The Foundation, and Wikimedia Deutschland, have set up a "participation grants" initiative to fund people going places to do things in the Wikimedia movement. We've already identified giving travel grants of this nature as something we should do in 2012. We've been invited to take part and commit a sum of money towards it, but aren't sure whether we should or not.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Participation
Basically, the advantages we might gain are that it might be simpler (both for us and the applicants) if there was one global grants programme rather than us doing our own thing.
The disadvantage would be that we'd have less direct control over what that element of grant might be spent on, we might need to take on some of the work of deciding on a wider group of grant applications, and also the fact that the dividing line between what the Foundation does and what Chapters do is very unclear at the moment and this might further muddy it.
Does anyone here have a view?
Thanks,
Chris
My understanding is that nobody has suggested that if WM-UK were to give an unrestricted donation to this committee that it would supersede our current practices for offering non-UK grants, such as the grant for GLAMcamp in December.
As well as having little or no control over outcomes or (probably) how they are reported, this represents a move away from allowing our volunteers to assess the suitability of grants (with minimal staff support) to paying chapter and WMF staff to spend their time every week sitting on a funding committee. Though I have asked for an estimate of end to end costs and associated increase or saving on transaction costs the only answer received so far was "negligible" which leads me to suspect there is no plan for WMF or WM-DE staff to book or report on the time they spend every week dealing with the analysis of proposals against the WMF mission (presumably not against the WM-DE mission) or the associated reporting requirements needed for tax and governance purposes.
Though I understand that 3 grants have been given, in addition to any reports by grantees, it is unclear at this point how these grants are openly reported by the PGC though presumably these reports will clarify how the assessment of proposals against the mission was achieved.
My understanding is that as a newly conceived committee, the PGC has yet to publish a stable policy that we could access against, say, Charities Commission guidelines or judge as an effective or efficient use of our charitable funds. I remain unclear as to why the money WM-UK provides to the WMF requires an additional supplement beyond the amount that the WMF has earmarked for the PGC ($25,000) as it would seem more effective to increase our grant to the WMF with the exception that they would in turn increase their grant budget if we feel the money is better placed there rather than the complexity of going through this unproven process.
Until the processes are stable and there is a track record of successful outcomes, donating money to a new committee of this type seems to introduce risk rather than providing any efficiency savings even though there are obvious benefits to chapter staff working in this way with WMF staff.
I have raised some questions at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Participation and I encourage anyone interested to read through the most recent questions and answers there and consider taking part in improving the proposed process.
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
On 1 November 2011 12:48, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
The Foundation, and Wikimedia Deutschland, have set up a "participation grants" initiative to fund people going places to do things in the Wikimedia movement. We've already identified giving travel grants of this nature as something we should do in 2012. We've been invited to take part and commit a sum of money towards it, but aren't sure whether we should or not.
If we want to fund our own choices of global activities, or give grants for UK activities (or UK residents doing things overseas), then we should do so directly. If we want to fund global activities without deciding for ourselves, then we should just include the money in our donation to the WMF and let them get on with it.
As I've mentioned in the discussion on internal-l, this new scheme seems very confused in terms of what the roles of chapters and the WMF are.
Thinking as a member, I would prefer an organisation of which I'm a member to be able to decide on a case-by-case basis what it wants to give grants out for. Thinking as a potential applicant for a grant, I think WMUK's process, at least for microgrants, looks more efficient than deferring to a committe over which WMUK has limited influence. If the WMDE/Foundation initiative is mainly focused on larger grants (ie bigger than thsoe covered by WMUK's microgrants scheme), then there could be benefits to WMUK's participation, and it could be interesting to see what kind of things people are applying for grants for as possible inspiration to Brits. Harry
________________________________ From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 1 November 2011, 13:12 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Should we join in the Foundation grants scheme?
On 1 November 2011 12:48, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
The Foundation, and Wikimedia Deutschland, have set up a "participation grants" initiative to fund people going places to do things in the Wikimedia movement. We've already identified giving travel grants of this nature as something we should do in 2012. We've been invited to take part and commit a sum of money towards it, but aren't sure whether we should or not.
If we want to fund our own choices of global activities, or give grants for UK activities (or UK residents doing things overseas), then we should do so directly. If we want to fund global activities without deciding for ourselves, then we should just include the money in our donation to the WMF and let them get on with it.
As I've mentioned in the discussion on internal-l, this new scheme seems very confused in terms of what the roles of chapters and the WMF are.
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