Grants talk:Index

What would help the Mission Activities Grants have a larger impact on: Participation, Reach, Quality and Credibility?

• I don't think P/Q/R are an effective measure of the success of our mission -- as opposed to, say, Empowerment, Education, and Effectiveness. How about linking back to the Mission itself instead of using this shorthand? -- sj · translate · + 13:30, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• ...

Add Grants: namespace?

To ease with organizing this info, I suggest adding a Grants: namespace. This would make it easier to track new pages and changes (both of which have namespace filters), and reduce the amount of prefix/subpage hackery without polluting the main namespace. Any thoughts about this? Otherwise I'll go ahead and get this set up.--Eloquence 20:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't see any problems that would be created from that, I think you can go ahead and do it. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 21:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Opening to projects at large

I understand the original proposal of the grants program was to finance good projects regardless of chapter mediation. To me, that sounded great both for the proponents and for the chapters themselves. I consider the phrase "we may expand the grants process to volunteers and like-minded organizations" to mean there is an ongoing debate about it happening already this year. Does anyone know what is the current state of opening the grants program and where is this being discussed? Thanks, --Solstag 22:57, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

There hasn't been a lot of discussion about it yet. Even the chapters grants progress has been running on life support (i.e. I'm doing it) and will likely continue to do so until we've filled the Chief Global Program Officer vacancy. To the extent that we have talked about it internally at WMF, what we've said so far is that we'd like to explore ways to fund activities by individual volunteers and other like-minded organizations that are relevant to the mission, while minimizing overhead, scope creep, distortion of volunteer motivations, and risk of waste. We're also very interested in DonorsChoose type approaches of connecting donors directly with important work.

I can try to participate a bit in a discussion here, if you want, and I encourage you to make bold proposals, which can help to energize the conversation and carry it forward.--Eloquence 01:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The DonorsChoose model is a good one for this type of thing for a few reasons: first, it's transparent, when done well. Second, it's a good gauge of the interest in a project by a subset of the community. There are some legal issues around giving money away to volunteers (does that make them contractors? consultants?), I'm sure Mike is thinking about that as well. As a general rule, speaking as an individual and in no capacity for the Foundation, I tend to think that we should find a way to encourage donation to individuals and indirectly affiliated organizations. Like Eloquence said, now's the time for brilliant ideas. Philippe (WMF) 19:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

WM-CZ is going to be late

Hi, as Wikimedia CZ is currently quite overwhelmed with Book World exhibition, we unfortunately won't be able to submit all our projects today. Hopefully we'll manage to post at least few, but we have several more in the works, so I'd like to ask if it would be possible to extend the deadline a bit, which we've been said is possible. So, if you can, please wait :-) Many thanks --che 14:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Grants for new year

Is WMF going to offer some grants for a new year?--Juan de Vojníkov 14:38, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the Index page is out of date, and I'll be fixing it in the coming day. You are welcome to submit new grant requests! Ijon 17:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I see. Thank you!--Juan de Vojníkov 14:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Not funded grants

Hi there. First, let me say that I do like the Grants program, allowing people and unofficial groups outside chapters to get their good ideas funded. What I don't get is the 'Not funded grants' part, as the reasons for the refusal are not public. This can lead to a certain amount of speculation: was the idea rejected because it was crazy/stupid/too much money was asked/not enough people were involved/details were not specified and so on. Lastly, this leaves the impression that WMF did not approve at all of the idea itself or the people proposing it, and that it would be seen as a complete waste of time and money if it was funded in other ways or if someone else tried today to put something similar forward. --Elitre 12:43, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you -- sometimes I'm also eager to know why a certain grant was rejected. --Abbasjnr 20:00, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Certainly, it is valuable information. As announced in my blog post, we are looking to make our grantmaking more transparent. While we would not be making a statement of the form: "The requested is rejected on the grounds of X", we will be having a public discussion about each grant on its Talk page, and it should usually not be difficult to see that rejected grants (from now on) have outstanding issues or unanswered questions. Ijon 22:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

You lost me here. If the request has outstanding issues or unanswered questions, where is the problem in stating "the request is rejected because it has outstanding issues/unanswered questions", saving people's time in otherwise painful and maybe useless researches? --Elitre 14:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Open Space

Hello GAC members, et al., Just suggesting that we should consider having an open space or a page where people are free to suggest ideas/projects and may not necessarily know how to implement them. Or creating a fishbowl where everyone is welcome to beef up an idea into a successful project worth giving a grant. Some people have the ideas, but don't necessarily know how to express them. --Abbasjnr 20:00, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

A good idea! Why don't you help me create one? Perhaps a bakery for half-baked ideas? Ijon 20:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Yo, Asaf. Happy to be a GACer, or a baker, or whatever. Where can an old fella like me find out what actually needs to be done at every point in time? Harel 20:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Open grant submissions are the basic task list of the GAC. Right now, there are very few open submissions, and those have received some comments from the GAC already. You are welcome to review those submissions' talk pages and add thoughts of your own, or, if you're happy with what's already there, await new submissions or significant updates (e.g. more detailed plans; responses to concerns raised by the GAC), which I will generally advise the GAC about via e-mail. Ijon 22:22, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Grants may be submitted in any language provided it is in English?

The criteria on the grants page state that "Grants may be submitted in any language." and a couple of bullet points later that "All applications must be submitted in English." I guess, one of them should be removed or clarified. --Dami 19:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

er, yes, that was silly... Thanks! Ijon 01:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)