Grants:IEG/Committee/Workroom

Individual Engagement Grants

committee workroom

This committee aims to do as much of its work in public as possible. The Workroom is our organizing hub.

get started

responsibilities

review process

« Welcome, committee members! New committee candidates are welcome to apply through March 25. »
« Please share early feedback on new drafts and ideas during open call. » +

round 2 2015 schedule

Proposals accepted: 31 August–29 September

Committee members finalized: 30 September

Community comment requested: 30 September–19 October

Committee review: 20 October – 2 November

Grantees announced: 4 December

2015

Grants disbursed: December 2015 – January 2016

Midpoint reports: April

Final reports: July

2016 +

round 1 2016 schedule

IdeaLab Campaign: 28 February-29 March

Proposals accepted: 14 March through 12 April

Open feedback period: 12 April through 2 May

Committee review: 3 May –16 May

Grantees announced: 17 June

Grants disbursed: June

Midpoint reports: September

Final reports: December

2016 +

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getting started

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roles and responsibilities

The committee and WMF staff work in partnership to ensure that the best proposals are selected for Individual Engagement Grants. These are our commitments to each other.

committee responsibilities

Primary:

1. Provide feedback on the talk page of grant proposals in all 3 stages: ideas, drafts, and final submissions.
2. Evaluate finalized proposals: Review finalized proposals and community input, and score proposals according to rubric determined by selection criteria.
3. Recommend proposals for funding: Recommend a shortlist of proposals for funding based on the available budget and projects.

Secondary:

1. Help recruit new proposals and ideas, and spread the word about IEG and committee openings during open call periods.
2. Make recommendations to WMF about grantmaking practices and help improve the IEG program and committee process.
3. Become a project mentor. If you’ve become familiar with a project and we’ve funded it, following its progress to completion is a great way to stay involved between open call periods. Read reports, highlight results, check-in with grantees from time-to-time about what they’re producing, help troubleshoot or connect them to others if needed, etc.

staff responsibilities

1. Provide feedback on the talk page of grant proposals in all 3 stages, with a particular focus on eligibility.
2. Filter out ineligible or incomplete proposals, communicating with applicants on the talk page.
3. Nudge proposals to move from draft to proposed status.
4. Fix proposals formatting, infoboxes, etc to ensure committee has easy access to a clean list of proposals with all info needed for completing review.
5. Prepare scoring rubric and other tools to assist with committee review.
6. Facilitate committee review process as needed.
7. Help communicate committee recommendations outward as needed.
8. Due diligence on recommended grantees and final approval and disbursement of funds.

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proposal review

Reviewing and recommending proposals is the primary mandate of the committee. Here is information about how the process works, tools and instructions we use to accomplish this work, and so forth.

review process

What	Who	Where	When
Feedback on ideas and drafts	Committee, Staff	Idea/Proposal talk page	March 14-April 12, 2016 (IdeaLab Campaign launches February 24--committee engagement encouraged)
Working groups formed	Committee	Workroom	20 April
Eligibility status confirmation	Staff	Proposal page + talk page	13 Apr-18 Apr
Comments period	Community, Committee	Proposal page + talk page	13 Apr until 2 May
Scoring	Committee (working groups)	IEG review tool + IEG wiki	3 May until 16 May
Aggregate scores and publish feedback	Committee (working groups)	IEG review tool + IEG wiki + proposal talk pages	by 23 May
Due diligence	Staff	Email + Skype interviews with shortlist grantees	17 May until 3 Jun
Finalize recommendations and approvals	Committee, Staff	IEG wiki, Skype call, mailing list	4 Jun until 15 June
Grantees announced	Staff, Committee	Talk pages + blog post + IEG page announcements + mailing list	17 Jun

edit

instructions: initial proposal feedback

• Check for new ideas and drafts submitted to the IdeaLab, and for complete proposals on the IEG mainpage.
• Give feedback and ask clarifying questions to help improve proposals and projects for which funding is sought. It would be rare for a submission to be absolutely perfect from the start. Some may need tweaking to become really good actionable project plans, and we can help nudge them in the right direction.
• Encourage good ideas to move to status=PROPOSED before the deadline for each round.
• Ensure that sufficient information is provided and that goals and estimates are realistic and well-defined. If scope or budgets need to be adjusted up or down, the appropriate time to request this is before a project is recommended for a grant.
• Check on the community discussion around each proposal. Make sure community notification happened. If not, suggest or help grantees to do so.

instructions: formal review

Visit Workroom Review for detailed instructions, a complete scoring rubric and other information needed to complete the formal review.

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guidelines

communications

• The committee communicates using a variety of channels, including:
  • Proposal talk pages
  • This meta Workroom and the Workroom talk page
  • iegcomlists.wikimedia.org (currently private)
  • an IRC channel, if the members choose to set one up
  • Skype or Google Hangout may also be considered if voice becomes necessary for reaching consensus
• Active committee members should not communicate with recused members, grant proposers, or anyone not on the Committee email list regarding scores or comments about specific proposals during the scoring and recommendation periods.
• A WMF Learning and Grantmaking employee may post a one-time release of aggregated scores and comments after the scoring phase has concluded.
• Before the scoring phase begins, Committee members are encouraged to communicate with grant proposers in the IdeaLab, to make suggestions, to provide help, to ask questions, and to give constructive criticism. Committee members are also encouraged to communicate with grant proposers after grants are announced to discuss how proposals that were not chosen for funding could be improved and to share their individual opinions about how possible it is that the Committee would approve a revised version of a proposal in a future round.

conflicts of interest

The committee handles conflicts of interest from active members who submit proposals as follows:

• Members may continue to serve on the committee during a round in which they have submitted a proposal by continuing to participate in public discussions and other on-wiki activities.
• Members who have submitted a proposal will recuse themselves from formal review of all proposals during that round.
• Recusal includes abstaining from scoring and formally recommending proposals, and removal from the committee mailing list and any other private channels or documents in use throughout the formal review period.
• Committee members should follow the WMF Conflict of Interest Guidelines, which is currently in a draft form at Guidelines on potential conflicts of interest. Any potential or perceived COIs must be first and foremost disclosed proactively to the Supervisor of the allocation of funds. The Committee must be informed of any recusals that take place, but not necessarily of the reasons involving them.

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