Microgrant Proposal framework (please edit to make it suitable for EWG) The following information will guide the Engineering Working Group's process for managing software project proposals. Project ideas are sourced from OSM community members and prioritized by the Engineering Working Group. All code will be open-source and available without charge. The following information will guide the first microgrant project. We want to start small and fund a maximum of 10 projects. This will be a learning experience. After this run, the project will be refined. Continuation is of course subject to a positive overall evaluation and availability of funds. Be bold in your application! The eligibility criteria are limited and exclude the obvious. The list below is just to give an idea of what we would like or not like to see. But do not let yourself be limited by this list. For the first phase, we will spend a maximum of 50.000 euro. Depending on projects received, we will not necessarily spend it all. Further stages of the project will be decided on later on. ''Note: The text below is a copy of the '' [https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/1/1a/Microgrants_working_document_snapshot_2020-01-13.odt official policy document]. ''As the project evolves, content below can evolve.'' ==== Qualities of a successful Examples of good ideas proposal==== * Creating documentation/courses. * Design work (e.g. leaflets, stock image creation) & updating such digital files. * Funding for a school or university to integrate mapping in their curriculum, run projects mapping their local area and working with local stakeholders to use their data. * Funding for shared mapping equipment. * Merchandise (swag) to recognize exceptional volunteer contributions, or low-cost swag. * One-off costs related to hosting. * Outreach to local schools. * Several small events (e.g. mapping party). * Software projects that are part of a larger program but have use by themselves. * Software projects that can be fully completed during the grant period. * Temporary working space. * Training programs with a local tech meetup. * Translation work. * Demonstrates a thorough understanding of the task, relevant codebases, and applicable technologies. * Clearly defines the scope of work to be completed. * Includes a list of applicant's relevant experience and in particular experience with the OSM tech stack. * Lays out a detailed timeline, including as many milestones as make sense for the project in question. * Communicates any potential roadblocks forseen by applicant and makes a good faith attempt to estimate non-financial support needed from the Engineering Working Group. ==== Qualities of an unsuccessful proposal Examples of proposals unlikely to be accepted ==== * Academic scholarships. * Merchandise giveaways for all participants in an event or for general outreach, including t-shirts. * A single large event. * Prizes for mapping. * Recurring hosting, rent and other costs. * Server hardware. * Traditional paid mapping. * Travel to a conference / event. * Any purchase or activity that would be budgeted by the OSMF in the normal course of business, such as improvements to general OSMF infrastructure and support for Working Groups Recurrent hosting and buying server hardware could become acceptable in a further iteration of the project. === Decision making process === ==== Who will decide Proposal process==== Proposals The applications for microgrants will be accepted or declined will be processed by the Engineering Working Group.Microgrants Committee. [There should be a community review of our project ideas/requests for tender before the call for proposals OK] * The process will begin with a public call for proposals that includes a list of project ideas by the EWG. * Proposals can refer to one of these project ideas, or (only for funding rounds after the first) be an unrelated project idea related to any software that is within the EWG's scope of interest. * Proposals will be submitted in the form of a PR against the proposal repository on Github [link here]. * The Board will appoint five people from this group to the Committee. In selecting committee members, board will give preference to applicants with a history of volunteer engagement in OSM, but may also consider external applicants if they are deemed to bring valuable expertise. * The Committee is assembled on a temporary basis for the duration of the first round of funding. The Board expects the Committee to be open by default. * Proposals for a given project will be voted on by members of the Engineering Working Group. The proposal with the most votes for a given task will be accepted. * A minimum of 5 members of the Engineering Working Group must be present to hold such a vote. * A majority of members may also vote to not accept any proposal for a given task, putting the request for tender for that task on hold until the Engineering Working Group decides to open it up again. * The Committee decides on which projects to fund. However, the Board can decide to block the approval of selected projects. * Engineering Working Group members are expected to encourage community involvement in the selection process. They are expected to follow discussions about the proposed projects and factor them into their decision. Members of the community may leave feedback on the proposal Github repo or, should they prefer, email the working group directly at engineering@osmfoundation.org. As always, Engineering Working Group meetings are open to the public. ==== Eligibility criteria ==== * Applicants must be OSMF member (but can apply for membership at the same time as the grant application). [Dropped membership requirement] [Emphasize communication with the community] * Applicants and beneficiaries must have a history of volunteer OSM activity. (at least comparable in scope to the grant