Thanks a lot for the replies, Anasuya and Jessie. It will be interesting to see the evolution and impact of WMF grantmaking in the months and years ahead.
Pine > Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 15:43:15 -0700 > From: Anasuya Sengupta <[email protected]> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Comments on compliance and the FDC Round 2 > decisions > Message-ID: > <CAKK0PRxtmW8tyq=O_bCyCA696H8ObvCtgBTm==4wfpoeth3...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Hi Pine, > > My apologies for the tardiness of this reply; I've been away in India with > family and am only just back. > > It's an important question to ask, because the Grantmaking team's programs > - including the FDC process - have and are being set up with a strong > self-evaluation component. We exist to support our movement through grants > and shared knowledge as key resources, and we can only do this well if > we're good at listening and learning ourselves. > > Overall, we're looking at multiple feedback mechanisms (including surveys > and discussion groups at conferences like WMConf, Wikimania). As an > example, we did a survey of the FDC Round 1 process which we shared in > Milan, and used as a way to get more face-to-face feedback. This helps us > know both broad and specific areas that we need to improve on and to do so > quickly and appropriately. One thing to keep in mind with grantmaking > programs is that process feedback is easily and quickly incorporated (like > wiki-tables that made life miserable for FDC Round 1 applicants and we > could improve for Round 2 applicants). However, substantive feedback (like > the nature of questions, or entirely new sections of inquiry) need to be > incorporated at the end of the year for the new year, so that the nature of > the proposal doesn't change dramatically over the year, or from one round > to the next: it's not fair on either the new folks applying, or the > committee reviewing the proposals. We intend to do surveys of all our major > grantmaking programs over the next few months, so that we have a good > baseline against which to measure our progress as a team. > > Again, it's useful to remember that our proposal processes might seem > 'heavy' to many in the movement, but they're pretty light-weight (with the > possible exception of wiki-tables) in comparison to other grantmaking > processes that are far more demanding for far smaller grant amounts. As a > comparison, in the human rights and social justice grantmaking world, most > grants are in the range of 5,000-50,000 USD. > > For the FDC in particular, the FDC Advisory Group will assess the first > year, and towards the end of the second year (March 2014), give the Board a > recommendation on whether the mechanism works (or not) and should continue > (or not). The FDC Ombudsperson also gives an annual report which is > independent and autonomous on the FDC process.[1] With these various > inputs, the staff and FDC will create a report for Year 1 which we hope > will be shared back with the community at Wikimania. > > Other forms of external or independent assessments will also be part of our > process: Kevin Gorman's retrospective of the grants program so far, for > instance, was really useful and we've already incorporated several of his > recommendations.[2] With the Program Evaluation team, we're also going to > get much better at sharing the good and best practices that already exist > in the movement, and at pointing out work that's relevant from other > movements. > > Finally, we're planning some internal and external research to better > provide guidance to grant applicants on issues like potential growth > trajectories and useful ways of thinking about moving from entirely > volunteer to staffed groups. We're obviously not working on this in > isolation - there has already been some good thinking within the movement > on this - and we'd be glad to be in conversation with anyone who wants to > work with us on these issues. > > The Grantmaking team is a work in progress - we didn't exist in our present > form last year, we've essentially restructured and reconfigured ourselves > over the past few months, set up the FDC and IEG processes, and learnt > rapidly about what works (and what might not) - and we're always open to > feedback. If people are uncertain about who to reach out to, please do get > in touch with me: as the person who heads the Grantmaking team, (some > element of) the buck does stop with me. :-) > > thanks, > Anasuya > > [1] > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC#FDC_Ombudsperson > [2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Retrospective_2009-2012 > > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
