I found the context of the post kind of hard to understand and think the introduction is probably the section most worth editing. In particular, the “there’s an opportunity here” framing seemed to clash a bit with “this was almost funded by a major grantmaker” (emphasis mine).
As almost means wasn’t, it’s not super clear how big an update people should make about this without more context on the funding decision. If OP is making the case for this to happen, I think it might be better to just frame the post more clearly as “this is why I think you should found this thing, and I’ll connect you to people who are excited to fund it if you think you can”.
Thanks, this is extremely useful feedback and if you have any more comments like this, please share!
I edited the relevant line:
A version of the common application was almost funded by a major EA grantmaker this spring, but the founder left the project for reasons specific to themselves
What I think happened: The specific grant did not proceed because of reasons related to the would be “founder”, but my understanding is that funding was prepared and approved.
The reasons why the would-be “founder” left is a complicated and important topic itself, but is out of scope and unrelated to the viability of the common application.
In my opinion, based on what I know, this gives an unusually positive signal for funding interest in the project, because at least one version made it to the stage before funding was released, and it only ended because of the founder leaving.
I found the context of the post kind of hard to understand and think the introduction is probably the section most worth editing. In particular, the “there’s an opportunity here” framing seemed to clash a bit with “this was almost funded by a major grantmaker” (emphasis mine).
As almost means wasn’t, it’s not super clear how big an update people should make about this without more context on the funding decision. If OP is making the case for this to happen, I think it might be better to just frame the post more clearly as “this is why I think you should found this thing, and I’ll connect you to people who are excited to fund it if you think you can”.
Thanks, this is extremely useful feedback and if you have any more comments like this, please share!
I edited the relevant line:
What I think happened: The specific grant did not proceed because of reasons related to the would be “founder”, but my understanding is that funding was prepared and approved.
The reasons why the would-be “founder” left is a complicated and important topic itself, but is out of scope and unrelated to the viability of the common application.
In my opinion, based on what I know, this gives an unusually positive signal for funding interest in the project, because at least one version made it to the stage before funding was released, and it only ended because of the founder leaving.