My outsider impression is that CG is so bottlenecked on grantmakers because of having a relatively high epistemic bar for giving out grants (ie CG grantmakers spend a fair amount of time developing detailed inside views about grants). What’s the case for hiring more grantmakers rather than lowering the rigorousness bar?
I’m guessing the answer might be something like “active grantmaking produces much better grants at the current margin”. My own heuristic (from doing a bit of incubator work) is that it’s usually more effective to found one thing yourself than to get others to found a couple of things, because it’s hard to convey a vision and also hard to find someone talented enough who isn’t already doing something equally good or better. Interested in your takes on that!
What’s the case for hiring more grantmakers rather than lowering the rigorousness bar?
This doesn’t fully address your question, but as far as I* can tell, the AIS grantmaking ecosystem is lowering the bar for how rigorous grant investigations need to be relative to a year ago.
*Annoying caveat: this is just my subjective opinion, I might lack visibility on things, yadda yadda yadda.
My outsider impression is that CG is so bottlenecked on grantmakers because of having a relatively high epistemic bar for giving out grants (ie CG grantmakers spend a fair amount of time developing detailed inside views about grants). What’s the case for hiring more grantmakers rather than lowering the rigorousness bar?
I’m guessing the answer might be something like “active grantmaking produces much better grants at the current margin”. My own heuristic (from doing a bit of incubator work) is that it’s usually more effective to found one thing yourself than to get others to found a couple of things, because it’s hard to convey a vision and also hard to find someone talented enough who isn’t already doing something equally good or better. Interested in your takes on that!
This doesn’t fully address your question, but as far as I* can tell, the AIS grantmaking ecosystem is lowering the bar for how rigorous grant investigations need to be relative to a year ago.
*Annoying caveat: this is just my subjective opinion, I might lack visibility on things, yadda yadda yadda.