Grants talk:IEG/Procedures

Further suggested changes and copyediting

• Change the "Renewals" heading to "Renewals and expansions"
• Put "Committee members are requested to give input, either privately or on the renewal page." after "Grantee notifies community of renewal request, to elicit comments."
• Have a 10 day community and IEGCom public question and comment period after the grantee post notices to community pages and email lists with links to the notices.
• Have a 7 day period for IEGCom private discussion and internal review. Public discussion may continue.
• After the 7 day internal review a summary of the IEGCom decision and discussion will be posted by an IEGCom bureaucrat or administrator to the talk page of the new grant request.
• After the IEGCom decision is announced "WMF finalizes renewals decision after reviewing community and committee input, and works with grantees to setup new grant agreements. New grant agreements will be finalized no more than 2 months after the original grant period's end date."

--Pine^✉ 06:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pine, thanks for working on this!

• Renewals are what WMF calls this kind of grant. What would you think about this sentence instead (adding to page, for trying on): "WIth good rationale, these renewals may include an updated or expanded scope and budget to the cap of $30,000, and should include updated measures of success for the second 6 months." Other changes/additions along these lines?
• Switched order, done!

As for the rest, I don't see how we can have 17 days for comment and discussion, and still give a decision w/in 2 months of the project's end, with everything there is to do before and afterwards. And I'd like us to keep projects going; stalls of months seem like they could be costly for some projects. Can the committee hold discussion internally at the same time as the 10-day public comment period (during that period, we can surface the requests on the IEG program pages), and just share their thoughts individually and publicly on the proposal talk pages as they go? If at the end of 10 days, you'd still like to make a group statement, that would be fine, but it seems like it would be most useful for these grantees and WMF decision-makers to hear personally from committee members (as the GAC does, for example), rather than just as an impersonal, bureaucratic body. I see the grantee in these cases as an investment that merits a higher level of touch than proposers, and individual perspectives may be the most nimble, nuanced and helpful for all parties. Thoughts?Siko (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• I'm hoping that grantees request extensions at least a month before their original grant periods are scheduled to end so 17 days seems reasonable. If the grantee starts writing an extension request a month before their grant ends that gives them 13 days to write the request and the review process 17 days to complete. WMF can be working on its review process at the same time that the community and the Committee are reviewing the request. If this is done I think there should be little or no funding gap. If a grantee is late in requesting an extension a funding gap may happen, so grantees should be encouraged to request extensions at least a month before their original funding period ends. Review processes can happen in parallel to some extent but I oppose rushing them.
• I am in favor of the Committee acting as a group with consensus to make a decision. If members want to make individual comments they can do to that also, and I am in favor of encouraging that but not as a substitute for a group consensus decision. --Pine^✉ 07:39, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

We do not have enough data from a project at 5 months presently for the grantee or staff to make a decision about a renewal, Pine. At 5 months, every grantee I see is in the thick of their project still, and they without exception have their hands full just getting their project done. At 6 months, they're just barely wrapping up, and their 30 days-post project for reporting allows just enough time to reflect and collect measures of success (in many cases, this includes community surveys, discussion, etc too, which as you know takes time). For any of the projects we'd consider from round 1, we'd not have had enough info to make good decisions until month 7, and I expect that to be a common trend. I don't think that rushing a project and its outcomes in order to jumpstart a renewal is the most reasonable solution. Other ideas? Siko (WMF) (talk) 07:57, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it may be useful to hear from IEGcom members who also have experience serving on the GAC, in this discussion. Ilario, Mile, and Steven - can any of you gentlemen share some thoughts based on how you've experienced GAC's inputs to grant proposals working out? What I'm proposing seems like a method that works quite well for the GAC and their grantees - and the reason I'm thinking of GAC as a suitable model here is that, like with IEG renewals, GAC is looking at grants on a rolling 1-by-1 basis in a timely manner. In this model, community and committee members are all invited to give comments directly on-wiki for a given time period , and staff takes this input to make a final decision. This seems appropriate for our renewals process, both in terms of a need for rolling, time sensitive processing, and in alignment with the framework we started this program from, in which IEGcom serves as a body of extra-invested and experienced community members who awesomely volunteer their time to give inputs to WMF, with WMF at the end of the day being the one to take on both risk and responsibility as final grant approvers. I can why private deliberations and group consensus pronouncements may be useful at some points in the IEG process, but I don't know why that would be the most useful or efficient strategy here. Does the committee have any special private knowledge or privilege (something which isn't appropriate to release in grantee reports or on-wiki discussion) that requires a more formal or secretive group deliberation in this stage? Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

There are benefits from more transparency. I am want to make sure that there is a consensus recommendation and that we have enough time for the community and the committee to look at a grant thoughtfully. For first round decisions we are using a closed process for coming to a consensus and with Ocaasi's current renewal we are doing the same but in the future I think having public discussion of renewals is ok but I suggest asking other IEGCom people how they feel about that. It would be good to hear from the GAC members. --Pine^✉ 20:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

