Groups thrive when they’re led by committed, talented, and hardworking organizers. If they’re not handed off to enthusiastic and competent people when organizers leave, the group may become less active or go entirely defunct. Succession problems are a frequent killer of good groups. This is a particular problem for university groups, which are robbed of organizers every time one graduates. Good leadership handovers don’t always happen automatically–so here are some tips to make your handover go smoothly.

We have developed a meeting template to help mentors and mentees discuss key succession planning issues, including reminders of early timelines and overcoming group-specific struggles when executing on this plan. We recommend all final-year organisers go through this with their mentor during continued mentorship.

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For a related article on leadership, consider reading Jeremy’s How to cultivate lasting club leadership.

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1. Preparing for leadership succession early

The first thing you should do when you become the main organizer of your group is to think about who the next organizer could be. Long before you are in a position to decide on a successor, you can take steps to ensure you have a large pool of candidates to choose from when the time comes. University students should focus on recruiting first-year students so your members don’t all graduate at the same time. Let promising younger students take over responsibilities gradually in order to give them more leadership experience and get a better understanding of their fit for group leadership. You can also mentor someone to become your successor.

If you are graduating within the next 1-1.5 years, succession should be a serious consideration! Our best guess is that by that point, it is key you work on answering the following questions:

• Have you been able to identify when you’d need to leave your leadership position?
• Can you map out 2 names of possible promising successors in the future, and explain why they would be good successors?
  • If you can’t right now, consider hosting more 1-1s and individualized interactions – see section 4 below
• Have you asked these people, after providing a solid pitch on the value of organizing, if they might be interested in community building?
  • Here are some of the reasons we think group organizing can be helpful for the world:
    • University group members (and organizers in particular) have a strong track record of making significant contributions to AI Safety priorities;
    • Universities are places where people build communities and deep social networks. These in-person social ties are important for people being more likely to take significant action on AI safety ideas;
    • Universities can have high concentrations of pre-screened talent
  • Here are some of the reasons we think group organizing can be helpful for the individual:
    • Opportunity to form deeper models on important problems;
    • Variety of experience: team managing, stakeholder liaising, communications and marketing, strategizing, etc.;
    • Wide network within AI Safety;
    • For the reasons above, actual impact.

Even if you're not a university student, you can still focus on outreach to new members, and get existing members involved so they can get familiar with how the organization works.

2. Consider leadership transitions in your committee structure

Some uni groups have chosen to design their committee structure to help transitions. Here are some examples:

• Having two co-presidents - Some groups have two co-presidents from two consecutive years run the group, each for two years, so that there will never need to be a total leadership handover.
• Choosing a president with two years left to graduate and having an advisor others choose a president from the group of members that have two years left before they graduate. That way the previous president becomes an advisor in their final year (this has the advantage of avoiding lessening the responsibilities of organizers in their senior years, during which they might be writing a thesis or searching for jobs).
• Holding an application process - this can work well if you are likely to have more people capable and interested people than you have available roles in the committee, or if it is common at your university to hold application processes. The executive board applicants fill out an application form, get interviewed, and present platforms on how they envision the group for the next year.

3. How to select your successor

Choose next year’s leadership early—ideally one semester/term before you hand over responsibilities to them. Be sure that they have a solid understanding of AI Safety and of the group’s purpose. If possible, choose someone who is familiar with the existing community and who has already helped you organize the group in some capacity.

Starting even earlier will allow you to execute on this process well. For this purpose,

• spending time doing 1-1s (or on other forms of interaction),
• getting to know “intrigued-but-not-yet-highly-involved members” and boosting their interactions with AI SAfety,