I am much more comfortable exercising clawback options when grantees have used the grant “for purposes other than those for which they have been awarded”.
For a grant of this nature, where the grantee does not produce the work product envisioned by the grant, I’d at least want to see that the grantee had devoted an appropriate amount of time to attempting to complete the grant. Here, that might be something like 0.4-0.5 FTE-years (somewhat making up a number here). To the extent that the grantee both did not produce the output and did not spend enough time attempting to do so in light of the grant amount, then I would view that as ~ using the grant for unauthorized purposes.
That isn’t the best possible system, but at least it is low cost and promotes donor confidence (insofar as it at least should ensure that the grantee made an honest effort and didn’t slack off / enrich themselves).
That makes sense. I currently believe that the grantee did honour their commitment re hours spent on this project, and if I came to believe otherwise I would be much more inclined to claw back funding.
(You didn’t explicitly make this claim, but I’d like to push back somewhat on people with unsuccessful longtermist projects “slacking off”. In general, my impression from speaking to grantees (including those with failed projects) is that they are overworked rather than underworked relative to “normal jobs” that pay similarly or are similarly challenging/selective.)
For a grant of this nature, where the grantee does not produce the work product envisioned by the grant, I’d at least want to see that the grantee had devoted an appropriate amount of time to attempting to complete the grant. Here, that might be something like 0.4-0.5 FTE-years (somewhat making up a number here). To the extent that the grantee both did not produce the output and did not spend enough time attempting to do so in light of the grant amount, then I would view that as ~ using the grant for unauthorized purposes.
That isn’t the best possible system, but at least it is low cost and promotes donor confidence (insofar as it at least should ensure that the grantee made an honest effort and didn’t slack off / enrich themselves).
That makes sense. I currently believe that the grantee did honour their commitment re hours spent on this project, and if I came to believe otherwise I would be much more inclined to claw back funding.
(You didn’t explicitly make this claim, but I’d like to push back somewhat on people with unsuccessful longtermist projects “slacking off”. In general, my impression from speaking to grantees (including those with failed projects) is that they are overworked rather than underworked relative to “normal jobs” that pay similarly or are similarly challenging/selective.)