Hi Patrik, (I'm speaking for myself as a member of the FDC, not as a spokesperson for the whole committee.)
A large part of the reason that the FDC was created was to have an international group of volunteers do the work of helping the organizations in the wikimedia family do a better job around strategic planning, governance practices, and creating and executing budgeted activities that bring impact to the wikimedia movement locally and globally. During this round of the FDC evaluating the requests, the majority of the organizations that we were looking at had submitted requests to the FDC for the past 3 years. While we have seen improvement around strategic planning, budget planning and evaluation, there is still a great amount of room for improvement from everyone in the wikimedia movement (including the WMF.) If you read the recommendations, FDC is primarily asking the largest organizations to re-evaluate their current capacity to deliver impact to the movement in line with the funds that they are using. In many instances it involves looking at the organizations overall capacity to develop and execute a strategic plan. Because the FDC is making recommendations about unrestricted funds, rather than focusing on a specific project or program, often the reductions in funds is linked to concerns about an organizations capacity to grow (eg., hire and manage more staff, do more complicated projects.) In some instance we gave general comments about some funds. For example, the FDC commented on the Wikimedia Deutschland’s Volunteer Support program, with an estimated cost of € 710,000 ($880,000 USD) for next year which was larger than any other single proposal made to the FDC. Reiterate that I'm speaking for myself not the whole FDC, I think that Wikimedia Deutschland did not make a stronger justification to the whole wikimedia movement about why that this high level of funding should be dissemination to the wikimedia movement through this program. Because we are making a recommendation about unrestricted funds, this type of evaluation and revamping needs to come from inside Wikimedia Deutschland. Patrik, you are asking good questions and making insightful comments, so I encourage you to join the larger discussion about the way that the wikimedia movement funds the work of volunteers and organizations. Look out for announcements about community discussion around strategic planning and wikimedia movement grants and join in!. Warm regards, Sydney Poore User:FloNight Member FDC On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:21 PM, pajz <pajzm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Dariusz, > > On 23 November 2014 at 18:05, Dariusz Jemielniak <dar...@alk.edu.pl> > wrote: > > > All in all, this is > > unrestricted funding scheme - all of our recommendations are basically > > advice, we cannot really make demands on what needs to be expanded, and > > what needs to be shut down. > > > > sure, I understand this, but I'm sure that you and the other members are > making such demands anyway (internally); my suggestion is to make that a > part of the deliberation process of the entire committee, and then put a > price tag to individual concerns. The chapter can still make its own > decisions about how to spend their money, but at least it facilitates both > the affected chapter's and the public's understanding of what's going on. > > One more question on a somewhat different subject, if you allow: I was > wondering about your suggestion (to WMDE in this case, or to other chapters > as well?) to fund some projects (in this case Wikidata) outside of the FDC > process. Is this borne out of a general strategic consideration of the FDC > or is this something specific to the Wikidata project? In WMDE's case it > sounds a bit, well, dangerous from the chapter's perspective (obviously if > one moves the one big "success" out of the ordinary FDC process, this gives > the FDC completely free hand in setting next year's allocation at no risk > of endangering the continued success of Wikidata), but generally speaking > it does sound like an interesting approach if you're considering this for > other projects as well. I'm just asking because I haven't heard of such a > funding scheme before, and it doesn't seem to fit in any of the existing > grants programs of the WMF, right? > > Cheers, > Patrik > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
