So you want to run a microgrants program

Abstract

This article is a personal account of the author’s experience running a microgrants program. The author describes how he solicited grant proposals, then struggled to evaluate them due to the inherent difficulty of quantifying the expected value of different projects and the presence of a large number of second-order effects. He eventually relied on a network of experts and his own intuition, but still felt unsure about his decisions. This led him to analyze the challenges of microgrant programs in greater detail and offer advice on how to run a successful one. The author suggests that running a microgrant program is only worth it if the grantmaker has a comparative advantage in soliciting proposals, obtaining funding, or evaluating grants. He also discusses the potential of using impact certificates to create a market-based approach to microgrant funding. – AI-generated abstract.