concept of effective giving and the two charities involved in the SGG, and are then invited to make a decision about which of the two charities to support. Their vote results in a dollar each going to either charity, sponsored by an outside party, usually The Life You Can Save. It was important to create a nice layout that people could engage with quickly and easily, again due to distractions in the conference setting. We chose GiveDirectly as the effective charity, and the Mid-Ohio Food Bank as a local and not so effective charity.

For those who participated in Speed Giving Games, we then aimed to get them to sign up for the InIn newsletter and The Life You Can Save newsletter, and engage them in conversations about effective giving. We also printed out shorter versions of the UU and SSA Giving Games packets. These had brief descriptions of the full Giving Games, with links to the longer versions they could host back in their SSA student clubs or UU congregations.

Another thing we did is schedule meetings in advance with some influencers to discuss effective giving opportunities. We also made sure to schedule meetings spontaneously during the conference with notables who seemed interested in effective giving. For those who expressed an interest but did not have time to meet, we made sure to exchange contact information and follow up afterwards.

Finally, we applied to be speakers at both conferences. We succeeded with the SSA, but not with UU. Still, we decided to attend the UU conference, because the costs were low enough since we did not have to travel and The Life You Can Save judged the potential impact worthwhile.

 

Conference Outcomes

At the UU conference, we had around 75 people play the SGG, so around 2% of attendees. Of those, about 65% signed up for the newsletter, just under 50 people. We had 50 packets with GG descriptions printed, and we ran out by the end of the conference. About 70% of the people who played there voted for GiveDirectly.

We also had meetings with some notable parties interested in effective giving. Especially promising was a meeting with the Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association (UUHA), who expressed a strong interest in bringing GGs to her constituents. There are hundreds of UU Humanist groups within congregations around the world. We are currently working on testing a GG at a local UU Humanist group, and we will then write up the results for the UUHA blog. We had some other promising meetings as well, but no one was as interested as the UUHA.

At the SSA conference, we had 15 people play the SGG, so around 7.5% of attendees. Of those, 80% signed up for the newsletter, so about 12 people. The same proportion, 80%, voted for GiveDirectly.

We gave away around 35 GG packets with descriptions, as some people did not want to play the SGG, but were interested in having their clubs host it. Distributing packets was especially helped by the fact that I was a speaker at the SSA, and promoted and handed out packets at my presentation.

The meetings with notable parties proved more promising at the SSA. We met with staff from two national secular organizations, the American Ethical Union and the Center for Inquiry, who expressed an interest in promoting GGs to their membership. A number of influencers expressed enthusiasm over the concept of effective giving, and wanted to promote it broadly in the secular/skeptic/humanist movement.

 

Assessment and Conclusion

We would have been satisfied at both conferences to have at least half of the people who played the SGG vote for GiveDirectly, and have half the people sign up. Instead, we ended up with 70% voting for GiveDirectly at UU and 80% at SSA, and 65% signing up for the newsletter at UU and 80% at the SSA. So these conferences strongly exceeded our baseline expectations. We did not have specific expectations for giving away packets or meetings with notables. Yet looking back, we certainly did not expect the level of interest we got for conference participants holding Giving Games back home – we would have printed more packets for the UU had we thought they might run out.

The evidence from GGs shows they are a great method to promote effective giving. Getting influencers from target demographics engaged with GGs not only gets the activists to give more effectively, but also encourages the activists to hold GGs back at their groups.

After all, holding GGs is a win-win for secular/skeptic/humanist groups and UU congregations alike. They get to engage in an activity that embodies their values of using reason and evidence. At the same time, they get to improve the world and building community, without spending a penny themselves.

For those of us promoting effective giving, it gets these ideas to a new audience, and enables them to continue engaging if they wish. The newsletter sign-ups are especially indicative of people’s interests. So are the numbers of people who took packets to host GGs back at their groups. We at InIn already heard from a number of people who are arranging Giving Games after being exposed to the adapted GG packets, including a UU church that is arranging to have a GG for all 500 members of the church. Based on these outcomes, we at InIn and The Life You Can Save decided it would be even worthwhile to invest into traveling to distant conferences given the right conditions – having a table, having a role as a speaker, having many potential influencers, etc.

So consider promoting effective giving at conferences to audiences not directly related to existing effective altruism communities. Hopefully, the steps I outlined above will help you decide on the best opportunities to do so. I would be glad to chat with you about specifics and share more details; email me at gleb@intentionalinsights.org.


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About the author:

Gleb Tsipursky

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an Effective Altruist, social entrepreneur, writer, scholar, and science popularizer. He is the President of Intentional Insights, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Effective Altruism and rational thinking to a broad audience. He authored Find Your Purpose Using Science, the forthcoming Reach Your Goals Using Science and other books, and regularly contributes to prominent venues such as The Huffington Post and Lifehack. He serves as a tenure-track professor at The Ohio State University.

The views expressed in blog posts are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Peter Singer or The Life You Can Save.