tl;dr:[0] Please join the community review for six annual plan grant
proposals requesting USD $1.5 million in movement funds. Add your questions
and comments to the proposals until April 30!
Hello Wikimedians,
Round 2 of the Annual Plan Grants program [1] is underway, and the
Community Review process is open for your comments and questions. In this
round, six proposals were submitted to the Funds Dissemination Committee,
by the Centre for Internet and Society, Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimédia
France, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Norge, and Wikimedia ZA -- with total
requests of USD $1,531,687. [2] These six proposals, developed based on the
organizations' annual plans, include programmatic and operational costs,
and are requests for general funding.
This year (2014-2015), the FDC has USD $6 million to allocate to movement
organizations to help advance our strategic goals. In Round 1, $3,817,956
was allocated to movement organizations, [3] leaving $2,182,044 for Round
2. In mid-May, the Funds Dissemination Committee will meet face-to-face,
prior to the Wikimedia conference, to deliberate on and then make
recommendations to the WMF Board of Trustees about how to grant funds to
these organizations, in order to achieve mission-related impact.
We invite you and all other community members to review any or all of the
proposals, and to share your thoughts and ask questions on the discussion
pages of the proposals. General questions or comments can also be made in
the General comments section. [4] The community review period lasts until
April 30, 2015. Applicants are also expected to respond to comments and
questions during this period, although they are not able to change the
proposal form itself after the submission date. The FDC will review the
discussion pages and will use the questions and comments as one of their
many inputs into the decision-making process. To join other community
consultations, visit the noticeboard. [5]
You can join in by reviewing the proposals [2] and adding your comments on
the discussion pages. Proposals are available in English, but comments and
questions can be made in any language. As a member of the Wikimedia
community, your review helps make the grantmaking process more transparent,
collaborative and robust. Feedback and questions from the community are an
important input into the proposal review process, and the FDC considers
them seriously.
The major milestones for the rest of this round is as follows: [6]
* Community review: 1 April 2015 - 30 April 2015
* Staff assessments published: 8 May 2015
* FDC deliberations: 12-14 May 2015
* FDC recommendation published: by 1 June 2015
* Appeals or complaints submitted: by 8 June 2015
* Board of Trustees decision: by 1 July 2015
* Start of new grant terms: 1 July 2015
Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about
the process. You can reach the FDC staff at FDCsupport(a)wikimedia.org
Warm regards,
Katy Love
Senior Program Officer
Funds Dissemination Committee
Wikimedia Foundation
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Commu…
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Current_community_consultations
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information#Calendar
Hi Everyone,
2015 is an election year for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees> as well
as for the Funds Dissemination Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee>.
As you may recall the Board has three directly-elected members who serve
for two years. Currently they are Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe>), Samuel Klein (SJ
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sj>) and María Sefidari (Raystorm
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm>). As in the past years we
rely on an effective election committee to coordinate the elections for us
along with staff support and a Board liaison. Not only do they guarantee
that the election is overseen by an independent body, but they also make
sure that the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done is taken care
of. My job, as this year's Board liaison, is to coordinate the formation of
this committee and to support them in their work while serving as the
primary point of contact with the Board regarding the process..
This is a call for volunteers to serve on the election committee. If you
feel that you can contribute to this committee, please email James
Alexander (Jalexander(a)wikimedia.org) and give a small summary of why you
think you would be able to help out with this process.
The Committee is responsible for planning and maintaining virtually every
aspect of the Board election. For example, the Committee plans the type of
voting, suffrage criteria, and criteria for candidacy, helps to draft and
organize all of the official election pages on Meta, verifies that
candidates and voters meet the criteria, audits votes to ensure there are
no duplicate votes or other problems, et cetera. You can expect that this
work will take an average 5-10 hours a week with a few periods of relative
quiet and a few periods of heavy work during and after each election (the
FDC and Board elections are planned to be separate this year).
If you decide to join the committee you will have to identify to the
Wikimedia Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_handbook/email_templates#Notificati…>
because
of the personal information you have access too and must be at least 18
years of age. In addition you cannot be part of the election committee if
you are planning to be a candidate or are planning to support any candidate
publicly.
To ensure we get going as quickly as possible, committee members will start
to be seated as soon as we have 4-5 good candidates with an anticipated
first meeting of Friday April 10th (or soon after, depending on committee
availability). The deadline for volunteers, however, is Friday, April 17th
UTC 12:00.
The committee and staff will be setting up the election pages soon and the
call for candidates, led by a letter from the Board, which will be going
out shortly. If you're interested in running for either the Board or the
FDC, I encourage you to read up on prior elections
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2013>and
the groups themselves to prepare your statements!
Regards,
Alice.
--
Alice Wiegand
Board of Trustees
Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi all,
Today the Wikimedia Foundation published a report on its activities in
calendar year 2014.
This State of the Wikimedia Foundation
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.p…>
report
provides a snapshot view of the Foundation’s major initiatives and
considerations during that period. It also offers a baseline assessment of
key efforts made by internal Foundation departments, with an emphasis on
data-based results, project impact, challenges, and how our work supports
our mission.
Last December, the Wikimedia Foundation entered into the beginning of a
strategy planning exercise. As we progressed, we found people had differing
familiarities with the work, needs, and concerns of other departments --
the proverbial Blind Men and an Elephant.[1] In response, we began pulling
together information as a baseline reference so we would better understand
each others’ work. This report is the outcome of that research.[2]
Although the information in the report was originally gathered in response
to an internal Foundation need, we planned to make it public as a report
from the very beginning. It is intended to be relatively candid, sharing
insight into where teams feel they have strengths and where they feel there
are development areas.
The report also offers the first look at the Foundation’s internal Call to
Action for 2015
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Found…>.
The Call to Action is a set of actions for the 2015 calendar year to focus
the staff of the Foundation on our core functions. These include improving
the processes by which we do our work, building stronger community
relationships, and exploring new ways to expand free knowledge. Terry, our
new COO <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/20/wmf-welcomes-coo/>, will
manage its implementation over the coming year.
Finally, a note: the report is a standalone product designed to aide the
strategy development process, and does not substitute for the Quarterly
Reports, Annual Report, or Annual Plan process. It is scoped only against
the Foundation’s existing workflows in 2014, and not against the work of
the Wikimedia movement overall. We have not committed to making it an
annual exercise.
The full State of the Wikimedia Foundation report is available as a wiki
here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/State_of_the_Wikimedia_Found…>
and as a PDF on Wikimedia Commons here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation.p…>
. You can also find more information in our blog post:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/02/new-wikimedia-foundation-report/.
We hope you find it interesting, and welcome your feedback.
Thanks,
Katherine
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
[2] Thanks to everyone at the Foundation who contributed so much great
information to their various teams sections. And a special thanks to Juliet
Barbara and Heather Walls who wrote and produced the whole thing!
--
Katherine Maher
Chief Communications Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org