These short summary reasons in this post forwhy grants are not made are great and very interesting to see.
Was wondering do the unsuccessful grant applicants tend to recieve this feedback (of the paragraph summary kind in this post) or do they just get told “sorry no funding”?
I wonder if this could help the situation. I think if applicants have this feedback, and if other granters know that applicants get feedback they can ask for it. I’ve definitely been asked “where else did you apply and what happened” and been like “I applied for x grant and got feedback xyz of which I agree with this bit but not that bit”.
(Or maybe that doesn’t help for some of the reasons in your ” against sharing reasons for rejection” section)
(Also FWIW if there is a private behind the sceens grantmaker feedback channel, I’m not sure I would be comfortable with the idea of grant makers sharing information with each other that they weren’t also willing to share with the applicants.)
I can’t speak about all cases, but I think for most cases in the rough cluster of situations like the above, we do not currently give reasons for rejection at the level of granularity of the above. I’m a bit sad about this but I think it’s probably the right call. I remember a specific situation some months ago where I wrote fairly elaborate feedback for an applicant but I was dissuaded from sending it, in retrospect for probably the right reasons.
If we have something like 3x the current grantmaker capacity, I’d love for us to give more feedback, but this is not a priority now and I think it won’t be in the near future, as I think the following are all more important:
Finding a chair to take over Asya’s role to formalize separation between LTFF and Open Phil
Evaluating grants faster and improving our turnaround times
Have more eyeballs per grant evaluation
More transparency and public communication with donors/applicants/the broader community (like this article and future ones)
Feedback for the most promising applicants/grantees
Donor engagement (especially with high-net-worth individuals) and fundraising
Retroactive evaluations of and comparing LTFF grants with other grantmakers like Open Phil.
More experiments with active grantmaking and trying to find more of a product-market fit in other areas adjacent to LTFF’s interests (eg a fund specifically for AI Safety)
(Also FWIW if there is a private behind the sceens grantmaker feedback channel, I’m not sure I would be comfortable with the idea of grant makers sharing information with each other that they weren’t also willing to share with the applicants.)
I’m not sure I would be comfortable with the idea of grant makers sharing information with each other that they weren’t also willing to share with the applicants
One of my pet ideas is to set up a grantmaker coordination channel (eg Discord) where only grantmakers may post, but anyone may read. I think siloed communication channels are important for keeping the signal to noise ratio high, but 97% of the time I’d be happy to share whatever thoughts we have with the applicant & the rest of the world too.
These short summary reasons in this post forwhy grants are not made are great and very interesting to see.
Was wondering do the unsuccessful grant applicants tend to recieve this feedback (of the paragraph summary kind in this post) or do they just get told “sorry no funding”?
I wonder if this could help the situation. I think if applicants have this feedback, and if other granters know that applicants get feedback they can ask for it. I’ve definitely been asked “where else did you apply and what happened” and been like “I applied for x grant and got feedback xyz of which I agree with this bit but not that bit”. (Or maybe that doesn’t help for some of the reasons in your ” against sharing reasons for rejection” section)
(Also FWIW if there is a private behind the sceens grantmaker feedback channel, I’m not sure I would be comfortable with the idea of grant makers sharing information with each other that they weren’t also willing to share with the applicants.)
I can’t speak about all cases, but I think for most cases in the rough cluster of situations like the above, we do not currently give reasons for rejection at the level of granularity of the above. I’m a bit sad about this but I think it’s probably the right call. I remember a specific situation some months ago where I wrote fairly elaborate feedback for an applicant but I was dissuaded from sending it, in retrospect for probably the right reasons.
If we have something like 3x the current grantmaker capacity, I’d love for us to give more feedback, but this is not a priority now and I think it won’t be in the near future, as I think the following are all more important:
Finding a chair to take over Asya’s role to formalize separation between LTFF and Open Phil
Evaluating grants faster and improving our turnaround times
Have more eyeballs per grant evaluation
More transparency and public communication with donors/applicants/the broader community (like this article and future ones)
Feedback for the most promising applicants/grantees
Donor engagement (especially with high-net-worth individuals) and fundraising
Retroactive evaluations of and comparing LTFF grants with other grantmakers like Open Phil.
More experiments with active grantmaking and trying to find more of a product-market fit in other areas adjacent to LTFF’s interests (eg a fund specifically for AI Safety)
Thanks, this is helpful feedback.
One of my pet ideas is to set up a grantmaker coordination channel (eg Discord) where only grantmakers may post, but anyone may read. I think siloed communication channels are important for keeping the signal to noise ratio high, but 97% of the time I’d be happy to share whatever thoughts we have with the applicant & the rest of the world too.
Thanks Linch. Agree feedback is time consuming and often not a top priority compared to other goals.