hi,
I whole-heartily agree with many of Christophe's comments. Whenever possible, GAC should take precedent before the FDC in my opinion. The FDC should typically involve those entities, which have grown significantly (often also through part-time staff hired for specific projects well before).
Ilario - I disagree with your view that we should have an algorithm of evaluating projects, mainly because projects vary quite a lot. Also, it is my strong personal belief that it is imperative that if we see brilliant projects, with visionary impact for our movement, we should be able to support them, irrespective of some minor formal imperfections. I do serve on another funds dissemination committee relying on a sort of algorithmic method and quite often it is difficult to appreciate great projects with high impact, if they fail to tap into some of the application fields (btw, there we're giving grants of about $5k, while requiring more paperwork than in the FDC).
The level of expectations in terms of professional preparation of a project also partly depends on the size of an entity. I believe that budgets below 100k should be treated with more lenience than those of over 1m, and the medium-sized budgets in between require some medium approach as well. Yet, ultimately, projects are written to show that the money is really worth spending on them.
What is essential in evaluating proposals, is seeing their impact for the movement. For instance (and bear with me for this theoretical example), I would rather be reluctant to support a project in which the vast majority of expenses are to cover only office work and staff, with minimal direct relation to projects and initiatives themselves. The discussion on what proportions of overheads to other expenses are good is ongoing and, all in all, we probably should be flexible here (because of different labor laws, taxation, customs, etc.). But generally, all projects funded through the FDC should be the ones really worth funding. Also, I think it would be really good if there was more interaction with the prospective applicants prior to applying, so as to help them and make sure they do not invest their time in vain. We are going to suggest changes to the FDC application process soon (and hope to get the community's insight into this, especially from the entities which applied).
I'm writing this reply on the spot to acknowledge the discussion, more to follow tomorrow.
best,
dariusz ("pundit")
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Christophe Henner < christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi David,
I changed the topic to not flood Deryck parting email. Though the topics are related, I'd rather not flood his thread.
Yes, the process is flawed, and everyone recognise it, even FDC staff and FDC members in their comments do. Yes, the process is a heavy burden to all the organisations Yes, we're still missing some steps
Now, I believe because of the situation in which the FDC was created, a lot of chapters thought that the FDC would become their way to get funds and so made a proposal. But the FDC is not the "normal" way to get fund, GAC should be. FDC is like a EU grant system, where you ask for a lot of money, explaining the main reasons you need the money (money is not earmarked for a specific project) and you report back on the use of the money on a regular basis.
This is not a "light" process.
I am sorry to hear of deeply commited people leaving because of the FDC toll. And to be quiet honest, even within WMFr the FDC was not a painless process... and we went through it twice already. I can totally relate to their feelings and exhaustion. But I believe the FDC role is, and there's much way of improvement on that, to help Wikimedia organisations get to the next stage regarding personification, goals definition, metrics, etc.. In fact we're at that moment when a start-up starts *really* thinking about ROI. Though in our case the ROI is not money but in furthering our goals, fostering Wikimedia community.
And when I say Wikimedia organisations, I include WMF, because all of our standards are rather low. When I look at the proposals with an outside perspective, or with the level of quality I ask to my team, we're all far from the quality I could expect. If I was to judge those demands only on my professional criteria, no one would have 100% of the allocation. But we have
And that change in perspective, from start-up to "company" always comes with its toll. You always see founders stepping back or even leaving, you see employees leaving too. I lived the exact same thing in a company I joined at founding 4 years ago and left last December.
That is a normal step in the life of any organisation. It is a painful one, but a needed one I believe.
Do we really believe it was better the way it was? Everybody doing pretty much what they want with the movement funds and little reporting? I do not.
Now, I don't believe anyone is hiding. Everyone acknowledges the process is far from perfect. In The initial timeline there was meant to be a review period after the first rounds (the second just ended). I believe this period's goals are to on one hand improve the process in itself and on the other hand make it clearer how heavy a process the FDC is.
As I said in my previous email:
- Most of the chapters should go through the GAC first, to get used
with a formal process
- We need the first employee/office space budget being a specific GAC
or FDC process (there's pros and cons in having one or the other handling it). Because let's be honest, the actual FDC process is way to heavy for those needs and the GAC is not meant to handle such requests
Best,
Christophe
On 29 April 2013 08:31, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 April 2013 06:14, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@gmail.com
wrote:
As said during the feedback session, we still have to figure out how to
fund the first employee.
The FDC process is a really heavy process that do take a huge amount of
time and energy. This is a process everyone should want to avoid as much as possible.
This sort of disastrous outcome seems, IIRC, precisely what chapters were expecting, and were up in arms about, when the WMF first asserted absolute control of the funding. These arguments being what WMF staff decided they weren't interested in listening to any more, leading to internal-l falling into disuse. Unfortunately, as Deryck notes, ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
- d.
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