[Wikimedia-l] FDC Letter of Intent due June 8 & IRC office hours

[Katy Love]

Dear members of the Wikimedia community,

You will have seen an email recently from Patricio Lorente and Jan-Bart de
Vreede, the Board Reps to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), about
the FDC's new Letter of Intent process. The Letter of Intent (LOI) is the
first step in applying for funds from the FDC, as outlined in the FDC
Framework. [1] This upcoming year (2013-2014) will be the first time we
institute the LOI process. As you heard from them, we anticipate the LOI
will be a helpful planning tool for the FDC as well as offering us a chance
to begin working with entities in advance of the FDC proposal deadline.  We
hope it will allow us to work closely with applying entities and to address
questions and concerns (and clear up any misunderstandings) significantly
before the proposal deadline.

Interested entities must submit an Letter of Intent in order to apply for
FDC funding. For Round 1 of 2013-2014, the LOI is due on June 8. The LOI
asks potential FDC applicants to state their intentions to apply and to
include a notional dollar figure (or local currency figure). The
Letter of Intent
can be created on the FDC portal [2], and a sample is here for your
reference [3]. The LOI is non-binding, but it is required in order to be
able to submit a proposal for Round 1.

In anticipation of the LOI's June 8 deadline, the FDC staff is holding
office hours twice to respond to questions. We welcome entities considering
applying for Round 1 funding to join us. Our two office hours will be held
on #wikimedia-office on:

* Tuesday, May 28 at 0:00 UTC
* Wednesday, May 29 at 15:00 UTC

These two sessions will have the following agenda:

1. Introductions
2. Brief explanation of the FDC
3. Explanation of the purpose of the Letter of Intent and general FDC
proposal process
4. Q&A on the LOI

And finally, for your reference, here is the 2013-2014 Round 1 proposal
process [4] schedule:

- *Letter of Intent deadline for Round 1: 8 June 2013*
- Deadline for WMF Staff to post eligibility: 15 July 2013
- Deadline for entities to meet eligibility requirements: 15 September 2013
- Proposal submission deadline: 1 October 2013
- Community review period: 1 October - 31 October 2013
- Staff assessment deadline: 8 November 2013
- FDC recommendation due: 1 December 2013
- Board decision due: 1 January 2014

As always, contact us questions or requests for support:
FDCsupport at wikimedia.org.

Warm regards,
Katy and the FDC support team

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC#Process_overview
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Sample_letter_of_intent
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposal_process