2014-11-25 12:05 GMT+01:00 Balázs Viczián balazs.viczian@wikimedia.hu:
Despite the little to zero initial experience of its members, all-volunteer setup and the ever changing circumstances (global goals, focus points, etc.) and how in general awful it sounds if you say it out lout that an all-amateur (in the good sense) and inexperienced group of people are handling out USD 6 million every year in their free time and for free, it works pretty well.
I must admit that I am little sad to say that the FDC is not that special but what we are doing is called "participatory grantmaking" and it's hardly new. Participatory grantmaking is a practice that has been around for a while now (since the 1970s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_grantmaking
Of course, not all of us have the astounding background of Dariusz ("Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (cit.)) but that's acceptable in the framework of participatory grantmaking.
We are also participating with all the other WMF committees volunteers (IEG, GAC) in a research program from Lafayette Practice (http://www.thelafayettepractice.com/), I think that Anasuya Sengupta [WMF's Director of Grantmaking[*]] can give more info about this if needed.
Of course any feedback is appreciated and process feedback even more.
On a somewhat related note, I want also to take the occasion to point out that WMF said that they will devise a community review process for their annual plan. This mechanism has still to be devised, it will probably not be the FDC[+].
C [*] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grantmaking_and_Programs [+] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Adv...