[Foundation-l] Grant agreements

[MZMcBride]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> Oh. I can speak to this, at least a little. The Wikimedia Foundation has a
> policy of publishing our grant applications when the grantmaking institution
> is okay with it. We don't do a lot of grant applications, and of the ones we
> do, I am guesstimating that two-thirds of the grantmakers have said it's
> fine with them for us to publish, and about a third have asked us not to.
> Some grantmaking institutions are very happy to publish, because they
> believe the sector as a whole benefits from transparency about how things
> work. (IIRC Hewlett is an example of that.)
> 
> I do not know where they get published: I'll ask.
> 
> But, some of the grant we receive are unsolicited gifts, in which case there
> is no application, and nothing to publish. I think for example that our
> recent grant from the Indigo Trust in the UK is an example of that.
> 
> I assume, MZ, that you're mostly interested in the Stanton grant, and I
> don't remember their position on this issue. I do know they're not
> publicity-seeking, and they don't welcome grant applications that they
> haven't solicited. So they might be an example of a foundation that doesn't
> want its agreements publicized: I don't remember.
> 
> We can find out :-)

That would be great. Thanks. :-)

It's mostly the large grants that I'm interested in, the ones that have the
power to shape a significant portion of Wikimedia's short-term future.
Personally, the applications (assuming there are any) are completely
unimportant to me. I can't imagine they're much more than "we'd like X money
to fulfill Y portions of our mission", though perhaps I'm wrong. But the
grant agreements ("we'll give you X money over Y months to do Z") are the
piece that has me curious.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. There's no rush on this, but I'd
most certainly appreciate it if you could take a look or ask someone to.

(There also doesn't seem to be too much about the grants process on
wikimediafoundation.org currently, so I'll look into improving that next
week. Even a primer on the difference between grants Wikimedia
solicits/receives and the grants Wikimedia administers/doles out would be
cool.)

MZMcBride