project). [Reuse sentence with "should" instead of "must"? Or just move "good community standing" from below to here?] [Ensure no side effects by influence, consider various phrasings] * Max 5000 EUR. * Project length should be no longer than 6 months. * Any individual, group, or organization is allowed a maximum of 2 open proposals at any one time. open grants at any one time. [remove] * Funds for offline activities are typically for direct expenses and not used to pay for people’s time. We strongly prefer enabling volunteers over paying for work. However paid work is not excluded as such, and can be acceptable if the impact is big enough. Funds can be used to pay for people’s time in certain cases, for example on software projects and tools development. * YouApplicants must agree to the reporting requirements, be willing to sign a grant agreement, and provide the OpenStreetMap Foundation with information needed to process their funding. * You must consult with your Local Chapter if applicable. * Projects that have a local impact, should discuss with the relevant local communities * Personal benefit should be small compared to benefit of outcome. The application should describe potential personal benefit. * The initiative you plan to do should be open to a general audience by all means. That is, an event attendance should be free of charge, All software must be open-sourced. Media must be freely downloadable and published under open licenses (see the definition at https://opensource.org/osd). [Suggestion: In addition, the EWG or another body of the OSMF must be able to build, set up, and run both a production grade and an independent sandbox instance.] * The project or the initiative should be directly related to OpenStreetMap, which should be justifiably stated in its goals. * Number of people involved in the project or the initiative is not limited (but it would not affect the grant size). * Project must be shared and discussed widely during the application process, at least on OSMF-talk and with the wider OSM community. * The project proposal should not consist of work isn’t paying someone to do something that could have easily been done by a volunteer. * Project participants must adhere to Community guidelines and should be in good community standing. * Projects can be recipients of other funds of any form, but need to disclose this during the application process. Candidates should have tried to find other possible sources of funding for their project. There is no language criterion, but Applications will need to be translated to English before the final application. [Remov: The OSMF can use its network to try to help find translators if needed. ] [This is separately stated in the "Responsibilities of parties" section] ==== How to apply ==== To apply visit the public Github repo [link here]. Please make a pull request against the main branch with your proposal in the form of a markdown document. There will be a template wiki page that you can clone.Your application will be a public wiki page. Send a message to microgrants@osmfoundation.org engineering@osmfoundation.org and osmf-talk when it’s ready. Practical issues with sending applications to osmf-talk are not disqualifying. By submitting a proposal to the OpenStreetMap Foundation, you certify the information contained in your proposal is correct, and that if you are awarded funds a grant, you will use it only for the purposes described above. You will provide written documentation and receipts for all of your expenses to the OSM Foundation to demonstrate this. You and you understand that the decisions made by the OSM Engineering Working Group are final. ==== Responsibilities of parties Following up accepted projects ==== The Committee will follow up accepted projects. They can call for further volunteers to help with the practical issues, and can count on our administrative assistant’s help. In particular, the Committee will: ===== Engineering Working Group ===== * The Engineering Working Group will ensure that the accepted projects proposals will receive funds. Payment schedules will be discussed with project operators and agreed to before work outlined on the proposal has begun. * If it is possible to make payments through organizations, rather than personal accounts, this is preferred. It is not required. For projects with a budget on the large side, payment in installments can be considered. * When decising on proposals, members of the Engineering Working Group will declare relevant conflicts of interest and abstain from voting accordingly. [Remark: community communications first] * The Engineering Working Group will Rrespond to practical issues a project may face, answer questions from project operators, and generally offer assistance to the best of their abilities. recipients. * Should a project operator fail to deliver on the terms outlined in their proposal, the Engineering Working Group may decide to withhold funds until such terms are fulfilled or, if need be, elect to suspend work permanently and cancel future payments. * The Engineering Working Group will keep track of difficulties faced by project operators and in turn share lessons learned with future applicants. * If the Committee has larger issues with certain projects, it can ask the Board for assistance. * The community can ask questions the Engineering Working Group during any phase of the projects, and will be kept informed through public reporting. ===== Project Operator ===== * The project Project operators should communicate any known possible practical issues that might arise during the execution of the project. To help with this task, the Committee shall be provided with a checklist of typical causes of issues. In turn, the Committee should share any lessons learned with their successors. * Keep tabs on projects' reporting requirements. * Every project is