EA - How much do EAGs cost (and why)? by Eli Nathan

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: How much do EAGs cost (and why)?, published by Eli Nathan on August 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.TL;DR:EAGs from 2022-2023 each cost around $2M-$3.6M USD at around $1.5k-2.5k per person per event.These events typically cost a lot because the fixed costs of running professional events in the US and UK are surprisingly high.We're aiming to get these event costs down to ≤$2M each moving forwards.We've already started to cut back on spending and will continue to do so, whilst also raising default ticket prices to recoup more of our costs.Throughout this post, for legibility I discuss the direct costs behind running our events and don't include other indirect costs like staff salaries, software, and our office space (which would increase the costs below by ~25%).IntroductionThis year (2023), EAG Bay Area cost $2M and EAG London cost £2M (including travel grant costs). Our most expensive event ever was EAG SF 2022, which cost $3.6M. This gives us a range of about $1.5-2.5k per person per event.In-person EAGx events typically cost $150-500k, with smaller events in cheaper countries on the lower end (e.g. EAGxWarsaw) and large events in the US on the higher end (e.g. EAGxNYC). The cost per person for these events is $300-900.You can see historical attendance figures on our dashboard.People are often surprised by how expensive our events are - this post seeks to explain why our events have historically been so expensive, why they'll continue to be somewhat expensive, and how we're working to reduce costs (see an earlier post here). We're writing this partially in response to requests from the community, but we'll also be raising our ticket prices soon, and hope that this post will add some useful context as to why.We know event prices matter a lot in a community where people care so much about what donations can achieve and the importance of using money well - our staff feel the same way. And it's worth noting that we still think our events are worthwhile, as they seem to have had a large effect at shifting people into high-priority work (though we plan to run them in a cheaper way now). We think that short events can be an effective way to accelerate people in building professional relationships, applying for jobs, and making other critical career decisions.In this post I primarily discuss EAGs because they're a much larger portion of CEA Events team spending and it's hard to generalise across EAGx events, which occur in a wider range of contexts. However, similar principles and themes will apply to EAGx events (you can see more details in Ollie's posts here). I've ended this section with an example budget breakdown for EAG London 2023, though I'll note that the precise breakdown tends to vary a fair bit between events.Catering£739,680.00Venue£532,918.00Audiovisual and video recording£170,975.93 Printing and signage£106,658.40Travel grants£110,000.00Production company fee£98,810.00Furniture hire£33,610.50Other costs£161,316.96Total costs£1,953,969.79EAG London 2023ItemCostVenue and cateringOur biggest spending items are venue and catering.In a given city there are surprisingly few venues that can host 1500+ people. Some of these venues instantly get ruled out for being too expensive/flashy, being too far away from easy transit, not having suitable availability, etc. This means that in the Bay Area for example, there are maybe four venues that I would consider viable for a 1500+ person EAG (as it exists currently, with a main networking area, multiple content/meetup rooms, etc.).Most venues force you to use their in-house catering company and don't let you bring in your own food (i.e. we can't buy a bunch of Oreos ourselves). These catering companies generally have a minimum mandatory spend, and significantly mark up the costs of their service...