I’d like to expand on this: a think-tank/paper that formulates a way of evaluating all grants by a set of objective, quantifiable, criteria. This in order to better inform future allocation decisions so that each dollar spent ends up making the greatest impact possible.
In this respect Retrospective Grant Evaluations, is but one variable to measure grant effectiveness.
I have a few more ideas that can be combined to create some kind of weighted scoring mechanism for grant evaluation:
Social return on investment (SROI). Arriving at a set of non-monetary variables to quantify social impact
Cost effective analysis. GiveWell is a leader in this. We could consider applying some of their key learnings from the non-for-profit space to EA projects
Horizon Scanning. Governmental bodies have departments that perform this kind of work. A proposal could be assessed by it’s alignment with emerging technology forecasts
Backcasting. Seek out ventures that are working towards a desirable future goal
Pareto optimal. Penalize ideas that could have potential negative impact on factors/people outside of the intended target audience.
Competence and track record. Prioritize grant allocators/judges based on previous successful grants. Prioritize grants to founder or organizations with a proven track record of competence
Obviously this list could go on and this is just a small number of possible variables. The idea is simply to build a model that can score the utility of a proposed grant.
I’d like to expand on this: a think-tank/paper that formulates a way of evaluating all grants by a set of objective, quantifiable, criteria. This in order to better inform future allocation decisions so that each dollar spent ends up making the greatest impact possible.
In this respect Retrospective Grant Evaluations, is but one variable to measure grant effectiveness.
I have a few more ideas that can be combined to create some kind of weighted scoring mechanism for grant evaluation:
Social return on investment (SROI). Arriving at a set of non-monetary variables to quantify social impact
Cost effective analysis. GiveWell is a leader in this. We could consider applying some of their key learnings from the non-for-profit space to EA projects
Horizon Scanning. Governmental bodies have departments that perform this kind of work. A proposal could be assessed by it’s alignment with emerging technology forecasts
Backcasting. Seek out ventures that are working towards a desirable future goal
Pareto optimal. Penalize ideas that could have potential negative impact on factors/people outside of the intended target audience.
Competence and track record. Prioritize grant allocators/judges based on previous successful grants. Prioritize grants to founder or organizations with a proven track record of competence
Obviously this list could go on and this is just a small number of possible variables. The idea is simply to build a model that can score the utility of a proposed grant.