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 by the end of August. We will be awarding the grants by the beginning of October.
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, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 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.
Idea: "Online Survey: Projects We'd Like to See Funded by the Perl Foundation"
Maybe the submissions take the form of replies to a post on Perl Monks or entries on a page on the Perl 5 wiki.
Later, the Perl Foundation views the survey results and then uses its discretion to pick which projects it would like to put up for bids. Or maybe it picks one project at a time.
The Perl Foundation then asks for confidential bids. The lowest bidder gets the project unless the Perl Foundation decides to award the grant to a bidder who wants a bit more money but is more likely to succeed. (This is all confidential at the Perl Foundation, to minimize hurt feelings, etc.)
The Perl Foundation then publicizes the name of the winning bidder -- provides lots of strokes , prestige. No need to actually say how much money is being paid, though.