GAC I think has the benefit of time, because there is no hard-coded cut off deadline, the GAC can give feedback on proposals, applicants can make changes based on feedback and then after we have given our final input, grantmaking staff makes a decision. I think it could work for renewals, but not for new applications. Steven Zhang (talk) 11:06, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Steven! And to be clear: this discussion is specifically focused on the renewals process, not changing anything for new applications. Although I think IEG proposals would indeed still benefit from more committee members giving early feedback on-wiki, which we do indeed see drives applicants to make good updates to their proposals before decisions are made, let's separate the case of new applications from the issue at hand. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko, sorry for my late reply. For GAC there is a different approach as Steven says. The approach of GAC is a "wikipedia-like" vision but the proposals are more or less proposals of communities and there are several people to have interaction (a proposal have several applicants). Anyway I appreciate a lot the IEG workflow for new applications and in my opinion it works very well because for GAC is more a proposal of a community to the community, the IEG is an individual. The main risk to avoid is to create around the IEG the feeling that there is "something personal", so I suggest to keep the IEG process more private and to defend the privacy of the individual also for the renewal. What I suggest is to give to the IEG committee the possibility to choose when a discussion may become public and the possibility to keep it private if there are some "private" points to discuss, may be also the concerns that some applicant is no able to produce the expected results. We have to consider that when a discussion becomes public it becomes public to the world. --Ilario (talk) 10:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ilario! I think your point about individuals in some ways being more vulnerable than the groups going through GAC is an interesting one - thanks for bringing it up. In light of this, I do think it makes sense that the committee should still be allowed to keep a channel for private discussion for renewals - we'd not get rid of the mailing list option. I'd still hope, though, that the committee could use the 10 day community comments period to hold their discussion wherever they see fit (on the proposal, or on the mailing list), and at the end of that 10-day period, they should give input to WMF staff so that the final decision can still be made in a timely manner. Do people think we can try this, and see how well it works, before we go down the path of adding more time to the process? Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Renewal and initial proposal

I guess that some proposers might present their proposals differently if they knew they had an option of a renewal, while not all of them were aware of that possibility. For future rounds, I would suggest clearly presenting possibility of renewals, and ask proposers indicate in the beginning whether they might go for a renewal or not (with a rough plan for that extended part of the project, if they have any). I have some sense that although renewal requests might not fully be ready for review until the end of the (first) period for most of grantees, their intention for a renewal and potential for it should typically be clear in the earlier point in time. If we are to allow renewals with a sizable fund request (which could be as large as $15,000, for example) with less scrutiny than regular proposals, then it should naturally be an option for proposers to first request a modest fund and leave more ambitious fund and part of the project for a renewal. This style could be nice in that in the renewal stage proposers could use accomplishments already there to convince, than wrapping up everything into the first proposal, and the same goes for those who review. However, in fairness, we should then work with initial proposals a bit differently; I think we should be, where appropriate, letting know proposers that they can make renewals later, and that they have an option to split their proposals into two stages. While acknowledging possible increase of complexity, this could work nicely with some types of proposals - i.e. "it has a lot of potential, but we cannot recommend with confidence because it looks too ambitious for a 6-month project and there are too much uncertainty". Of course, a proposal should be clearly separated from the renewal so that it can be reviewed independently, though. whym (talk) 10:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

+1 to the point that renewals need to be surfaced more clearly and earlier in the process, as we iterate :) What we've got displayed so far and what we discuss in monthly check-ins with them isn't yet enough, but based on what we're learning from the first set we'll now be able to build in a better workflow, template, surfacing, etc for these requests - hooray!

+1 also that renewal requests can, should (and in fact do) build on a grantee's accomplishments and the proposal from the first 6 months, and will often take on more ambitious matters once the first 6 month's activities have been proven.

I'd be very much worried, though about going down the road of having proposers build a second 6 months into their plans from the very beginning, or before they've had adequate time to reflect on their first 6 months (even if the details requested were lightweight). Perhaps I don't yet understand what you're suggesting, but I'd not be sure of how much benefit we'd gain by adding more complexity to what is already probably more complex than any individual would like, and I think it is critical that we put grantee needs first as much as possible. We already have individuals who feel that the process is hard, and one of the strengths of IEG to date has been that grantees feel this program is reasonably straightforward compared to other grants processes they've experienced. Preplanning for an entire year of a risky idea is really difficult (I'd seldom agree to do it for any of the pilots I've run myself) and what I've learned from working closely with each of our grantees so far is that they've got a lot of ideas that they need to test and learn more about before they can plan very far into the future, and 6 months already feels like a long time for most of them. If we were aiming to fund experienced professionals, I might shift my thinking. But I don't want to live in a world where IEG becomes so complex that our process favors experienced project managers and grant writers over awesome young Wikipedians with big dreams and new ideas (who as grantees can be taught those more boring and professional skills along the way).

Whym, one way I can think of to get a bit closer to what you're suggesting without increasing the burden on grantees is to add a simple yes/no question to the midpoint report which asks them if they're considering requesting a renewal at the end of their project. Might this give the committee some of the additional heads up you're looking for? We'll also be including more info about renewals in the IEG program pages, for new proposers to see. And the committee is always most welcome to suggest to proposers that they reduce scope in their initial proposal, raising the possibility of an additional 6 months without over-promising before impact and need is demonstrated (this will be easiest to do if members take more time to directly comment on proposals, of course!). Curious to hear if this would meet the needs you're seeing. Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed to that asking for a complete one-year plan in the beginning would be too much. My main point was asking proposers (and thus letting know of the possibility of) intent of renewal in the earlier point in time. The intent can be yes/no, more or less, and can be reconsidered later after seeing how the project goes. The timing of the midpoint report sounds fine to me. I was more concerned about ensuring fair opportunity, and as you mentioned, allowing the committee and community to prepare for a more critical review of midpoint reports and final reports. whym (talk) 23:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, let's try this, and see how it works for the next round! Thanks, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Just noting that we've now got a new continuation section up on the main IEG page, with better info about renewals. And the new question/creation flow is included in the midpoint and final reporting templates too :) Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 14 February 2014 (UTC)