Historically, I think CFAR has been really quite bad at explaining its goals, strategy, and mechanism of impact—not just to funders, and to EA at large, but even to each other. I regularly encounter people who, even after extensive interaction with CFAR, have seriously mistaken impressions about what CFAR is trying to achieve. I think this situation is partly due to our impact model being somewhat unusually difficult to describe (especially the non-career-change-related parts), but mostly due to us having done a poor job of communicating.
When I wrote this comment on T-shaped organizations, CFAR was one of the main examples in my mind.
When I wrote this comment on T-shaped organizations, CFAR was one of the main examples in my mind.