Handling sponsorship requests

[Teo Mrnjavac]

Hello KDE-www people,

I'm writing with my GSoC org admin hat on about an idea that could be
very good for KDE as a whole.

Lydia and I have been discussing how KDE handles travel sponsorship
for students, and generally how sponsorship applications are handled.

Would it be possible to deploy some kind of solution for handling any
and all kinds of reimbursement and sponsorship requests from members?
Ideally we'd have an interface for contributors to apply, make their
case and then later send in receipts. It might be also a good idea if
an eV member could vouch for someone's application (think new GSoC/SoK
students applying for Akademy sponsorship). From the eV board side I
guess they could use an overview of requests, funds and maybe a way to
rate them and sort a list by priority. Maybe such a software already
exists and can be integrated into our existing infrastructure (i.e.
identity.k.o and sprints.k.o). I guess the workload would greatly
depend on this.

Now, SoK applications close in less than a week. Could this be a SoK
project for a student maybe? Is anybody available to mentor?

As you might know, there have also been some discussions about the
transparency of criteria. While I do not doubt that the board handles
requests as diligently and fairly as possible, judging from the
information I have it is a very manual, tedious and tough task. Having
a software framework for handling these kind of requests could greatly
improve the perception of transparency.

I would appreciate if a board member could comment a bit on the need
and requirements for this solution, and if someone from the KDE-www
team could comment on the feasibility.

Cheers,
-- 
Teo