Overview - read this first to understand the process and documents involved

Ambassadors around the world who are interested in running specific ONF-related activities in their local communities or participating in regional industry events representing ONF can submit a request to receive financial support. This financial support is primarily meant to cover activity/event travel, accommodation, participation, and/or sponsorship costs. Each request is vetted by the Ambassador's mentor and reviewed by the A-team. The A-team can either approve, partially approve, or reject the request. In exceptional cases, there is a process for Expedited Financial Support Request Approval.

The financial support is in the form of reimbursement, meaning that the Ambassadors will have to cover these costs initially by themselves and receive pre-approved reimbursement from ONF after the activity/event when all documentation has been properly submitted and reviewed.

The Financial Support Request process consists of creating a Jira Issue and filling out three supporting documents.  The Jira Issue is used to track the request status, reviews, approvals, payment, and closure. The first two documents are used to provide detailed information about the request and the last document is used to provide an event report and a blog post after the activity/event.  Each ambassador applying for financial support should create their own request, even if they participate in the same event with other Ambassadors.

The three documents are as follows:

1. Financial Support Request Summary
2. Financial Support Request Details
3. Activity/Event Report and Blog Post

More details about the process and each document is provided below.

Prepare the financial support proposal

First, before applying for financial support for the event, please create the New Event in the ONF Events listing.

To prepare the financial support request, start by filling out these two documents:

1. Financial Support Request Summary template - this describes the activity/event, the target audience, measures of success, etc.
2. Financial Support Request Details template - this breaks down the financial request by numbers in local currency and USD.

Please click “File” -> “Make a Copy” to create your own copy of these files and save them to the Financial Support Requests folder. Please make sure to share them with permission “Anyone with the link can comment.”

Please also review the Ambassador Travel Policy.

Create a financial support request Issue in Jira

Login to Jira system: https://jira.opennetworking.org/projects/AMBASSADOR/issues/ 

The username and password are the same that you use for the ONF wiki.

Click the red “Create” button

Fill the forms according to the example below

Include links to both the Financial Support Request Summary and Details documents in the Description field.

Click the blue “Create” button

Steps after you submit your request

1. Your mentor will set the Jira ticket to In Progress.

2. Your mentor will review the request first and provide necessary assistance to polish the financial support proposal.

3. Your mentor will then submit the request to the Ambassador Program Steering Team (A-team) for review. All the proposals and comments are public to ensure full transparency and accountability within the Ambassador community.

4. Once the A-team approves or partially approves the request, an appropriate comment is made in the Jira Issue and an A-team member or your mentor will inform you accordingly. You can count on being reimbursed up to the approved amount.

5. In case the A-team rejects the request, an appropriate comment is made in the Jira Issue and an A-team member or your mentor will inform you accordingly. 

Steps after the activity/event is completed

Attach financial support request details

Use the above-created Financial Support Request Details document to finalize the request by inserting the actual expenses. This is necessary to do proper accounting of your activity/event and process reimbursement. 

Attach all relevant expense receipts to the Financial Support Request Details document and attach it to the above-created Jira Issue. Notice, this time we ask you to ATTACH the actual document, not just the link to the Google Doc.  This ensures we have access to the final copy of the document.

Submit event report and blog post

Every Ambassador who receives financial support must produce an Activity/Event Report and a Blog Post, and share them on the Ambassadors mailing list (ambassadors@opennetworking.org). The Activity/Event Report helps us and the ambassador community to have a better understanding of the events and activities we have helped to fund for Ambassadors and to learn from the past experiences. The blog post enables the wider ONF community to see what Ambassadors and ONF are doing in the industry.

• Please find here the Activity/Event Report and Blog Post template. 
• Here is an Activity/Event Report Example.

Please click “File” -> “Make a Copy” to create your own copy of this file and save it to the Event reports and blog posts folder. Please make sure to share them with permission “Anyone with the link can comment.”

Please also copy/paste the link to Activity/Event Report and Blog Post to the Jira Issue Description field.

Blog post will be published by ONF at the ONF Blog site.

Optional: If you have slides from the event that you want to share, you can follow the instruction to upload the files to Jira or put a link of the slides in the description of the Jira Issue, or put links to the Activity/Event Report document.

Processing of payment and closing the Jira Issue

Once you have completed the above steps and finalized the supporting documents, please inform your mentor and the A-team (a-team@opennetworking.org), so that your documentation can be reviewed and processed. 

The payment in the pre-approved amount will be processed promptly, usually via PayPal in USD, but we can work with you on alternate payment methods if necessary.

Once the payment has been sent, ONF will set the Jira issue to Resolved/Done.