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 ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 6:52 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2018-05-02 1:51 GMT+03:00 Woubzena Jifar <wjifar(a)wikimedia.org>rg>: Woubzena, there used to be a time when the promise of the Rapid grants was that they would be reviewed weekly. I understand this is no longer possible, even if the wording is still present on meta. Does the new rule imply a promise from the WMF that the grants will be granted or refused withing the same calendar month? Regards, Strainu

Hello Fae, Thank you for sharing your experience with micro-grants and offering an experimental and responsive procedure. It's definitely a good model to consider. As we enter our planning year for the strategic direction our team will be soliciting ideas from the community and looking at different approaches. I will be sure to keep your suggestion in this consideration as we move forward. Best regards, Woubzena Woubzena Jifar Program Officer Rapid Grants Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home> User: WJifar (WMF) On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Fæ &lt;faewik(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Hi Woubzena, Thank you for your comments. I agree that it is a good idea for staff to reflect on the Rapid Grants program and how it might evolve to better serve the needs of grantees. Also, I understand that WMF might have a backlog of grants in process and that WMF may wants to pause accepting more of these grant requests while the backlog is reduced. However, pausing the program for six weeks seems like a high price to pay, especially for a program with the name "Rapid Grants" which implies short turnaround times. I hope that considerations during this period of reflection include how to make the process more efficient in terms of WMF staff time, and how to staff the program adequately so that the program is continuous in the future. Continuity of operations is valuable in many organizations, even when important staff people become unavailable for planned or unplanned reasons, and I hope that WMF will make every reasonable effort to ensure that the Rapid Grants program is continuously operational after this pause regardless of future unavailability of the regular program staff. One way to improve the continuity of operations for this program could be to cross-train staff who could be reassigned to this program if a need arose. I understand that $500+ grants might seem to be more efficient uses of resources than grants of lower amounts, but I am concerned about initiatives with costs less than $500 potentially being unfunded after this change, for example a request for $100 to rent a display projector for an edit-a-thon. Also, the $500 floor creates an undesirable incentive for potential grantees to increase the amount of money that they request for the purpose of meeting the floor. And while I agree that the ratio of administrative expenses to the impact of grants under $500 is worth considering, I think that the potential for individual Wikimedians to be required to pay expenses from their personal funds if they want to run programs that cost under $500 (and not inflate their requests to meet the $500 floor) is problematic. For the changes that you outlined for this program, I am less concerned about the costs of WMF staff time and more concerned about adverse impacts to small programs (particularly small programs with potential to grow), the potential adverse impacts to individual Wikimedians, and the potential for artificial inflation of amounts for grant requests. Regarding the process through which WMF made the decision to implement these experiments, I think that these experiments should have been proposed by WMF to the community, and that at a minimum WMF should have run a two week consultation before implementing these changes. I think that the best that can be done at this point is to hope that these experiments produce valuable data, that the benefits will outweigh the adverse impacts, and that WMF staff's time for reflections will yield valuable ideas. I encourage WMF to consider how to mitigate the potential adverse impacts of the $500 floor and the limited windows for applications each month. I hope that WMF will produce a report regarding the results of these experiments, and that after the six week pause WMF will consult the community before making any further changes to the program. Thank you, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 3:51 PM, Woubzena Jifar &lt;wjifar(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

I'm also concerned about the implementation of these new rules - especially in the context of the upcoming Wiki Loves Monuments round. If implemented without change or exceptions, the implications could be tricky. The combination of dates and timelines effectively reduces the time window to apply for rapid grants to about 2 weeks for Wiki Loves Monuments this year: 1-15 July (new submissions should not be made less than a month before the event). It removes all possibility for prospective grantees to get feedback on ideas or get help with their application during Wikimania. These months are precious in the context of organizing Wiki Loves Monuments. I hope that the team can fulfill their commitment to respond rapidly indeed - but given the altered timeline, I fear a large influx of proposals in a short period of time; a recipe that typically leads to delays. Especially as no doubt Wikimania will require travel, cause delays by itself, and the strategy taking time too. I'm less concerned about the practical implications of the $500 limit: I guess I'll just be advising people to increase their programs to match the threshold (e.g. find something to spend money on: adapt the needs to what you can ask for), even though in the past I have always had the opposite approach: only ask what you need. What's perhaps most concerning, is that this change to day to day operations are such that they result in less effective empowerment of community members. It's painful. Given the cumulation of these measures, it feels like the community empowerment will have to pay a significant cost for developing a strategy. Surely, someone has to give: I just hope this is not a set of choices/trend that continues in the strategy itself. Best, Lodewijk On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 1:10 AM, Laurentius &lt;laurentius.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: