Thank you for this announcement, though I am sorry to hear it.
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Sue Gardner <susanpgardner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Here's an example: As you know, we have long
wanted to create a
program making grants to volunteers -- both to chapters and individual
Wikimedians. Erik and I launched the chapters grantmaking process prior
to Jennifer's arrival, but by ourselves we didn't have capacity to put much
time into it. When she arrived, Jennifer picked it up and successfully made
grants to 21 chapters. We had wanted to expand the program to include
grants to individuals, which Jennifer would have done. With her leaving,
three things will happen. 1) The existing chapters grants still need to be
managed. 2) The launch of individual grants will be delayed. And 3) Our
longer-term, big-picture thinking about grantmaking will be slower to
evolve, because it won't benefit from having a person whose primary job
is thinking about that kind of work.
To this example: are there other ways for long-term big-picture
thinking to evolve? Not only does this seem like one of many topics
suitable for brainstorming during the strategy planning of the coming
9 months, but Jennifer has recently been discussing on Meta ways to
tap into community interest in being part of grant-finding and
grantmaking. There is a certain tradition of the latter -- the
community organized the first technology grant for essential technical
work six years ago.
I expect there are community members with their own ideas and
background in thinking and writing about such work - given the good
example of the early chapters grants model, those interested could
propose a variation suitable for individual grants, for example.
SJ