Greetings friends,

As you know, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) helps to make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to achieve Wikimedia’s mission, vision, and strategy. [1]. On behalf of the FDC, I am pleased to announce recommendations for Round 2 of funds allocations for the year 2012-13. [2] The WMF Board of Trustees will make a decision on these recommendations by June 1, 2013.

This round, the FDC received proposals from four Wikimedia movement entities for a total requested amount of 1.2 million USD. The FDC and the FDC staff spent significant time reviewing all four proposals. The FDC staff prepared materials for the FDC review, including analysis on finances, grant compliance, and programs and presented an overview of these findings to the FDC. The FDC members asked questions of the entities on-wiki over the four-week community review period and closely followed the community questions and commentary on the proposals. The FDC recently met in Milan for three days (April 22-24, 2013) for an additional in-depth review and deliberation on all proposals. To learn more about the review and deliberation process, please visit the recommendations page.

The FDC would like to thank all the entities that submitted proposals. Submitting a proposal requires a tremendous amount of work. We'd like to recognize the staff and volunteers that put so much time and effort into creating the proposals, liaising with the FDC members and support staff, and answering questions on the proposal page. We appreciate all of their efforts.

We, the FDC, are still learning about the fund-seeking process. For the next few months, we will be reviewing the FDC proposal process, the FDC portal, and all the associated forms. We'd like to hear from you about how you think we can improve (the discussion on this topic started already during our feedback session in Milan, with many great suggestions). We invite you, members of the community to provide feedback about the recommendations and the process by providing feedback about the FDC process on-wiki to the Ombudsperson. [3] The Ombudsperson will collect this feedback and use it in our continuous improvement process.

For formal complaints about the recommendations, there is a separate process that entities should follow. Any entity that would like to submit a complaint about the FDC’s Round 2 recommendation should submit it by 23:59 UTC on 8 May 2013 in accordance with the complaint process outlined in the FDC Framework. The process is as follows: [4]

* The complaint should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word summary directed to the two non-voting WMF Board representatives on the FDC (Jan-Bart and Patricio) * The complaint should be submitted on-wiki, through the FDC portal page designated for this purpose [5] * These board representatives will present the complaint to the WMF Board at the same time it considers the FDC recommendation. * Formal complaints can be submitted only by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking entity. * Formal complaints must be filed within seven days of the submission of the FDC slate of recommendations to the WMF Board (by end of day UTC May 8) * Any planned or approved disbursements to the organization filing a complaint will be put on hold until the complaint is resolved. * If the WMF Board's consideration of the complaint results in an amendment of the FDC's recommendations (which is expected only in extraordinary circumstances), the WMF Board may choose to release extra funds from the WMF reserves to provide additional funds not allocated by the FDC's initial recommendation. * Other members of the WMF Board may participate in the investigation if approved by the Chair of the WMF Board.

Thank you for all of your support over the inaugural year of the FDC's work. We look forward to hearing your feedback.

On behalf of the FDC,

"pundit" Dariusz Jemielniak, (Chair)

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_t...

[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2012-2013_roun...

[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Appeals_regarding_FDC_process/2012...

[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Complaints_regarding_FDC_recommend...

[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Complaints_regarding_FDC_recommend...