When organizations and researchers in the Effective Altruism (EA) community conduct surveys about talent development and community growth, the data often remains siloed. This makes it hard to spot long-term trends, compare results across different surveys, or identify gaps in the talent pipeline. A centralized platform could address this by aggregating and standardizing survey data, providing a clearer picture of how EA's human capital evolves over time.

Creating a Unified View of EA Talent

One approach would be to build a public database where EA-related surveys could be stored, analyzed, and visualized. At its core, this would mean:

• Collecting existing surveys from EA organizations and researchers
• Developing common metrics to track career interests, skill development, and bottlenecks
• Offering tools to compare data across time periods and demographic groups

For example, by combining data from career surveys, donation patterns, and community participation metrics, it might become easier to see where promising individuals tend to drop out of EA pipelines, or which interventions most effectively develop talent.

Turning Data into Action

The platform's value would come from helping different stakeholders make better decisions:

• Organizations could see which roles are in high demand or undersupplied
• Funders might identify the highest-impact areas to support talent development
• Community builders could tailor outreach based on understanding participation patterns

An initial version could start by focusing on the most common and comparable survey questions, then gradually incorporate more specialized data as standards emerge.

Overcoming the Coordination Challenge

The main hurdle lies in getting organizations to contribute data. One way forward might be to demonstrate value first - by manually combining a few existing datasets to show insights that weren't visible before. Over time, as more groups participate, the platform would become increasingly useful through network effects. Early adopters might include research organizations or those focused specifically on EA community growth, with others joining as the benefits become clear.

By making EA talent data more accessible and comparable, such a resource could help the community better understand its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth.