[smc-discuss] ICFOSS director is asking for help from community to help draft guidelines for funding

[Pirate Praveen]

Hi,

Today we had a good discussion with new ICFOSS director Sabarish K and 
the discussions are still continuing at #icfoss:matrix.org matrix 
channel.


Sabarish K: frame a guideline for funding, fixing criteria

Naveenpf: community grants can be split as

1. Project grant
2. Events and Travel grant

Project grant proposals can be invited once in a month in a year.

Events and travel grant proposal invited anytime.

Grants committee should be formed with community members. All depends 
on yearly budget for community grant.

Structure for fund expenditure reporting template should be in place. 
(can be reused from wikimedia grants reporting)

Hrishi: Adding to this,
Travel support can be of two types.
1. Grants
2. interestless loans

The second one should be easy to work out. Few years back I was in need 
of a travel support when I had an opportunity to present one of my 
projects in a prestigious event abroad. The organizers were reimbursing 
the travel expenses but I had to advance it to make the arrangements. I 
tried to get support from many such govt programs (including startup 
mission) in vain. If such a travel support can be arranged, it is not 
an expense per say. As the candidate will repay it when she gets the 
reimbursement.

Sabarish K: This is a good suggestion, biggest task before me is to 
frame meticulously charted guidelines for each of the external funding 
progs. Otherwise it may be the Next Story of Nepotism..
Navenpdf: Open proposals, community endorsements, diverse grant 
committee and open reporting will help

You can see his responses to our demands we send to last ICFOSS 
director here 
https://pad.disroot.org/p/ICFOSS_New_Director_Response_To_Old_Points

If you'd like to volunteer to be part of this team to draft guidelines 
for funding from ICFOSS, please reply. We can send him the list of 
people volunteered in aweek's time (by next Wednesday 22nd July.

There are also other promises from him like funding font development 
which I hope someone will take up. See the pad linked above or join the 
matrix group to see all the points.

Thanks
Praveen