[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-

[Sue Gardner]

Fair enough, Brion :-) -- I'm just going to amplify and elaborate a
little on Jennifer's original mail. I think some of this is on the
meta page, but I'll say it here anyway.

The purpose of the chapters grant process is to make money available
to people to get good work done. The basic assumption underpinning it
is that those people know best what they need to make progress towards
our shared goals. They know their culture best, they know their
situation best, and they know best what will help them get stuff done.

Because of that, the intent of the Wikimedia Foundation is to provide
a simple lightweight process for grants approval. Many chapters have
never applied for a grant in any context: they are learning how to do
it, and we want to support that learning. We have an obligation to
apply some scrutiny to their requests (and we do), but we also
acknowledge that we at the Foundation may or may not have any
particular expertise in Portugese culture, or German culture, or
Indian. We don't pretend to be the experts in their specific context.

To that end, we're comfortable applying some scrutiny and finetuning,
which Jennifer has done --- but we do also want to trust them, and to
assume good faith. I am confident that the Portugese grant recipients,
like the other recipients, will put the money to good use. They're
required to report on what they did with it, and we expect that if the
money turns out to be too much, or the need turns out to be somewhat
different than planned, they will tell us so, and we will work out
something sensible that is not wasteful.

Probably some mistakes will be made, and we will learn from that. That
will be unavoidable, and is also a desirable part of the process. Part
of the purpose is to learn -- all of us, together. And that is also
why the process is public: so people other than the Foundation and the
grant recipients, can comment and influence and share and learn.

On the whole, I am confident the money will be well-used, and will
achieve its goal: supporting people in advancing our shared mission,
in ways that make sense in their context.

Thanks,
Sue


On 11/09/2009, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> May I respectfully suggest that further discussion on this thread be
> taken offlist until new arguments come to light which have not already
> been posted?
>
> -- brion
>
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> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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-- 
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell

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