I don’t feel entitled to contact funders to ask them about their process (perhaps I should feel free to? I’m not sure)
I do think you should feel free to do this! Open Phil, EA Funds, GiveWell, and ACE all have contact pages, and “I’m thinking about how EA funding could be better and I wanted to understand more how you work,” followed by specific questions that aren’t too much work to answer, is something I’d expect to be well received.
On the other hand, I don’t think you have to do this. Your post, as is, still is helpful in describing how the NIH and NSF make funding decisions. Personally, though, I would want to at talk to existing funders and learn a bit about their current process (or learn that they don’t want to talk about it) before including proposals about what I think they should do differently ;)
I do think you should feel free to do this! Open Phil, EA Funds, GiveWell, and ACE all have contact pages, and “I’m thinking about how EA funding could be better and I wanted to understand more how you work,” followed by specific questions that aren’t too much work to answer, is something I’d expect to be well received.
On the other hand, I don’t think you have to do this. Your post, as is, still is helpful in describing how the NIH and NSF make funding decisions. Personally, though, I would want to at talk to existing funders and learn a bit about their current process (or learn that they don’t want to talk about it) before including proposals about what I think they should do differently ;)