Most potential funding exists in the donor cloud, which can reallocate resources easily enough; SIAI does not have large reserves or an endowment that would be encumbered by the nonprofit status. Ensuring that the donor cloud is sophisticated and well-informed contributes to that flexibility, but I’m not sure what other procedures you were thinking about. Formal criteria to identify more promising outside work to recommend?
Formal criteria to identify more promising outside work to recommend?
I think that might help. In this matter it all seems to be about trust.
People doing outside work have to trust that SIAI will look at their work and may be supportive. Without formal guidelines, they might suspect that their work will be judged subjectively and negatively due to potential conflict of interest due to funding.
SIAI also need to be trusted not to leak information from other projects as they evaluate them, having a formal vetted well known evaluation team might help with that.
The Donor cloud needs to trust SIAI to look at work and make a good decision about it, not just based on monkey instincts. Formal criteria might help instill that trust.
SIAI doesn’t need all this now as there aren’t any projects that need evaluating. However it is something to think about for the future.
Another factor to consider, the permeability of the team, how much they are likely to leak information to the outside world.
However if the teams are completely impermeable then it becomes hard for external entities to evaluate the other factors for evaluating the project.
Does SIAI have procedures/structures in place to shift funding between the internal team and more promising external teams if they happen to arise?
Most potential funding exists in the donor cloud, which can reallocate resources easily enough; SIAI does not have large reserves or an endowment that would be encumbered by the nonprofit status. Ensuring that the donor cloud is sophisticated and well-informed contributes to that flexibility, but I’m not sure what other procedures you were thinking about. Formal criteria to identify more promising outside work to recommend?
I think that might help. In this matter it all seems to be about trust.
People doing outside work have to trust that SIAI will look at their work and may be supportive. Without formal guidelines, they might suspect that their work will be judged subjectively and negatively due to potential conflict of interest due to funding.
SIAI also need to be trusted not to leak information from other projects as they evaluate them, having a formal vetted well known evaluation team might help with that.
The Donor cloud needs to trust SIAI to look at work and make a good decision about it, not just based on monkey instincts. Formal criteria might help instill that trust.
SIAI doesn’t need all this now as there aren’t any projects that need evaluating. However it is something to think about for the future.