Indeed, a start-up grant is the way to go. It will take some time (weeks), and would be a lot easier (for you) once you are a registered NGO with a Wikimedia Kenya bank account, but we can certainly give you some interim funding to support travel costs etc.
What we need, to do this, would be a volunteer to undertake the role of interim treasurer. This means the responsibility of:
1. accepting a wire transfer from the foundation into their personal bank account
2. undertake to disburse (pay) money to WMKE members before scheduled trips, or to reimburse them after said trips.
3. Manage and submit a report on the use of funds -- dates, names, purpose, amounts, receipts (where available -- we realize e.g. matatus don't give receipts).
If a volunteer interim treasurer can be found, we can easily send you an advance on a fuller start-up grant very soon. A full start-up grant would entail a grant request (submitted on Meta), review by our Grant Advisory Committee, and be based on a detailed _plan_ by WMKE for its intended activities.
Cheers,
Asaf
From: Alex Wafula <xelawafs@yahoo.com>
To: "wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org" <wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Kenya] Invitation to Kabarak University
Now
that I think of it, I probably read this somewhere or heard it from
someone; the minimum amount for a grant should be USD 500. I should
probably google this...
As for the number of guys to go, 2 - 3
sounds good. Speaker, Abbas, your knowledge on Wikimedia is pretty good
and well, I haven't heard you give a speech before but I have a gut
feeling you can manage :) so what do you say?
I'd love to hear Asaf's thought regarding the grant. This should cost way below USD 500, more like USD 60 - 70
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Abbas Mahmood
<abbasjnr@hotmail.com> wrote:
Chris is right. Maybe it's also worth asking: who wants to go?, how many people are(or should be) going?, and who will speak*?
What I know of is that chapters usually apply for a start-up grant that helps them off the ground. This start up is aimed at paying the legal fees, registration fees, conferences, logistics, etc. Another option that chapters use is the money collected from membership fees is used to cater for such activities.
Sincerely,
Abbas.
*Asaf and I had an informal chat while he was here and he suggested that we come up with a Speakers List -- which I think is a very good idea. The people on this list should be really good at public speaking: have a fair knowledge of what Wikip|media is; and IMO, are capable of answering questions from an audience satisfactorily. This list would be the first turning point whenever we need a speaker to be deployed at a certain event. Of course, this is just a suggestion -- and is open to refute.
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Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation