Talk:Individual Engagement Grants/Committee

Relationship to GAC

Because the Grant Advisory Committee already has its own process and work to do on behalf of the Wikimedia Grants program, we've thought that it might make sense to start with a separate committee for Individual Engagement Grants. At some point, though, it may make sense to combine forces into one Super Grants Committee, with sub-committees focused on different programs or areas of grantmaking. It would be great to hear any thoughts people have about this - particularly if you've got experience serving on GAC, or the Wikimania Scholarships Committee. Siko (WMF) (talk) 05:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Question I haven't been on either GAC or the Wikimannia Scholarships Committee, but I would hesitate to combine the committees unless there is a clear benefit to doing so. At the moment I believe the committees will have enough difference in their specialization that keeping them separate makes sense. Would there be some meaningful benefit in combining the committees? --Pine^✉ 18:23, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

One meaningful benefit I could see is being able to run 1 campaign for new committee members instead of 3 - it takes time to recruit new committee members as long-time members wander off to other things, and pooling our resources to recruit and orient new members who all share an essentially evaluative grantmaking role could be useful. And perhaps to build some more common community around these grantmaking roles. On the other hand, I agree that many of the activities for each program are different, so this would only make sense as a common framework that got divided into pretty clear and different sub-committee roles. I don't think we need to decide any of this soon, though, just a thought for the future. Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you can run a single campaign to recruit for multiple committees. I have some more thoughts on this but I'm short on time right now. I'll try to remember to come back to this later. --Pine^✉ 22:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

My experience is that usually there are more great people who apply than places – if you can run a campaign for multiple similar committees and then distribute the great applicants among more free places, that could be a good way to utilize more of the great people who offer to join in a single campaign. –Bence (talk) 13:36, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, so let's separate the ideas of combining recruiting and combining committees. I think we could run a combined campaign once or twice a year, as needed, for lots of groups including those I list below.

• Individual Engagement Grants
• Grant Advisory Committee
• Flow Funding distributors
• Funds Dissemination Committee
• Wikimania Scholarships Committee
• Affiliations Committee
• Research Committee
• Ombudsman Commission
• Board elections coordinators
• Steward elections coordinators

I think combining IEG, GAC, and WSC, and possibly FDC, is a bit risky. I can foresee that turning into a wikibureaucracy and a wikipolitical mess unless it's managed carefully, probably with some role by the Trustees. On the other hand, a combined committee with a common grant application might provide better transparency about which programs may have applied for funding from multiple places including the FDC, and might facilitate committee members having a fuller picture of what a grant applicant is doing. So there are tradeoffs here. Maybe the downsides could be managed in a way that makes the risks worthwhile for the possible transparency benefits. But I'd want to be very careful about how committee members are chosen for a combined grants committee, and I'd want to be very careful about COI especially as a single group gets more budgetary authority, more members, and more possible ways for intentional or unintentional problems to happen. --Pine^✉ 03:28, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

OTRS

I would suggest that all committee members identify to the Foundation and get OTRS access since it is likely that at least some grant information may come through email. It also may be that committee members will learn of investigations that are not public or get email questions from organizations such as universities and hackathons, and that also suggests to me that committee members should identify to the Foundation. Perhaps the committee should have its own OTRS list. --Pine^✉ 20:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Although most of the grantmaking should be done in public, I see your point that there may be things that end up coming in via email. I'd expect the most sensitive information is probably going to come at the point after grantees are recommended by the committee based on public applications - WMF staff will need to do some due diligence on the grantees (full legal names and addresses for checking against the terrorist watch list to comply with US law, gathering bank info for processing payments, etc) - but that information will be handled by WMF staff directly, it should not need to involve the committee. Nevertheless, your note about investigations or email questions seem plausible. Some volunteers do not want to identify to the Foundation, however, and I worry if we made this a requirement too soon, might it keep otherwise great people from joining? What would you think about waiting until the committee is fully formed (by Feb 15th we should have the membership list for round 1 finalized, I'm adding this to the timeline for the program in the pages we're building for next week), and then decide as a group if this makes sense to do? I also wonder if the need for an OTRS list will naturally materialize later on, or if you see this as something needed from the start. Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

At the time I wrote the suggestion above I wasn't aware that a portal would be used. I think the portal will address some of the issues that I had in mind, and it sounds like the Foundation will handle a lot of the confidential parts of the work. I think we can proceed as you suggest, without requiring OTRS for now but keeping it in mind as a possibly useful tool in the future. --Pine^✉ 22:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)