Some trainable things I think would help with grantmaking:
-knowledge of the field you’re making grants in
-making a simple model to predict the expected value of a grant (looking for a theory of change, forecasting the probability of different steps, identifying the range of possible outcomes)
-best practices for identifying early signs a grant won’t be worth funding, to save time, without being super biased against people you don’t know or from a different background to you who eventually could do good work
-giving quality feedback to successful and unsuccessful applicants
-engaging with donors (writing up summaries of why you gave different grants, talking to people who are considering donating through your fund)
-evaluating your grants to learn how closely what really happened matched your model
It doesn’t seem to me obviously less trainable then being a Navy seal
Some trainable things I think would help with grantmaking:
-knowledge of the field you’re making grants in
-making a simple model to predict the expected value of a grant (looking for a theory of change, forecasting the probability of different steps, identifying the range of possible outcomes)
-best practices for identifying early signs a grant won’t be worth funding, to save time, without being super biased against people you don’t know or from a different background to you who eventually could do good work
-giving quality feedback to successful and unsuccessful applicants
-engaging with donors (writing up summaries of why you gave different grants, talking to people who are considering donating through your fund)
-evaluating your grants to learn how closely what really happened matched your model
It doesn’t seem to me obviously less trainable then being a Navy seal