Sorry to hear that you’ve had this experience and thank you for writing such a non-confrontational(!) post. I imagine many people have similar stories.
On the one hand, I want to be open to criticism and take seriously the possibility that I really am too confrontational. On the other hand, I strongly believe that radical honesty is a prerequisite for genuine cooperation, so I feel it would be disingenuous of me to simply ask what I can do to become less confrontational.
I think the following things are plausibly both true:
Grantmakers made a reasonable decision given the information available to them at the time and shouldn’t spend any more time evaluating your grant proposals for a while.
You shouldn’t update much on their claims that you’re too confrontational.
Grantmakers are in demand. The existing ones have very little time on their hands. They are generally making decisions on much less information than people are used to in the wider world in an effort to deploy funding quickly without too much fear of error to address urgent problems.
This can understandably be incredibly frustrating for unsuccessful grant applicants who have good reason to believe that the grantmakers made a mistake. I’m not sure if there’s a good solution to this situation just yet (and I’m saddened by the recent loss of the expanded grantmaking capacity from the Future Fund’s regranting system), but the one thing I can recommend is that you at least don’t put too much weight on grantmakers having made a correct evaluation here.
I’ve only taken a cursory look at your work but I for one am glad to have you in our community :-)
Sorry to hear that you’ve had this experience and thank you for writing such a non-confrontational(!) post. I imagine many people have similar stories.
I think the following things are plausibly both true:
Grantmakers made a reasonable decision given the information available to them at the time and shouldn’t spend any more time evaluating your grant proposals for a while.
You shouldn’t update much on their claims that you’re too confrontational.
Grantmakers are in demand. The existing ones have very little time on their hands. They are generally making decisions on much less information than people are used to in the wider world in an effort to deploy funding quickly without too much fear of error to address urgent problems.
This can understandably be incredibly frustrating for unsuccessful grant applicants who have good reason to believe that the grantmakers made a mistake. I’m not sure if there’s a good solution to this situation just yet (and I’m saddened by the recent loss of the expanded grantmaking capacity from the Future Fund’s regranting system), but the one thing I can recommend is that you at least don’t put too much weight on grantmakers having made a correct evaluation here.
I’ve only taken a cursory look at your work but I for one am glad to have you in our community :-)