W3C Office Funding Program

Inside:

Eligibility
Scope of actions
Process and Schedule
Biddings

A W3C Office is a regional W3C arm that helps recruit local participation and promote W3C technology adoption in their region.

W3C rewards Offices hosts by granting them a percentage of the W3C fee from W3C members in their region. This doesn't generally compensate the cost of an Office (with staff, overhead) but Offices hosts gain a strong reputation from hosting a local representation of W3C.

In order to increase the mutual gain of W3C and the Offices hosts, we're creating an Office Funding Program, with the aim for more joined activities of Offices, their hosts and W3C, and to reward specific efforts taken by Offices that contribute to the objectives of W3C.

As of January 2011, the following financial terms will be implemented:

Offices get a 3 years commission on every new recruitment (40%-20%-15%).
After the 3rd year, no payment for this member will go to the Office (used to be 15% forever - this changed in 2009)
We have created an Offices Fund (max of US$100,000 a year)
Office activities will be supported from this fund, using a simple process of two yearly Calls for Proposals and W3C staff and AB evaluation

As of January 2013, the following financial terms will be implemented:

The Offices Fund will still be the same total amount, but it will be aligned to, and managed by, each of the four Hosts

Who can apply ?

W3C Offices only. See our page on the Roles of a W3C office and How to Become a W3C Office.

Scope of actions

The idea of the funding program is to use the "Additional Costs" model used by some grant institutions, that is, not paying back direct office staff salaries, or overhead (building, system, admin).

Things in scope include:

Events organized by the Office, such as workshop, symposium, local members meeting or recruiting meeting for new members.
Events co-sponsored by the office (e.g. given them a presence, a stand)
Participation costs for a W3C office representative going to a conference to present W3C work.
Production of promotional brochures and documents (printed or electronic) for use by the Office, and possibly by other Offices or the W3C Staff.
Translation of important documents, in particular for government official use in the region. This might be misleading. So here a clarification: [added starting the second semester 2009]:
- no personal costs (salaries) for translation or translators will be covered (W3C relies upon the fact that this is done by volunteers or sponsored)
- only other costs related to community building, outreach, negotiations, promotional events are accountable
Courses, tutorials development costs (again: no office staff salaries)
Press support (e.g. organizing a breakfast or a lunch for influential regional media)

The action should occur within the period considered (next semester).

The total cost of an action can be larger than the funding requested to W3C, in which case the source of the matching fund should be indicated.

Process and Schedule

The overall amount of the fund will be decided in November each year, with approval from the W3C Management and Advisory Board.

Every year, in November and May, a Call for Proposal(s) will be sent to our all our Offices for the following semester.

Information about the total amount reserved for this round and therefore the average amount allocated to each offices will be given at that point (e.g. 100K divided by 20 offices = 5K per proposal on average).This should not preclude proposal to go above that average amount, but it gives an idea of the amount available if everybody is funded equally.

This will be supported by a questionnaire WBS (for 3 proposals max) with guidelines, opened for that purpose til the end of the call month.

The Evaluation Committee will gather in December and June to review all the proposals.The results will be published just before the period starts, end of December or end of June.

The money not allocated will be put back into the fund following period.

The priorities of the Evaluation committee will be given to project proposals:

with an amount below the average amount for the period
that haven't been funded last round
likely to have a good ROI (e.g. new full member)
with multi-offices partnership
with official government involvement

The fund will be paid to the office at the end of the period, based on invoice, and with a required final report deliverable, describing the work done and linked from the original WBS proposal.