User:Hecker/GrantStrategy
Grants can be a useful middle way to help address problems relevant to Mozilla, more effective than relying solely on volunteer contributions and more suitable for areas where we can't justify making a sustained investment of Mozilla staff time and other resources. However effective grantmaking requires more than simply defining grant criteria and soliciting grant applications. We need to actively reach out to find and fund projects in support of clear and compelling strategies.
Mozilla Catalyst is a proposed framework to help guide the choice of problem areas in which Mozilla organizations might make grants and the creation of detailed strategies for each such area. The goal is for Mozilla to be a catalyst in spurring innovations and addressing problems in areas relevant to the Mozilla mission that are important for the future of the open web but have been relatively neglected by us or others who share our vision and values.
Executive summary
Over the years the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation, and other Mozilla organizations have made grants to various organizations and individuals. In some cases (as with Mozilla grants to support accessibility) such grants have been made in support of a defined strategy; in other cases grants have been done in a relatively ad hoc manner, with little or no coordination between organizations and minimal leveraging of other Mozilla resources.
Grants (whether outright grants to nonprofits or one-off service contracts with individuals and for-profits) are a useful and relatively low-overhead mechanism to help us solve Mozilla-relevant problems that are too big and/or specialized to be addressed by volunteer contributors and are too small or not critical enough to justify a major commitment of Mozilla staff time, funds, and other resources. However simply defining a set of grant criteria and encouraging people to submit grant applications has not proved not effective in practice; we need to take a more proactive approach to finding and funding people and projects of interest to us.
Our goal in making grants should be to spur innovations and address problems relevant to the Mozilla mission of advancing and promoting the open web. As we move to coordinate grantmaking across the Mozilla organizations it's increasingly important that we have clear strategies guiding all our grantmaking activity, in order to ensure that we use our limited resources most effectively in support of this goal.
This document describes Mozilla Catalyst, a proposed umbrella program of strategic grantmaking by Mozilla organizations that builds on existing Mozilla activities and leverages existing Mozilla technologies, people, and other assets, with support and stewardship provided by the Mozilla Foundation team.
We propose to select individual program areas for Mozilla Catalyst based on the following criteria:
- Important, exciting, and (relatively) neglected problems. Our grantmaking should be directed at problems that have the following characteristics:
- They are relevant to the Mozilla project.
- Their solution will help accomplish larger goals related to the overall Mozilla mission.
- Addressing them will require actions that go beyond the scope of existing Mozilla project activities (including product development, marketing, research, and other efforts already being undertaken by the Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Messaging).
- They are challenging but also interesting and even exciting.
- They are somewhat neglected, in the sense that relatively few people are approaching them in a manner consistent with our overall open web vision.
- Entrepreneurial partners. For each problem meeting the above criteria there must exist strong individuals and organizations who know the problem space, whose overall mission and vision are congruent with ours, and who have the passion and skills to make things happen in partnership with us.
- Internal champions. There must be Mozilla people who care deeply about the problem, can help identify and work with partners, and will advocate for proposed grants and related activities to help address the problem.
- Clear strategy. For each problem we must work with our chosen partners and internal champions to create a clearly defined strategy that can guide grantmaking and related investments to address the problem.
- Bounded commitment. For each problem we must be able to provide leadership in addressing the problem while making a relatively limited commitment of Mozilla funds and staff time.
These criteria are based on our past grantmaking in the accessibility space (where Mozilla drove a major wave of innovation in making advanced web applications accessible), on our current Mozilla Education program (as a result of which Mozilla is now a leader in introducing open source values and practices into undergraduate computing education), and on our thinking about possible future areas in which we might become involved, such as media and the arts.
Our goal with Mozilla Catalyst is to make things happen by our leadership and actions. We don't need to do everything ourselves, and should not attempt to do so; rather our aim is to connect the Mozilla community to other communities, and to facilitate interactions among these communities so that together we can do great things. If we do this right then the result will be that people from the Mozilla community and people from other communities will join to form new self-sustaining communities that can take responsibility for driving further progress.
