I suspect it matters quite a bit WHICH 10-20 people support the project. And I further suspect that the right people are unlikely to sell their time in this way.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad idea to offer to compensate people for the time and risk of analyzing your proposal. But you should probably filter for pre-interest with a brief synopsis of what you actually want to do (not “get funding”, but “perform this project that does …”).
This makes sense. Paying someone to do more of something they care about is very different from paying someone to do something they don’t otherwise want to do. That would include providing regular feedback.
I suppose that philanthropy funds mainly driven by public relations and their managers are looking for projects that would look good on their portfolio. Your idea may buy your way to the attention of the said managers, but they will decide based on comparison with similar projects that got maybe more viral and may seem more public-appealing.
If your project is simple enough for a non-specialist to evaluate its worthyness in 30 minutes, than perhaps the best course of action is to seek for more appealing presentations of your ideas that would catch the attention and make it viral. Then it will work for fund managers as well.
Not really, apart from the absense of feedback on my proposal.
I think it is a universal thing. Imagine the works of such a fund and you are a manager peeking proposals from a big flow. Even if you personally feel that some proposal is cool, but it doesn’t have public support and you feel that others won’t support it. Will you be heavily pushing it forward when you have to review dozens of other proposals? If you do, won’t it look like you are somehow affiliated with the project?
So, you either look for private money, or seek public support, I see no other way.
I’ve been informed that getting approval of 10-20 people on lesswrong for a project is a good way of getting funding from the bigger EA funders.
Can I just pay $50 each to 20 people for 0.5 hours of their time? Has this been tried?
(Ofcourse they can choose to disapprove the project, and accept the payment regardless.)
I suspect it matters quite a bit WHICH 10-20 people support the project. And I further suspect that the right people are unlikely to sell their time in this way.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad idea to offer to compensate people for the time and risk of analyzing your proposal. But you should probably filter for pre-interest with a brief synopsis of what you actually want to do (not “get funding”, but “perform this project that does …”).
This makes sense. Paying someone to do more of something they care about is very different from paying someone to do something they don’t otherwise want to do. That would include providing regular feedback.
Please post your hourly rate either here or even better, on your personal website. It’ll make it easier to contact people for this.
Related: Beta Readers by Holden Karnofsky
I suppose that philanthropy funds mainly driven by public relations and their managers are looking for projects that would look good on their portfolio. Your idea may buy your way to the attention of the said managers, but they will decide based on comparison with similar projects that got maybe more viral and may seem more public-appealing.
If your project is simple enough for a non-specialist to evaluate its worthyness in 30 minutes, than perhaps the best course of action is to seek for more appealing presentations of your ideas that would catch the attention and make it viral. Then it will work for fund managers as well.
I don’t think this is a good description of how big EA funders operate? This might be true for other orgs. Do you have any data to back this up?
Not really, apart from the absense of feedback on my proposal.
I think it is a universal thing. Imagine the works of such a fund and you are a manager peeking proposals from a big flow. Even if you personally feel that some proposal is cool, but it doesn’t have public support and you feel that others won’t support it. Will you be heavily pushing it forward when you have to review dozens of other proposals? If you do, won’t it look like you are somehow affiliated with the project?
So, you either look for private money, or seek public support, I see no other way.
I think EA funders are more willing than many other non-profit funders to be the first person to fund your org, without anyone else supporting.
P.S. I didn’t downvote your comments.
That’s just me trying to analyze why it doesn’t work. The lack of feedback is really frustrating. I would rather prefer insults to the silence.
I feel same.