What processes do you have for monitoring the outcome/​impact of grants?
Relatedly, do the AWF fund managers make forecasts about potential outcomes of grants?
And/​or do you write down in advance what sort of proxies you’d want to see from this grant after x amount of time? (E.g., what you’d want to see to feel that this had been a big success and that similar grant applications should be viewed (even) more positively in future, or that it would be worth renewing the grant if the grantee applied again.)
(I imagine that this could help improve decision-making both by providing another framing for thinking about whether a grant is worthwhile, and by tracking what did and didn’t go as expected in order to better train your judgement for future evaluations.)
(I’m adapting these questions from a thread in a Long-Term Future Fund AMA, and that thread also contained some interesting discussion that might be somewhat relevant here too.)
>What processes do you have for monitoring the outcome/​impact of grants?
We have a ~10 question questionnaire that we send grantees. We send these out 6 months after the grant’s starting date—which coincides with the payment date usually. We then send them out every six months and then a final report at the grant’s end date. E.g., if the grant was for an 18-month project, we would send the progress report to that grantee at the 6-month mark, 12 months, and then 18 months.
I feel like I am also just fairly regularly in touch with a lot of grantees in addition to that. Or across all of us we usually have a pretty good sense of where things are at.
> Relatedly, do the AWF fund managers make forecasts about potential outcomes of grants?
Not as of now. I would like us to use forecasts more often and think there might be some low effort ways where we could get most of the value out of them.
>And/​or do you write down in advance what sort of proxies you’d want to see from this grant after x amount of time?
We haven’t historically done this. But again, I am interested in possibly adopting in future rounds.
Thanks for doing this AMA!
What processes do you have for monitoring the outcome/​impact of grants?
Relatedly, do the AWF fund managers make forecasts about potential outcomes of grants?
And/​or do you write down in advance what sort of proxies you’d want to see from this grant after x amount of time? (E.g., what you’d want to see to feel that this had been a big success and that similar grant applications should be viewed (even) more positively in future, or that it would be worth renewing the grant if the grantee applied again.)
(I imagine that this could help improve decision-making both by providing another framing for thinking about whether a grant is worthwhile, and by tracking what did and didn’t go as expected in order to better train your judgement for future evaluations.)
(I’m adapting these questions from a thread in a Long-Term Future Fund AMA, and that thread also contained some interesting discussion that might be somewhat relevant here too.)
Thanks for all your questions! :)
>What processes do you have for monitoring the outcome/​impact of grants?
We have a ~10 question questionnaire that we send grantees. We send these out 6 months after the grant’s starting date—which coincides with the payment date usually. We then send them out every six months and then a final report at the grant’s end date. E.g., if the grant was for an 18-month project, we would send the progress report to that grantee at the 6-month mark, 12 months, and then 18 months.
I feel like I am also just fairly regularly in touch with a lot of grantees in addition to that. Or across all of us we usually have a pretty good sense of where things are at.
> Relatedly, do the AWF fund managers make forecasts about potential outcomes of grants?
Not as of now. I would like us to use forecasts more often and think there might be some low effort ways where we could get most of the value out of them.
>And/​or do you write down in advance what sort of proxies you’d want to see from this grant after x amount of time?
We haven’t historically done this. But again, I am interested in possibly adopting in future rounds.