Grants talk:Index

Archives 2009-2012

Ideas for improvement re post-grant reports

• Making it clearer who the audience for post-grant reports is (WMF? the Meta community? the Board? other stakeholders?)
• Using templates to make it easier for grant recipients to turn the relevant bits of their proposals into the post-grant report

Hope this is helpful! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

+1 on both of these. I definitely see cases where a report is written that is welcome by the community but missing some detail wanted by the WMF - in which case there's a double reason to have templates: not wanting to have arbitrary-seeming hoops for people who are repeatedly asked for more or different information. Also perhaps the related idea:

• Having an idealized report filled out - perhaps by a WMF subgroup about one of their projects - for each of the canonical types of grants: an event or workshop, a conference, a coding project, a startup grant for something meant to become self-sufficient.

–SJ talk  01:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

We do, in fact, have templates. When you click "please provide a report" on any ongoing grant (go ahead and try it, just don't save), you get a new page pre-filled with a reporting template, complete with instructions in comments in the wikitext.

I do like the idea of pointed at an idealized report, or perhaps at some particularly good actual reports as models. We shall add that to our ongoing maintenance tasks.

As for audience, it is assumed to be "the entire movement", with WMF's grants staff as the one group that's committed to reading every report and ensuring the essentials are all there in sufficient detail and clarity, both in terms of what's required for WMF's own compliance with US law, but also with respect to the original grant proposal, so that any future reviewer would be sure to find a report useful in assessing the grant. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 07:09, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, all: We've included some additional details about the purpose of grant reports on this page if anyone is interested in reviewing them: Grants:Index/Reporting_requirements#Purpose_of_grant_reports. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 20:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, note that you can now view a copy of the grant reporting form for final reports here: Grants:Index/Grant report form. This is the form that is preloaded when you use the page creation tool at Grants:Index/Submit report, and we'll work on getting an example request up soon. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 20:15, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Be careful

This is a sample of grant report that has taken 30 pages long if print Wikimedia Cipta, I would like to say to other future grant request: be careful. Wikimedia Indonesia total returned IDR 58.663.299 or equal to USD 5,930.31, the IDR 37.634.349 is already set aside because it is unspent - no problem, however the requested of Beacon of Theology IDR 21.028.950 is not, it is spent. For those of you who didn't have personal funding to cover ... whatever. Be careful, WMF grant request and report system is really bad. Siska.Doviana (talk) 06:11, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

As a note we are featured grant recipient in 2010, we receive Ford Foundation grant in 2011 because WMID is that good, part of USD 1 million initiative to do re-granting, and to go from there to ... that, is worrying. In a side note, different human resource by WMF. Just saying Siska.Doviana (talk) 06:19, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Deadline for stalled requests

Ni!

Some members of the GAC have been discussing among themselves whether there should be a procedure for grant proposals where the proponent stops responding questions from the public. The ideas presented were:

• To introduce deadlines for:
  • moving the request to an intermediary idle state
  • rejecting the request based on lack of response

I myself feel that introducing an intermediary idle state will end up being more of a burden on the review process than an incentive for proponents to be active, when we should aim for the opposite.

I think that automatic rejection with notification is a better procedure. The last notification should suggest retracting the grant. If the grant is retracted it does not get marked as rejected, which is a good incentive for the proponent to at least act to take a position about his proposal.

Finally, my personal opinion is that warnings should start at 3 weeks of inactivity and the final warning at 6 weeks, giving one more week for the person to retract the proposal in case he concludes he no longer has the time or needs to more thoroughly reformulate it.

Let's keep this discussion going =)

Cheers,

--Solstag (talk) 20:59, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I personally, don't like an intermediary state, and also believe that things should move faster. So I would go for a rejection based on lack of responde. A Warning after 3 weeks, and then a week to retract the request. By the end of the fourth week, rejected by default. This will save us time, and burocracy (I believe that six weeks is too much). --3BRBS (talk) 21:21, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that if we going to reject the request for lack of response, we must warn people more than once. Why not a 3 warnings separated for 2 weeks each (so we keep the 6 weeks time frame that I believe is the best here)? Béria Lima ^msg 22:48, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

First we are not "rejecting" anything. It just get rejected by default. Also I don't see why we should warn more than once, this is not a baby sitting room, if someone needs the funding I believe they would or should be interested enough to go ahead with no warning at all. This should be simple and fast. Sorry Beria, I don't agree, and I think more than one month is excesive.--3BRBS (talk) 01:02, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

• Applicants who have to be warned more than once clearly don't care much about getting their funding. And I don't see the need for some holding bay for the poor darlings who don't bother to follow up. Why should GAC members—unpaid—bother when applicants go AWOL? Why are we making this bureaucratically complicated? Tony (talk) 23:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Yup, I think this is the right track!--3BRBS (talk) 01:02, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

IF we were to threat applicants as people who can get their shit up alone, why WE receive weekly announces of the grants? After all we are all grow ups as well. Actually if we going to assume everyone is responsible, we - GAC - wouldn't exist because Asaf could do alone, and the report system could also be ignored because we are sure they use the money in a responsible way. Béria Lima ^msg 21:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm totally irresponsible, but I'm not asking for funding. At issue is set of orderly rules, not "threats". Tony (talk) 11:11, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Intro notice

"Grants redirects here" or "Grants (disambiguation page)"? First phrase is irrelevant - Grants is disambiguation currently. --Kaganer (talk) 10:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Done I agree, and it could be confusing to translators (as it was to me). I have moved the notice to the disambiguation page. [1] [2] If anyone thinks this is not ideal, feel free to sort it out better, of course. --whym (talk) 11:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Thanks to both of you for the change. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Grants:Index/Guide to WMF grants program documentation

This index is not an index and is very hard to navigate. The actual index to grants pages is Grants:Index/Guide to WMF grants program documentation, so a link should be prominently added at the top of this page. --Nemo 16:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added a link. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:58, 16 July 2013 (UTC)