ReadWriteWeb

Google just announced a new grant program that will distribute $5 million to "new and emerging YouTube partners. According to Google, the YouTube Partner Grants program is designed to find the best new ideas and production models from YouTube's content partners. As Google notes, many successful YouTube partners are able to generate substantial revenues, but they still lack the resources of studio-backed production houses.

The Wikimedia Foundation just emailed ReadWriteWeb to announce receipt of $500,000 in grant funding from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The grant is a part of a $100 million dollar program to fund open education resources, and given Wikimedia's mission to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, the Hewlett Foundation couldn't have chosen a better org.

The Ford Foundation has just granted $300,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation to support Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's repository for free, sharable multimedia files.

The grant will fund a study of barriers to entry for users and contributors new to Wikimedia Commons. The project team will also identify best practices from similar media-sharing sites. The team will design and implement a simpler workflow for uploading, licensing, and describing media.