Approach
In creating Mozilla Catalyst programs we need to leverage our strengths and work within our constraints. Our major strengths are in the areas of technology and community. Our constraints are funding, staff time, and lack of deep expertise in all aspects of the problem area.
Our proposed approach to conceiving, creating and operating Mozilla Catalyst programs is as follows:
- Identify a important and exciting problem relevant to Mozilla that is not currently being addressed, being addressed in a fragmented way, or being addressed in ways not congruent with our vision and values, and whose scope goes beyond the Mozilla project proper.
- Find a key individual (or, in some cases, an organization) with subject matter expertise who can play an entrepreneurial role in helping us to create and run a program to address the problem.
- Identify one or more individuals who can serve as champions for the program within Mozilla and (if possible) actively participate in it in some way.
- Formulate a short-term goal that is relatively achievable and will be the focus of immediate activities.
- Formulate a longer-term vision to inspire participants and guide overall strategy. The vision should be ambitious but conceivable, and should align with the Mozilla mission.
- Formulate a strategy that (if executed successfully) could advance both the short-term goals and long-term vision. The strategy should be grounded in a realistic analysis of the context in which the problem exists, so that we can leverage and perhaps accelerate likely technological and socioeconomic trends.
- Tactics called for as part of the strategy will typically include
- fostering the creation and growth of new communities of practice invested in solving the problem, building from the existing Mozilla community and the communities of partners.
- creation of new technologies and related artifacts (e.g., code, specifications, documentation, web sites, etc.) that help address the problem
- Fund a small select set of individuals or (where appropriate) organizations who can execute the tactics called for by the strategy and are supportive of the long-term vision. They will form the core of the problem-solving community and help develop any new technologies called for by the strategy, and will be the focus of grantmaking for the program.
- Coordinate grantmaking and related activities with other existing and planned Mozilla activities and with the activities of other organizations with a stake in the problem. This supplements core Mozilla funding with contributions from other organizations, whether in the form of staff time, parallel funding of joint efforts, or donations to the Mozilla Foundation in support of the program.
An effective Mozilla Catalyst program should have the following outcomes:
- After a year or so:
- We should see some measurable progress toward achieving the short-term goal, based on the criteria set in the initial strategy.
- After 2-3 years:
- We should have achieved (or nearly achieved) the short-term goal based on our criteria.
- We should see some measurable progress in attaining the longer-term vision, as evidenced by the participation and support of many individuals and multiple organizations in activities (whether Mozilla-related or not) supporting the vision.
- After 4-5 years:
- The long-term vision should be well on the way to being realized.
- Mozilla should end (or at least significantly reduce) active grantmaking in the program, leaving further work to be carried on by others or wholly incorporated into the core activities of one or more Mozilla organizations.
In terms of funding, our goal should be to commit no more than $1-1.5M of Mozilla funds to a given Mozilla Catalyst program over a 5-year period (e.g., up to $200-300K/year on average per program). This level of funding has proved adequate in the past (most notably with accessibility), and will help encourage creative strategies and working with others as opposed to trying to do everything ourselves. Any additional funding should come from other sources, e.g., donations or grants to the Mozilla Foundation earmarked for the program, core program investments by the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation, or other Mozilla organizations, or parallel expenditures by others.
Candidate programs
The programs below were created over the past few years by the Mozilla Foundation in cooperation with others in the Mozilla community, and helped inspire and inform the creation of the Mozilla Catalyst framework.
The following pages describe possible new Mozilla programs we might undertake under the Mozilla Catalyst umbrella. (Note: These are totally blue-sky; there is no guarantee whatsoever that we would actually do these as formal funded programs.)
The following pages contain notes from early thinking about areas which might be candidates for future Catalyst programs:
See also
The following pages contain additional material relevant to Mozilla Catalyst: