Believe it or not, the Community Giving and Empowerment Program has been distributing resources to our community for just over one year. In that time frame, we have distributed several hundred thousands of dollars in grants, hardware, software, and other services to the Mozilla Community.

As part of the 2007 Q4 goals planning, Mike Shaver and I began to think about ways in which we could be more experimental with providing resources to the Mozilla community, while remaining (in fact, stressing!) leverage. It’s a bit of the same story, how do we do more strategically with what we have?

Here’s the new idea.

We collectively envisioned a program where, in addition to purchasing hardware for contributors who have been around the project for quite a while, we could create a limited pool of resources that could be distributed to the community on an as-needed basis. The rationale follows:

• We want more contributors accesses resources from the program: Sending resources to long-time contributors may have seemed like a reward for those who have been around a long time and have done superb work…unintentionally excluding some contributors who thought they didn’t qualify because they were either “too new” or on the cusp.
• We want to experiment: In the first year of the program, we’ve tried very hard to make sure that our contributors have the resources they have needed. But, many contributors who may not be contributing directly to Mozilla’s code base might be working on very interesting projects and might need resources. Why can’t we touch them, too?
• We want to stress leverage: As always, we’d like all resources we provide to amplify the work that our contributors are doing. Sometimes, it’s as easy as providing a new machine with updated software for testing purposes. But, in every case we’ve examined and in everything we’ve sent out to contributors, our team at Mozilla has always tried to answer the question, “Does this provide support in a leveraged way?”

Our proposed solution, and part of the 4th quarter goals, is to launch the Community Loaner Program. We’ll start small, making a small pool of hardware and funding resources available for people to use. We envision participation to look something like the following steps:

1. Individual or group of individuals contacts Seth about the Loaner Program.
2. Seth and that person work on articulating what is needed and for how long. Perhaps someone is working for 3 months on the next release of software for a specific module of code or a certain project. Or, another example might be that a group of individuals needs a new machine for 6 months to use as a tinderboxen. The ideas will have to come from the community.
3. The individual then submits a simple proposal (based on a template that Seth provides) sketching out a timeline, need, and deliverables.
4. Loan idea is discussed among the team with the individual and a decision is made.
5. At the end of the term of the loan, the deliverables are evaluated and any of the following could happen:
   • Extend loan of the resource for more deliverables (the case would have to be made);
   • Permanently gift the resource to the individual or group based on leverage, contribution and ongoing need;
   • Return resource (hardware or whatever) for use by another individual in the community.

We’re looking to have a few test cases in place by the end of Q4. If you’d like to apply or have questions, please comment here or email me. Yes, we are in the formative stages of this program, so we can amend it if something looks illogical or wrong.