Hi, As far as I know, grants are typically given for projects that are beneficial to the general public but not immediately profit-makers. You can target an area where there's money - like accessibility, research in the internet, open government/citizenship and perhaps education. I'm short on ideas for many of these fields, but perhaps there are legs to exploring them?
Some ideas I have are: Accessibility: * Perfect a free software eye tracker program like OpenGazer (needs a *lot* of work to be usable & stable) * Gestual commands - this existed when I was a young lad, you drew "N" with your mouse on the screen & this opened netscape. Would be very useful in touch-screen environments. * Open voices - doing quality synthetic voices is a lot of work, major research project & lots of time in a sound studio with specialised actors. Funding one (or several) in various languages would be useful. Internet + accessibility: * Integrate an eBook library like Gutenberg Library or Bookshare into the desktop - integrate well with Orca to make a book reader Open citizenship: * Work with groups like OSGeo, OpenPlans.org, OpenStreetMap, to provide native high-quality maps, map editors, and (why not?) traffic flow simulators for the free desktop Education: Not sure what we could target as a project here... probably something concrete like a development project in partnership with a deployment, perhaps with an existing big GNOME user like Extremadura? Seeds for ideas, in any case. Cheers, Dave. Stormy Peters wrote: > Hi GNOME Foundation members, > > I need your help defining GNOME projects you'd like to see happen if we > had grant money to fund them. > > Brian Cameron has been encouraging us to apply for grant money for a > while and I think he's right - there are organizations out there willing > to sponsor good work in the nonprofit space - projects that are for the > good of the public. > > Applying for grants is not easy. They require identifying appropriate > grants, writing a proposal, and then going back and forth with the grant > organization. The application process can take 6 weeks to 6 months, and > while it's impossible to predict success rate, it does seem like the > best average rate of any project I've talked to is about 1 in 3, so for > every 3 proposals we submit, we might get one. (And that's a really, > really good success rate.) > > In order to successfully apply, we need project ideas. For a successful > application we would need: > > - A project idea. Why this project? Why is this really important? > - Urgency. Why now? Why is this idea important now? (The more urgently > needed, the better according to advice I've gotten.) > - Benefits. Who will benefit from this work? Most grant organizations > are nonprofits dedicated to improving the world for the public. > - Financial plan. We need to show how we'd spend the money from the > grant. How much money would it take to do this project? How would we > spend the money? > - Resources needed. Why these people? Why did you pick these people to > work on this project? How are they qualified? Why are they the best to > work on it. > > So if you have project ideas, I'd love to hear them. Also, if you know > of organizations in your community that offer grants, I'd be happy to > help you approach them with a proposal. However, the first thing is > identifying the projects and then identifying the potential grant givers. > > I'm looking forward to seeing your project proposals! I've started a > wiki page for ideas, http://live.gnome.org/Grants. > > Thanks, > > Stormy > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [email protected] _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
