Something interesting crossed my inbox recently … turns out the Maxava company (makers of the Maxava High Availability Suite) has created a foundation to provide grants to IBM i community oriented organizations.
From the website …
The Maxava iFoundation has been established to provide assistance to not-for-profit organizations working to grow and strengthen the IBM i community. iFoundation grants are designed specifically to support user groups in the general promotion and free exchange of knowledge, ideas, and skills related to IBM i.
They have a grant fund of $50000 that they will be given to eligible organizations (Local User Groups, advocacy organizations, etc) in blocks of $2000 / year.
- Eligible uses for a Maxava iFoundation grant include IBM i related education, administration costs, group meetings and conferences, membership growth initiatives, events and speaker support.
- Grants applied for must be for specific and future based purposes (not retrospective activities).
- One grant per annum, per approved user group.
- Preference will be given to organizations that include a High Availability / Disaster Recovery educational component in their agenda during the year.
- Successful applicants agree to acknowledge the support of the foundation by displaying its logo on their website.
- The foundation may allocate part or all of available grant funding in any particular year, depending on Maxava iFoundationâs assessment of the merits of applications received for that year.
It’s kind of interesting that that give preference to HA projects … although not unsurprising. Seems very much like enlightened self interest. Not dissimilar to my original reasons for creating midrange.com (originally The Midrange System BBS).
At this point I doubt that midrange.com will be applying for a grant … as we are getting by on income from Google AdSense ad’s, but you never know. If I think of a project that could use some outside resources, this might be the organization that could fund it.
I have offered the PR person who contacted me about this a guest author spot on this blog to discuss the motivations for this project … which they have accepted, so keep your eyes out for their article.