Thanks for this question—it’s indeed helpful to clarify this. Yes, we’re seeing many applications that are clearly out of scope and therefore are desk rejected. The applications we typically desk reject are focused on, for example, animal shelters, direct animal care, companion animals, or work not aligned with animal welfare, etc. This accounts for approximately 95% of our desk rejections. Given that the fund’s scope is laid out on our website, applicants who carefully review AWF’s page should be able to easily determine whether their project aligns with our scope before applying.
Are you considering other approaches to reduce the number of out-of-scope applications?
For example, by getting people to fill out a form to make their application, which includes a clear, short question up front asking the applicant to confirm their application is related to in-scope topics and not letting them proceed further if they don’t confirm this (just a quick idea that came to mind, there might be better ways of doing it).
I like this. Along the same lines, explicitly communicating to desk-rejected candidates that they are clearly out of scope may discourage repeat out-of-scope applications (if this isn’t already being done).
Thanks for this question—it’s indeed helpful to clarify this. Yes, we’re seeing many applications that are clearly out of scope and therefore are desk rejected. The applications we typically desk reject are focused on, for example, animal shelters, direct animal care, companion animals, or work not aligned with animal welfare, etc. This accounts for approximately 95% of our desk rejections. Given that the fund’s scope is laid out on our website, applicants who carefully review AWF’s page should be able to easily determine whether their project aligns with our scope before applying.
Are you considering other approaches to reduce the number of out-of-scope applications?
For example, by getting people to fill out a form to make their application, which includes a clear, short question up front asking the applicant to confirm their application is related to in-scope topics and not letting them proceed further if they don’t confirm this (just a quick idea that came to mind, there might be better ways of doing it).
I like this. Along the same lines, explicitly communicating to desk-rejected candidates that they are clearly out of scope may discourage repeat out-of-scope applications (if this isn’t already being done).
Thanks for your suggestions! I’m out of the office, but I will address your comment upon my return.