“Our attempts in late 2021 and early 2022 to support top uni groups didn’t pay off as we hoped, and we passed on this strand of work to Open Philanthropy in early 2022.”
“One downside of handing top university support over to Open Philanthropy is that they only supply funding to groups. We are beginning to investigate whether we can provide advice, support, and retreats to top university groups and group organizers of well established groups.”
I’m a bit confused by this pair of points. What was the problem? Why was OP a better fit for this task? How is the support you’re now looking to provide different from the support which didn’t pay off as you had hoped? How will you avoid duplicating work with OP?
I am just adding a quick response now because I think Max’s response does a good job of covering most of your questions. I would be happy to expand if you like, though.
We are more optimistic now because, as mentioned, the landscape is quite different and we are testing out focusing on different types of support than before. For example, we are not currently planning on restarting the campus specialist program but are investigating things like group organizer retreats for top universities (which was a more well-received aspect of the campus specialist program).
You can read a bit more about why we did this here. We handed the funding side off to OP, and we hoped someone else would take on the support side, but no-one did. OP are currently handling funding only, and we would work on support only, which reduces much of the risk of duplication.
I’ll ask someone on the groups team to explain more about why we’re more optimistic about our approach now.
“Our attempts in late 2021 and early 2022 to support top uni groups didn’t pay off as we hoped, and we passed on this strand of work to Open Philanthropy in early 2022.”
“One downside of handing top university support over to Open Philanthropy is that they only supply funding to groups. We are beginning to investigate whether we can provide advice, support, and retreats to top university groups and group organizers of well established groups.”
I’m a bit confused by this pair of points. What was the problem? Why was OP a better fit for this task? How is the support you’re now looking to provide different from the support which didn’t pay off as you had hoped? How will you avoid duplicating work with OP?
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the questions!
I am just adding a quick response now because I think Max’s response does a good job of covering most of your questions. I would be happy to expand if you like, though.
We are more optimistic now because, as mentioned, the landscape is quite different and we are testing out focusing on different types of support than before. For example, we are not currently planning on restarting the campus specialist program but are investigating things like group organizer retreats for top universities (which was a more well-received aspect of the campus specialist program).
You can read a bit more about why we did this here. We handed the funding side off to OP, and we hoped someone else would take on the support side, but no-one did. OP are currently handling funding only, and we would work on support only, which reduces much of the risk of duplication.
I’ll ask someone on the groups team to explain more about why we’re more optimistic about our approach now.