I appreciate this post a lot. Very thought provoking and the examples make it very concrete and useful.
I wonder to what extent one should prefer a proposal that hasn’t been evaluated by other grantmakers to one that has been and was rejected (ceteris paribus). This would depend on how what fraction of rejections are due to:
proposer was bed (everyone should reject)
proposal was bad (likely it was improved after previous rejection)
project not a good fit for grantmaker (likely better fit next time)
everything great but grantmaker ran out of money
For example, if all are due to 1, previous rejection is very strong negative signal, while if all are due to 4, previous rejection is not a negative signal at all. Maybe 3 can be a positive signal, but I am not sure.
I appreciate this post a lot. Very thought provoking and the examples make it very concrete and useful.
I wonder to what extent one should prefer a proposal that hasn’t been evaluated by other grantmakers to one that has been and was rejected (ceteris paribus). This would depend on how what fraction of rejections are due to:
proposer was bed (everyone should reject)
proposal was bad (likely it was improved after previous rejection)
project not a good fit for grantmaker (likely better fit next time)
everything great but grantmaker ran out of money
For example, if all are due to 1, previous rejection is very strong negative signal, while if all are due to 4, previous rejection is not a negative signal at all. Maybe 3 can be a positive signal, but I am not sure.
Does anyone have a sense of the answer?