Hello Wikimedians,
tl;dr: The FDC’s recommendations for this round of the APG grant
requests have now been published at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) meets twice a year to help
make decisions about how to effectively allocate movement funds to
achieve the Wikimedia movement's mission, vision, and strategy. [1] We
met for four days last week in San Francisco to review 11 proposals
submitted for this round of funding. [2]
The committee has now posted our Round 1 2015-2016 recommendations on
the annual plan grants (APG) to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees. [3] The WMF Board representatives to the FDC (Denny
Vrandecic, Jan-Bart de Vreede and Dariusz Jemielniak) will lead the
Board in its review of these recommendations. The WMF Board will
review the recommendations and then make their decision on them before
1 January 2016.
This round, the eleven proposals came from ten chapters and one
thematic organisation, totaling requests of approximately $3.8 million
USD. Ten affiliates were returning to the APG program, and one was a
new applicant. This round, one organisation requested a restricted
grant to support one particular program. All other grant requests were
for general funding.
Before we met for our face-to-face deliberations, the FDC carefully
reviewed all proposals and supporting documentation (e.g., budgets,
plans, strategies) in detail, aided by staff assessments and analysis
on impact, finances, and programs, as well as community comments on
the proposals. The committee had long and intense conversations about
the proposals submitted this round. By listening and carefully
considering all available data, the committee achieved consensus on
all proposal deliberations.
In addition to the above, the FDC has also included a recommendation
about the WMF itself to improve its own level of planning transparency
and budget detail. The WMF staff were not involved in the conception
or writing of this additional recommendation.
For your reference, there is a formal process to submit appeals about
these recommendations or complaints about the FDC process. The
processes for both are outlined below.
Any applicant that wants to appeal the FDC’s recommendation about
their proposal this round should submit it by 23:59 UTC on 8 December
2015 in accordance with the appeal process outlined in the FDC
Framework. A formal appeal to challenge the FDC’s recommendation
should be in the form of a 500-or-fewer word summary. The appeal
should be submitted on-wiki, [4] and must be submitted by the Board
Chair of a funding-seeking applicant.
Complaints about the process can be filed by anyone with the
Ombudsperson, and can be made any time. The complaint should be
submitted on wiki, as well. [5] The ombudsperson will publicly
document the complaint, and investigate as needed.
Please take a look at the upcoming calendar [6] to learn about other
upcoming milestones in the APG program.
Again, we offer our sincere thanks to the 11 organisations who
submitted annual plan grant proposals to the FDC this round.
On behalf of the FDC,
Matanya Moses (FDC chair), User:Matanya
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016_round1
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Appeals_to_the_Board_on_the_reco…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Complaints_about_the_FDC_process
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Calendar