I think it’s unlikely to play out this way. Evaluating large grants requires a lot of effort: understanding the proposal, researching context (e.g., are there alternatives? how risky are the dependencies?), discussion time, evaluating revisions, etc. Few people are inclined to put in such effort voluntarily.
To give some examples from within our own ecosystem:
- In ZF’s previous grant program, I think the majority of GitHub comments were by the members of the grant review committees (or the proposers replying to them).
- ECC’s ECC R&D and Engineering Flight Plan did not get any feedback, other than mine.
- ZF’s Engineering Roadmap 2020 also got little feedback (the most substantial of which was by rex4539, who I guess was continuing the momentum from his role on the grant review committee
) .
So my expectation is that the MG committee members will need enough expertise to take the lead on analyzing proposals. Of course they’ll draw on the community, and reach out for advice (as the old grant committee did), but even doing that effectively requites sufficient understanding.
Notably, this isn’t just about technical expertise. Knowledge in finances, marketing, regulation, etc. may also be called for, and ideally the committee will have some of these too. (Again, by example: ZF is lucky to count @valkenburgh among its board members, and ECC is fortunate to have Andrew McLaughlin on its board.)