@Igor Ivanov my experience with Caleb and EAIF have been incredibly similar (with the exception of Michael Aird who is smart, helpful and emphatic). I’m unfortunately not surprised to see this post and its many upvotes, and I know of multiple people who have ranted about EAIF’s disrespectful and unemphatic ways of working. I hope they will also start speaking up, and your post has persuaded me to do so, so thanks for that!
I will disclose the email I sent to Caleb below. In his defence: he did reply with feedback after this email for which I’m thankful. Unfortunately the feedback contained factual errors about our application and company, and made it clear that our application was not carefully reviewed (or reviewed at all). We recently got another application rejected by Caleb, even though I specifically asked for someone else to review it too, because I believe he has something against me (no clue what that would be since he always ignored me and we never met).
I still believe EAIF and its managers are good people trying to do a good job, I just don’t think they are actually doing a good job based on others and my experiences.
Here’s the email:
Hi Caleb,
I hope you are well!
I know it’s not your policy, but after many applications that are, and I mean this respectfully, wasting a lot of time on both ends, I think it’s in both our interests if we have some clarity on our applications. Many others and myself think EAIF is an incredibly good fit with our common goals, but after the declined applications it’s clear EAIF does not think so (at least currently). That’s fine, but because we continue to believe this is a good fit we’re continuing to apply and up until now wasting a lot of EA’s time. At this stage I’m confident it would help a lot if you could give a little bit of feedback, even if it’s just one line of feedback, so we can either move on or reapply with something that we both agree if effective.
I hesitated to write this because I’m anxious it will hurt our future within EA because I believe you and EAIF have a position of power, but I have decided honesty is more important and it’s more helpful if you know who this is coming from so I decided not to be anonymous. This might be emotional and irrational and not at all true, but I have the feeling you don’t like me or the work that I’m doing. If true, I haven’t figured out why, but I’d prefer to hear that out loud so I can stop frustrating you (if I am) and I can stop being frustrated by not being answered. For context: I have read up on EAIF’s and your work, I’ve been to two office hours on two EAG’s, I went to your talk and I tried to get both written or F2F feedback at multiple occasions, each time emphasizing I’d do whatever would be easiest for you, and even if it was one minute of feedback it would help us a lot. I tried to be very respectful of your time because I completely understand you are incredibly busy. You wrote me back once that you could give feedback but after replying I was again ignored. If I may be completely frank I have found it quite disrespectful, considering how respectful I tried to be with your time and space, and how much time we put into our applications.
These are just emotional observations and they do not constitute truth, but I think it’s helpful for you to know the impression you and EAIF (although others at or affiliated to EAIF did reply to our requests for help, most of them pointing to you to ask for feedback) are leaving on me. I’m very sorry if this is making you feel bad, I don’t at all think that you are a bad person and I admire the amazing work you do. I’m just sharing the impression our encounters (or the lack thereof) have made me feel.
Any feedback would be helpful because I believe it will help EAIF save considerable time in the future. I would appreciate it if our next EAIF will be reviewed by someone else so we can remove any personal biases there might be between you and us. We continue to believe the fit is great and won’t give up until we get clear feedback saying otherwise.
I think this situation is pretty different. In my email, I said we would not be able to provide feedback, but I decided to provide feedback anyway. The grants were reviewed by other fund managers internally, who agreed that your application was not a good fit for the fund.
I will disclose the email I sent to Caleb below. In his defence: he did reply with feedback after this email for which I’m thankful. Unfortunately the feedback contained factual errors about our application and company, and made it clear that our application was not carefully reviewed (or reviewed at all). We recently got another application rejected by Caleb, even though I specifically asked for someone else to review it too, because I believe he has something against me (no clue what that would be since he always ignored me and we never met).
I also don’t think I made factual errors when evaluating your application. I don’t want to publicly share details of your grants, but it’s probably at least somewhat helpful to have it on the record that I disagree. Other fund managers and I have actually reviewed your applications. I didn’t evaluate all of them due to your request, but I do send the rejection emails.
Thanks for the reply Caleb. I’m not arguing it’s not a good fit here (although I disagree with that too, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t apply to EAIF). Ultimately you guys decide the fit. What I’m arguing is that I felt disrespected by our interactions, and it seems I’m not alone.
I stand by that your feedback contained multiple factual errors. An example is the feedback mentioning we don’t have transparent financials even though all of that was linked clearly (and was even publicly available at that time). Happy to go into other examples but I don’t think we’re going to agree on this.
