Do you think it’s possible that, by only funding individuals/organisations that actually apply for funding, you are missing out on even better funding opportunities for individuals or organisations that didn’t apply for some reason?
If yes, one possible remedy might be putting more effort into advertising the fund so that you get more applications. Alternatively, you could just decide that you won’t be limited by the applications you receive and that you can give money to individuals/organisations who don’t actually apply for funding (but could still use it well). What do you think about these options?
Yes, I think we’re definitely limited by our application pool, and it’s something I’d like to change.
I’m pretty excited about the possibility of getting more applications. We’ve started advertising the fund more, and in the latest round we got the highest number of applications we rated as good (score >= 2.0, where 2.5 is the funding threshold). This is about 20-50% more than the long-term trend, though it’s a bit hard to interpret (our scores are not directly comparable across time). Unfortunately the percentage of good applications also dropped this round, so we do need to avoid too indiscriminate outreach to avoid too high a review burden.
I’m most excited about more active grant-making. For example, we could post proposals we’d like to see people work on, or reach out to people in particular areas to encourage them to apply for funding. Currently we’re bottlenecked on fund manager time, but we’re working on scaling that.
I’d be hesitant about funding individuals or organisations that haven’t applied—our application process is lightweight, so if someone chooses not to apply even after we prompt them, that seems like a bad sign. A possible exception would be larger organisations that already make the information we need available for assessment. Right now I’m not excited about funding more large organisations, since I think the marginal impact there is lower, but if the LTFF had a lot more money to distribute then I’d want to scale up our organisation grants.
Good question! Relatedly, are there common characteristics among people/organizations who you think would make promising applicants but often don’t apply? Put another way, who would you encourage to apply who likely hasn’t considered applying?
A common case is people who are just shy to apply for funding. I think a lot of people feel awkward about asking for money. This makes sense in some contexts—asking your friends for cash could have negative consequences! And I think EAs often put additional pressure on themselves: “Am I really the best use of this $X?” But of course as a funder we love to see more applications: it’s our job to give out money, and the more applications we have, the better grants we can make.
Another case is people (wrongly) assuming they’re not good enough. I think a lot of people underestimate their abilities, especially in this community. So I’d encourage people to just apply, even if you don’t think you’ll get it.
Do you feel that someone who had applied, unsuccessfully, and then re-applied for a similar project (but perhaps having gathered more evidence), would be more likely, less likely, or equally likely to get funding than someone submitting an identical application to the second case, but not having been rejected once before, having chosen to not apply?
It feels easy to get into the mindset of “Once I’ve done XYZ, my application will be stronger, so I should do those things before applying”, and if that’s a bad line of reasoning to use (which I suspect it might be), some explicit reassurance might result in more applications.
Another one is that people assume we are inflexible in some way (e.g., constrained by maximum grant sizes or fixed application deadlines), but we can often be very flexible in working around those constraints, and have done that in the past.
Do you think it’s possible that, by only funding individuals/organisations that actually apply for funding, you are missing out on even better funding opportunities for individuals or organisations that didn’t apply for some reason?
If yes, one possible remedy might be putting more effort into advertising the fund so that you get more applications. Alternatively, you could just decide that you won’t be limited by the applications you receive and that you can give money to individuals/organisations who don’t actually apply for funding (but could still use it well). What do you think about these options?
Yes, I think we’re definitely limited by our application pool, and it’s something I’d like to change.
I’m pretty excited about the possibility of getting more applications. We’ve started advertising the fund more, and in the latest round we got the highest number of applications we rated as good (score >= 2.0, where 2.5 is the funding threshold). This is about 20-50% more than the long-term trend, though it’s a bit hard to interpret (our scores are not directly comparable across time). Unfortunately the percentage of good applications also dropped this round, so we do need to avoid too indiscriminate outreach to avoid too high a review burden.
I’m most excited about more active grant-making. For example, we could post proposals we’d like to see people work on, or reach out to people in particular areas to encourage them to apply for funding. Currently we’re bottlenecked on fund manager time, but we’re working on scaling that.
I’d be hesitant about funding individuals or organisations that haven’t applied—our application process is lightweight, so if someone chooses not to apply even after we prompt them, that seems like a bad sign. A possible exception would be larger organisations that already make the information we need available for assessment. Right now I’m not excited about funding more large organisations, since I think the marginal impact there is lower, but if the LTFF had a lot more money to distribute then I’d want to scale up our organisation grants.
Thanks for this reply. Active grant-making sounds like an interesting idea!
Good question! Relatedly, are there common characteristics among people/organizations who you think would make promising applicants but often don’t apply? Put another way, who would you encourage to apply who likely hasn’t considered applying?
A common case is people who are just shy to apply for funding. I think a lot of people feel awkward about asking for money. This makes sense in some contexts—asking your friends for cash could have negative consequences! And I think EAs often put additional pressure on themselves: “Am I really the best use of this $X?” But of course as a funder we love to see more applications: it’s our job to give out money, and the more applications we have, the better grants we can make.
Another case is people (wrongly) assuming they’re not good enough. I think a lot of people underestimate their abilities, especially in this community. So I’d encourage people to just apply, even if you don’t think you’ll get it.
Do you feel that someone who had applied, unsuccessfully, and then re-applied for a similar project (but perhaps having gathered more evidence), would be more likely, less likely, or equally likely to get funding than someone submitting an identical application to the second case, but not having been rejected once before, having chosen to not apply?
It feels easy to get into the mindset of “Once I’ve done XYZ, my application will be stronger, so I should do those things before applying”, and if that’s a bad line of reasoning to use (which I suspect it might be), some explicit reassurance might result in more applications.
I think definitely more or equally likely. :) Please apply!
Another one is that people assume we are inflexible in some way (e.g., constrained by maximum grant sizes or fixed application deadlines), but we can often be very flexible in working around those constraints, and have done that in the past.