Challenges are a part of a bigger project called community boost_r. community boost_r inspires, enables and promotes tech for civil participation in transparency and accountability initiatives in the Western Balkans. The project is run by Fundacja TechSoup and Dokukino in partnership with TechSoup Global, Zašto ne (BiH), SEE-ICT (Serbia) and IPKO Foundation (Kosovo) thanks to the support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Balkan Trust for Democracy.
I. ELIGIBILITY
Challenges invite participation from all social innovators and entrepreneurs, NGOs and programmers. Through a variety of creative offline events and online forums, partnerships with IT communities, corporations and web-media outlets, innovators will be targeted to join and share both ideas and feedback.
NOTE: We encourage individuals as well as organizations to apply but for legal reasons grants to finalists may only be given to the three winners per country upon the completion of a grant agreement between Fundacja TechSoup and an NGO. If the winner is an individual, she/he will need to partner with an existing NGO whose programs would be aligned with the project. Another possibility would be to start an NGO, as a condition of receiving the cash grant support. We reserve the right to organize a short phone-interview to make sure the organization is real and committed to developing the project.
II. VOTING AND JUDGING CRITERIA:
Projects will be chosen through a process combining online and offline (jury) voting. Selection during these phases will happen as follows:
- Online vote: the online vote highlights community involvement and the potential for a project to succeed based on a growing community of supporters and friends. This phase is used to determine a short list of projects that meet criteria, receive votes and show high levels of social media interactions, comments and followers. Once voting begins, individuals may create a profile and will then be able to fill in a ballot and must choose their favorite three (3) projects. The votes are the primary value considered but other social media are taken into consideration using the following algorithm: 70% votes, 20% comments/dialog, and 10% combined average of Facebook Likes, Tweets and Google +.
- Once a short list has been determined, the Jury will weigh the finalists based on a simple point system (10 points each category) on the following factors:
- Social change potential: How will people (the users) change, what will they be able to achieve with your product? Do you hope their behavior will change? How will this influence your community and your country or city? Does this idea educate, organize, or empower people to address a particular transparency and accountability issue and does it have potential to make a significant contribution to work on the issue?
- Technology: How will people use your website / web application / mobile application? How will they interact with it? Be specific and remember to keep it simple! If you can provide any technical details (i.e. programming languages, operational systems, data base information), it is appreciated, but not required.
- Timeline and objectives: If you are a finalist we will help you build your product and you will receive $5,000 in support for the project. What will you guarantee people as a result? Impress us with your solid plan and show realistic, measurable objectives.
- Community building: How will people find out about and thus begin using your tool? What kind of multimedia do you want to use? Do you have any online or offline campaigning ideas? Are you going to organize events? How will people engage offline?
- Sustainability: How do you hope to keep this project running? What kind of support do you think you need beyond our initial investment in your product and project? How do you plan on getting it? Do you have a social enterprise idea? Many of the best projects rely and build on existing technology. Are there existing tools that you can use to build your product? Can you share examples and links?
3. Closing events: Winners will be determined by the second round of online voting. Additionally, we plan on organizing closing events during which each finalist will have an opportunity to launch their project.
III. TIMELINE
Challenges start with the submission phase during which citizens and organizations of Kosovo, BiH and Serbia submit their ideas for a social project to the community boost_r site. The submission phase starts on April 18 for all countries and ends on May 14 (midnight) for Serbia and Bosnia & Hercegovina and on May 20 for Kosovo.
The submission phase is followed by the voting phase and the Jury work -- May 15-18 for Serbia and BiH, May 21-28 for Kosovo.
After the voting finishes a code sprint (hackathon) for seven best projects in each country will be organized on the weekend of May 25-26 in Sarajevo (BiH), May 31 -- June 1 in Belgrade (Serbia) and June 15-16 in Pristina (Kosovo). Code sprints will be followed by the second round of online voting that will happen between June 18 and 25 in all countries.
Winning sites and/or applications will be announced on June 27.
IV. PROJECT VETTING
To participate, projects must:
- confirm availability for code sprints and Events
- confirm political neutrality, transparency and legality – projects which are illegal, slanderous, libelous or unconstructive will not be accepted.
- affirm they have read rules and regulations and understand Fundacja TechSoup, Dokukino and partners have the right to refuse any application with or without explanation.
- register on the community boost_r website
- share and share alike Creative Commons (read more about licensing in the FAQ)
V. AWARDS CRITERIA
To receive a grant, projects must meet the requirements of the sponsor, if any.
The organization running the project or affiliated with it must:
- sign up a grant agreement with Fundacja TechSoup
- fulfil the grant reporting obligations specified in the grant agreement
- grant funding to finalists will be distributed in installments based upon mutually agreed project milestones and reporting.
Fundacja TechSoup will provide a model for a locally binding agreement to cover these essential points among others:
- share and share alike Creative Commons
- publish their code to the CodeBase
- include a translation module in the coding language (http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/translation)
- present a 6 month plan and budget
- spend no more than 50% of the grant on administration and salaries (see FAQ)
- confirm logo placement/representation of Fundacja TechSoup, Dokukino/community boost_r and partner logos
- political neutrality, transparency and legality.
- projects must demonstrate live launch date within 3 months.
- utilize and share access to an analytics tool available in English (preferably Google Analytics).
