A question for the fund managers: When the EAIF funds a project, roughly how should credit should be allocated between the different involved parties, where the involved parties are:
The donors to the fund
The grantmakers
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure (eg Jonas running everything, the CEA ops team handling ops logistics)
The grantee
Presumably this differs a lot between grants; I’d be interested in some typical figures.
This question is important because you need a sense of these numbers in order to make decisions about which of these parties you should try to be. Eg if the donors get 90% of the credit, then EtG looks 9x better than if they get 10%.
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure (eg Jonas running everything, the CEA ops team handling ops logistics) – 7%
The grantee – 75%
This is for a typical grant where someone applies to the fund with a reasonably promising project on their own and the EAIF gives them some quick advice and feedback. For a case of strong active grantmaking, I might say something more like 8% / 30% / 12% / 50%.
This is based on the reasoning that we’re quite constrained by promising applications and have a lot of funding available.
I think my off-the-cuff numbers would be roughly similar as Jonas’s, but mostly I just feel like I don’t know how to think about this. I would probably need to spend 1 to 10 hours reviewing relevant theoretical concepts before being comfortable giving numbers that others might base decisions on.
(No need for the EAIF folks to respond; I think I would also find it helpful to get comments from other folks)
I’m curious about a set of related questions probing this at a more precise level of granularity.
For example, for the
$248,300 to Rethink Priorities to allow Rethink to take on nine research interns (7 FTE)
Suppose for the sake of the argument that the RP internship resulted in better career outcomes than the interns counterfactually would have.* For the difference of the impact from the internship vs the next-best-option, what fraction of credit assignment should be allocated to:
The donors to the fund
The grantmakers
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure
RP for selecting interns and therefore providing a signaling mechanism either to the interns themselves or for future jobs
RP for managing/training/aiding interns to hopefully excel
The work of the interns themselves
I’m interested in whether the ratio between the first 3 bullet points has changed (for example, maybe with more $s per grant, donor $s are relatively less important and the grantmaker effort/$ ratio is lower)
I also interested in the appropriate credit assignment (breaking down all Jonas’ 75%!) of the last 3 bullet points. For example, if most people see the value of RP’s internship program to the interns as primarily via RP’s selection methods, then it might make sense to invest more management/researcher time into designing better pre-internship work trials.
I’m also interested in even more granular takes, but perhaps this is boring to other people.
(I work for RP. I do not speak for the org).
*(for reasons like it a) speeded up their networking, b) tangible outputs from the RP internship allowed them to counterfactually get jobs where they had more impact, c) it was a faster test for fit and made the interns correctly choose to not go to research, saving time, d) they learned actually valuable skills that made their career trajectory go smoother, etc)
A question for the fund managers: When the EAIF funds a project, roughly how should credit should be allocated between the different involved parties, where the involved parties are:
The donors to the fund
The grantmakers
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure (eg Jonas running everything, the CEA ops team handling ops logistics)
The grantee
Presumably this differs a lot between grants; I’d be interested in some typical figures.
This question is important because you need a sense of these numbers in order to make decisions about which of these parties you should try to be. Eg if the donors get 90% of the credit, then EtG looks 9x better than if they get 10%.
(I’ll provide my own answer later.)
Making up some random numbers:
The donors to the fund – 8%
The grantmakers – 10%
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure (eg Jonas running everything, the CEA ops team handling ops logistics) – 7%
The grantee – 75%
This is for a typical grant where someone applies to the fund with a reasonably promising project on their own and the EAIF gives them some quick advice and feedback. For a case of strong active grantmaking, I might say something more like 8% / 30% / 12% / 50%.
This is based on the reasoning that we’re quite constrained by promising applications and have a lot of funding available.
I think my off-the-cuff numbers would be roughly similar as Jonas’s, but mostly I just feel like I don’t know how to think about this. I would probably need to spend 1 to 10 hours reviewing relevant theoretical concepts before being comfortable giving numbers that others might base decisions on.
+1
Here’s another comment that goes into this a bit.
(I’d be very interested in your answer if you have one btw.)
(No need for the EAIF folks to respond; I think I would also find it helpful to get comments from other folks)
I’m curious about a set of related questions probing this at a more precise level of granularity.
For example, for the
Suppose for the sake of the argument that the RP internship resulted in better career outcomes than the interns counterfactually would have.* For the difference of the impact from the internship vs the next-best-option, what fraction of credit assignment should be allocated to:
The donors to the fund
The grantmakers
The rest of the EAIF infrastructure
RP for selecting interns and therefore providing a signaling mechanism either to the interns themselves or for future jobs
RP for managing/training/aiding interns to hopefully excel
The work of the interns themselves
I’m interested in whether the ratio between the first 3 bullet points has changed (for example, maybe with more $s per grant, donor $s are relatively less important and the grantmaker effort/$ ratio is lower)
I also interested in the appropriate credit assignment (breaking down all Jonas’ 75%!) of the last 3 bullet points. For example, if most people see the value of RP’s internship program to the interns as primarily via RP’s selection methods, then it might make sense to invest more management/researcher time into designing better pre-internship work trials.
I’m also interested in even more granular takes, but perhaps this is boring to other people.
(I work for RP. I do not speak for the org).
*(for reasons like it a) speeded up their networking, b) tangible outputs from the RP internship allowed them to counterfactually get jobs where they had more impact, c) it was a faster test for fit and made the interns correctly choose to not go to research, saving time, d) they learned actually valuable skills that made their career trajectory go smoother, etc)