It took me a while to finish reading this report, so I know I’m joining this comment thread late. There were lots of good thoughts shared in other comments, so I’ll try to focus my thoughts are areas that are different:
---There could be a donor coordination problem for this particular opportunity. Donational might not be able to do a pilot with less than $40k, and anything over $40k would be more than needed. How do donors know if they are fully funded?
---Have you seen the write-ups of ImpactMatters (https://www.impactmatters.org/)? If not, it may be worth looking at them. That organization was founded by Dean Karlan, who is one of the top economists doing randomizes controlled trials of development programs.
---In terms of the write-up, there was some discussion of certain key points not coming through strongly. To address this, one idea would be to put a lot of the details from the main body into an appendix.
---This report focuses a lot of the sample evaluation of Donational, but the summary of Rethink Grants suggests that it is trying to do more than just evaluate opportunities and promote the good ones. If I’m understanding correctly that Rethink Grants is also doing things to try to make the underlying organizations better, then it might be great to have more details on that.
It’s great to see more efforts to evaluate and promote top giving opportunities. Rethink Grants seems promising and I’m interested in seeing where it goes.
It’s great to see more efforts to evaluate and promote top giving opportunities. Rethink Grants seems promising and I’m interested in seeing where it goes.
Hey Eric, we appreciate the kind words and thank you for taking the time to bring some of these things to our attention.
How do donors know if they are fully funded?
Great question—were RG to continue on, the idea was for us to be quite involved in the fundraising process for recommended projects. If Donational were interested in continuing with the CAP, we would likely engage in a joint fundraising effort where we would take special care to keep key funders and the wider public in the loop regarding fundraising milestones and progress. This could even take the form of a public fundraising campaign in certain cases.
Have you seen the write-ups of ImpactMatters?
We have! In fact, Luisa Rodriguez, one of the Rethink Priorities analysts on this report, is a former ImpactMatters research analyst. ImpactMatters was also among the organizations that we drew inspiration from for Our Process.
To address this, one idea would be to put a lot of the details from the main body into an appendix.
This could certainly be helpful. I think a lot more could be done to better highlight key reasoning within future potential evaluations, including detailed notes on criteria that were important in the VOI, for example.
If I’m understanding correctly that Rethink Grants is also doing things to try to make the underlying organizations better, then it might be great to have more details on that.
That’s correct, and now that you mention it, future reports could expand more on all the possible intervention points that RG would consider for improving the overall quality of projects.I cover quite a bit of that in this reply in a different thread. As an example from this report, in the Potential Issues section, we mention pretty large plan changes from presenting the founder with a BOTEC that we came up with based on a handful of parameters that we considered crucial. Having this all mapped out onto one place would certainly be better.
It took me a while to finish reading this report, so I know I’m joining this comment thread late. There were lots of good thoughts shared in other comments, so I’ll try to focus my thoughts are areas that are different:
---There could be a donor coordination problem for this particular opportunity. Donational might not be able to do a pilot with less than $40k, and anything over $40k would be more than needed. How do donors know if they are fully funded?
---Have you seen the write-ups of ImpactMatters (https://www.impactmatters.org/)? If not, it may be worth looking at them. That organization was founded by Dean Karlan, who is one of the top economists doing randomizes controlled trials of development programs.
---In terms of the write-up, there was some discussion of certain key points not coming through strongly. To address this, one idea would be to put a lot of the details from the main body into an appendix.
---This report focuses a lot of the sample evaluation of Donational, but the summary of Rethink Grants suggests that it is trying to do more than just evaluate opportunities and promote the good ones. If I’m understanding correctly that Rethink Grants is also doing things to try to make the underlying organizations better, then it might be great to have more details on that.
It’s great to see more efforts to evaluate and promote top giving opportunities. Rethink Grants seems promising and I’m interested in seeing where it goes.
Hey Eric, we appreciate the kind words and thank you for taking the time to bring some of these things to our attention.
Great question—were RG to continue on, the idea was for us to be quite involved in the fundraising process for recommended projects. If Donational were interested in continuing with the CAP, we would likely engage in a joint fundraising effort where we would take special care to keep key funders and the wider public in the loop regarding fundraising milestones and progress. This could even take the form of a public fundraising campaign in certain cases.
We have! In fact, Luisa Rodriguez, one of the Rethink Priorities analysts on this report, is a former ImpactMatters research analyst. ImpactMatters was also among the organizations that we drew inspiration from for Our Process.
This could certainly be helpful. I think a lot more could be done to better highlight key reasoning within future potential evaluations, including detailed notes on criteria that were important in the VOI, for example.
That’s correct, and now that you mention it, future reports could expand more on all the possible intervention points that RG would consider for improving the overall quality of projects.I cover quite a bit of that in this reply in a different thread. As an example from this report, in the Potential Issues section, we mention pretty large plan changes from presenting the founder with a BOTEC that we came up with based on a handful of parameters that we considered crucial. Having this all mapped out onto one place would certainly be better.