[Koha] Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi Folks,

First off, thanks to everyone for support on the non-techie side
for offering to go after a grant like this. One of the discussions
we had at the Koha Developer's Week conference, was the fact that
there are quite a few such opportunities for library-related endeavors,
but that without a non-profit organization to nominate, we're not able
to apply. The same holds true for this Mellon Foundation grant.

(See http://www.mellon.org/MellonGeneral.htm where it says "The Foundation
does not make grants to individuals.").

In fact, it's just as well, since from the developer's point of view, 
we wouldn't want to accept a grant that couldn't benefit the whole 
community, rather than just one company or person.

Now, that said, we are in the process of forming a non-profit (501(c)3
Koha organization in the states, and I believe similar efforts are 
happening in France. Once these organizations are in place, we'll make
an announcement that librarians (or anyone) interested in finding grant
money to help foster the project, can do so through the non-profit. So,
this post was quite timely :-)

Again, thanks for the support.

Cheers,

--
Joshua Ferraro               VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 03:20:35AM -0700, BWS Johnson wrote:
> Salve!
> 
> 
> >I recently saw that the Mellon Foundation is giving awards to groups
> >which have contributed significantly to Open Source projects which
> >help the typical constituency of the Mellon Foundation (this includes
> >libraries!).
> 
> 
> Hooray! This is totally a librarian project :D I am more than happy to submit a
> nomination, if it's okay with you all. I'd like to point out that they'll take
> multiple nominations, so it won't preclude other folks from nominating Koha if
> I nominate it. I intend to state how much money Koha has saved me as well as
> highlighting how very well suited Koha is to this award. It really does all of
> the stuff the foundation is looking for.
> 
> There's a deadline of 4 August on this, so we should come together quickly to
> get something in.
> 
> One final observation - the application calls for identifying 1-2 individuals
> most responsible for the project. This is one reason why it would be ideal to
> have more than one person nominate. We could identify more than 2 people that
> way :D (I wouldn't go past say 4, that way we don't look unorganised.) Because
> in my mind, the people that are most responsible for things and would be our
> best spokespeople would be
> 
> Stephen Hedges
> Paul Poulain
> and
> Joshua Ferraro.
> 
> I don't think Chris, Pate or any of the other folks that really laid the
> foundations for Koha are out of the question, of course. I do very much
> appreciate everyone elses efforts, but this application would force us to pick
> 2 people for the contact role so I feel very much pressed to do just that. I'm
> sure that the panel will realise that there are more than two people to contact
> and have contributed significant amounts to the project.
> 
> Would you three be willing to be mentioned on the nomination petition as
> contacts? If none of you have the time, we really ought to find someone that
> can serve, but you all have always been there for me for the least of questions
> :D
> 
> 1,000 words is very short, so this shouldn't take too long if you guys really
> want to nominate the project.
> 
> Thanks so much for the excellent suggestion! I always knew that grants were out
> there that would be perfect for this project, but I never had the time to
> research those on top of my own library duties.
> 
> Cheers,
> Brooke @ Hinsdale MA

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