An Open Phil staff member made a rough guess that it takes them 13-75 hours per grant distributed. Their average grant size is quite a bit larger, so it seems reasonable to assume it would take them about 25 hours to distribute a pot the size of EA Grants.
My experience making grants at Open Phil suggests it would take us substantially more than 25 hours to evaluate the number of grant applications you received, decide which ones to fund, and disburse the money (counting grant investigator, logistics, and communications staff time). I haven’t found that time spent scales completely linearly with grant size, though it generally scales up somewhat. So while it seems about right that most grants take 13-75 hours, I don’t think it’s true that grants that are only a small fraction of the size of most OP grants would take an equally small fraction of that amount of time.
Right, neither do I. My 25-hour estimate was how long it would take you to make one grant of ~£500,000, not a bunch of grants adding up to that amount. I assumed that if Open Phil had been distributing these funds it would have done so by giving greater amounts to far fewer recipients.
My experience making grants at Open Phil suggests it would take us substantially more than 25 hours to evaluate the number of grant applications you received, decide which ones to fund, and disburse the money (counting grant investigator, logistics, and communications staff time). I haven’t found that time spent scales completely linearly with grant size, though it generally scales up somewhat. So while it seems about right that most grants take 13-75 hours, I don’t think it’s true that grants that are only a small fraction of the size of most OP grants would take an equally small fraction of that amount of time.
Also related: https://www.facebook.com/vipulnaik.r/posts/10211030780941382
Right, neither do I. My 25-hour estimate was how long it would take you to make one grant of ~£500,000, not a bunch of grants adding up to that amount. I assumed that if Open Phil had been distributing these funds it would have done so by giving greater amounts to far fewer recipients.
Ah, k, thanks for explaining, I misinterpreted what you wrote. I agree 25 hours is in the right ballpark for that sum (though it varies a lot).