TL;DR: Please comment on any or all of the 11 2014-2015 Round 1 proposals from Wikimedia movement organizations to the Annual Plan Grants program from now til 31 October!

Greetings, Wikimedia community:

We are happy to share with you that eleven applicants have submitted proposals in 2014-2015 Round 1 of the Annual Plan Grants (APG) process. These Wikimedia organizations are requesting general funding to support their annual plans, which include both programmatic and operational costs. These eleven requests in Round 1 total about US$5.2 million of US$6 million available in both rounds this year. In November, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) will meet to review and deliberate on these proposals. They will make a recommendation to the WMF Board of Trustees about how to strategically grant funds to these applicants in order to achieve the most impact.

From now until October 31, we invite everyone to review the proposals, and to provide thoughts and ask questions on the discussion pages of the proposals: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/Community/Review.

About community review: The APG proposal submission date on October 1 is followed by a 30-day open comment period, when anyone is invited to provide input on and ask questions about specific proposals on the discussion pages of the proposal forms. Applicants are also expected to respond to input 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 during their deliberations in November as one of many inputs to the decision-making process. While anyone can comment on proposals after the open comment period closes on October 31, the FDC may not be able to take comments made after this period into consideration when making its decisions.

How to join in the review: Please visit the community review page to view the proposals being considered and follow the instructions on that page. The proposals are only available in English, but your comments on the discussion pages can be in your own language.

Why your feedback matters: We hope that this open comment period will add to an in-depth and robust review of each proposal. The community review process also helps make our grantmaking transparent and collaborative. The FDC highly values feedback and insights from the Wikimedia community in making its funding recommendations.

Here are a few milestones to keep in mind with the FDC process:

* Proposal forms submitted: 1 October 2014
* Open comment period / Community review: 2 October 2014, until 31 October 2014
* Staff proposal assessments published: 8 November 2014
* FDC deliberations: 15-18 November 2014
* FDC recommendation published: by 1 December 2014
* Board decision: by 1 January 2015
* Start of new grant terms: 1 January 2015

Visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information for more information about the APG program, the FDC, or the dates listed here. Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about the process. We are always happy to talk! The FDC support staff can be reached at FDCsupport@wikimedia.org

Warm regards,

Katy Love and the FDC staff