FWIW I’m happy for you to share public details of our grant application, we’re transparent. I don’t think the public will disagree with you our project is not a fit, because other funders have also declined our Profit for Good ideas so far.
@Igor Ivanov my experience with Caleb and EAIF have been incredibly similar (with the exception of Michael Aird who is smart, helpful and emphatic). I’m unfortunately not surprised to see this post and its many upvotes, and I know of multiple people who have ranted about EAIF’s disrespectful and unemphatic ways of working. I hope they will also start speaking up, and your post has persuaded me to do so, so thanks for that!
I will disclose the email I sent to Caleb below. In his defence: he did reply with feedback after this email for which I’m thankful. Unfortunately the feedback contained factual errors about our application and company, and made it clear that our application was not carefully reviewed (or reviewed at all). We recently got another application rejected by Caleb, even though I specifically asked for someone else to review it too, because I believe he has something against me (no clue what that would be since he always ignored me and we never met).
I still believe EAIF and its managers are good people trying to do a good job, I just don’t think they are actually doing a good job based on others and my experiences.
Here’s the email:
Hi Caleb,
I hope you are well!
I know it’s not your policy, but after many applications that are, and I mean this respectfully, wasting a lot of time on both ends, I think it’s in both our interests if we have some clarity on our applications. Many others and myself think EAIF is an incredibly good fit with our common goals, but after the declined applications it’s clear EAIF does not think so (at least currently). That’s fine, but because we continue to believe this is a good fit we’re continuing to apply and up until now wasting a lot of EA’s time. At this stage I’m confident it would help a lot if you could give a little bit of feedback, even if it’s just one line of feedback, so we can either move on or reapply with something that we both agree if effective.
I hesitated to write this because I’m anxious it will hurt our future within EA because I believe you and EAIF have a position of power, but I have decided honesty is more important and it’s more helpful if you know who this is coming from so I decided not to be anonymous. This might be emotional and irrational and not at all true, but I have the feeling you don’t like me or the work that I’m doing. If true, I haven’t figured out why, but I’d prefer to hear that out loud so I can stop frustrating you (if I am) and I can stop being frustrated by not being answered. For context: I have read up on EAIF’s and your work, I’ve been to two office hours on two EAG’s, I went to your talk and I tried to get both written or F2F feedback at multiple occasions, each time emphasizing I’d do whatever would be easiest for you, and even if it was one minute of feedback it would help us a lot. I tried to be very respectful of your time because I completely understand you are incredibly busy. You wrote me back once that you could give feedback but after replying I was again ignored. If I may be completely frank I have found it quite disrespectful, considering how respectful I tried to be with your time and space, and how much time we put into our applications.
These are just emotional observations and they do not constitute truth, but I think it’s helpful for you to know the impression you and EAIF (although others at or affiliated to EAIF did reply to our requests for help, most of them pointing to you to ask for feedback) are leaving on me. I’m very sorry if this is making you feel bad, I don’t at all think that you are a bad person and I admire the amazing work you do. I’m just sharing the impression our encounters (or the lack thereof) have made me feel.
Any feedback would be helpful because I believe it will help EAIF save considerable time in the future. I would appreciate it if our next EAIF will be reviewed by someone else so we can remove any personal biases there might be between you and us. We continue to believe the fit is great and won’t give up until we get clear feedback saying otherwise.
Thanks and all the best,
Vin
I think this situation is pretty different. In my email, I said we would not be able to provide feedback, but I decided to provide feedback anyway. The grants were reviewed by other fund managers internally, who agreed that your application was not a good fit for the fund.
I also don’t think I made factual errors when evaluating your application. I don’t want to publicly share details of your grants, but it’s probably at least somewhat helpful to have it on the record that I disagree. Other fund managers and I have actually reviewed your applications. I didn’t evaluate all of them due to your request, but I do send the rejection emails.
Thanks for the reply Caleb. I’m not arguing it’s not a good fit here (although I disagree with that too, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t apply to EAIF). Ultimately you guys decide the fit. What I’m arguing is that I felt disrespected by our interactions, and it seems I’m not alone.
I stand by that your feedback contained multiple factual errors. An example is the feedback mentioning we don’t have transparent financials even though all of that was linked clearly (and was even publicly available at that time). Happy to go into other examples but I don’t think we’re going to agree on this.
FWIW I’m happy for you to share public details of our grant application, we’re transparent. I don’t think the public will disagree with you our project is not a fit, because other funders have also declined our Profit for Good ideas so far.