Hi Risker,

I actually do think that a project like Reimagining Mentorship would be fair game for this Inspire Campaign, simply by making explicit some of their implicit goals - I've been working closely with that team, and creating a space that is welcoming to women is something we discuss a fair amount as part of the project, even if it wasn't emphasized in the original proposal. Same goes for a WLM project that aimed to attract more women, or could demonstrate high participation of women. For either project to be considered in scope, what they'd likely need to do is state an explicit aim to attract/support women, have a strategy for doing so, and plan to measure gender in outcomes. 

I think of the Teahouse, for example, as the first "gender gap" focused project that Sarah Stierch and I worked on together. That space was intended to welcome people of all genders, supporting any new Wikipedians. But, it was an explicitly stated aim of the space to try to support more new female editors, Sarah went out of her way to make sure we had a good percentage of women hosts, we thought about strategies like "invitation" to ensure women (as well as people of all genders) were likely to come to the space, and measuring impact on gender was a clear part of the pilot wrapup. A project like that would surely be welcome in this upcoming campaign. 

When we formally announce and launch the March campaign, we'd thought to include some examples of what kinds of ideas would be considered within scope, to help clarify this more. Meanwhile, these early concerns and rumblings are helping me recognize where we'll need to message most carefully, which is useful :)

Also adding to my list the need to update the grants portal for this campaign...agreed it could use some attention. 

I, too, was pleased to calculate that 1/3 of our grantee project leaders in both programs this year so far are women! There's been a good increase in IEG this round (from pilot round: 0 women), perhaps thanks to the support and advisor model that we've encouraged increasingly each round. When we get to 50%, then I'll really celebrate though. 

As for turning away non-theme-focused grants for 3 months: yes, I too worry about how to focus without sending messages of exclusion. This isn't quite how I'd originally hoped to run an experiment this year. But trying to make the best of things, we'll surely learn a lot regardless from this pilot. And it certainly feels like there is still a lot to learn about both the gender gap and grantmaking in the Wikimedia movement.

Cheers,
Siko



On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 7:19 AM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6 January 2015 at 09:38, Neotarf <neotarf@gmail.com> wrote:
The beginning of a contentious thread on the Wikimedia mailing list about Project and Event Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG):
An earlier official explanation here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html

and here, offers to work with anyone who needs funds before that time, and notes that last year the earliest request was made in June:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html

Some strong words here:
"Shutting down the grantmaking gives a strong negative signal to every
organiser. 'Your project is not important enough for the movement', that is
what this campaign says.

"This is campaign is not benefiting the community, it is damaging it and it
is damaging the trust of the community in WMF."
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-January/076276.html

Note that Gender Gap is not viewed here as *part of* the community, but as a barrier to the community.

 
 
I think things may be calming down now that there is a much more complete response from WMF Grants staff in respect of this action plan.  One of the issues that arose was the finding that WLM, for example, came to realise that they had not given enough lead time for the grants process by putting in their applications in June, so they were already consciously planning to submit applications earlier, pretty much in the middle of this period.  That was intended to make it easier for grants request reviewers to make timely decisions, and I for one think it was a good idea on their part.  Similarly, a few chapters whose requests are too small to go to FDC would be making their *annual* request during this period, something they may have scheduled months in advance.  So yes, this sort of very sudden change in direction does have an impact on other activities, and from a narrow focus does give the impression that these large-scale activities are seen as less important than a bunch of not-yet-posted grant requests. 
 
I don't think the issue is really about the gender gap, it's about giving the impression that just about any grant that is not exclusively and specifically about the "experiment topic" (whatever that topic happens to be) would be left unconsidered for months, even if it has some focus on the "experiment topic".   I'm pretty sure there would be the same reaction if the topic was "bots" or "GLAM" or "Sister Projects" or "Research".  
 
I've got a bit of a concern that the process may be too exclusionary in some ways.  For example, WLM has historically had higher-than-average participation by women, especially in certain countries, so one might think that it could rationally fall into the catchment for "gender gap" funding; however, it's been specifically excluded. 
 
This is coming as a huge surprise to a lot of people, and I think with good reason.  The Grants portal is notoriously unnavigable, and without a direct link to the page where this particular project was discussed, it's next to impossible to find it.[1] The Grants portal doesn't have a general administrative page for announcements or discussions that apply broadly (as this does), and you literally can't get from one section of the portal to another without leaving the portal and starting over.   And the page discussing the project doesn't actually describe it in the same way that the emails do - the timeline is quite different, and there's nothing that says "other than very time-sensitive grants, we won't consider anything else". 
 
One other thing I found odd here:  " In the first half of this year, IEG and PEG combined have spent only 9% of funds on projects aiming to directly impact this gap and less than ⅓ of our grantee project leaders have been women."  While the dollar value of the funding is roughly proportional to the percentage of women participating in Wikimedia projects, I was actually extremely impressed by the fact that almost a third of grantee project leaders are women.  That's a dramatically higher percentage than we have ever seen actively participating in Wikimedia projects overall. 
 
Again, I'm a bit concerned that more general programs that could be funded and are known to have attracted higher than average percentage of women participants wouldn't be included in any calculation of funding focused on "gender gap" issues.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I genuinely do not believe that women only want to work in areas directly related to the gender gap.  For example "Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship",[2]  a current grant, should be at least as interesting to women as to men, and has the potential to have at least as significant an effect in retaining new women editors as new men editors.  But it's not counted as a gender gap activity.
 
Risker/Anne
 

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Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

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