SPUG: Perl Foundation Grants - Call for Proposals

[Andrew Sweger]

The Perl Foundation has not received many grant applications this year.
Maybe you were not aware TPF has money to reward people doing work for the
Perl community. Maybe you thought all the money goes to Damian Conway. It
doesn't (at least, not any more). Just in case you're interested, here's
the call for proposals:

It's that time again! If you have an idea for doing some work for the Perl
community and you think it's worthy of a grant, please send your grant
entry to tpf-proposals at perl-foundation.org. Grant applications must be in
by the last day of July and we will be awarding the grants at the
beginning of September.

First, please read about how to submit a grant[1]. Read that *carefully*
as grants are often rejected if they don't meet the criteria. For example,
if you want to submit improvements to a well-known project but there's no
evidence that you have at least tried to work with the maintainers of that
project, the grant will likely not be approved. You can also read through
our rules of operation[2] for a better idea of thee grant process.

To get an idea of what sorts of grants are generally accepted, you can
read through past grants for 2001[3], 2002[4], 2003[5], 2004[6], 2005[7]
and 2006[8]. You can also read through the grant-related postings to the
Perl Foundation blog[9]. As a general rule, a properly formatted grant
proposal is more likely to be approved if it meets the following criteria:

It has widespread benefit to the Perl community or a large segment of it.
We have reason to believe that you can accomplish your goals. We can
afford it (we rarely approve anything more than a couple of thousand
dollars).

The thorniest issue, as always, is the grant amount. If you do not include
a grant amount, the grant will not be approved. So how much do you ask
for? While we have information in this posting about the grant
committee[10], the reality is fairly simple. We're a non-profit
organization and we are not flush with cash. If you charge us a typical
hourly rate, we probably cannot afford it. Typical grant awards are
generally in the $500 to $3000 range, but we have gone under and over
those amounts, depending on the grant. As a general rule the less
expensive it is, the more likely it is that we can afford to fund it. For
highly speculative grants (in other words, projects whose benefits may be
unclear or have a high chance of failure), we are unlikely to risk large
amounts of our donor's money.

[1] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/proposals.html
[2] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/rules.html
[3] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2001.html
[4] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2002.html
[5] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2003.html
[6] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2004.html
[7] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2005.html
[8] - http://www.perlfoundation.org/gc/grants/2006.html
[9] - http://news.perlfoundation.org/grants/
[10] - http://news.perlfoundation.org/2005/12/the_grant_committee_what_we_do.html