[Wikimedia-l] Join the community review of 4 FDC annual plan grant requests!

[Katy Love]

Greetings, Wikimedia community,

I am happy to announce that 2013-2014 Round 1 of the Funds Dissemination
Committee’s (FDC) annual plan grants process has begun! Eleven
Wikimedia-affiliated entities submitted proposals based on their annual
plans (which include programmatic and administrative costs) for funding
requests totaling nearly US$6 million. I want to thank them for their time
and effort in submitting these annual plan grant proposals to the FDC.


We now launch the community review period to help the FDC strategically
allocate movements funds.  From now until October 31, we invite you,
members of the Wikimedia community, to review the proposals, provide
thoughts and ask questions on the discussion pages of the proposals. [1]

More about community review: The FDC proposal submission deadline (October
1) is followed by a 30-day open comment period when community members are
asked to provide input on and ask questions about specific proposals.
During this period, entities that submitted proposals are asked to respond
to input and questions about their proposals on the discussion pages.
Entities are not able to change the proposal itself after the submission
deadline. All community input and entity responses are submitted with the
proposal submitted to the FDC. While the community may comment on proposals
after the open comment period closes on October 31, the FDC may not be able
to take comments made after this period into consideration.

How to join in the review: To take a look at the FDC round 1 proposals,
please visit the community review page [1], which links to the submitted
proposals. While the proposals are unfortunately only available in English,
we hope that the 30 day review period will help address this challenge.
Your comments on the discussion pages do not need to be in English,
however.

*Why your feedback matters: *Community review can help to bring an in-depth
and robust review to each submitted proposal. The FDC seriously values the
input and feedback of the Wikimedia community. Therefore, they ask for your
comments and questions on these proposals in order to consider the
potential impact of movement funds. Also, the community review process
helps to ensure that the grantmaking is a transparent and collaborative
process.


Finally, here are a few milestones to keep in mind with the FDC process
[2]:


   - 2-31 Oct 2013: Community review period of Round 1 proposals
   - 8 Nov 2013: FDC staff assessment of Round 1 proposals published
   - 8 Nov 2013: Letter of Intent deadline for 2013-2014 Round 2
   - 17-21 Nov 2013: FDC face-to-face deliberations on Round 1 proposals
   - 1 Dec 2013: FDC recommendation on Round 1 proposals published
   - 1 Jan 2014: Board decision on FDC's Round 1 recommendations published

Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback on the
process. The FDC support staff can be reached at FDCsupport at wikimedia.org

Warm regards,

Katy Love

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/Community/Review
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Timeline

--
Katy Love
Senior Program Officer, Funds Dissemination Committee
Wikimedia Foundation