Seeking Testimonials - IPR, Leverage, and Paradigm

Leverage Research ("Leverage"), the Institute for Philosophical Research (“IPR”), and Paradigm Academy (“Paradigm”) are three closely collaborating organizations who, in one way or another, are working to advance and develop

• self-improvement techniques,

• movement-building techniques, and

• philosophical and intellectual methodology and training methodology.

Internally, BERI has begun referring to this group of organizations as "ILP". Together, the ILP organizations employ over 40 people.

BERI is currently investigating both IPR and Leverage for possible grants. BERI previously made a $25k grant to IPR, and recently approved another $50k grant to provide "stop-gap" support to IPR, while we conduct a deeper grant investigation for a larger amount on the order of $100k - $500k.

Given that...

• a) BERI is not as familiar with ILP organizations as some of the other organizations that we have made grants to, and

• b) there seem to be somewhat divisive opinions about the sign and/or magnitude of ILP's value to the world, more so than for other organizations BERI has supported at similar levels of funding,

we are seeking broader community input. We are hoping to collect first-person testimonials from those who have directly interacted with ILP, and we intend to use these testimonials to inform our grant decisions.

If you would like to submit a testimonial, you can do so by filling out this testimonial form. Please only fill out this form once. We will accept submissions through December 20, 2018. IPR, Leverage, and Paradigm have all agreed, via statements from Directors of each, for BERI to share this post and the testimonial form.

Note that we do not currently expect to be able to publish the results of this research. We may be able to share some results if IPR, Leverage, Paradigm, & BERI all mutually agree to publish a broad summary of the findings (in a way that respects the selected privacy levels of all testimonials received).

Testimonial Types

All else equal, BERI will weight the following types of report with decreasing levels of importance:

• Type 3: First-person testimonials provided directly to BERI, that BERI is free to share publicly if we so choose.

• Type 2: First-person testimonials provided directly to BERI, that BERI is free to share with ILP if we so choose.

• Type 1: First-person testimonials provided directly to BERI, which BERI is not free to share with ILP or the public

Of course, other factors will determine the importance of any given testimonial besides its Type as listed above, and we'd like to encourage responses of all types.

For the most part, BERI will pay less attention to non-first-person testimonials, such as:

• "I've heard Leverage is (great / mediocre / terrible)";

• "My friend had a (great / mediocre / terrible) time at a Paradigm workshop"

BERI will also put less weight on anonymous testimonials, as anonymous testimonials are more easily faked and difficult to follow up on. However, if you are only comfortable submitting a testimonial anonymously, we do encourage you to do so.

We also encourage readers to pass along this post to anyone they know who has had direct experience with ILP.

Please email organization-grants@existence.org if you have any concerns or questions that you would like to share with BERI.

Thanks for helping BERI develop our opinion of IPR, Leverage, and Paradigm!