Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Call for Volunteers - WLM International Team

Hi,

I would be happy to look into the possibility of finding external funding for the International contest (perhaps based on the PEG application from 2013?).

There are a few Swedish funds that I know of that might be interested in supporting the international part of WLM - after all it is pretty awesome. If you think that I should pursue this I would of course be grateful for any and all help with drafting the content. Even though these are Swedish foundations some of the staff costs might still be possible to be moved to WMNL or other chapters that have been involved in the international part previously (I think that would be very beneficial because of their expertise) - but I would have to look into if the funds have any rules preventing that. I am sure that it could be solved somehow.

The funds I have in mind have a pretty fast process - and we could probably have a preliminary answer from them within a couple of months or so. Please let me know if you would like me to get cracking at it.

Best,

John

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Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2015 10:09:03 +0100 From: romaine.wiki@gmail.com To: wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Call for Volunteers - WLM International Team

Hi Alex,

Please

also note that last year PEG funded 7 WLM grants (+1 to the international team). The earliest request was made in June and the last in mid-September. Next year, we will recommend that national requests come in by early July, and will be communicating this as well as other tips on national WLM grant requests, over the next couple of months.

Sorry, but that is not workable. We definitely should not recommend to submit requests in early July, that is for a big organisation with much activities and active partners way too late.

Also the 2014 situation was worse: it should be possible to have a last moment grant request (for unforeseen circumstances), but that is far from handy to recommend such for all national teams!

And I am sorry to say, but closing the grant requests for good requests is insane. The situation will be that instead of coming with a good and well defined plan, people have to rush and will come with less well set up project plans or are too late to be in time!

We do believe that this is a positive campaign

It is a negative campaign. Not thought through well, and with problems. It is at such fine to have more attention to a strategic priority, but this works counter productive for other good projects.

Also this is a negative campaign, as good projects are not taken seriously this way. I thought the grantmaking was intented to support the community (mission-allied people and organisations), apparently that basic idea has disappeared...

All folks with grants currently in draft stage have been contacted

But all folks with grants in draft stage elsewhere, planning to submit in February or March, aren't aware! Yes, we have multiple project plans to submit in February...

This is really disappointing.

Romaine

2014-12-30 20:33 GMT+01:00 Alex Wang awang@wikimedia.org: Hi Lodewijk,

If the international team (whomever they may be) cannot submit the request before February 1st and need funds before April 30th, I am happy to talk about a solution. I am also happy to review a draft grant request at any time in order to make the process of review and discussion by the Grant Advisory Committee more efficient.

We do believe that this is a positive campaign, addressing a strategic priority, that demands more time and focus from the grants team. We honestly cannot provide this focus in the stream of our normal grantmaking workflow. All folks with grants currently in draft stage have been contacted, as well as grantees whose current annual grants are coming to an end.

Please also note that last year PEG funded 7 WLM grants (+1 to the international team). The earliest request was made in June and the last in mid-September. Next year, we will recommend that national requests come in by early July, and will be communicating this as well as other tips on national WLM grant requests, over the next couple of months.

Cheers,

Alex

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote: Hi Alex, it is indeed the case that the 2013 team started in May only. One of the lessons was however, that this was way too late and that it should ideally be started in December. I'm sorry to hear that the grant system is being used in this way, and that this will only be announced two weeks before the period starts. I would be much more in favor of a /positive/ campaign to support requests of a certain type rather than to a negative campaign like this, which discourages everything besides that type. In either way, perhaps we learn this in time to make an effort to submit the grant request before February 1, so that we stay ahead of this and the damage is limited to all the national requests that have to be made. Best,Lodewijk On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 6:44 PM, Alex Wang awang@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi All,

Yes, we are in the planning stages of an Inspire Grants campaign that we will be announcing more broadly the week of January 12th. Please stay tuned for the details.

In short, Inspire is a global campaign to proactively source and support new projects aimed at addressing a specific strategic topic. Our first campaign will focus on addressing the gender gap: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gend.... In order to focus, we will take a short break from the regular funding routines in both Project and Event Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG). We are dedicating round 1 of IEG funding and 3 months of PEG funding to the campaign. From February 1-April 30, PEG will only accept proposals as part of the gender gap campaign, with the exception for urgent requests. And IEG's first round of the year will be devoted to this experiment.

I don't anticipate this having a large impact on 2015 WLM grant planning. The 2013 international team started on their proposal at the end of May, leaving plenty of time for discussion and approval. However, if you feel this will be a challenge, please let me know and I am happy to discuss.

Cheers,

Alex