different, so projects project operators should need to come up with their own planning and reporting schedule. While a first version of this should be part of the proposalmicrogrant application, once accepted, the content of that plan can be refined in agreement with the Engineering Working Group Committee project. * The applicant project is expected to follow their planning or actively communicate issues as they arise. The Committee can take measures if the planning is not being respected. * Reporting should be hosted on the public Github repo and be done in such a way that the community can have insight into work being performed. can be hosted on the OSM diaries or other places, but all public reporting should be findable from the main wiki page for the project. * Assist projects with community interaction, and make sure that the community learns of each project's conclusion. * Proposals and reporting should be in English as both are meant to serve as documentation for the OSM community, Engineering Working Group members, and the OSMF Board. * Additionally, at the end of the project, the project operators are expected to start a thread on OSMF-talk about their project to share their work with the community., inviting the community to help evaluate the project. == How to Apply == The Microgrant project application will ask for the following: (To start your application scroll down to the '''Start your application''' section.) ==== About your Mapping Community ==== Tell us a little bit about your mapping community at the moment, some examples of details to include are below, but please provide us with any information you think is relevant. Please write 100-200 words. * Which city and country are you based in * Which locations is your mapping focussed on * How long you and/or your organisation have been mapping * How many people are part of your mapping community * The gender balance of your mapping community * What the purpose of your mapping is (your mission) ==== What do you need the grant money for? ==== We want to understand what you plan to buy, how much you plan to buy, and why this will help you to scale your community mapping efforts. There are two tables for you to fill in your response, and you may add more rows as needed. Some examples are in the table for your reference. You are welcome to use a different format in your response, but please make sure to include these details. ====Budget Breakdown ==== {| class="wikitable" ! Item ! What do you plan to spend the money on? ! Expected cost per unit (in Euros) ! Quantity you plan to buy / subscription length ! Expected total cost (in Euros) ! Why is it needed? (Please give as much detail as possible.) |- | Example | Wifi internet access | €50 per month | 12 months | €600 | This will allow us to run mapathons with up to 40 people at one time. At the moment we do not have internet access so cannot run mapathons with large groups. Having wifi will enable us to grow our community and achieve our goals. |- | Example | Drone with camera | €500 per drone+camera | 2 units | €1,000 | This will allow us to capture drone imagery to aid us in detailed mapping of our city, because the available satellite imagery is poor quality currently and not useful for mapping roads, sidewalks, and houses in detail. |- | 1 | | | | | |- | 2 | | | | | |- | 3 | | | | | |- | 4 | | | | | |- | 5 | | | | | |- | 6 | | | | | |- | 7 | | | | | |- | 8 | | | | | |} ==== If you receive a grant, what do you aim to achieve? ==== ''It is recommended that this supports the mission of the OSM Foundation and your local community. Please provide us with any information you think is relevant including the metrics you expect to achieve. Please write 100-200 words.'' ''Some examples of details could be any of the following, or others you decide upon: * How will the project help the community * The area you plan to map * What volume of mapping you plan to complete (e.g. expected number of people, number of square kilometres) * How many members of your existing community you plan to train * How many new members you hope to join your community'' ==== Do you receive funding from any other sources at the moment? ==== ''If you receive funding from other organisations currently, please state how much this is, whether the donations are regular or one-off, and how these funds have been raised. Please write no more than 300 words.'' ''If you have any sources of co-funding for this grant application, please provide details. Examples of this might be if you have any partners who would be willing to match grant funding if you receive it, or if your project has existing funding. Please provide as much detail as possible.'' ==== Is there anything you would like OSMF to support you with? ==== ''If there is anything which you would like OSMF to support you with in order to strengthen your project, please let us know. For example, this could include building relationships with OSM communities, sourcing updated imagery for mapping projects, or guidance on how to use some of the tools we have created. We want to do our best to support OSM communities, so please let us know what you need. Please write no more than 150 words.'' ==== Declaration ==== By submitting this form to the OpenStreetMap Foundation, you certify the information contained in this application is correct, and that if you are awarded a grant, you will use it only for the purposes described above. You will provide written documentation and receipts for all of your expenses to the OSM Foundation to demonstrate this. You understand that the decisions made by the OSM Engineering Working Group are final. ==== Endorsements ==== ''Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here! [[Let the community know]]'' If you have any challenges editing the wiki to submit your application, you can send it as in email to engineering@osmfoundation.org