Hello Woubzena,
I would like to remind you that I am waiting for a response to the email
that I sent on April 19.
Thank you,
Pine
(
)
On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 6:52 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Woubzena,
I am glad to hear that the WMF Rapid Grants program has been so popular
that its original budget for the year is near exhaustion. I trust that
these funds are being spent wisely, and that community members and
affiliates are achieving valuable outcomes with these funds.
I have some questions about this group of decisions.
1. My understanding is that WMF routinely underspends its quarterly
budgets for the organization as a whole. Also, WMF has ample funding in its
reserves. Because Rapid Grants appears to be a popular program and the
budget of this program appears to be relatively small (am I correct in
saying that the program's total budget for FY1718 is $200,000?), why has
WMF chosen to suspend the program instead of transferring a relatively
small amount of other funds, perhaps $50,000, to support this program
through the remainder of FY1718?
2. My understanding is that one of the original goals for Rapid Grants is
to support small projects and events in an efficient and timely manner. I
am puzzled by the decision to raise the floor for Rapid Grants to $500,
which seems to eliminate WMF funding for small projects that might not
happen without Rapid Grants support and/or require volunteers to take money
out of their personal funds to support Wikimedia projects and events. The
WMF Annual Plan for 2018-2019 is currently in a draft phase, and it seems
to me that the plan could be revised to support continuing the Rapid Grants
program with no floor, or perhaps a very low floor like $50, for funding
requests. If the FY1819 budget for Rapid Grants and/or the budget for staff
time for Rapid Grants needs to be increased in order to achieve the goal of
supporting small projects and events in a timely manner with minimal or no
floor, then it seems to me that the modest amount of additional funding to
accomplish this would be reasonable.
3. Similarly, if additional staff time is necessary to support continuous
processing of Rapid Grant requests instead of limiting requests to the 1st
through 15th of each month, then my inclination is to support the funding
for additional staff time in FY1819. Does that option sound reasonable from
your perspective? I realize that continuous processing might be less
convenient for WMF, but I think that support for the community and
affiliates should be the highest priority here.
Thank you,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 1:30 AM, Woubzena Jifar <wjifar(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hello all!
Hope this email finds you well. We are sending this message to select
community mailing lists and all previous recipients of a Wikimedia
Foundation Rapid Grant.
We have an announcement regarding the closure of the Rapid Grants [1]
program between May 14 - June 30, 2018. This year we've received a lot of
interest in the program and this quarter we've almost doubled the amount of
grants offered to the community compared to last year's quarter. You can
look at our spending analysis
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_spending_analysis> [2]
for
reference. Unfortunately, this means we've expended our funds for this
fiscal year. The last date we will be receiving an application for a rapid
grant before the closure will be *Friday, May 11, 2018*.
We encourage *Wiki Loves Earth* participants to apply for a Rapid Grant
by May 11, 2018 to receive support for their project.
The grant program will be open again to receive grant requests starting *July
1, 2018*. At this point we will be implementing the following changes:
1. There will be a minimum of *$500 USD* for grant requests
2. Applications will only be accepted between the *1st - 15th of each
month*. This is to help with our current workflow and to allow us to be
more responsive to your requests.
If you have any questions, please email us at rapidgrants(a)wikimedia.org.
Best regards,
Woubzena
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Gran
ts_spending_analysis
Woubzena Jifar
Program Officer
Rapid Grants
Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>
User: WJifar (WMF)
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