Grants talk:Conference/bluerasberry/WikiConference North America 2019

Hi bluerasberry. We appreciate your commitment to WikiConference North America and all the communities that benefit from the regional meeting. We agree that the conference has been successful in past years and engaged a growing diversity of communities. We realize that not supporting the conference this year has impacts on the ability for these communities to maintain momentum, share knowledge, and more.

We also realize you are aware of our funding restrictions this fiscal year and have submitted the application anyways. Our understanding is that you want a record that the community still wishes to hold the conference and that you are asking for whatever financial support we can give. Unfortunately, WikiConference North America still remains ineligible for any Conference Grant funding this year.

As we explained previously via email, on our temporary changes to WMF grant programs page, and linked to in the Conference Grants portal, we have made temporary changes to our grantmaking programs to free up staff and community time to engage in Phase 2 of the movement strategy work on issues of resource allocation, while still meeting essential support commitments. Developing a new approach requires careful consideration and collaboration, and commitment to our values of sharing power in decisions, transparency, and accountability. Included in this new approach is developing a better strategy for events. We are committed to doing this, but it does take time and space that we would not have if we had not implemented these temporary changes.

Contrary to what you wrote in the proposal, even with the temporary changes, we have continued to fund conferences in 2018/2019, including all regional conferences in emerging communities, all thematic conferences that were in development since early 2018, as well as all national/local conferences up to $10,000 from emerging communities. In total, we will still be supporting around ten conferences this year.

We know this is disappointing and we considered many of the trade-offs in making these temporary changes. We hope that the outcomes of the new movement strategy lead to an equitable and effective resourcing strategy, including as it relates to Wikimedia events. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 18 February 2019 (UTC)