IEEE’s Member and Geographic Activities is responsible for supporting and meeting the members’ needs, for IEEE membership recruitment and retention, and for supporting the local geographic organizational units (Sections, Chapters, Affinity Groups, and Student Branches) within IEEE. If MGA has run a surplus during the previous fiscal year, it can offer opportunities for these organizational units to request funding for special projects during the current fiscal year. (Note that is funding is totally separate from the Region 3 Projects Funding that you may have already heard about.)

These projects must meet special requirements in order to be funded. Here are the rules:

[Explanatory comments are inserted in square brackets. They were added to help you increase your chances of getting your funding approved.]

• Projects must be completed in the current year. Any funds that remain at the end of the year will need to be returned.
• This funding is intended for new initiative activities (activities with a limited expected life of one to three years). [Since these are surplus funds, they are not intended to cover existing, ongoing operating expenses. Those are covered through other funding mechanisms. Showing that your idea either only has one-time costs, or can be funded long-term through other IEEE channels and will not result in repeated annual requests for special funding, will help your proposal to get approved.]
• Projects of less than $10,000 will not be considered. [You don’t usually get told that you have to ask for more money!]
• Multi-region projects are encouraged. [Projects that only assist a single Region rarely get approved at the MGA Board level. Think about how your idea can help multiple Regions and include that in your proposal.]
• It is encouraged that Region funds also be used to co-fund the proposed projects. [The Region 3 ExCom will decide how much co-funding to provide when it evaluates your proposal.]
• If a project requires [IEEE staff to do] software development, it will be subject to available resources.
• Proposals must be received by 1 April 2024 from each Region Executive Committee. [In order for them to do that, your proposals need to be received no later than 5:00 PM EDT on Thursday, March 21.]
• The MGA Finance Committee (FinCom) will recommend a maximum amount of funding for all projects to the MGA Board.
  • [In 2023, up to a total of $710k from the 2022 surplus was available.
  • In 2022, up to a total of $650k from the 2021 surplus was available.
  • In 2021, up to a total of $798k from the 2020 surplus was available.
  • In 2020, no funds were available.]
• Compliance with the IEEE Finance Operations Manual (FOM) rules will be reviewed by MGA Finance Committee. As specified in the IEEE FOM, [financial] awards cannot be funded under this program.
• If compliant, projects will be reviewed and ranked by MGA Operations Committee (OpCom) and recommended to the MGA Board for approval in June.
• Submitting a request does not preclude the use of Region funds for projects that are outside of these guidelines.

The opportunities are great, …

In 2023, Regions 1 & 2 requested and received $50k in funding to provide Owl Labs Meeting Owl Pro units to all of their Sections to improve their ability “to merge the two regions and promote greater communication and collaboration among members.” You can see their funding request here.

Also in 2023, Regions 9 & 10 requested $13k and received $8k in funding to encourage ethics awareness among its members through a short online assessment and the awarding of “Ethics Star” pins based on the participant’s level of scoring in the assessment. You can see their funding request here.

but the time constraints are tight.

You need to apply no later than 5:00 PM EDT on Thursday, March 21. Unfortunately, you won’t know if your funding request has been approved until June. Once you have your approval, you will need to spend all the money by the end of the year.

Fortunately, the submission form is short!

And you can save it and return to it later if you realize that you need to get some more information first!

Click here to open the form.

If you have questions, please contact [email protected].