Should Open Philanthropy have external grant reviewers?
By defun 🔸 @ 2024-07-21T18:59 (+24)
Some months ago, @Vasco Grilo🔸 wrote "Should the main text of the write-ups of Open Philanthropy’s large grants be longer than 1 paragraph?", asking for more reasoning transparency.
As @MathiasKB🔸 answered, sharing their analysis and decision-making process publicly would be very costly and it's probably not worth it.
A potential middle ground could be to collaborate with external grant reviewers. They would provide valuable insights while avoiding the high costs associated with public disclosure. (the reviewers would sign NDAs)
External grant reviewers could bring diverse perspectives, help identify potential blind spots, and enhance the overall decision-making process.
Reviewers could include independent researchers, forecasters, academic scholars, non-profit executives, and other relevant experts.
(Open Philanthropy's Grantmaking Process page doesn't mention anything regarding external reviewers, but maybe they are already doing it informally)
I'm not an expert in academic peer review (and I know it has some issues), but I guess there are valuable insights from that process that could be applied to grantmaking.
Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-07-22T08:23 (+6)
Thanks for the post! I wonder whether it would also be good to have public versions of the applications (sensible information could be redacted), as Manifund does, which would be even less costly than having external reviewers.
joshcmorrison @ 2024-07-22T16:57 (+12)
1Day Sooner made our last proposal to OP public (with some minor redactions), but I do think for a lot of groups (particularly those doing advocacy) there could be a significant tradeoff between candor/clarity and transparency, so it's not a costless choice. I do tend to think OP making grant requests public as a default would probably be good (I think information often has a lot of positive externalities that can be hard to observe or predict). But doing it in some cases and not others might draw attention/criticism to the more controversial areas, and it would create more work for OP and for applicants.