I actually think that as long as you communicate potential downside risks, there is a lot of value in having independent granting bodies look over the same pool of applications.
I think a single granting body is likely to end up missing a large number of good opportunities, and general intuitions arounds hits-based giving make me think that encouraging independence here is better than splitting up every grant into only one domain (this does rely on those granting bodies being able to communicate clearly around downside risk, which I think we can achieve).
Is this different from having more people on a single granting body?
Possibly with more people on a single granting body, everyone talks to each other more and so can all get stuck thinking the same thing, whereas they would have come up with more / different considerations had they been separate. But this would suggest that granting bodies would benefit from splitting into halves, going over grants individually, and then merging at the end. Would you endorse that suggestion?
I don’t think you want to go below three people for a granting body, to make sure that you can catch all the potential negative downsides of a grant. My guess is that if you have 6 or more people it would be better to split it into two independent grant teams.
I actually think that as long as you communicate potential downside risks, there is a lot of value in having independent granting bodies look over the same pool of applications.
Yes, this is a great idea to help reduce bias in grantmaking.
I actually think that as long as you communicate potential downside risks, there is a lot of value in having independent granting bodies look over the same pool of applications.
I think a single granting body is likely to end up missing a large number of good opportunities, and general intuitions arounds hits-based giving make me think that encouraging independence here is better than splitting up every grant into only one domain (this does rely on those granting bodies being able to communicate clearly around downside risk, which I think we can achieve).
Is this different from having more people on a single granting body?
Possibly with more people on a single granting body, everyone talks to each other more and so can all get stuck thinking the same thing, whereas they would have come up with more / different considerations had they been separate. But this would suggest that granting bodies would benefit from splitting into halves, going over grants individually, and then merging at the end. Would you endorse that suggestion?
I don’t think you want to go below three people for a granting body, to make sure that you can catch all the potential negative downsides of a grant. My guess is that if you have 6 or more people it would be better to split it into two independent grant teams.
Yes, this is a great idea to help reduce bias in grantmaking.