A number of grants seemed good if continued but nevertheless did not receive funding because they seemed unlikely to be able to fundraise enough to sustain their budget long-term. While we are okay with funding a large portion of a project’s budget as a one-off grant, we do not want organizations to depend on us for long-term funding as we are very uncertain about who our donors will be or what grants they will prioritize in the future. This is another reason we prefer not to fund large grants for newer projects.
(Disclaimer: I was involved with such a project, and no longer am, though for now it’s still continuing)
This seems like a strange way of thinking about it to me—sure, it feels bad if you fund a project that goes under sometime thereafter, but those project are where I would imagine such grants to have the highest leverage. In many cases, they’re in a vicious cycle of needing to spend time to seek funding and then looking worse to funders because they haven’t had enough time to spend on pursuing their nominal goals or improving operational efficiency. Often a single large grant might help them break out of that cycle, especially if it were presented with a clear understanding that it were such a grant. So you’ll get fewer ‘successes’ than you would from donating to more established orgs, but I would think the expectation from well chosen grants to less established organisations would be much higher.
This seems to be exactly the reason you’ve given for funding Ge Effektivt, so it seems like you accept this reasoning in some circumstances. I don’t want to pretend I know what your money would be best spent on, but for the sake of future applicants I think it would be helpful to have more clarity on this reason for rejection.
Thank you for your feedback, I completely agree with your comment that
[...] for the sake of future applicants I think it would be helpful to have more clarity on this reason for rejection.
So I’ll try to clarify what we mean here.
First, I would like to stress that that the funding circle gathers individual funders with separate wills cooperating under a joint brand to i) more easily process a higher number of applications ii) have a forum where we can discuss the grants to make a more informed decision. So, while the list of the “most common reasons for rejection” is written with the intent to reflect an amalgamation of views of the funders, every funding decision is made by individual members.
More to your question,
“[...] you’ll get fewer ‘successes’ than you would from donating to more established orgs, but I would think the expectation from well chosen grants to less established organisations would be much higher [...] This seems to be exactly the reason you’ve given for funding Ge Effektivt.”
I agree with this reasoning and certainly believe in hits-based giving. However, we mean something different here. We’re not trying to say that we don’t want to take bets and risk having very limited impact, but that when comparing funding opportunities it, all else being equal seems worse if one does not look like it will be able to raise funds to continue to operate. Regarding Ge Effektivt, which I personally decided to donate to, I was taking a bet that GE will be able to get on its feet with this injection of cash. One of the reasons it stood out to me was actually that I think they can raise money with lower counterfactual going forward.
“In many cases, they’re in a vicious cycle of needing to spend time to seek funding and then looking worse to funders because they haven’t had enough time to spend on pursuing their nominal goals or improving operational efficiency. Often a single large grant might help them break out of that cycle, especially if it were presented with a clear understanding that it were such a grant.”
We would be happy to fund an applicant that could convince us that that is the situation they have found themselves in. However, I don’t think that you in (hits-based) grantmaking, would fund something for which you do not think there will be a later funder, if you cannot fund it yourself.
I would still worry that in practice most organisations don’t know how much they’re in that situation, so if you’re penalising uncertainty, you’re going to lose a lot of expected value—but I guess that’s a balance you can figure out (and I hope be somewhat explicit on) over time.
(Disclaimer: I was involved with such a project, and no longer am, though for now it’s still continuing)
This seems like a strange way of thinking about it to me—sure, it feels bad if you fund a project that goes under sometime thereafter, but those project are where I would imagine such grants to have the highest leverage. In many cases, they’re in a vicious cycle of needing to spend time to seek funding and then looking worse to funders because they haven’t had enough time to spend on pursuing their nominal goals or improving operational efficiency. Often a single large grant might help them break out of that cycle, especially if it were presented with a clear understanding that it were such a grant. So you’ll get fewer ‘successes’ than you would from donating to more established orgs, but I would think the expectation from well chosen grants to less established organisations would be much higher.
This seems to be exactly the reason you’ve given for funding Ge Effektivt, so it seems like you accept this reasoning in some circumstances. I don’t want to pretend I know what your money would be best spent on, but for the sake of future applicants I think it would be helpful to have more clarity on this reason for rejection.
Thank you for your feedback, I completely agree with your comment that
[...] for the sake of future applicants I think it would be helpful to have more clarity on this reason for rejection.
So I’ll try to clarify what we mean here.
First, I would like to stress that that the funding circle gathers individual funders with separate wills cooperating under a joint brand to i) more easily process a higher number of applications ii) have a forum where we can discuss the grants to make a more informed decision. So, while the list of the “most common reasons for rejection” is written with the intent to reflect an amalgamation of views of the funders, every funding decision is made by individual members.
More to your question,
“[...] you’ll get fewer ‘successes’ than you would from donating to more established orgs, but I would think the expectation from well chosen grants to less established organisations would be much higher [...] This seems to be exactly the reason you’ve given for funding Ge Effektivt.”
I agree with this reasoning and certainly believe in hits-based giving. However, we mean something different here. We’re not trying to say that we don’t want to take bets and risk having very limited impact, but that when comparing funding opportunities it, all else being equal seems worse if one does not look like it will be able to raise funds to continue to operate. Regarding Ge Effektivt, which I personally decided to donate to, I was taking a bet that GE will be able to get on its feet with this injection of cash. One of the reasons it stood out to me was actually that I think they can raise money with lower counterfactual going forward.
“In many cases, they’re in a vicious cycle of needing to spend time to seek funding and then looking worse to funders because they haven’t had enough time to spend on pursuing their nominal goals or improving operational efficiency. Often a single large grant might help them break out of that cycle, especially if it were presented with a clear understanding that it were such a grant.”
We would be happy to fund an applicant that could convince us that that is the situation they have found themselves in. However, I don’t think that you in (hits-based) grantmaking, would fund something for which you do not think there will be a later funder, if you cannot fund it yourself.
Hope that clarifies things a bit!
Thanks, that’s useful :)
I would still worry that in practice most organisations don’t know how much they’re in that situation, so if you’re penalising uncertainty, you’re going to lose a lot of expected value—but I guess that’s a balance you can figure out (and I hope be somewhat explicit on) over time.