Do you have a rough sense of how much better [1] the grants discussed here—those “rated highly, usually because [investigators] thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high”—than the current funding bar? That might be helpful to two groups: donors (who are presumably aware that the marginal effect of their donation isn’t as high as it would be if it counterfactually funded these specific examples) and would-be applicants (who shouldn’t be discouraged if their proposals are not as strong as the highlighted grants).
Hi Jason, great question! You and/or potential donors and/or potential grantees can look at the marginal grants writeup[1]that Kieran and Neil put together last December. I don’t think the bar has changed significantly in the last 6 months, though any AWF fund manager is free to correct me.
To answer your exact question, I don’t have a quantitative sense of how much better the highlighted grants are, compared to the marginal grants. I don’t think it’s strictly necessary here to have a cardinal ranking, because (as you’ve identified) exactly where the marginal grants are matters noticeably more than the number of times the best grants are better than the marginal ones.
Do you have a rough sense of how much better [1] the grants discussed here—those “rated highly, usually because [investigators] thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high”—than the current funding bar? That might be helpful to two groups: donors (who are presumably aware that the marginal effect of their donation isn’t as high as it would be if it counterfactually funded these specific examples) and would-be applicants (who shouldn’t be discouraged if their proposals are not as strong as the highlighted grants).
(for lack of a better word)
Hi Jason, great question! You and/or potential donors and/or potential grantees can look at the marginal grants writeup [1]that Kieran and Neil put together last December. I don’t think the bar has changed significantly in the last 6 months, though any AWF fund manager is free to correct me.
To answer your exact question, I don’t have a quantitative sense of how much better the highlighted grants are, compared to the marginal grants. I don’t think it’s strictly necessary here to have a cardinal ranking, because (as you’ve identified) exactly where the marginal grants are matters noticeably more than the number of times the best grants are better than the marginal ones.
(click through to the link, the headline is for a fundraising post but the section I linked detailed marginal grants).