Speaking for myself, I’m interested in increasing the detail in my write-ups a little over the medium term (perhaps making them typically more the length of the write up for Stefan Schubert). I doubt I’ll go all the way to making them as comprehensive as Max’s. Pros:
Particularly useful for donors to the fund and potential applicants to get to know the reasoning processes grant makers when we’ve just joined and haven’t yet made many grants
Getting feedback from others on what parts of my reasoning process in making grants seem better and worse seems more likely to be useful than simply feedback on ‘this grant was one I would / wouldn’t have made’
Cons:
Time writing reports trades against time evaluating grants. The latter seems more important to me at the current margin. That’s partly because I’d have liked to have decidedly more time than I had for evaluating grants and perhaps for seeking out people I think would make good grantees.
I find it hard to write up grants in great detail in a way that’s fully accurate and balanced without giving grantees public negative feedback. I’m hesitant to do much of that, and when I do it, want to do it very sensitively.
I expect to try to include considerations in my write ups which might be found in write ups of types of opportunity. I don’t expect to produce the kind of lengthy write ups that come to mind when you mention reports.
I would guess that the length of my write ups going forward will depend on various things, including how much impact they seem to be having (eg how much useful feedback I get from them that informs my thinking, and how useful people seem to be finding them in deciding what projects to do / whether to apply to the fund etc).
While I’m not sure I’ll produce similarly long write-ups in the future, FWIW for me some of the pros of long writeups are:
It helps me think and clarify my own views.
I would often find it more time-consuming to produce a brief writeup, except perhaps for writeups that have a radically more limited scope—e.g., just describing what the grant “buys”, but not saying anything about my reasoning for why I thought the grant is worth making.
Speaking for myself, I’m interested in increasing the detail in my write-ups a little over the medium term (perhaps making them typically more the length of the write up for Stefan Schubert). I doubt I’ll go all the way to making them as comprehensive as Max’s.
Pros:
Particularly useful for donors to the fund and potential applicants to get to know the reasoning processes grant makers when we’ve just joined and haven’t yet made many grants
Getting feedback from others on what parts of my reasoning process in making grants seem better and worse seems more likely to be useful than simply feedback on ‘this grant was one I would / wouldn’t have made’
Cons:
Time writing reports trades against time evaluating grants. The latter seems more important to me at the current margin. That’s partly because I’d have liked to have decidedly more time than I had for evaluating grants and perhaps for seeking out people I think would make good grantees.
I find it hard to write up grants in great detail in a way that’s fully accurate and balanced without giving grantees public negative feedback. I’m hesitant to do much of that, and when I do it, want to do it very sensitively.
I expect to try to include considerations in my write ups which might be found in write ups of types of opportunity. I don’t expect to produce the kind of lengthy write ups that come to mind when you mention reports.
I would guess that the length of my write ups going forward will depend on various things, including how much impact they seem to be having (eg how much useful feedback I get from them that informs my thinking, and how useful people seem to be finding them in deciding what projects to do / whether to apply to the fund etc).
While I’m not sure I’ll produce similarly long write-ups in the future, FWIW for me some of the pros of long writeups are:
It helps me think and clarify my own views.
I would often find it more time-consuming to produce a brief writeup, except perhaps for writeups that have a radically more limited scope—e.g., just describing what the grant “buys”, but not saying anything about my reasoning for why I thought the grant is worth making.