First, there is a big difference between “detailed feedback” and “conversation”—if something is worth funding, working out how to improve it is worth time and effort, and delaying until it’s perfect is a bad idea. Whereas If it’s fundamentally off base, it isn’t worth more feedback than “In general terms, this is why”—and if it’s a marginal grant, making it 10% better is worth 10% of a small amount.
Second, different grantmakers work differently, and EA funds often engages more on details to help build the idea and improve implementation. But junior grantmakers often aren’t qualified to do so!
That makes sense, though I don’t think it’s as clear a dividing line as you make out. If you’re submitting a research project for eg, you could spend a lot of time thinking about parameters vs talking about the general thing you want to research, and the former could make the project sound significantly better—but also run the risk you get rejected because those aren’t the parameters the grant manager is interested in.
‘It’s rarely worth your time to give detailed feedback’
This seems at odds with the EA Funds’ philosophy that you should make a quick and dirty application that should be ‘the start of a conversation’.
Two things.
First, there is a big difference between “detailed feedback” and “conversation”—if something is worth funding, working out how to improve it is worth time and effort, and delaying until it’s perfect is a bad idea. Whereas If it’s fundamentally off base, it isn’t worth more feedback than “In general terms, this is why”—and if it’s a marginal grant, making it 10% better is worth 10% of a small amount.
Second, different grantmakers work differently, and EA funds often engages more on details to help build the idea and improve implementation. But junior grantmakers often aren’t qualified to do so!
That makes sense, though I don’t think it’s as clear a dividing line as you make out. If you’re submitting a research project for eg, you could spend a lot of time thinking about parameters vs talking about the general thing you want to research, and the former could make the project sound significantly better—but also run the risk you get rejected because those aren’t the parameters the grant manager is interested in.