FWIW, it’s not just admin hassle but also mental attention for the fund chairs that’s IMO much better spent on improving their decisions. I think there are large returns from fund managers focusing fully on whether a grant is a good use of money or on how to make the grantees even more successful. I therefore think the costs of having to take into account (likely heterogeneous) donor preferences when evaluating specific grants are quite high, and so as long as a majority of assessed grants seems to be somewhat “in scope” it’s overall better if fund managers can keep their head free from scope concerns and other ‘meta’ issues.
I believe that we can do the most good by attracting donors who endorse the above. I’m aware this means that donors with different preferences may want to give elsewhere.
(Made some edits to the above comment to make it less disagreeable.)
FWIW, it’s not just admin hassle but also mental attention for the fund chairs that’s IMO much better spent on improving their decisions. I think there are large returns from fund managers focusing fully on whether a grant is a good use of money or on how to make the grantees even more successful. I therefore think the costs of having to take into account (likely heterogeneous) donor preferences when evaluating specific grants are quite high, and so as long as a majority of assessed grants seems to be somewhat “in scope” it’s overall better if fund managers can keep their head free from scope concerns and other ‘meta’ issues.
I believe that we can do the most good by attracting donors who endorse the above. I’m aware this means that donors with different preferences may want to give elsewhere.
(Made some edits to the above comment to make it less disagreeable.)