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Elizabeth

4224 karmaJoined May 2015

Comments
367

I don't know that I think having more profile 2s will fix the problems you list, and other people have addressed that there are more profile 2s than you would think. But I do think that having profile 2 (or a hybrid) feel like a more available option would be good for people emotionally and improve overall EA productivity. 

Isn't a lot of FB's revenue generated by owning a cookie, and cooperating with other websites to track you across pages? I don't think it's fair to count that revenue as generated by the social platform, for these purposes. 

Your argument also feels slippery to me in general. Registering that now in case you have a good answer to my specific criticism and the general motte-and-bailey feeling sticks around.

I think you're comparing costs for EAF to revenue on FB. 

Specifically as the PI, I should have (a) evaluated the application sooner, (b) reached a final recommendation sooner, and (c) been more responsive to communications after making a decision

 

This comment feels to me like temporary embarrassed deadline-meeter, and I don't think that's realistic. The backlog is very understandable given your task and your staffing, I assume you're doing what you can on the staffing front but even if that's resolved it's just a big task and 3 weeks is a very ambitious timeline even with full staffing. Given that, it's not surprising that you're falling short of your public commitment, and I want to look at what changes could be made to make a better experience for applicants without a change in capacity. 

All of my ideas are going to be shots in the dark given how little information I have, but maybe they'll spark something:

  1. Set a longer timeline for grant decisions. No one is going to complain if they hear back early.
  2. Give decision-times with percentiles. E.g. 50% are decided in 3 weeks, 75% at 12 weeks.... Then when someone gets a slow response they can think "I guess I was in the 10%" rather than "EAIF missed the deadline"
  3. Update applicant's expectations if a grant looks likely to run long, either on the website or upon first review of the application. It sounds like some projects fall into buckets that cause predictable delays, but applicant's don't know if they fall into that.
  4. Give applicants timelines for when you will follow up, and when they should bug you if you failed to do that. It is really demoralizing to sit there plotting how long you should wait on a grant maker and what the consequences of a mistake will be. 

For many CE-incubated charities, the obvious counterfactual donation would be to GiveWell top charities, and that's a really high bar.

I think this is right and important. Possible additional layer: some donors are more comfortable with experimental or hits based giving than others. Those people disproportionately go into x-risk. The donors remaining in global poverty/health are both more adverse to uncertainty and have options to avoid it (both objectively, and vibe-wise)

I'm not following- what does it mean to say you've calculated resolution time to applications that haven't been resolved?

I tentatively agree with you Igor should have done several things differently, including making his constraints clearer and not changing his job until he had the money in hand. 

I think the real question is "how many applicant mistakes should grantmakers be expected to gracefully handle?" Given that they interact with so many people, especially people new to direct work who couldn't possibly figure out the exact rules ahead of time, I think it's reasonable that EAIF and other entry-level grantmakers be able to handle a fair number[1]. I imagine that someone with no application experience and inconsistent communication from EAIF would have found it challenging to explain the nuances of their situation in a way that was heard.

I was going to say "someone with no application experience would have found it difficult to know how to interpret EAIF's communications", but I reject the concept that EAIF should need that much translation. It makes me sad that I automatically double timing estimates from EA orgs, treat that as the absolute minimum time something could take, and am often still disappointed. If they can't be more accurate, they could at least give more conservative estimates. 

On the other hand, this case appears to have been unusually legally complicated and have ESL issues. Maybe EAIF is handling the 98th percentile case well and this was the unlucky 99th. It's surely not worth the effort to have zero mistakes, and I don't what the right goal is. 

  1. ^

    My understanding is SFF deliberately does the opposite and considers ability to fill out the detailed forms to be a qualification. I can also see an argument for that approach. But I do think granting orgs should make a decision and follow through on it. 

what does 30/60/90 days mean? Grants applied to in the last N days? Grants decided on in the last N? 

How do the numbers differ for acceptances and rejections? 

What percent of decisions (especially acceptances) were made within the timeline given on the website? 

Can you share more about the anonymous survey? How has the satisfaction varied over time? 

This is impossible for us to evaluate without the exact wording. If Caleb agrees, would you be willing to post screenshots of the emails? 

I think that would be a big step forward- and it might not even be a change in policy, just something that needs to be said more explicitly. 

I don't think it solves the entire problem, but at a certain point I just need to write my Why Living On Personal Grants Sucks post. 

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