Maxava Makes $45,000 In iFoundation Awards

September 19, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in late March, high availability software maker Maxava put $50,000 of its money where all of our mouths were to try to help out the IBM i community.

June 30 was the cutoff date to put in an application for a grant of a few grand, which could not be used for any personal expenses or any other costs that had been already incurred by a user group or other organization.

Allan Campbell, chief executive officer of Maxava, tells The Four Hundred that there were over 20 applicants for iFoundation grants, and that most of them were approved. “We just put it out there and we got pretty good feedback,” says Campbell. “It was really just a case of too many people talking and not enough action. We just put it out there for people to do something good with it.”

The one thing that Maxava did not do as part of the iFoundation grant process is ask for approval from those who received the grants to be part of a publicity campaign. “We were not doing it for publicity, so we didn’t think to get permission,” explains Campbell.

South East Michigan iSeries User Group (SEMIUG), the OMNI User Group, the Fairfield Application Systems User Group (FASUG), and the COMMON Education Foundation have subsequently given Maxava permission to say that they received iFoundation grants after members of the press (that would be us) had been pestering Maxava for details on who got the money and what they used it for. Campbell says that it doled out funds to organizations in North America, Europe, and South Africa, and that in a lot of cases the money is being used by organizations to do training or help foster education. One user group, for instance, is using the money so college students don’t have to pay fees, and yet another is using it to pay for better speakers to come and attend their events.

“I like that the response to the iFoundation has been open and honest and genuine,” Campbell says. “We were expecting that it might be a bit cynical, and the fact that it has not been is quite refreshing.”