[Wikimedia-l] The launch of the FDC portal, and Round 1 of the FDC proposal process

[Anasuya Sengupta]

Dear Wikimedia Community,

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Funds Dissemination Committee
(FDC) portal [1] today (August 1, 2012 PDT). The FDC Proposal form is
available for all eligible entities to use immediately, and can be created
by going to the main portal page and starting at the “I am ready to begin”
section. (For some guidelines, see here [2] for a sample proposal.) The
deadline for finalised proposals in Round 1 of the FDC process is October
1, 2012.

As all of you know, the Eligibility Status [3] and Eligibility Checklist
[4] tables - laying out current eligibility and compliance requirements for
the FDC process - were shared with the community last week. Based on this,
chapters/entities interested in applying for Round 1 of the FDC process
should work to close their eligibility gaps, and contact Garfield Byrd (WMF
Chief of Finance and Administration) for any clarifications.

We have done our best to design the portal to be as accessible and
informative as possible. Some aspects of the portal are still being built;
we ask for your patience as we finalise these. Once the members of the FDC
are nominated by the Board in early September 2012, the portal will also
introduce you to the new FDC and the Ombudsperson, as well as the two
non-voting Board members serving as observers on the FDC.

We welcome comments and suggestions from the community to improve the FDC
portal and the information it contains! We request that you leave
suggestions for changes on the page for Questions to FDC support staff [5],
or on related Talk/Discussion pages. We want to avoid too many changes on
those pages in the short term, to minimize confusion for entities sending
proposals to the FDC.

In particular, we hope that all chapters/entities that would like to apply
for FDC funds will be in touch with us <FDCsupport at wikimedia.org> to let us
know of any suggestions or concerns they may have during this process.

Warmly,
Anasuya Sengupta
(Director of Global Learning and Grantmaking, WMF; lead for the FDC support
team)

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Example/Proposal_form
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/2012_Round_1_Eligibility_Status
[4]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/2012_Round_1_Eligibility_Checklist
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Questions_for_FDC_staff