[Foundation-l] Chapter wikimania scholarships Was: Money, politics and corruption

[Bence Damokos]

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias at gmail.com>wrote:

> Perhaps in future (for say, Haifa) it would be an idea if any chapter-based
> scholarships were put on hold until after the Foundation makes its choices?
> That way the systems could mesh, with people who don't quite meet the
> Foundation requirements/do but oh dear, we've already used up all our
> scholarships being forwarded to the chapter for its decision.
>

Just a quick note on scholarships and chapters:
Wikimedia Hungary applied for a government grant to send people to Wikimania
and we have just today received the news that we have won about €850, which
would have covered the costs of about 5 people (originally we asked for
€1160). With this unfortunate timing there were only 4 people from Hungary
(2 and a half of them got funding from the WMF, their employer and the
organisers) so we can't really utilize this grant.

There are some lessons in it for us (we could shoulder some of the costs
anticipating a successful grant application and accepting the risk
associated with not being successful or being less successful than planned
for).
 It also helps a little that the Haifa Wikimania will be in August, which
gives us an extra month and a chance to get at least the results – if not
the grant money itself – before the conference.

For a successful grant application and in order to induce more participants
to go it is also helpful if cost and schedule information are available
early on (a budget has to be submitted for the grant, people need to plan
their summer accordingly and a schedule helps convince people that they
should go to Wikimania for the program as well – not only the nice other
people they can meet – and it helps in drafting the grant).


Best regards,
Bence Damokos