Alex Wang also spoke about a need to begin allowing GAC members to provide private feedback, explaining that "Most of the committee members are also grantees, and it's a very tight community. Some of them have said they don't want to comment on their colleague or friend's proposal because it's very hard because of personal connections." The IEG process starts with individual polling via the scoring rubric, with results then aggregated, anonymized, and reported back to the committee. Another argument for private feedback mechanisms: IEG Head Siko Bouterse reports that through this, "everyone has a turn and a say, it gets women to participate in a different way." Katy Love also argues that there is a need for protected space - as the FDC does have - for committee members to make decisions without feeling that everything that they say is going to be made public. One unusual and important step in the process for the APG applicants is that the staff publicly review the proposal and annual plan in the "staff proposal assessment."[1] This expert assessment is an input to the committee making the decision.
The GAC program has now recently tested a scoring rubric, and they are adopting it as an internal resource for private commenting, as in the IEG model.
When and how groups meet and work together offline was another item that came up in our interviews. Currently, the Funds Dissemination Committee (for the Annual Plan Grants) is the only committee that holds in-person meetings. The FDC meets in person twice a year for grantmaking sessions that distribute a total of $6 million, gathering in San Francisco in the Fall and in Europe in the Spring. In the past, the Wikimedia Foundation has also covered travel expenses to gather FDC committee members at Wikimania. Since the FDC has a constantly shifting membership by design, gathering at Wikimania has created an opportunity for intensive orientation, building the committee's cohesion and their understanding of the FDC decision-making tools. "We've realized," says Katy Love, "that for this funding program, it is critical to invest money in bringing people face to face. It is often a challenge for grantmakers to justify such costs, because what you spend on bringing people together, you can't spend on grants. In this case, because the grant requests are so large and our committee is so diverse, it's absolutely worth it to have them discuss, deliberate, and create consensus in a face-to-face setting." The FDC deliberations are facilitated to create consensus, and use a tool called the "Gradients of Agreement"[2] to arrive at funding amounts. Love reports that decisions made in person tend to result in much more committee clarity and shared buyin, and they are less likely to need revisiting.
With a small number of committee members responsible for such a large grantmaking budget, the Wikimedia Foundation staff are able to justify the travel expenses for in-person FDC meetings. Alex Wang reports that because the GAC is an advisory committee, with final decisions made by staff, there can be a lack of incentive for people to participate. Wang feels there may be room for improvement, "or possibly incentives - such as more formalized skills development training - to make community members more involved." However, the GAC has 28 members, and approves applications on a rolling basis throughout the year. Also, both the Project and Event Grants program and the Individual Engagement Grants program give in ranges that scale very low—it would be hard to justify flying so many people to meet in person to give out a relatively low amount of grant funding.
- ↑ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Staff_proposal_assessment_form
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G radients_of_agreement_scale
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