I think EA is vetting constrained. It’s likely that I’ll be involved with a new experimental grant allocation process. There are a few key ingredients here that are worth discussing:
Meta Process design. I have some thoughts on designing good grantmaking processes (at the meta level), and I’m interested in hearing from others about what seem like important process elements.
Evaluation approach. I haven’t done (much) evaluation before, and would be interested in talking to people about what makes for good evaluation approaches.
Object level ideas about organizations worth funding. New orgs, old orgs. (Note: I am specifically interested in things that feed into the x-risk ecosystem somehow. Also, in the near future will only be able to consider organizations rather than individuals)
I’d offer that whatever you can do to make it possible to iterate on your grantmaking loop quickly will be useful. Perhaps starting with smaller grants on a month or even week cycle, running a few rounds there, and then scaling up. Don’t try and make it near-perfect from the start, instead try and make it something that can become near-perfect because of iterations and improvements.
Gotcha. I wonder whether it could create substantially more impact from doing over the long term yourself, or setting it up well for someone else to run long term. Obviously I have no context and your goals on the project but I’ve seen things where people do a short term project aiming for impact creation and where in the end they feel that they could’ve created much more impact by doing the thing in a more ongoing manner. So this note may or may not be relevant depending on the project and your goals :)
Grantmaking and Vetting
I think EA is vetting constrained. It’s likely that I’ll be involved with a new experimental grant allocation process. There are a few key ingredients here that are worth discussing:
Meta Process design. I have some thoughts on designing good grantmaking processes (at the meta level), and I’m interested in hearing from others about what seem like important process elements.
Evaluation approach. I haven’t done (much) evaluation before, and would be interested in talking to people about what makes for good evaluation approaches.
Object level ideas about organizations worth funding. New orgs, old orgs. (Note: I am specifically interested in things that feed into the x-risk ecosystem somehow. Also, in the near future will only be able to consider organizations rather than individuals)
Hey Raemon—I run the EA Grants program at CEA. I’d be happy to chat! Email me at nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org if you want to arrange a time.
I won’t be at EAG but I’m in Berkeley for a week or so and would love to chat about this.
I’d offer that whatever you can do to make it possible to iterate on your grantmaking loop quickly will be useful. Perhaps starting with smaller grants on a month or even week cycle, running a few rounds there, and then scaling up. Don’t try and make it near-perfect from the start, instead try and make it something that can become near-perfect because of iterations and improvements.
I’m not yet sure that I’ll be doing this more than 3 months, so I think there’s a bit more value to focus more on generating value in that time.
Gotcha. I wonder whether it could create substantially more impact from doing over the long term yourself, or setting it up well for someone else to run long term. Obviously I have no context and your goals on the project but I’ve seen things where people do a short term project aiming for impact creation and where in the end they feel that they could’ve created much more impact by doing the thing in a more ongoing manner. So this note may or may not be relevant depending on the project and your goals :)