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