Hello Wikimedians,

tl;dr: The FDC’s recommendations for this round of the APG grant requests have now been published at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/20...

The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to achieve the Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] We met for four days last week in San Francisco to review 11 proposals submitted for this round of funding. [2]

The committee has now posted our Round 1 2015-2016 recommendations on the annual plan grants (APG) to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. [3] The WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Denny Vrandecic, Jan-Bart de Vreede and Dariusz Jemielniak) will lead the Board in its review of these recommendations. The WMF Board will review the recommendations and then make their decision on them before 1 January 2016.

This round, the eleven proposals came from ten chapters and one thematic organisation, totaling requests of approximately $3.8 million USD. Ten affiliates were returning to the APG program, and one was a new applicant. This round, one organisation requested a restricted grant to support one particular program. All other grant requests were for general funding.

Before we met for our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC carefully reviewed all proposals and supporting documentation (e.g., budgets, plans, strategies) in detail, aided by staff assessments and analysis on impact, finances, and programs, as well as community comments on the proposals. The committee had long and intense conversations about the proposals submitted this round. By listening and carefully considering all available data, the committee achieved consensus on all proposal deliberations.

In addition to the above, the FDC has also included a recommendation about the WMF itself to improve its own level of planning transparency and budget detail. The WMF staff were not involved in the conception or writing of this additional recommendation.

For your reference, there is a formal process to submit appeals about these recommendations or complaints about the FDC process. The processes for both are outlined below.

Any applicant that wants to appeal the FDC’s recommendation about their proposal this round should submit it by 23:59 UTC on 8 December 2015 in accordance with the appeal process outlined in the FDC Framework. A formal appeal to challenge the FDC’s recommendation should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word summary. The appeal should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and must be submitted by the Board Chair of a funding-seeking applicant.

Complaints about the process can be filed by anyone with the Ombudsperson, and can be made any time. The complaint should be submitted on wiki, as well. [5] The ombudsperson will publicly document the complaint, and investigate as needed.

Please take a look at the upcoming calendar [6] to learn about other upcoming milestones in the APG program.

Again, we offer our sincere thanks to the 11 organisations who submitted annual plan grant proposals to the FDC this round.

On behalf of the FDC,

Matanya Moses (FDC chair), User:Matanya

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016_round1 [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/20... [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_recom... [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar