Specifically as the PI, I should have (a) evaluated the application sooner, (b) reached a final recommendation sooner, and (c) been more responsive to communications after making a decision
This comment feels to me like temporarily embarrassed deadline-meeter, and I don’t think that’s realistic. The backlog is very understandable given your task and your staffing, I assume you’re doing what you can on the staffing front but even if that’s resolved it’s just a big task and 3 weeks is a very ambitious timeline even with full staffing. Given that, it’s not surprising that you’re falling short of your public commitment, and I want to look at what changes could be made to make a better experience for applicants without a change in capacity.
All of my ideas are going to be shots in the dark given how little information I have, but maybe they’ll spark something:
Set a longer timeline for grant decisions. No one is going to complain if they hear back early.
Give decision-times with percentiles. E.g. 50% are decided in 3 weeks, 75% at 12 weeks.… Then when someone gets a slow response they can think “I guess I was in the 10%” rather than “EAIF missed the deadline”
Update applicant’s expectations if a grant looks likely to run long, either on the website or upon first review of the application. It sounds like some projects fall into buckets that cause predictable delays, but applicant’s don’t know if they fall into that.
Give applicants timelines for when you will follow up, and when they should bug you if you failed to do that. It is really demoralizing to sit there plotting how long you should wait on a grant maker and what the consequences of a mistake will be.
This comment feels to me like temporarily embarrassed deadline-meeter, and I don’t think that’s realistic. The backlog is very understandable given your task and your staffing, I assume you’re doing what you can on the staffing front but even if that’s resolved it’s just a big task and 3 weeks is a very ambitious timeline even with full staffing. Given that, it’s not surprising that you’re falling short of your public commitment, and I want to look at what changes could be made to make a better experience for applicants without a change in capacity.
All of my ideas are going to be shots in the dark given how little information I have, but maybe they’ll spark something:
Set a longer timeline for grant decisions. No one is going to complain if they hear back early.
Give decision-times with percentiles. E.g. 50% are decided in 3 weeks, 75% at 12 weeks.… Then when someone gets a slow response they can think “I guess I was in the 10%” rather than “EAIF missed the deadline”
Update applicant’s expectations if a grant looks likely to run long, either on the website or upon first review of the application. It sounds like some projects fall into buckets that cause predictable delays, but applicant’s don’t know if they fall into that.
Give applicants timelines for when you will follow up, and when they should bug you if you failed to do that. It is really demoralizing to sit there plotting how long you should wait on a grant maker and what the consequences of a mistake will be.