How much do you think you would’ve granted in this recent round if the total funding available to the IF had been ~$5M? ~$10M? ~$20M?
I can’t think of any specific grant decision this round for which I think this would have made a difference. Maybe I would have spent more time thinking about how successful grantees might be able to utilize more money than they applied for, and on discussing this with grantees.
Overall, I think there might be a “paradoxical” effect that I may have spent less time evaluating grant applications, and therefore would have made fewer grants this round if we had had much more total funding. This is because under this assumption, I would more strongly feel that we should frontload building the capacity to make more, and larger, higher-value grants in the future as opposed to optimizing the decisions on the grant applications we happened to get now. E.g., I might have spent more time on:
Generating leads for, and otherwise helping with, recruiting additional fund managers
Active grantmaking
‘Structural’ improvements to the fund—e.g., improving our discussions and voting methods
I can’t think of any specific grant decision this round for which I think this would have made a difference. Maybe I would have spent more time thinking about how successful grantees might be able to utilize more money than they applied for, and on discussing this with grantees.
Overall, I think there might be a “paradoxical” effect that I may have spent less time evaluating grant applications, and therefore would have made fewer grants this round if we had had much more total funding. This is because under this assumption, I would more strongly feel that we should frontload building the capacity to make more, and larger, higher-value grants in the future as opposed to optimizing the decisions on the grant applications we happened to get now. E.g., I might have spent more time on:
Generating leads for, and otherwise helping with, recruiting additional fund managers
Active grantmaking
‘Structural’ improvements to the fund—e.g., improving our discussions and voting methods