On “our time is too valuable to put out a list of country’s relevance” etc.:
I think this might be a case where a little bit of visible effort avoids much unseen effort. Maybe we have a tendency to overlook the latter and thus we underinvest in data, organization and communication ?
A lot of effort is spent planning and writing grants. While some of it may be useful practice even if the application is futile, I think a lot of this effort could be put to better use.
So, e.g., if grant makers like EAIF put out a list of priority countries, or allowed preliminary “one paragraph applications” and responded with a yes/no or a predicted chance of success it might save ppl like Ariel a lot of time, effort and frustration. He/she could say “I’m applying to start an EA Romania group, here’s my CV and profile” and they could say “we predict less than 2% chance of success”.
(Similar arguments apply to giving feedback, I think.)
Adding that this doesn’t have to be an explicit list of ~200 countries, but rather the general ideas that guide the strategy on funding community building efforts should be enough. This way we can compare and offer criticism of important grantmaking strategies.
There may be no realistic way to produce a master list of what countries do / do not have a reasonable chance at funding. For instance, the grantmaker may just not know enough about the country and the possibilities it offers without reading a grant proposal.
What would people think of a presumption that EAIF or other funders in this space should ordinarily offer at least a minimal participation grant for first-time applications filed in good faith coming from low/middle income countries?
By “participation grant” I mean a reasonable amount to compensate for planning and writing of the grant itself. And I might extend “middle income countries” a bit further than the official World Bank definition, at least for partial compensation. The grants could be rather low; at the top of the World Bank definition, the top of the range for MICs is $12,535 GNI per capita, so a week’s worth of time based on that rate would be somewhere around $241. I’m not wedded to a specific way of calculating a participation grant, but this payout report suggests the number of denials is not that large and presumably only a fraction of denials are from LMICs.
The perception that funding is harder to get in LMIC countries may dissaude people from applying in the first place, and getting applications from LMIC countries has value. So the presumption would shift at least some of the costs of producing unsuccessful applications in LMICs from the applicant to the community. It’s not a complete answer, but compensating certain unsuccessful applicants who produce something for community use seems better to me than making them bear all costs.
On “our time is too valuable to put out a list of country’s relevance” etc.:
I think this might be a case where a little bit of visible effort avoids much unseen effort. Maybe we have a tendency to overlook the latter and thus we underinvest in data, organization and communication ?
A lot of effort is spent planning and writing grants. While some of it may be useful practice even if the application is futile, I think a lot of this effort could be put to better use.
So, e.g., if grant makers like EAIF put out a list of priority countries, or allowed preliminary “one paragraph applications” and responded with a yes/no or a predicted chance of success it might save ppl like Ariel a lot of time, effort and frustration. He/she could say “I’m applying to start an EA Romania group, here’s my CV and profile” and they could say “we predict less than 2% chance of success”.
(Similar arguments apply to giving feedback, I think.)
Adding that this doesn’t have to be an explicit list of ~200 countries, but rather the general ideas that guide the strategy on funding community building efforts should be enough. This way we can compare and offer criticism of important grantmaking strategies.
There may be no realistic way to produce a master list of what countries do / do not have a reasonable chance at funding. For instance, the grantmaker may just not know enough about the country and the possibilities it offers without reading a grant proposal.
What would people think of a presumption that EAIF or other funders in this space should ordinarily offer at least a minimal participation grant for first-time applications filed in good faith coming from low/middle income countries?
By “participation grant” I mean a reasonable amount to compensate for planning and writing of the grant itself. And I might extend “middle income countries” a bit further than the official World Bank definition, at least for partial compensation. The grants could be rather low; at the top of the World Bank definition, the top of the range for MICs is $12,535 GNI per capita, so a week’s worth of time based on that rate would be somewhere around $241. I’m not wedded to a specific way of calculating a participation grant, but this payout report suggests the number of denials is not that large and presumably only a fraction of denials are from LMICs.
The perception that funding is harder to get in LMIC countries may dissaude people from applying in the first place, and getting applications from LMIC countries has value. So the presumption would shift at least some of the costs of producing unsuccessful applications in LMICs from the applicant to the community. It’s not a complete answer, but compensating certain unsuccessful applicants who produce something for community use seems better to me than making them bear all costs.