Dear Wikimedia Community, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) portal [1] today (August 1, 2012 PDT). The FDC Proposal form is available for all eligible entities to use immediately, and can be created by going to the main portal page and starting at the “I am ready to begin” section. (For some guidelines, see here [2] for a sample proposal.) The deadline for finalised proposals in Round 1 of the FDC process is October 1, 2012. As all of you know, the Eligibility Status [3] and Eligibility Checklist [4] tables - laying out current eligibility and compliance requirements for the FDC process - were shared with the community last week. Based on this, chapters/entities interested in applying for Round 1 of the FDC process should work to close their eligibility gaps, and contact Garfield Byrd (WMF Chief of Finance and Administration) for any clarifications. We have done our best to design the portal to be as accessible and informative as possible. Some aspects of the portal are still being built; we ask for your patience as we finalise these. Once the members of the FDC are nominated by the Board in early September 2012, the portal will also introduce you to the new FDC and the Ombudsperson, as well as the two non-voting Board members serving as observers on the FDC. We welcome comments and suggestions from the community to improve the FDC portal and the information it contains! We request that you leave suggestions for changes on the page for Questions to FDC support staff [5], or on related Talk/Discussion pages. We want to avoid too many changes on those pages in the short term, to minimize confusion for entities sending proposals to the FDC. In particular, we hope that all chapters/entities that would like to apply for FDC funds will be in touch with us <FDCsupport(a)wikimedia.org> to let us know of any suggestions or concerns they may have during this process. Warmly, Anasuya Sengupta (Director of Global Learning and Grantmaking, WMF; lead for the FDC support team) [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Exampl… [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/2012_Round_1_E… [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/2012_Round_1_E… [5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Questions_for_FDC_staff