Difference between revisions of "Grants"

Latest revision as of 04:37, 25 July 2007

Tim Erickson and Steven Clift recently met in a secret location to draft various grant proposals.

You can view our work on this page.

Smaller Starter Grants

• New Voices grant proposal - Diverse community outreach for Issues Forums in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Winona.

• Community technology grant proposal - Core enhancements to GroupServer that promote broad use in Minnesota along with features that promote the expansion of Issues Forum.

• New Issues Forums grant proposal - A focused expansion to a diverse set of Minnesota communities - rural area, regional city, an inner-ring suburb, and ex-urban community. Existing forums in Minneapolis and St. Paul cover central cities.

Future Possibilities

• GroupServer international development grant - A major effort to expand use of GroupServer by non-profits and democracy organizations by engaging them in a features development initiative.

• Community Forums grant proposal - Developing a network of neighborhood-based "community forums" across Minneapolis and St. Paul.

• Community Topics for problem-solving online grant proposal - Pilot "community topics" on priorities local issues where the focus is on solving the problem through strategic and open communication (as opposed to open policy debate alreadyt featured on Issues Forums). Proposal will include a multiple-community Q and A network built with GroupServer to foster information sharing on special topics from community to community.

• UK Issues Forums phase 3 proposal - A proposal for UK government support for the creation of forums across the UK where local interest is determined. This will include a source of some central funding along with a equation for community/Council funding. This will include pilot e-support for neighbourhoods within communities with Issues Forums as well as a neighbourhood-based model.

• European Local Issues Forum development proposal - A multi-partner proposal to the European Commission, led by E-Democracy.Org UK for an expansion of Issues Forum to at least ten European cities involving translation of materials into five languages and internationalisation of GroupServer. This might also include potential accession states like Serbia and others.

• Research grant proposals - From survey research on forum participants and content analysis of forum postings to qualitative community interviews and experimental forum formats, the opportunity to participate in externally led research projects is quite significant.

• Strategic expansion capacity development grant - A grant to fund a process to define and plan a major expansion of E-Democracy.Org from a host of a few forums to potentially hundreds of forums around the world. This grant would plot the evolution of E-Democracy.Org from a sustainable all-volunteer initiative to a scalable international organization with core staffing and a distributed network of national affiliates (like in the UK) and governance structures

• Major expansion and development grant - The big one. A multi-year, multi-million, multi-funder grant proposal to expand Issues Forums to hundreds of communities around the world. The expansion would be based on the service club model and be similar to the growth of Rotary and Lions Clubs in the early 1900s.

Resource Links

• Grant proposal template