Financial assistance for WG21 meetings

The purpose of the Standard C++ Foundation (the “Foundation”) is to promote the common business interests of the Standard C++ developer community. In support of that purpose, the Foundation has allocated a pool of funds to facilitate the work of WG21 (the ISO C++ committee) at each of their meetings. The work of WG21 benefits the Standard C++ developer community on all compilers and platforms. This program of financial assistance for WG21 meetings is experimental, and may be revised or even eliminated as experience and the purpose of promoting the common business interests of the Standard C++ developer community dictate.

In summary, assistance can include:

• Financial assistance for hosting the meeting, if not enough host funds are available. This requires a written request from the WG21 convener.
• Financial assistance for travel to the meeting, for proposal authors whose presence is requested by the committee but cannot otherwise attend because of financial hardship. This requires a written request from the appropriate subgroup chair (such as the Evolution Working Group chair, Library Evolution Working Group chair, or Concurrency Study Group chair).
• Financial assistance for further development of existing proposals that have been requested by the committee but whose authors cannot otherwise fully fund the proposal’s continued development because of financial hardship. This requires a written request from the appropriate subgroup chair (such as the Evolution Working Group chair, Library Evolution Working Group chair, or Concurrency Study Group chair).

See below for details.

Directors of the Foundation and their immediate family members are not eligible to receive assistance from the Foundation.

In all cases, assistance requires approval by the Foundation and a majority of the following WG21 officers: convener, Core working group chair, Library working group chair, Evolution working group chair, and Library Evolution working group chair. The total assistance may not exceed the budget determined by the Foundation directors.

Meeting sponsorship assistance policy

Some funding assistance is available for hosting prospective WG21 meetings for which there are insufficient financial sponsors to cover the entire costs of the meeting. The requirements are:

• There is an appropriate venue, including meeting space and hotel facilities, and a local meeting organizer who is willing to do all the administrative and logistical work to organize the meeting.
• The meeting organizer has asked their employer and other local companies, but those will not cover all the expenses.
• Some financial assistance would enable the meeting to occur. This assistance is limited to direct meeting expenses only including meeting room facilities and beverages/snacks for morning/afternoon breaks, and does not extend to meals, social events, or other expenses.
• The WG21 convener supports convening a WG21 meeting at the proposed meeting location and dates.

If you meet these requirements, you may qualify for hosting assistance. To apply, please ask the convener to submit a written hosting assistance request to the Foundation directors that includes the above information.

Travel assistance policy

Some travel assistance is available for attendees with a financial need to be able to attend a WG21 meeting. The requirements are:

• You have a paper to present. Preference will be given to papers that are followups to papers that have previously been considered and received encouragement to continue at a WG21 meeting, rather than papers on new topics.
• To attend the WG21 meeting, you have asked your employer to pay or reimburse your travel expenses, but your employer will not cover all the expenses and you are not in a position to pay the remainder personally.
• Some financial assistance would enable you to attend all or a substantial part of the meeting to present the proposal. This assistance is limited to coach travel and hotel room expenses only, and does not extend to meals or other expenses.
• The chair of the subgroup which will consider the paper (such as Evolution Working Group or Library Evolution Working Group) supports giving you travel assistance.

If you meet these requirements, you may qualify for travel assistance. To apply, please ask the appropriate subgroup chair to submit a written travel assistance request to the Foundation directors that includes the above information.

Grant assistance policy

Some grant funds are available for individuals with a financial need to continue work on WG21 proposals. The requirements are:

• You are a student, self-employed, or have some other demonstrated need for financial assistance.
• Your proposal is in the form of a numbered WG21 document that has already been presented at a WG21 meeting and the appropriate subgroup has requested a revision. This means that you have already contributed your own time and resources to develop the proposal into a form sufficiently complete so as to be technically evaluated by the committee.
• You have no other source of funds available to continue the work.
• Financial assistance would enable you to continue the work and create a suitably updated proposal for the next WG21 meeting. This assistance is limited to incremental assistance only such as to help defray living expenses while not working full-time, and does not imply a normal pay rate for a software engineer or consultant.
• The chair of the subgroup which has considered the proposal (such as Evolution Working Group or Library Evolution Working Group) supports giving you grant assistance.
• Grant proposals must be submitted in writing and describe what the grant is supposed to accomplish: the specific existing paper/proposal that will be continued; how strongly it was encouraged at a previous WG21 meeting; and specific goals that should be accomplished for the next WG21 meeting(s). One or two pages is generally sufficient.

If you meet these requirements, you may qualify for grant assistance. To apply, please write a grant proposal as described in the last bullet above, and then ask the appropriate subgroup chair to submit it as part of a written grant assistance request to the Foundation directors that includes the other above information.

Other requirements:

• The Foundation will approve only grants for projects that the Foundation determines will further its purpose of promoting the common business interests of the Standard C++ developer community. Projects may not be designed to benefit, more than incidentally, any commercial developer, software publisher, or other individual or entity. Projects may not be used to provide monetary gain to a Foundation member or any other person.
• Short progress reports will be required at specified intervals, usually monthly or quarterly. The interval will be specified as part of grant approval.
• The grant period is typically until the next WG21 meeting (i.e., 6 months), or in some cases until the second WG21 meeting (i.e., 12 months). A grant may be extended by submitting an updated written proposal to be reconsidered at the approvers’ discretion based on prior results and continued need and subgroup chair support.
• Any reference implementations or other software produced as part of a project must be open-sourced under the Boost license (http://opensource.org/licenses/bsl1.0.html) or a license that provides the same or more generous rights to the general public to use, reproduce, redistribute, and prepare derivative works of the software, and made publicly available on GitHub or an equivalent site.
• Grantees are not employees or contractors of the Foundation, and their work is not work for hire. Grantees retain ownership of all rights in work they produce using Foundation grants. The Foundation receives no rights or benefits related to any work produced by the grantee, including but not limited to that the Foundation receives no ownership, intellectual property, or other rights related to the work. Receiving a grant does not create any employment or contracting relationship with the Foundation.

Updated 2014-04-21