[Foundation-l] Grants -- a proposal

[Angela]

On 19/06/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their
> donation. That is to say, they will have the ability to specify where they want
> their money to go. In that case, one donor may give specifically for servers,
> while another donor may give specifically to promote a language, print a
> particular wikibook, or whatever.

Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English
Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages
simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all
their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's
wider goals?

It might make more sense to say we will spend grant money on certain
projects, but I'm not yet convinced it makes sense for all donations
to have to go towards specific tasks in this way.

>     3.  People involved in specific projects will  naturally assume the
> responsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to  fill leadership positions

I'm not sure how the topic of donations is related to this, nor
whether having "Project Heads" is needed.

On 19/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This proposal helps the board to take decisions according to the
> community wishes and at the same time, it allows editors to support
> certain projects rather than others. 

Would community wishes be reflected by this though? Many donors are
not members of the community, or not the editing community anyway, and
vice versa. What if a large donor puts all their money towards a
project that is not supported by the community? How could that be
dealt with?

Angela.