New subject: FDC annual plan grant recommendations for 2014-2015 Round 2

1 Jun 2015


      Hello Wikimedians,
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help make
decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to achieve the
Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] Just before the
Wikimedia Conference, the FDC met in Berlin to deliberate on the five
proposals submitted for this Round. [2] We thank these organizations for
their hard work on their annual plans and their proposals.
The FDC has now posted our recommendations on Meta for Round 2 2014-2015 on
the annual plan grants to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [3]
Thanks to the leadership of the FDC’s two Board Representatives (Maria
Sefidari and Frieda Brioschi), the WMF Board will review the
recommendations and then make their decision on them by 1 July 2015.
This round, the six proposals were submitted to the FDC. One proposal was
withdrawn before we met to deliberate. We recommended allocations totaling
roughly $1,248,913 USD for these five organizations. Note that all
allocations were made in local currency. A total of $5,060,913 was
allocated in both rounds in this year (2014-2015). The remaining $939,087
from the FDC’s $6 million budget will be returned to the Wikimedia
Foundation.
Before our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC reviewed the proposals in
careful detail. We also reviewed staff assessments and analysis on impact,
finances, and programs, as well as community comments on the proposals. We
also took into consideration the discussion pages of relevant documents.
There is a formal process for grant applicants to submit complaints or
appeals about these recommendations. Here are the steps for both:
Any organization that would like to submit an appeal on the FDC’s Round 2
recommendation should submit it to the Board representatives to the FDC by
23:59 UTC on 8 July 2015 in accordance with the appeal process outlined in
the FDC Framework. A formal appeal to challenge the FDC’s recommendation
should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word summary directed to the two
non-voting WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Maria Sefidari and Frieda
Brioschi). The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and must be
submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking applicant. The Board will
publish its decision on this and all recommendations by 1 July 2015.
Complaints to the ombudsperson about the FDC process can be filed by anyone
with the Ombudsperson and can be made any time. The complaint should be
submitted on wiki, as well. [5] The ombudsperson will publicly document the
complaint, and investigate as needed.
The FDC would like to thank Wikimedia Deutschland for hosting this Round’s
deliberations. We appreciate the team that worked hard to make our
deliberations meeting a smooth and successful event.
Finally, we offer our sincere thanks to the six organizations who submitted
annual plan grant proposals to the FDC.
On behalf of the FDC,
"pundit" Dariusz Jemielniak (FDC Chair)
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/20...
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_recom...
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process