On the nitpick: After reflection, I’d go with a mixed approach (somewhere between even odds and weighted odds of selection). If the point is donor oversight/evaluation/accountability, then I am hesitant to give the grantmakers too much information ex ante on which grants are very likely/unlikely to get the public writeup treatment. You could do some sort of weighted stratified sampling, though.
I think grant size also comes into play on the detail level of the writeup. I don’t think most people want more than a paragraph, maximum, on a $2K grant. I’d hope for considerably more on $234K. So the overweighting of small grants relative to their percentage of the dollar-amount pie would be at least somewhat counterbalanced by them getting briefer writeups if selected. So the expected-words-per-dollar figures might be somewhat similar throughout the range of grant sizes.
If the point is donor oversight/evaluation/accountability, then I am hesitant to give the grantmakers too much information ex ante on which grants are very likely/unlikely to get the public writeup treatment.
Great point! I had not thought about that. On the other hand, I assume grantmakers are already spending more time on assessing larger grants. So I wonder whether the distribution of the granted amount is sufficiently heavy-tailed for grantmakers to be influenced to spend too much time on them due to their higher chance of being selected for having longer write-ups.
I think grant size also comes into play on the detail level of the writeup.
Another nice point. I agree the level of detail of the write-up should be proportional to the granted amount.
I think I have an older discussion about managing conflicts of interest in grantmaking the back of my mind. I think that’s part of why I would want to see a representative sample of small-to-midsize grant writeups.
On the nitpick: After reflection, I’d go with a mixed approach (somewhere between even odds and weighted odds of selection). If the point is donor oversight/evaluation/accountability, then I am hesitant to give the grantmakers too much information ex ante on which grants are very likely/unlikely to get the public writeup treatment. You could do some sort of weighted stratified sampling, though.
I think grant size also comes into play on the detail level of the writeup. I don’t think most people want more than a paragraph, maximum, on a $2K grant. I’d hope for considerably more on $234K. So the overweighting of small grants relative to their percentage of the dollar-amount pie would be at least somewhat counterbalanced by them getting briefer writeups if selected. So the expected-words-per-dollar figures might be somewhat similar throughout the range of grant sizes.
Great point! I had not thought about that. On the other hand, I assume grantmakers are already spending more time on assessing larger grants. So I wonder whether the distribution of the granted amount is sufficiently heavy-tailed for grantmakers to be influenced to spend too much time on them due to their higher chance of being selected for having longer write-ups.
Another nice point. I agree the level of detail of the write-up should be proportional to the granted amount.
I think I have an older discussion about managing conflicts of interest in grantmaking the back of my mind. I think that’s part of why I would want to see a representative sample of small-to-midsize grant writeups.