TPF Grants
To be an institution, or to represent an institution, is not a simple task. Namely, I represent The Perl Foundation (TPF), and specifically, I represent TPF Grants Committee (GC).
We, at TPF GC, receive quartely grant proposals on Perl, to be funded by TPF. We can't fund all (and we do not want to fund all). So, they are posted publicly for community discussion and are voted by the GC. We try to have in consideration the relevance of the grant to the Perl community (taking into account community comments), the grant proposal clearness (if it is clean, probably the proposer knows how to make his task), the amount requested (if it is worth the work proposed) and the proposer curriculum. This last item is, probably, the most abstract. But if the proposer has the skills and has previous contributions to the Perl community, that is usually enough. It is also important to analyze the proposer past on TPF Grants. If he failed any grant before, probably that will be taken into account.
After this, and if the grant is accepted, we expect things to go smoothly. The grantee is interested to perform the work (it is his proposal) and will try to perform it as good as he can.
Unfortunately that does not work every time. We had some failed grants during time, and probably we will have more. We just expect that amount can get lower with time. Failed grants are bad for TPF, as they sponsored or, at least, choose it to be funded, and they are bad for grantees, as their failure will be somehow presented publicly.
Why am I posting this? Because today I posted a failure in TPF blog, and I also posted a report on a (so far) successfully grant. And I would like to comment on that as a common person and not necessarily as TPF GC chair.
Probably more posts on TPF GC will hit this blog in the future. All as someone that knows how TPF GC works, but also as an independent guy :)
I blog about Perl. D'uh!
I read about the failed grant. I am sure stuff like that happens from time to time. People jump in feet first and then realize the water is too deep and cold.
Actually I think it is very good that grants are closed if they don't deliver. I would even say there should be a much shorter time limit (this was 1.5 years?) maybe of 6 months.
That would encourage the grantees either to finish their work or cancel the grant by themselves thereby freeing the allocated money and letting TPF allocate it for some other project.