New subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] FDC recommendations for 2015-2016 Round 1 APG grant requests

24 Nov 2015

Thank you FDC.

Many of the small and midsized APG requests fared well in this round. That
is nice to see.

I find it concerning that the larger the organization, the more problems
the FDC  seemed to find with the org's budget and performance management
practices. One would expect the larger organizations to have mature and
robust practices in these areas. Regarding WMF in particular, my concerns
about its budget practices are well documented and I appreciate that the
FDC is also taking note of the persistence of the problems. I hope that WMF
will get serious about its financial transpatency.

A couple of questions about Wikidata:

I'm confused about the funding for Wikidata. In one place the FDC says that
"Nonetheless, the FDC is exasperated by the inability of WMDE to to
disaggregate the costs of Wikidata from other projects." and in another
place the FDC says that "We have recommended a reduced amount for WMDE in
this round with the expectation that WMDE will not cut Wikidata or their
other tech development work, but will instead find cost savings elsewhere
in its annual plan." If the FDC wants a disaggregated budget (which is
understandable) then why is the FDC expecting WMDE to dip into its other
funds and/or make cuts elsewhere in order to cover the work in this
proposal that the FDC is declining to fund in this proposal? This
expectation seems to be a bit of a contradiction.

I'm also wondering how WMDE is able to submit a dedicated request for
restricted funding for Wikidata if the Wikidata project is so integrated
into WMDE's other budgets that the FDC finds the integration to be
problematic. Can the FDC or our colleagues at WMDE explain this?

Wikidata is a high profile project with a good reputation, and I hope that
the issues can be resolved soon.

Thanks,

Pine
On Nov 23, 2015 14:09, "matanya moses" &lt;matanya(a)foss.co.il&gt; wrote:

...
  Hello Wikimedians,

 tl;dr: The FDC’s recommendations for this round of the APG grant requests
 have now been published at:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…

 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] We met for four
 days last week in San Francisco to review 11 proposals submitted for this
 round of funding. [2]

 The committee has now posted our Round 1 2015-2016 recommendations on the
 annual plan grants (APG) to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [3]
 The WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Denny Vrandecic, Jan-Bart de
 Vreede and Dariusz Jemielniak) will lead the Board in its review of these
 recommendations. The WMF Board will review the recommendations and then
 make their decision on them before 1 January 2016.

 This round, the eleven proposals came from ten chapters and one thematic
 organisation, totaling requests of approximately $3.8 million USD. Ten
 affiliates were returning to the APG program, and one was a new applicant.
 This round, one organisation requested a restricted grant to support one
 particular program. All other grant requests were for general funding.

 Before we met for our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC carefully
 reviewed all proposals and supporting documentation (e.g., budgets, plans,
 strategies) in detail, aided by staff assessments and analysis on impact,
 finances, and programs, as well as community comments on the proposals. The
 committee had long and intense conversations about the proposals submitted
 this round. By listening and carefully considering all available data, the
 committee achieved consensus on all proposal deliberations.

 In addition to the above, the FDC has also included a recommendation about
 the WMF itself to improve its own level of planning transparency and budget
 detail. The WMF staff were not involved in the conception or writing of
 this additional recommendation.

 For your reference, there is a formal process to submit appeals about
 these recommendations or complaints about the FDC process. The processes
 for both are outlined below.

 Any applicant that wants to appeal the FDC’s recommendation about their
 proposal this round should submit it by 23:59 UTC on 8 December 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. The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and
 must be submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking applicant.

 Complaints about the 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.

 Please take a look at the upcoming calendar [6] to learn about other
 upcoming milestones in the APG program.

 Again, we offer our sincere thanks to the 11 organisations who submitted
 annual plan grant proposals to the FDC this round.

 On behalf of the FDC,

 Matanya Moses (FDC chair), User:Matanya

 [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG
 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016_round1
 [3]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
 [4]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_reco…
 [5]
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process
 [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar

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