The Foundation, and Wikimedia Deutschland, have set up a "participation
grants" initiative to fund people going places to do things in the
Wikimedia movement. We've already identified giving travel grants of this
nature as something we should do in 2012. We've been invited to take part
and commit a sum of money towards it, but aren't sure whether we should or
not.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Participation
Basically, the advantages we might gain are that it might be simpler (both
for us and the applicants) if there was one global grants programme rather
than us doing our own thing.
The disadvantage would be that we'd have less direct control over what that
element of grant might be spent on, we might need to take on some of the
work of deciding on a wider group of grant applications, and also the fact
that the dividing line between what the Foundation does and what Chapters
do is very unclear at the moment and this might further muddy it.
Does anyone here have a view?
Thanks,
Chris