Grants:TPS/Support/Organization

This page describes the organizational and technical details of the Wikimedia Participation Support program.

Participating Bodies and Contributions to the Pool

All interested chapters are welcome to contribute funds to the Participation Support pool! Any amount contributed is welcome; chapters contributing $5000 or more per year are invited to join the Participation Support Committee which evaluates requests each week.

The program is currently funded by,

Wikimedia Foundation (50,000 USD annually)
Wikimedia Deutschland (25,000 EUR annually)
Wikimedia CH (6,000 CHF annually)

If funding is exhausted before the end of the fiscal year, the funding bodies may consider allocating additional funds.

Administration

Decision making

The Participation Support Committee (PSC) meets once a week to evaluate and discuss open requests, and to discuss any issues that may arise related to the improvement of the program. In order to facilitate timely review of new requests, decisions are made each week whether or not every committee member is present or offers an opinion on each request.
The PSC exercises its judgment on a case-by-case basis to make recommendations for approving or not approving funding, based on the criteria listed here.
The PSC will usually review a new request within 14 days of submission (submission includes sending an Email to participation at wikimedia dot org to notify the committee of a new request). If more information is requested, the review period may be extended.
Chapters may be consulted about participation support in their geography and may choose to fund the participation themselves, support the request by contributing to the participation support pool, or recommend that the participation support program not fund a request. If no timely response is obtainable, the PSC will proceed with review without the chapter's recommendations.
The committee may partially fund requests.
The applicant may decline or withdraw the request at any time prior to signing a participation support agreement.

Disbursement and accounting

WMF will process grants and final decisions are at the discretion of WMF as the organization processing these grants.
Unless otherwise agreed, applicants will be reimbursed after the conclusion of the event and after a report and documentation of all approved expenses is submitted to WMF.
If advance disbursement is requested, WMF will send funds within 30 days of receiving a signed grant agreement from the requestor. A report is still required within 14 days of the completion of the event, and the grantee must return any unused or undocumented funds to WMF at the time the report is submitted.
All requestors awarded funding will be asked to provide WMF with some information required to issue a grant agreement, but will not be required to disclose this information publicly. This information will not be shared with other organizations on the Participation Support Committee.

Links to related pages