@Tom Barnes thank you for this insight. Your team and Caleb must work under a lot of pressure and this post, even when important, must not be nice for you to read.

It was clear to me from our EAIF applications and interactions that your team is overworked, understaffed and or burned out. I think it's so important that you are honest about that, and you work on a process that keeps your quality high. It seems from this post that EAIF is not meeting timelines, not communication clearly, and it was clear from the feedback on our application that it was not carefully reviewed (I can share the feedback and the errors and inconsistencies in that). 

Can you limit applications somehow and focus on making better decisions on fewer applications with clear communication? I'd rather wait for your team to carefully consider our application, so I don't have to waste time drafting it every 6 months and it not being carefully reviewed. 

We also had feedback with very clear inconsistencies (e.g. saying we had closed accounting, even when it was publicly available and clearly linked. Saying our application had not changed from last rejection, even though we applied with a completely different project). Disrespectful. 

@Igor Ivanov my experience with Caleb and EAIF have been incredibly similar (with the exception of Michael Aird who is smart, helpful and emphatic). I'm unfortunately not surprised to see this post and its many upvotes, and I know of multiple people who have ranted about EAIF's disrespectful and unemphatic ways of working. I hope they will also start speaking up, and your post has persuaded me to do so, so thanks for that!

I will disclose the email I sent to Caleb below. In his defence: he did reply with feedback after this email for which I'm thankful. Unfortunately the feedback contained factual errors about our application and company, and made it clear that our application was not carefully reviewed (or reviewed at all). We recently got another application rejected by Caleb, even though I specifically asked for someone else to review it too, because I believe he has something against me (no clue what that would be since he always ignored me and we never met). 

I still believe EAIF and its managers are good people trying to do a good job, I just don't think they are actually doing a good job based on others and my experiences. 

Here's the email:

Hi Caleb,

I hope you are well!

I know it's not your policy, but after many applications that are, and I mean this respectfully, wasting a lot of time on both ends, I think it's in both our interests if we have some clarity on our applications. Many others and myself think EAIF is an incredibly good fit with our common goals, but after the declined applications it's clear EAIF does not think so (at least currently). That's fine, but because we continue to believe this is a good fit we're continuing to apply and up until now wasting a lot of EA's time. At this stage I'm confident it would help a lot if you could give a little bit of feedback, even if it's just one line of feedback, so we can either move on or reapply with something that we both agree if effective. 

I hesitated to write this because I'm anxious it will hurt our future within EA because I believe you and EAIF have a position of power, but I have decided honesty is more important and it's more helpful if you know who this is coming from so I decided not to be anonymous. This might be emotional and irrational and not at all true, but I have the feeling you don't like me or the work that I'm doing. If true, I haven't figured out why, but I'd prefer to hear that out loud so I can stop frustrating you (if I am) and I can stop being frustrated by not being answered. For context: I have read up on EAIF's and your work, I've been to two office hours on two EAG's, I went to your talk and I tried to get both written or F2F feedback at multiple occasions, each time emphasizing I'd do whatever would be easiest for you, and even if it was one minute of feedback it would help us a lot. I tried to be very respectful of your time because I completely understand you are incredibly busy. You wrote me back once that you could give feedback but after replying I was again ignored. If I may be completely frank I have found it quite disrespectful, considering how respectful I tried to be with your time and space, and how much time we put into our applications. 

These are just emotional observations and they do not constitute truth, but I think it's helpful for you to know the impression you and EAIF (although others at or affiliated to EAIF did reply to our requests for help, most of them pointing to you to ask for feedback) are leaving on me. I'm very sorry if this is making you feel bad, I don't at all think that you are a bad person and I admire the amazing work you do. I'm just sharing the impression our encounters (or the lack thereof) have made me feel. 

Any feedback would be helpful because I believe it will help EAIF save considerable time in the future. I would appreciate it if our next EAIF will be reviewed by someone else so we can remove any personal biases there might be between you and us. We continue to believe the fit is great and won't give up until we get clear feedback saying otherwise. 

Thanks and all the best,
 

Vin 



 

Congrats Brad! I hope and think the Ted stage gets more people otherwise unfamiliar with effective giving and profit for Good to take action.

That's very relevant information! It's very similar to our idea, so I'd love to talk to him. Could you share his contact details with me on vin at boas dot co ?

You raise an important potential downside. It was already hard for people with shallow pockets to reach people with deep pockets and this might make it harder.

For me personally, I would do the following. Someone cold calls or emails me. If this is an aspiring entrepreneur who has no deep pockets and a good pitch, I will meet with them for free. Same for any NGO or individual making the world a better place. If this is a for-profit company that has X profits I will charge a Y amount that I think is fair for that company to pay me for my time, through a donation to an effective charity. If facebook wants my time I will charge a million. 

There's pros and cons to everything, but the additional money flowing to charities seems more important to me, but we should think of ways for people who can't afford donations to not be excluded. Replying with your HearMeOut link depending on who cold emails or calls you seems like a simple but effective solution, at least for me, but I'm curious to hear what others think!

That's a great question. @Brad West is a lawyer and can probably answer this for the US.

In the EU this would be possible if you just redirect someone to make a donation to the charity directly and upload their receipt as payment verification so they can book the meeting. This is a workaround solution, and I think this can be made tax deductible directly through HearMeOut as well, but if the beta goes well we should have a lawyer answer this depending on the country. 

You write "Again, you would feel icky paying a company for this, but you might feel OK doing it in exchange for a donation." And that's why we think HearMeOut can work so well, because it donates rather than pays to individuals. People are likely much more opposed to giving someone a lot of money for their time (e.g. paying a billionaire to meet with them), but would be more in favor of doing that when it goes to charities. 

I will beta test this with anyone who cold calls or emails me. I'll simply tell them that for a €100 donation they can have an hour of my time, and see what happens. 

I just wanted to add that I've been at events in The Netherlands where sunscreen manufacturers were giving away free sunscreen (either by people or in dispensers) so the cost was zero (it was basically marketing by sunscreen brands).