On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Erik, there are cases in which this is clearly the right thing for us to do.
- An annual 'supporting the ecosystem' program, that channels grants
and visibility to important partners, seems interesting. Could this be implemented as a targeted grants program? Or just targeted outreach encouraging groups to apply for existing programs?
I wouldn't call it 'giving back' -- that seems to minimize the way in which this is integral to our work. (I see almost no difference, from the perspective of our mission, between supporting OSM or Wikieducator and supporting Wikiversity).
However we should be clear that this is where some of our resources go, and update related messaging; or raise funds specifically for those goals with their own campaigns.
Yeah - it seems pretty complex to get right, and I don't want to shovel work onto our fundraising team's very full plate, or distract from our main fundraising efforts.
There are some interesting models to study at least. I like what the Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing with its flexible, permanent fundraiser for projects related to anonymity/privacy, which seems to be inspired by the Humble Bundle UI:
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/
- We need a free toolchain that we can build upon and digitize /
gather / curate / format / publish knowledge with. There are currently major gaps in this toolchain -- core projects and collaborations rely on non-free tools or non-free hosted service. Every time we use or work to interoperate with such tools and services, we should also support replacing them with free ones. (That support can include everything from publicity and matchmaking to in-kind support to funds)
So we should be supporting, in some fashion: free formats; free fonts; free tools for annotation, real-time text collaboration, spreadsheet editing, media editing; the ecosystem needed to support free media codecs. We should be framing and broadcasting to the FK ans FOSS world where the biggest gaps lie and what needs to be done.
I agree, and this seems more straightforward to integrate with existing grantmaking practices. In fact we've seen a few "toolchain" related grant applicants lately, such as the ShareMap proposal (which was turned down, in significant part because it's very Flash-based):
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/ShareMap
But the scope of the project is not such that, if I was (say) a contributor to Blender, I would apply for funding through it.
Focusing on grantmaking that directly supports content contributors might be a good area to hone in on, while deferring the larger sponsorship question for now.
- Many projects that we rely on run on a very small budget, but may
need specific skills. I would separate how we think about supporting this sort of work, from how we think about supporting larger projects such as CC and OSM.
Sure - we do in fact do a lot of the non-financial stuff (upstream code contributions, legal or other advice, providing space for meetups, etc.).
Erik