[Foundation-l] Announcement: Jennifer Riggs leaves Wikimedia

[Samuel Klein]

Thank you for this announcement, though I am sorry to hear it.

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Sue Gardner <susanpgardner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's an example: As you know, we have long wanted to create a
> program making grants to volunteers -- both to chapters and individual
> Wikimedians.  Erik and I launched the chapters grantmaking process prior
> to Jennifer's arrival, but by ourselves we didn't have capacity to put much
> time into it.  When she arrived, Jennifer picked it up and successfully made
> grants to 21 chapters.  We had wanted to expand the program to include
> grants to individuals, which Jennifer would have done. With her leaving,
> three things will happen. 1) The existing chapters grants still need to be
> managed. 2) The launch of individual grants will be delayed. And 3) Our
> longer-term, big-picture thinking about grantmaking will be slower to
> evolve, because it won't benefit from having a person whose primary job
> is thinking about that kind of work.

To this example: are there other ways for long-term big-picture
thinking to evolve?  Not only does this seem like one of many topics
suitable for brainstorming during the strategy planning of the coming
9 months, but Jennifer has recently been discussing on Meta ways to
tap into community interest in being part of grant-finding and
grantmaking.  There is a certain  tradition of the latter -- the
community organized the first technology grant for essential technical
work six years ago.

I expect there are community members with their own ideas and
background in thinking and writing about such work - given the good
example of the early chapters grants model, those interested could
propose a variation suitable for individual grants, for example.

SJ