I am wondering if there are generally strong enough recommendations on building a substantial personal runway? I am thinking that one might actually want to do something like the following:
-Before applying for a grant/applying for non-permanent/project based work, perhaps even target a personal runway of 12 months, especially if you have dependents?
-Then when you are applying, calculate the salary/rate you think you need.
-Then assume you might burn up to 6 months of your runway on working on this grant (either before it starts and/or when waiting for follow-on funding/your next project).
-Therefore take your runway per month number, multiply by 6, add taxes, pension etc. and then, before you suggest a rate/budget, add this amount. This is similar to how consultancies often have “billable hours” percentages of 70% or lower and they have rates that are high enough to create a buffer for lulls between projects.
The reason for doing this is that if you burn away your runway on your first grant, you are then out of commission for EA work after the grant. It seems to dawn on me that you should expect multiple months between grants/projects of no “EA income”.
I am making this comment because after reading a few other comments here and generally maybe picking up on the mood from e.g. the upvotes on this post, it seems that perhaps delays is more of a norm than the occasional exception? And I think grant makers are under a lot of pressure and also have incentives to “market” themselves as fast, incentives we should not expect to go away.
That said, one might significantly increase the amount one is asking for in these grants by following my recommendations. However, I am not sure this is such a big deal, because I expect the major parameter grantmakers are using for decisions is expected impact, not the cost. E.g. increasing your requested rate/budget by 30% or perhaps even 40% might actually not lower your chances of getting a grant by that much (feel free to comment on this if you disagree!). Such practice might also be good in a solidarity type of way as we could re-calibrate expectations of compensation with grantmakers, making them think less poorly of people “asking for a lot”. And if you end up not needing this extra money you know where to donate it!
I am wondering if there are generally strong enough recommendations on building a substantial personal runway? I am thinking that one might actually want to do something like the following:
-Before applying for a grant/applying for non-permanent/project based work, perhaps even target a personal runway of 12 months, especially if you have dependents?
-Then when you are applying, calculate the salary/rate you think you need.
-Then assume you might burn up to 6 months of your runway on working on this grant (either before it starts and/or when waiting for follow-on funding/your next project).
-Therefore take your runway per month number, multiply by 6, add taxes, pension etc. and then, before you suggest a rate/budget, add this amount. This is similar to how consultancies often have “billable hours” percentages of 70% or lower and they have rates that are high enough to create a buffer for lulls between projects.
The reason for doing this is that if you burn away your runway on your first grant, you are then out of commission for EA work after the grant. It seems to dawn on me that you should expect multiple months between grants/projects of no “EA income”.
I am making this comment because after reading a few other comments here and generally maybe picking up on the mood from e.g. the upvotes on this post, it seems that perhaps delays is more of a norm than the occasional exception? And I think grant makers are under a lot of pressure and also have incentives to “market” themselves as fast, incentives we should not expect to go away.
That said, one might significantly increase the amount one is asking for in these grants by following my recommendations. However, I am not sure this is such a big deal, because I expect the major parameter grantmakers are using for decisions is expected impact, not the cost. E.g. increasing your requested rate/budget by 30% or perhaps even 40% might actually not lower your chances of getting a grant by that much (feel free to comment on this if you disagree!). Such practice might also be good in a solidarity type of way as we could re-calibrate expectations of compensation with grantmakers, making them think less poorly of people “asking for a lot”. And if you end up not needing this extra money you know where to donate it!