This fund has seemingly taken a very “hits-based” approach to funding small, international grassroots organizations. How do you plan on evaluating and learning from these grants?
Thanks for the Q Josh. Yes that has been the primary approach to date. At Open Phi we’ve been following up with almost all of the grant recipients to see (a) if they’re ready to graduate to larger Open Phil grants (~5 already have), (b) whether they did roughly what they said they would (~80-90% seem to be), and (c) anything else we can learn (I hope to share some of these learnings when we have the time to collate them, perhaps via a research newsletter).
To add to Lewis’ response, I think this is a crucial part of the grant-making process, especially as we are granting to some organizations with more novel approaches, or in as yet neglected regions. At ACE we use 6 months as the point at which to check in with grant recipients, typically through a survey or call, and I would expect a similar process would work well for the Animal Welfare Fund.
Thanks Josh. I agree our approach was ‘hits based’, and I expect we will follow up on the grants informally within 6 months or so of making them. As Lewis mentioned, we hope to be able to share what we learn from the follow-up at some point.
This fund has seemingly taken a very “hits-based” approach to funding small, international grassroots organizations. How do you plan on evaluating and learning from these grants?
Thanks for the Q Josh. Yes that has been the primary approach to date. At Open Phi we’ve been following up with almost all of the grant recipients to see (a) if they’re ready to graduate to larger Open Phil grants (~5 already have), (b) whether they did roughly what they said they would (~80-90% seem to be), and (c) anything else we can learn (I hope to share some of these learnings when we have the time to collate them, perhaps via a research newsletter).
To add to Lewis’ response, I think this is a crucial part of the grant-making process, especially as we are granting to some organizations with more novel approaches, or in as yet neglected regions. At ACE we use 6 months as the point at which to check in with grant recipients, typically through a survey or call, and I would expect a similar process would work well for the Animal Welfare Fund.
Thanks Josh. I agree our approach was ‘hits based’, and I expect we will follow up on the grants informally within 6 months or so of making them. As Lewis mentioned, we hope to be able to share what we learn from the follow-up at some point.