I'm also concerned about the implementation of these new rules - especially in the context of the upcoming Wiki Loves Monuments round. If implemented without change or exceptions, the implications could be tricky.
The combination of dates and timelines effectively reduces the time window to apply for rapid grants to about 2 weeks for Wiki Loves Monuments this year: 1-15 July (new submissions should not be made less than a month before the event). It removes all possibility for prospective grantees to get feedback on ideas or get help with their application during Wikimania. These months are precious in the context of organizing Wiki Loves Monuments.
I hope that the team can fulfill their commitment to respond rapidly indeed - but given the altered timeline, I fear a large influx of proposals in a short period of time; a recipe that typically leads to delays. Especially as no doubt Wikimania will require travel, cause delays by itself, and the strategy taking time too.
I'm less concerned about the practical implications of the $500 limit: I guess I'll just be advising people to increase their programs to match the threshold (e.g. find something to spend money on: adapt the needs to what you can ask for), even though in the past I have always had the opposite approach: only ask what you need.
What's perhaps most concerning, is that this change to day to day operations are such that they result in less effective empowerment of community members. It's painful. Given the cumulation of these measures, it feels like the community empowerment will have to pay a significant cost for developing a strategy. Surely, someone has to give: I just hope this is not a set of choices/trend that continues in the strategy itself.
Best, Lodewijk
On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 1:10 AM, Laurentius laurentius.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On mar, 2018-05-01 at 15:51 -0700, Woubzena Jifar wrote:
- Regarding having a minimum of $500 for the rapid grants program,
this is something we’re experimenting with while we’re aligning to the new strategic direction. Our preliminary data is showing that this change will improve our ability to support communities, allowing for more impactful grants with less overhead for a more effective use of our shared resources. We also need to make reductions in the time spent processing grants this year in order to make space for the considerable research and discussions needed to implement the new strategy, and we need to consider whether the impact of very small grants warrants their administrative expense.
I'm interested in better understanding this decision and its impact.
- How many grants are actually impacted by this decision? In
particular, in the last year:
- How many grants below 500 $ have been approved?
- Of the total 265.000 $ of rapid grants, how much went into grants below 500 $?
My rough estimate, by looking at the list on Meta, is that approximately 20% of rapid grants are below 500 $ (but I don't know the total), which I expect is around 10.000-20.000 $ per year.
- From your experience, how do you value the quality of the requests
for grants below 500 $? Do they have proportionally the same impact of the larger (rapid) grants, less, or more? In other words: this decision is led by the thought that impact is roughly proportial with the size of the grant, but the administrative cost for the WMF is more or less the same, so it's better to prioritize for larger grants? or that the small grants are actually comparatively worse (less impactful, or less likely to be approved anyway)? or what else?
Roughly, how much is the administrative overhead for each grant?
You mentioned preliminary data about this change. Is there any
additional data that you can share?
Lorenzo
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