[Wikimedia-l] WMF grants for individuals

[Siko Bouterse]

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:42 PM,
<sgardner at wikimedia.org<wikimedia-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org>
> wrote:

>
> > Anasuya will be responsible for running all grantmaking processes (for
> > both individuals and entities) and for helping movement entities, like
> > chapters and thematic organizations, to develop and mature. Reporting
> > to Anasuya will be Asaf Bartov, Jessie Wild, Oona Castro and Siko
> > Bouterse, as well as a Senior Program Officer for the FDC (a new
> > position that will be filled within the next month or so).
> > * The Senior Program Officer will be responsible for facilitating the
> > FDC process, which recommends funding allocations for the largest and
> > wealthiest Wikimedia organizations such as Wikimedia Germany and
> > Wikimedia France.
> > * Asaf continues to be responsible for the Wikimedia Grants Program,
> > supporting younger, smaller Wikimedia organizations like Wikimedia
> > Venezuela and Wikimedia Mexico, and for finding non-Wikimedia
> > organizations that we can fund to carry out good programmatic
> > activities in developing countries, particularly where there are no
> > chapters.
> > * Jessie will be responsible for evaluation and learning for all our
> > grantmaking --- both helping us internally optimize our processes, and
> > helping us and the grant recipients assess organizations? development
> > (for Anasuya) and the impact of the programs funded by movement
> > dollars (for Frank).
> > * Oona will continue to run the Brazil program. Consistent with the
> > Narrowing Focus plan, she is actively seeking a partner to continue
> > the work in Brazil within a grants structure similar to the one we
> > recently negotiated with CIS in India.
> > * Siko is taking over responsibility from Asaf for all funding for
> > individuals. This will make it possible for us to grow our individual
> > grant-making, and it will also free up Asaf to do more small
> > organization development. Siko will also be responsible for
> > documentation and analysis of all grants except the ones funded by the
> > FDC. It?s important for us to grow grantmaking to individuals because
> > individuals create 99% of the value in the projects. They do it with
> > practically no funding, but in some cases a little money will be able
> > to make something great happen.
>

Hi all,
As Sue mentioned, we're looking at growing WMF's grant-making to
individuals.  This allows us to accomplish the goals of narrowing focus (on
WMF's capacity as grant-makers, in this case), while finding new ways to
support projects led by individual community members. Some more specifics
are on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Individual_Engagement_Grants
Please share your thoughts on-wiki if possible.
Thanks!

-- 
Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse at wikimedia.org

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