Hello, Wikimedians,

As part of the proposal review for the annual plan grants program, the staff proposal assessments have now been posted on Meta for all proposals in 2014-2015 Round 2. The proposal assessments are each linked to from the "Proposals" page for this round. [1]

As background, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations to the Board of Trustees about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds in the form of annual plan grants to support organizations overall annual plan to achieve mission objectives. Visit the Annual Plan Grants (APG) portal on Meta for more information about the committee and the process. [2]

These staff proposal assessments are an input into the FDC's decision-making process. With this round's assessments, the FDC staff have included a more detailed explanation of our methodology. The form was refined after the first two years of the FDC process, consists of three parts: (1) Overview, including a financial summary and a summary of strengths and concerns; (2) Staff proposal assessment narrative, including a nuanced analysis of the programs, context, and the feasibility of each plan; and (3) Staff proposal assessment rubric, assessing each proposal across three dimensions by identifying areas of strength and concern. More about the rubric is here. [3]

The assessments reflect the work of FDC staff who read the proposals, review past and current reports, receive internal input from WMF finance, education, learning and evaluation, legal, and community resources teams, and consider a portfolio view across all proposals in this round. These assessments do not reflect the analysis or views of the FDC or any of its individual members.

What's next: The FDC will meet from 12 May to 14 May in Berlin to deliberate on these proposals, and will consider these staff proposal assessments along with other inputs into the FDC process. For more information about the purpose of these assessments and how they fit into the FDC process overall, see the FDC's Framework. [4] They will make their recommendations to the Board of Trustees of the WMF on 1 June 2015, and the Board will make its decision about these recommendations by 1 July 2015. For more about the upcoming milestones, please visit the APG calendar. [5]

We welcome discussion about individual assessments on the discussion page of each assessment, or discussion about the process overall on the portal. [6] We also thank all the organizations who have applied for funding this round, for their proposals and annual plans.

Warmly, Katy Love

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2 [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Staff_proposal_assessment_form#St... [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_t... [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Comments