KDI Application Tips

General guidelines

Creating a new proposal for the Knight Drupal Initiative is the first step in a larger grant process. Proposals that are supported by the Drupal community will be sent to Knight Foundation for formal review prior to funding. Applications sent to Knight Foundation may require additional information.

For the initial phase of community review, concentrate on the benefits of your proposal to the Drupal community and how the proposal meets the stated goals of the KDI. Be sure to review the goals of the Knight Drupal Initiative before you apply.

The proposal form is designed to give a quick overview of the important aspects of your projects. Before you start writing, consider the following general guidelines:

• Be clear and concise when answering the questions.
• Be sure that both novices and experts will understand what you propose.
• Be honest and positive when describing your proposal

Specific guidelines

Below are some tips for the individual aspects of the proposal form.

Before applying, please make sure that you have enabled your groups.drupal.org contact form, or provide alternative contact information with your application.

Title

Keep the title short and descriptive, so it scans easily and gives a sense of the scope of your project. Mentioning Drupal in the title is redundant, so you should omit it.

Bad
- File handling for Drupal -- redundant and vague
- Improved search -- vague
- Install profile to enable community interaction -- no clear difference to Drupal's core mission
- Better documentation -- vague

Good
- Secure file storage and transmission module
- Search score weighting interface module
- Install profile for local volunteer coordination
- Document the configuration process for 10 common web sites

Please describe your project's desired goals and outcomes, including the specific features and improvements that you propose.

In this section, focus on the positive changes that your project will have. We are looking for projects that make Drupal easier for people to access, install and use. These projects may be of any type -- modules, documentation, install profiles, infrastructure needs -- and there are no restrictions on the scope of your project.

It is important that you can assess the current state of Drupal -- for development, that means both core and contributions -- in your project area. Knowledge of prior work, especially of public proposals for new improvements, will improve your proposal.

Pay careful attention to the 'delta' -- a term used to refer to the measure of change between two states -- of your project. If a current process takes six steps and you can reduce that to two, highlight that fact.

Note also that complaining about or deriding the current state of specific features or needs is a poor way to promote your ideas. Focus on the positive.

Also note that some projects may improve the support available for Drupal, including (but not limited to) the Drupal.org infrastructure, search improvements, branch maintenance and project security. Helping Drupal meet the needs of its community is in line with the goals of the program.

How does your proposal meet the stated goals of the Knight Drupal Initiative?

The goals of the Knight Drupal Initiative are clearly stated. Ensure that you address these goals directly.

Strong proposals will provide sample use cases. In writing a use case, simply describe the types of people or organizations who might benefit from your project. For example:

Documenting the configuration process for 10 common web sites will allow new Drupal users to build sites more quickly by providing easy-to-follow templates for site construction and configuration. Any individual or organization with limited technical resources may benefit from the project.

The install profile for local volunteer coordination is designed for community-based organizations such as the United Way or local civic groups like chambers of commerce. The project will allow these groups to schedule and manage volunteers in order to increase the effective use of staff and volunteer time devoted to community outreach projects.

How long will your project take to complete?

Allow plenty of time for the project's development. The timeline of the project is flexible, so you must provide a realistic estimate of the time to execute the project and to document its uses.

The best proposals will provide a specific outline of project milestones that can be used to track the progress of the project towards its goals. For example:

Project timeline: Secure file storage and transmission module

• Define security paradigm and publish for community feedback (1 week).
• Incorporate feedback into revised proposal and publish security standard (2 weeks).
• Release first beta of secure file module (3 weeks).
• Document module usage (1 week).
• Create simpletests for module (1 week).
• Incorporate bug testing and feedback from community (2 weeks).
• Publish documentation (final step)
• Release 1.0 of securefile module (final step)
• Total: 12 week project (10 weeks plus 2 weeks for overage).

How will you implement and distribute your project?

The key points here are: 1) who will be involved in your project; and 2) how will people be able to access and use your project.

Your proposal should list the team members (or yourself, if you are working alone) and a brief biography. One or two sentences is fine. You should link to additional information or supporting materials.

Clearly identify the team lead and state the roles that others will play on the project.

Remember that community confidence in you and your team is crucial. If you are new to Drupal, you might want to enlist some more established community members (or entire groups here on Groups.Drupal.org) to help sponsor your project.

When it comes to releasing your work, the normal process will be to create a project release on Drupal.org. In some rare cases -- such as a hosted solution or a documentation project -- this process may not be practical, and alternatives may be acceptable. No matter how you plan to release your project, you must provide some answer to this question. A simple "This project will be releases as a Drupal.org module|theme|profile" is fine in most cases.

What is your total budget estimate and how much funding are you requesting?

In this section, provide an overview of the costs expected for your project. A simple bullet list will suffice in most cases. For example:

• $40,000 for 4 programmers for 100 hours at $100 / hour.
• $10,000 for 1 database administrator for 50 hours at $200 / hour.
• $10,000 for a project manager to work 200 hours at $50 / hour.
• $60,000 total request.

Market rates will obviously apply to labor costs. (Please use $USD for your estimates since Knight Foundation is a U.S. entity; remember, however, that you do not need to be a U.S. citizen or organization to apply.)

If you are a Drupal contractor or development business, consider the grant to be the equivalent of a customer. Budget the cost of the project the way you would budget a client request for proposals (RFP).

You may include travel and other expenses if they are directly applicable. For example, holding a week-long work session on CCK improvements may involve airfare and lodging for community members.

If you are undertaking a large project that includes additional sources of funding, please include the total budget and separate line items for budget elements to be supported by the KDI grant process. We ask that you reveal the sources of other funding so that we may identify conflicts of interest.

Note: If you are receiving private funding (say, from venture capital) and do not wish to reveal the source, you may enter "private funding" on the form. If you enter "private funding" and your proposal is accepted, you can expect Knight Foundation to ask you to tell them the source(s) of your funding before they approve your grant.

Final notes

Remember that this is an open grant process, subject to community review. The community only decides whether or not to pass an application on to Knight Foundation for final consideration.

If you need to make significant alterations to a proposal after its initial submission, please submit a new proposal and leave a comment on the old proposal with a link to the revised version.

If you have any questions, please see the FAQ.