In today's WMF Metrics and Activities Meeting [1] Jessie Wild's
presentation starting around 1:05:00 compared the meta-level grantmaking
programs. The presentation is about 12 minutes long.
Jessie, I have two questions, and other people may want to ask questions as
well.
1. I'm aware that Program Evaluation is examining the outcomes of
conferences this year, and Jamie and I have discussed this in at least two
places on Meta. I'm curious about if and how you plan to measure the online
impact of conferences; not just what people and groups say they will do in
post-survey conferences, but what they actually do online in verifiable
ways in the subsequent 3-12 months.
2. You said in your presentation that there is no direct correlation
between grant size and measurable online impact. From the slides at around
the 1:13-1:15 minute marks, it looks to me like the correlation is
negative, meaning that smaller grants produced disproportionately more
impact. I can say that within IEG this occurred partly because we had some
highly motivated and generous grantees who volunteered a considerable
amount of time to work with modest amounts of money, and I don't think we
should expect that level of generosity from all grantees, but I think that
grantmaking committees may want (A) to take into account the level of
motivation of grantees, (B) to consider breaking large block grants into
discrete smaller projects with individual reporting requirements, and (C)
for larger grants where there seem to be a lot of problems with reporting
and a disappointing level of cost-effectiveness, to be more assertive about
tying funding to demonstrated results and reliable, standardized reporting
with assistance from WMF. What do you think?
Thanks,
Pine
[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JbZ1uWoKEg&feature=youtu.be