Formal criteria to identify more promising outside work to recommend?

I think that might help. In this matter it all seems to be about trust.

• People doing outside work have to trust that SIAI will look at their work and may be supportive. Without formal guidelines, they might suspect that their work will be judged subjectively and negatively due to potential conflict of interest due to funding.

• SIAI also need to be trusted not to leak information from other projects as they evaluate them, having a formal vetted well known evaluation team might help with that.

• The Donor cloud needs to trust SIAI to look at work and make a good decision about it, not just based on monkey instincts. Formal criteria might help instill that trust.

SIAI doesn't need all this now as there aren't any projects that need evaluating. However it is something to think about for the future.