When the Knight Foundation announced the Knight Drupal Initiative at DrupalCON Boston, we entered a partnership with the Drupal community.
Our goal was to establish an open, ongoing grant application process for the purpose of creating better open source web applications.
The last six months have been phenomenal. Too successful, in fact. We currently have six proposals under funding review, with over $600,000 (USD) in potential grants for Drupal projects.
What we have discovered, however, is that managing an ongoing grant process is inefficient, for both the community volunteers and for Knight Foundation staff. Our commitment to the Knight News Challenge and other programs also means that we cannot devote proper attention to the KDI year-round.
We want to continue to grow the KDI program and to fund innovation in the Drupal community. In order to do so, we think the program will work best with a predictable yearly schedule of submission, review and acceptance.
As a result, we will be ending the 2008 edition of the KDI after the next formal review meeting on November 6th. New applications may be posted to http://groups.drupal.org/knight-drupal-initiative for discussion, but the next round of funding reviews will not begin until 2009.
The schedule for 2009 is not set. Neither are the total funding levels. We plan to announce both items at DrupalCON DC, March 4-7, 2009.
Here is a preview of what to expect:
-- A formal opening date for new proposal submission.
-- A formal closing date for final submissions.
-- A scheduled review period.
-- A formal announcement date for the winners of KDI 2009, possibly at DrupalCON Europe.
The KDI will continue on Drupal Groups. Between the close of KDI 2008 and the start of KDI 2009, we should use the group to solicit new ideas, discuss proposals and give coaching and encouragement to applicants.
On behalf of the Knight Foundation and the Drupal community volunteers, we want to thank everyone for their participation, enthusiasm and understanding as we work towards making this an annual funding event for Drupal innovation.
-- Jose Zamora (Knight Foundation KDI lead)
-- Ken Rickard (KDI lead volunteer)
Comments
Feedback
Will there be feedback for applicants so they can reapply if unsuccessful with a project worth pursuing?
Will there be public feedback for use by future applicants to make their initial applications closer to what is required?
I think Drupal is the right way to go for most Web based projects and, from reading the Knight Foundation pages, they are looking more toward ways to bring in new users rather than fine tuning software for existing users. Perhaps Jose Zamora could provide some feedback on what they liked about the successful applications and what made the unsuccessful applications not applicable to the KDI.
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