Status: Draft
As Manifold works through a new round of grant applications, and considers funding its own initiatives on Manifund, I wanted to give my thoughts on how EA funders could help applicants and grantees more.
My thoughts are primarily based on interactions with: ACX Grants, SFF, LTFF, and FTX Future Fund (rip)
The worst thing about applying for funding is the waiting time between submitting the application and hearing back. While waiting for a decision, you’re stuck in limbo, not knowing whether you can pursue the project you’ve been planning. Hiring a promising candidate, booking out a venue, announcing your org’s new direction are all things that are blocked by the confirmation of funds. Worse is if you’re implicitly counting on a particular grant to be approved, and you end up surprised that the grant fails. In all these cases, a short review time (ideally just a couple days) is key.
There’s also often a gap between the announcement of a grant and it’s delivery to the grantee’s bank account; in the worst cases, this gap can run into multiple months. Especially for grantees who are not financially secure, the promise of funding does not and equate to actual funding. As Paul Graham says, “It's not a deal till the money's in the bank.”
See also: Fast Grants
Basic improvements: Provide applicants a timeline on when they should hear back; track turnaround time in a dashboard
<aside> 🎉 Shoutout to: Future Fund, with its 72-hour goal on its regranting program
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Could improve: SFF, with 3 months between application and announcement + 2 months of due diligence.
Side note for grantees: Consider just doing your project anyways while waiting for a funding decision. Manifold did this twice: we built out our MVP before the first ACX grants round results were announced, and we rolled out Charity Prediction Markets on our site before hearing back from Future Fund.
There’s been a lot written about how anyone running a screening process could help by providing feedback on why a particular application was rejected. However, feedback is also incredibly valuable for people who have received a grant! It’s often not clear which parts of the application stood out, or what ended up being the deciding factor in proceeding with the grant. Hearing about this helps align the plans of the grantee with the goals of the grantmaker.
<aside> 🎉 Shoutout to: LTFF and specifically Linchuan Zhang, for writing up his thoughts and meeting up with the Manifold team after our Feb 2022 grant.
In Silicon Valley, it’s routine for tech startups to send out a monthly investor update. This serves as a forcing function for startups to reflect on their progress over the last month; it also gives startups a space to ask for investors for help with things like hiring, ops, legal, intros.
As far as I’m aware, no EA funder asks for regular updates; at most, it comes in the form of a one-time evaluation eg 6 months after the original grant.
See also: Elad Gil on how to write an investor update email, Manifold’s investor updates
YCombinator founders and Emergent Ventures fellows often cite the peer group as the most important valuable aspect of the program. Not the funding received, or mentorship provided, or prestige gained; the real value-add was the friends we made along the way. A strong peer group energizes you, shows you what’s possible, fosters collaboration and incites a bit of competition.