Very interesting idea. I wonder what happens over time if applicants know before submitting that a proposal reviewed but not funded by NIH/NSF could still be put in front of a wider group of funders. Could this change the number or mix of applications in a way that puts more pressure on the review process? If it did bring in more proposals, some of them could be excellent and well suited to philanthropy, even if they sit towards the edge of what the original call is trying to fund or might not otherwise have been sent to NIH/NSF. But a public call is written around a particular job the funder is trying to do. It also sets some limits on what reviewers in an already stretched system are being asked to spend their time looking at.
If this were piloted, I’d be really interested to see how the number/mix of applications to public calls changed, and how philanthropies used the pool alongside their existing ways of finding ideas.
These are great points Anastasia. I think review systems are already at the brink given AI and staffing cuts both in govt and at universities. The problem is that most of the work already done is thrown away. So the win here is that other funders use the reviews already done to make their own determinations on what to fund, with the pool of ideas that already exist. What is taxing the system is that researchers are spending a lot of time pitching the same ideas to multiple funders. That’s a solvable problem and one that we’re focused on solving at Catalyze.
Great idea, Sandeep et al!. I suspect some philanthropists may care deeply about 'broader impacts' to society that they might achieve by funding some of these proposals. As you know, NSF has an existing 'broader impacts' criterion that evaluates proposals based on those societal outcomes. Explicitly teasing out broader impacts and perhaps allowing philanthropists to search for impacts that they may want to encourage might make your proposal even more valuable. Shorting of sharing detailed peer review results, a focus on having proposers opt in to sharing their anticipated broader impacts might be apt.
Also, in March, NASA did a Request for Information (RFI) about potential payloads to land on the Moon. Interestingly, the RFI allowed payload concept submitters to opt in to publicly share their payload concept as part of a public lunar payload database. The RFI explicitly calls out philanthropists and says that NASA could potentially convene meetings between payload developers and philanthropists. This could be an interesting complement to what you're suggesting, though it wouldn't allow for prioritized review score sharing to be made to outside funders, so less assurance of quality. RFI link: https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/130cb34208044e5692942416229bd993/view
Very interesting idea. I wonder what happens over time if applicants know before submitting that a proposal reviewed but not funded by NIH/NSF could still be put in front of a wider group of funders. Could this change the number or mix of applications in a way that puts more pressure on the review process? If it did bring in more proposals, some of them could be excellent and well suited to philanthropy, even if they sit towards the edge of what the original call is trying to fund or might not otherwise have been sent to NIH/NSF. But a public call is written around a particular job the funder is trying to do. It also sets some limits on what reviewers in an already stretched system are being asked to spend their time looking at.
If this were piloted, I’d be really interested to see how the number/mix of applications to public calls changed, and how philanthropies used the pool alongside their existing ways of finding ideas.
These are great points Anastasia. I think review systems are already at the brink given AI and staffing cuts both in govt and at universities. The problem is that most of the work already done is thrown away. So the win here is that other funders use the reviews already done to make their own determinations on what to fund, with the pool of ideas that already exist. What is taxing the system is that researchers are spending a lot of time pitching the same ideas to multiple funders. That’s a solvable problem and one that we’re focused on solving at Catalyze.
Great idea, Sandeep et al!. I suspect some philanthropists may care deeply about 'broader impacts' to society that they might achieve by funding some of these proposals. As you know, NSF has an existing 'broader impacts' criterion that evaluates proposals based on those societal outcomes. Explicitly teasing out broader impacts and perhaps allowing philanthropists to search for impacts that they may want to encourage might make your proposal even more valuable. Shorting of sharing detailed peer review results, a focus on having proposers opt in to sharing their anticipated broader impacts might be apt.
Also, in March, NASA did a Request for Information (RFI) about potential payloads to land on the Moon. Interestingly, the RFI allowed payload concept submitters to opt in to publicly share their payload concept as part of a public lunar payload database. The RFI explicitly calls out philanthropists and says that NASA could potentially convene meetings between payload developers and philanthropists. This could be an interesting complement to what you're suggesting, though it wouldn't allow for prioritized review score sharing to be made to outside funders, so less assurance of quality. RFI link: https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/130cb34208044e5692942416229bd993/view