[Osmf-talk] Should OSMF run another microgrants round?

Craig Allan allan at iafrica.com
Sun Oct 24 21:54:07 UTC 2021


Dear All,
Yes, a further microgrants round could be useful to OSM.  That said, 
some improvements may give benefits.  Previous contributions are noted. 
I reinforce others before me and add my thoughts:

Purpose - OSMF should be very clear internally about the purpose of 
running a microgrants programme.
Microgrants should serve only two purposes.
1. Building the greater OSM organisation, emphasising building 
leadership, building membership and teaching mapping skills.
2. Building the OSM IT infrastructure, emphasising robust and resilient 
systems.

Note that:
1. Humanitarian purposes are out of scope.  HOT and many others cover 
that aspect pretty well.
2. Building our database must be voluntary.  Paid data collection is 
against policy.

Like Simon suggested, I would separate the two purposes above into two 
distinct funds and two separate workflows - possibly even two committees.

With regard to the organisation-building microgrants, some thoughts:

Conflicts of Interest: Yes, the evaluation committee must strictly 
follow COI rules.

Grant Application Support - There are writers who may benefit from 
support in preparing a micro-grant application.  I believe we should try 
to offer such support, but only prior to the formal submission of the 
application.

M&E - I can't find out if our micro-grants succeeded in doing anything 
of enduring value. We need some monitoring and evaluation reporting. For 
micro-grants I'd only want a few formal measures of progress during the 
process and formal confirmation of the deliverables at the end.   These 
measures must be published.

Capital Goods - Last time, several grant requests wanted expensive 
hardware. Drones, Computers, Cameras etc. Where hardware can be very 
explicitly linked to purpose 1 above, and where the hardware remains 
property of the local structure after the project, then maybe a capital 
grant is ok, otherwise no.   In general, I would rather build human 
capital then provide someone with a nice toy.

Rentals/Fees - Many grant requests asked for consumable services, like 
catering, airtime, bus-fare, room rental, use of the BBB server, swag 
etc. Where this is proportional to the proposal I think it can be 
supported.  I suggest that we don't support stipends.

Communications - Yes, it is deeply frustrating that the micro-grants 
programme failed to communicate itself to membership and the greater 
public.  However OSM doesn't (yet) have a marketing strategy, so just 
hiring someone to "just do something" will be an auto-fail event.  In 
the interim, we should patch over that gap by writing a blog post or two 
to keep the membership informed.

With regard to microgrants for building a resilient robust IT 
infrastructure, I know little about those dark arts.  I believe that our 
greatest weakness is the depth of our bench.  If so, some courses to 
upskill willing and capable members eg. Chef courses, and providing 
sandbox environments for learning sysop work without destroying the sys, 
might be useful micro-projects.  Our Engineering members will need to 
guide us.

Craig Allan
OSM: cRaIgalLAn




On 2021/10/23 17:24, Simon Poole wrote:
>
> Am 22.10.2021 um 22:59 schrieb Amanda McCann:
>> Hello OSMers,
>>
>> In 2020 (& onwards) the OSMF ran a microgrants programme ( 
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Microgrants ) , and distributed 
>> about €50,000 to 12 projects. You can read the report from the 
>> Microgrants Committee here: 
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/File:OSMF_Microgrants_report_2020-21.odt
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