I’m only one of four fund managers, and I’m only describing my personal approach. For me scale and neglect typically operate as an initial threshold—I’m not excited about something that could never affect >1M animals or that is already fully-funded or likely to be. But most submissions for the Fund pass this threshold, so estimates of potential tractability / cost-effectiveness become most important. To assess this, I especially consider:
The track record of this intervention: has it been tried before; if so how did it go; are there reasons to think this group will do better/worse than previous efforts?
The track record of the applicant: have they already achieved wins; if yes, how scaleable do those wins seem; if no, are there reasons to think they could in future?
The plans: how plausible do the plans seem; will we know if they succeed or fail; how big a win would it be if the plans succeed?
What criteria do you use while deciding which charities are gonna be given funding from EA AWF?
I’m only one of four fund managers, and I’m only describing my personal approach. For me scale and neglect typically operate as an initial threshold—I’m not excited about something that could never affect >1M animals or that is already fully-funded or likely to be. But most submissions for the Fund pass this threshold, so estimates of potential tractability / cost-effectiveness become most important. To assess this, I especially consider:
The track record of this intervention: has it been tried before; if so how did it go; are there reasons to think this group will do better/worse than previous efforts?
The track record of the applicant: have they already achieved wins; if yes, how scaleable do those wins seem; if no, are there reasons to think they could in future?
The plans: how plausible do the plans seem; will we know if they succeed or fail; how big a win would it be if the plans succeed?