Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee/Additional Information and Analysis/Interviews/Bishakha Datta

Interview date: 4/24/12

What is the grantmaking model, and how will grantees be evaluated

• The one thing I’m still not clear about is how things are going to be evaluated if this isn’t going to follow a traditional grantmaking model. A traditional grantmaking model assumes that there will be more requests for funding than there are funds available. That becomes a competitive model. Therefore there is some sort of lens used as criteria to evaluate and identify the highest and best use of the funds.
• Traditional grantees focus their efforts on a theme set by the grantor, but they don’t see themselves as part of a movement like Wikipedians do.
• Also, if you put out a request for funding through the FDC, more people will request funding than if that process didn’t exist. We don’t want to subsidize things that aren’t valuable.
• Who decides if money is spent well?
  • It makes sense that this would be an evolutionary process moving toward being more strategic.
  • Demonstrating that using money is being used efficiently is relatively easy. Demonstrating that using money effectively is more difficult—requires impact measures.

Scope of responsibility

• What’s “out” of scope for this group?
  • Core expenditures to keep the sites up and running
  • Institutional grants (often made to a particular entity, even if unrestricted or semi-restricted)

Community engagement

• There has been little feedback on this to date because there is generally only feedback when people disagree
• Best to engage a core group of people