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@perl-foundation.org. Submission deadline is the last day of November, voting starts in December and we will be awarding the grants by the beginning of January.
First, please read about how to submit a grant. 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 for a better idea of the grant process.
To get an idea of what sorts of grants are generally accepted, you can read through past grants for 2001 to 2006. You can also read through the grant-related postings to the Perl Foundation blog. As a general rule, a properly formatted grant proposal is more likely to be approved if it meets the following criteria:
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, 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.
Re:travel grants?
ambs on 2007-11-05T14:46:46
Hola, Ricardo. I might add this information on TPF webpage. But for now, I was told that TPF rarely approve travel grants. In the rules of operation, you'll note the following:
- Non-travel grants may not be awarded to any member of the grants committee;
- Travel grants may only be awarded to members of the grants committee for actual expenses, and only with the full approval of TPF's board of directors.
Cheers!
Re:travel grants?
rjbs on 2007-11-05T15:30:23
Thanks. I imagine that one reason travel grants are rarely approved may be that they're rarely applied for, because there is no information on what the heck they're all about. I look forward to seeing what becomes of that.
