On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Erik, there are cases in which this is clearly
the right thing
for us to do.
1) An annual 'supporting the ecosystem' program, that channels grants
and visibility to important partners, seems interesting. Could this
be implemented as a targeted grants program? Or just targeted
outreach encouraging groups to apply for existing programs?
I wouldn't call it 'giving back' -- that seems to minimize the way in
which this is integral to our work. (I see almost no difference, from
the perspective of our mission, between supporting OSM or Wikieducator
and supporting Wikiversity).
However we should be clear that this is where some of our resources
go, and update related messaging; or raise funds specifically for
those goals with their own campaigns.
Yeah - it seems pretty complex to get right, and I don't want to
shovel work onto our fundraising team's very full plate, or distract
from our main fundraising efforts.
There are some interesting models to study at least. I like what the
Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing with its flexible, permanent
fundraiser for projects related to anonymity/privacy, which seems to
be inspired by the Humble Bundle UI:
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/
2) We need a free toolchain that we can build upon and
digitize /
gather / curate / format / publish knowledge with. There are
currently major gaps in this toolchain -- core projects and
collaborations rely on non-free tools or non-free hosted service.
Every time we use or work to interoperate with such tools and
services, we should also support replacing them with free ones. (That
support can include everything from publicity and matchmaking to
in-kind support to funds)
So we should be supporting, in some fashion: free formats; free
fonts; free tools for annotation, real-time text collaboration,
spreadsheet editing, media editing; the ecosystem needed to support
free media codecs. We should be framing and broadcasting to the FK
ans FOSS world where the biggest gaps lie and what needs to be done.
I agree, and this seems more straightforward to integrate with
existing grantmaking practices. In fact we've seen a few "toolchain"
related grant applicants lately, such as the ShareMap proposal (which
was turned down, in significant part because it's very Flash-based):
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/ShareMap
But the scope of the project is not such that, if I was (say) a
contributor to Blender, I would apply for funding through it.
Focusing on grantmaking that directly supports content contributors
might be a good area to hone in on, while deferring the larger
sponsorship question for now.
3) Many projects that we rely on run on a very small
budget, but may
need specific skills. I would separate how we think about supporting
this sort of work, from how we think about supporting larger projects
such as CC and OSM.
Sure - we do in fact do a lot of the non-financial stuff (upstream
code contributions, legal or other advice, providing space for
meetups, etc.).
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation