Grants talk:IdeaLab/Offline Wikipedia deployment in Syria

Syria

@Bluerasberry: Unfortunately, as far as I know WMF is unable to fund any activities in Syria. This is due to US sanctions against Syria that notably ban imports of any goods to Syria. I don't want to disappoint but you will probably need to request funding from a non-US organisation for this project (been there, we tried to ask for a WMF grant for WLE in Syria but this was denied due to sanctions) — NickK (talk) 19:55, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@NickK: That's correct. However, Charliemeyers sounds like he is travelling to Syria (Charlie, feel free to clarify when you'd plan to be travelling); funding could plausibly be sent someplace else beforehand. If has a legal residence in another country that matches the address of their bank account that will receive the funds, the actual location of the grant work is immaterial. Some documentation from the bank and the grantee will also be needed. One other matter that would need to be cleared is that the activities in the proposal would need to be cleared by the Legal team to confirm that we are OK to fund them. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): As far as I remember, it is illegal to fund supplying anything to Syria. In case of WLE in Syria even such solution as sending funds to an affiliate outside Syria that would forward them to a non-Syrian national who would buy prizes was not allowed as in the end WMF funds still would be used to supply something to Syria. In this case seems like WMF would not be able to give money for buying goods (Raspberry Pis) in order to ship them to Syria — NickK (talk) 20:15, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@NickK and I JethroBT (WMF): I am with Wikimedia NYC and am helping Charlie with his grant application. Charlie has been a regular attendee at our meetups since 2015 and I am posting here just because I am on meta continually while he does not follow back-end wiki administration.

Charlie has a trip planned to Syria and Iraq to meet with some long-time collaborators of his. His associates are Kurds and apparently he is going to a region where the dominant language is Kurdish. I do not know anything about the region to give comment. His trip will be in mid to late March. Perhaps @JRabah (WMF): knows something about WMF's relationship to this region? Thanks to NickK for raising the issue and I JethroBT (WMF) for getting any opinion from WMF legal or other interested WMF'ers. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry, I JethroBT (WMF), and NickK: NickK has this right. We can't make a grant to provide money or goods that are to be sent or brought to Syria, even if the grantee is located in another country and / or purchases the goods in another country. I do not know if there are restrictions on funding travel to Syria, but it is possible that our ability to fund travel to Syria is also restricted in some cases. Our grants administration team is checking in about this point, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. It's a complicated question, so it could take a while. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 19:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I will direct stakeholders to this update. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Moving to 'draft' until more guidance on this proposal

Dear Charliemeyers and team,

Apologies for the delay on updating you on this submission. We are still in the process of asking our external auditors about grantmaking guidelines to fund projects taking place in Syria and other countries sanctioned by the U.S. While we are still waiting, I am moving this back to 'draft' before we are able to get more background and move forward with reviewing this request. I'm sorry we weren't able to move on this more rapidly than we would have liked, but thank you for your patience thus far. Best, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

MJue (WMF) Thanks for doing the research. It is exciting to set a precedent, one way or the other.

Can you say more about what it means that you moved this into "draft" space? Normally, I thought being in "draft" meant that the WMF was waiting for some action by the applicant. In this case, is it correct that "draft" means that the applicants are waiting for a response from the WMF?

Should I direct the team to check back with you at any particular date in the future? At this point, the team would still like a response and closure eventually, however that resolves, but is going on with other plans as well. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry. We're still getting clarity on the conditions in which we can fund projects led by US citizens traveling to Syria. Putting this in draft means that we're waiting for our WMF finance colleagues to give us our marching orders, and so we can't provide further review until then. As of now I have no estimate time on when we'd have an answer, and I realize this has already taken a significant amount of time, so you may wish to withdraw this request until we have a more definitive approach, in which case you are welcome to re-open this submission in the future. Thanks for following-up. Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

MJue (WMF) Thanks for the explanation. Let's leave this submitted and waiting for a WMF response from the community side and as a draft from the WMF side. I understand that it could take an indefinite amount of time to get a response, and if your practice in that case is to mark grants as "drafts" until then, then that works for me. I was confused because "draft" is also a category for requests which the WMF will not review until they are submitted. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Mjohnson (WMF) and MJue (WMF): Do either of you have an update on this? When last we talked, Mjue had advised that this report needed to be in draft mode to indicate that the WMF was considering it further. Can you share any news on progress? I would appreciate a resolution if that seems right. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
• @WJifar (WMF), Mjohnson (WMF), and MJue (WMF): Hello. Can you give me a rejection if the WMF cannot fund this? The process is not clear to me. Getting some closure would be useful. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello Bluerasberry: Apologies for the long delay on our part. There has not been any development since our last decision for this grant proposal, except for the following finding: Sanctions related to activities in Syria may allow grant funding for certain types of activities in Syria under a General License. However, additional export regulations would require a specific export license for the materials included in this proposal, and unfortunately we have not been able to research any further than that. This also means that we currently won't be able to fund this project at this time, and we don't have the bandwidth to pursue any solutions to funding/resourcing the region. I'll mark this proposal as 'withdrawn,' but I hope we can eventually find a workable way of supporting individuals and organizations in Syria. Thanks for following-up with us. All the best, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

@MJue (WMF): Thanks. You marked this as withdrawn, which has a label "voluntarily withdrawn by the proposer." I just changed this to "Not funded" to note that the denial is on your side. Any objection?

Thanks for the review. I am satisfied with the outcome, except that the labels confuse me. I do not think "draft" is an appropriate label for a grant under WMF consideration and it seems odd at the end for this to have a tag that I withdrew it. Just curious - is there some reason why the WMF needs to avoid denying grant requests or bringing them to an end? Is that more useful for some reason? Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)