Beyond the cost of travel, the logistics of bringing a group together become less manageable with larger groups, and staff expressed concerns that some committee members would feel excluded because of not being able to attend in person.
Still, there may be opportunities for increasing offline conversation. Siko Bouterse reports that IEG recently did a conference call for the first time, and the committee loved it, giving positive feedback.
Participation, Representation, and Leadership of Those Impacted
The way we do our grantmaking is parallel to the way we believe knowledge should be created and distributed: by the people, by everyone regardless of who you are, or where you're from. We think that everybody holds a piece of knowledge, and all those things combined create these beautiful collections—like a Wikipedia in hundreds of languages. Similarly, with funding we made a process in which no one person necessarily holds the decision making power, but rather it's a consensus-driven process by the communities that are local, on the ground, working alongside these projects.
— Jessie Wild Sneller
There are many paths to the decision-making table at Participatory Grantmaking Funds. In our "Who Decides" study, 75% of survey respondents said that their panel members include "individuals directly impacted/program clients;" 38% listed Funders or Foundation Staff, Program Staff, and Program Volunteers as panel members; and 63% said that panel members are "Other," describing Other as Community Leaders, Scientists, and Activists (with issue-based and/or regional ties). Peer Review panelists' gender makeup, age range, disability, and geography of origin all varied widely within the survey, correlated to the specific focuses of each fund. For instance, youth-focused grantmakers make use of a predominantly the impact of the work being done across the movement.
It is the same for the Wikimedia grantmaking. At Wikimedia Foundation, the one key criteria for joining a committee, across the board, is active participation in the Wikimedia Movement. In our survey, WMF staff reported that grantmaking committee/panel members are "individuals directly impacted; program clients," and/or "program volunteers." Anasuya Sengupta explains "We trust this process because it's not one single person sitting in his backyard with his dog, reading proposals... It is a highly opinionated, highly diverse, highly complex set of communities—all of them volunteers."
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