[Osmf-talk] Membership Working Group Updates

[Paul Norman]

The Membership Working Group (MWG) has been very busy lately with the 
roll-out of the fee waiver for lack of money transfer program. Rather 
than a quarterly update, here's some news.

New countries

We've gotten more information about countries that PayPal doesn't 
support and have added Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, 
Haiti, Kosovo, Libya, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Uzbekistan to the 
list of countries which qualify because there's a lack of suitable money 
transfer facilities.

If you have information about countries not on the list at 
https://join.osmfoundation.org/fee-waiver-program/ where PayPal is not 
supported or the cost of transferring money is more than the cost of 
membership, please contact the MWG at membership at osmfoundation.org.

Application statistics

We welcome and congratulate our 19 new members from Iran, Kosovo and 
Liberia who have already joined the OSMF through the fee waiver program.

Over the first seven days, we had 45 applications. All the percentages 
below are based on these applications, and are rounded. The pace is 
still continuing, and as we work on our processes, it will be possible 
to automatically generate some statistics. Right now it's manual, so I 
don't have more recent numbers.

The money transfer applications are easy to deal with, as we have a well 
defined process. They only take a couple of minutes when all the 
information is there.

Of the first 45, 60% of the applications are from Iran, and 5% from 
Liberia, both countries on the list where money transfer is not 
practical. The remainder are from countries where we're seeking more 
information from the applicants. Since the first seven days, we've 
applications from other countries.

25% of applications filled out the form incorrectly and were asked to 
fill it out again with a corrected username. We might need to look at 
providing more instructions on the form.

How can I help?

Contact membership at osmfoundation.org about joining the MWG. If you're 
not interested in joining but have experience at writing instructions, 
documentation, and procedures, the stock responses to the form could use 
rewriting. If this is you, also contact membership at osmfoundation.org.

Note: A formatted version of this is at 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/pnorman/diary/47048

Paul Norman
on behalf of the Membership Working Group