I was funded with long delays. I wouldn’t have said “straightforwardly unprofessional” communication in my case.
It was a fairly stressful experience, but seemed consistent with “overworked people dealing with a tough legal situation”, both for EVF in general and my specific grant.
I did suggest on their feedback form that misleading language about timeframes on the application form be removed. It looks like they’ve done that now, although I have no idea when the change was made. (In my case this was essentially the only issue; the turnaround wasn’t necessarily super slow in itself—a few months doesn’t seem unreasonable—it’s just that it was much slower than the form suggested it should be.)
I believe we changed the text a bunch in August/early September. I think there were a few places we didn’t catch the first time, and we made more updates in ~the following month (September). AFAIK we no longer have any (implicit or explicit) commitments for response times anywhere, we only mention predictions and aspirations.
Eg here’s the text at near the beginning of the application form:
The Animal Welfare Fund, Long-Term Future Fund and EA Infrastructure Fund aim to respond to all applications in 2 months and most applications in 3 weeks. However, due to an unprecedentedly high load, we are currently unable to achieve our desired speedy turnarounds. If you need to hear back sooner (e.g., within a few weeks), you can let us know in the application form, and we will see what we can do. Please note that: EA Funds is low on capacity and may not be able to get back to you by either your stated deadline or the above aims—we encourage you to apply to other funders as well if you have a time-sensitive ask.
I was funded with long delays. I wouldn’t have said “straightforwardly unprofessional” communication in my case.
It was a fairly stressful experience, but seemed consistent with “overworked people dealing with a tough legal situation”, both for EVF in general and my specific grant.
I did suggest on their feedback form that misleading language about timeframes on the application form be removed. It looks like they’ve done that now, although I have no idea when the change was made. (In my case this was essentially the only issue; the turnaround wasn’t necessarily super slow in itself—a few months doesn’t seem unreasonable—it’s just that it was much slower than the form suggested it should be.)
I believe we changed the text a bunch in August/early September. I think there were a few places we didn’t catch the first time, and we made more updates in ~the following month (September). AFAIK we no longer have any (implicit or explicit) commitments for response times anywhere, we only mention predictions and aspirations.
Eg here’s the text at near the beginning of the application form: