This is an interesting idea, thanks for raising it!
I think intuitively, it worries me. As someone around hiring in these sorts of areas, I’m fairly nervous around the liabilities that come from hiring, and this seems like it could increase these. (Legal, and just upsetting people).
I’m imagining:
There’s a person who thinks they’re great, but the hiring manager really doesn’t see it. They get rejected.
They decide to work on it anyway, saying they’ll get the money later.
They continue to email the org about their recent results, hoping to get feedback, sort of similar to as an employee.
6-20 months later, they have some work, and are sure that it deserves funding.
The work isn’t that great, and the prize is denied.
They get really upset that their work has been denied.
This system could create “pseudo-employees” who are trying to act as employees, but aren’t really employees. This just seems pretty messy.
In addition, funding seems tricky. Like, a lot of research nonprofits don’t have that much extra funding allocated in their budgets for this. I imagine it would have to be coordinated with funders, on-demand. (“Hey, funder X… person Y, who we rejected, just did good work, and now we need $160k to fund them. Can you donate that money to us, so we can retrospectively pay them?”)
I could also see the tax/legal implications as messy, though that could be resolved with time.
Generally, if someone seems pretty strong and capable of doing independent work, I suggest they apply to the LTFF, and say that I could help discuss their application. The LTFF funds a lot of people at this point. Small funders like the LTFF seem like great escape hatches for these situations. So this technique would really make sense, I assume, if both the LTFF rejects them, and I’m pretty confident they have a solid chance of doing good research. This is pretty unusual.
It’s quite possible the benefits overcome these negatives. I’m not sure, I just wanted to share my quick feelings on this.
This is an interesting idea, thanks for raising it!
I think intuitively, it worries me. As someone around hiring in these sorts of areas, I’m fairly nervous around the liabilities that come from hiring, and this seems like it could increase these. (Legal, and just upsetting people).
I’m imagining:
There’s a person who thinks they’re great, but the hiring manager really doesn’t see it. They get rejected.
They decide to work on it anyway, saying they’ll get the money later.
They continue to email the org about their recent results, hoping to get feedback, sort of similar to as an employee.
6-20 months later, they have some work, and are sure that it deserves funding.
The work isn’t that great, and the prize is denied.
They get really upset that their work has been denied.
This system could create “pseudo-employees” who are trying to act as employees, but aren’t really employees. This just seems pretty messy.
In addition, funding seems tricky. Like, a lot of research nonprofits don’t have that much extra funding allocated in their budgets for this. I imagine it would have to be coordinated with funders, on-demand. (“Hey, funder X… person Y, who we rejected, just did good work, and now we need $160k to fund them. Can you donate that money to us, so we can retrospectively pay them?”)
I could also see the tax/legal implications as messy, though that could be resolved with time.
Generally, if someone seems pretty strong and capable of doing independent work, I suggest they apply to the LTFF, and say that I could help discuss their application. The LTFF funds a lot of people at this point. Small funders like the LTFF seem like great escape hatches for these situations. So this technique would really make sense, I assume, if both the LTFF rejects them, and I’m pretty confident they have a solid chance of doing good research. This is pretty unusual.
It’s quite possible the benefits overcome these negatives. I’m not sure, I just wanted to share my quick feelings on this.