Relative to other foundations of a similar size, I think OP moves fast; relative to startups, other AIS founders, and smaller organisations (i.e., almost all other AIS organisations), I think OP moves slowly.
I’m curious what this slowness feels like as a grantmaker. I guess you progress one grant at speed and then it goes off for review and you work on other stuff, and then ages later your first grant comes back from review, and then maybe there are a few rounds of this? Or is it more spending more time on each thing than you might prefer? I’m also curious if this is a negative or not for your experience (maybe slow = having time to really think about each thing rather than rushing?).
I’m also curious if you think OP could move faster or if this is optimal?
(These are just idle curiosities, I’m not wanting to apply but find it very interesting to hear more about grantmaking at OP, thanks!)
Yeah, so I think the best way to think of the slowness is that there are are bottlenecks to grants getting made: things need to get signed off on by senior decision-makers, and they’re very capacity-constrained (hence, in part, hiring for more senior generalists), so it might take a while for people to get to any particular grant decision you want them to get to. Also, as a more junior grantmaker, you’re incentivized to make it as easy as possible for these senior decisionmakers to engage with your thoughts and not need follow-up information from you, which pushes towards you spending more time on grant investigations.
In terms of the options you listed, I think it’s closest to “spending more time on each thing than you might prefer”.
(All this being said, I do think leadership is aware of this and working on ways we can move faster, especially for low-risk grants. Recently, we’ve been able to make low-risk technical grants much faster and with less time invested, which I think has been an exciting development!)
Very useful post!
I’m curious what this slowness feels like as a grantmaker. I guess you progress one grant at speed and then it goes off for review and you work on other stuff, and then ages later your first grant comes back from review, and then maybe there are a few rounds of this? Or is it more spending more time on each thing than you might prefer? I’m also curious if this is a negative or not for your experience (maybe slow = having time to really think about each thing rather than rushing?).
I’m also curious if you think OP could move faster or if this is optimal?
(These are just idle curiosities, I’m not wanting to apply but find it very interesting to hear more about grantmaking at OP, thanks!)
Thanks!
Yeah, so I think the best way to think of the slowness is that there are are bottlenecks to grants getting made: things need to get signed off on by senior decision-makers, and they’re very capacity-constrained (hence, in part, hiring for more senior generalists), so it might take a while for people to get to any particular grant decision you want them to get to. Also, as a more junior grantmaker, you’re incentivized to make it as easy as possible for these senior decisionmakers to engage with your thoughts and not need follow-up information from you, which pushes towards you spending more time on grant investigations.
In terms of the options you listed, I think it’s closest to “spending more time on each thing than you might prefer”.
(All this being said, I do think leadership is aware of this and working on ways we can move faster, especially for low-risk grants. Recently, we’ve been able to make low-risk technical grants much faster and with less time invested, which I think has been an exciting development!)