Grants:PEG/User:Dimi z - WMBE/Start-up Grant - WMBE

Funded

This submission to the Project and Event Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2012-13. This is a grant to a group.

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This grantee has requested a change to the project start or completion date submitted here, and this change has been approved by WMF and is now reflected on this submission page. Please see the discussion page for details, including reporting requirements that may have changed as a result of this change.

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Affiliations Committee Resolution

Resolution voted on 2 April 2013

Basic information

Grant details

Official project name: Wikimedia Belgium Start-up Grant
Project start date (include month, day, and year): 1 April 2013
Project completion date (include month, day, and year): ~~31 December 2013~~ 1 November 2014
Please describe this project in 1–2 sentences: The project aims to assist the local community in Belgium in the founding and affiliation process of a Belgian chapter. Its main focus is to cover some of the considerable financial burden caused by the Belgian linguistic and legal systems.

Financial details

Currency requested (you must specify a currency): Euro
Amount requested in currency requested: €2209.73
Equivalent amount in US$ on the date of this submission: $2868.89
List the exchange rate used to calculate the amount listed in USD: US$1.2983 per €1.00 (quoted from Google Calculator on 24 March 2013)
Project start date (include month, day, and year)

30 November 2013 (for relauching the founding process) or as soon as grant approved and received.

Grantee details

See the eligibility requirements for more information.

Are you an organization, an individual, or an individual submitting on behalf of a group?: Group

Group information

Name of group:

Wikimedians in Belgium wishing to become Wikimedia Belgium

Purpose of group:

Founding of local organisation to support free knowledge in general and WMF projects in particular. Affiliation with the WMF thereafter.

Link to information about your group:

Wikimedia Belgium founding wiki

Contact information

1st Project Lead

Project lead name:

Dimitar P. Dimitrov

Project lead username or email:

User:Dimi_z or dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com

Project lead title (position within group), if any:

Not applicable at this stage (description of tasks: start-up grant lead in founding process)

2nd Project Lead

Project lead name:'

Maarten

Project lead username or email:

User:MADe

Project lead title (position within group), if any:

Not applicable at this stage (description of tasks: statutes lead in founding process)

Goals and measures of success

Project goal

The ultimate goal of this project is to successfully found Wikimedia Belgium and affiliate it as a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Measures of success

Legal approval of the statutes and bylaws of WMBE (by a lawyer or the legal service of a professional association).

Approval of the statutes and bylaws of WMBE by the Affiliations Committee.

Translation of the statutes and bylaws in the three official federal languages of Belgium (NL, FR, DE) and English.

Due to cost considerations only the French translations will be done professionally (they are legally required in Brussels Region). The other translations will be crowd-sourced, which will be easier when the documents are available in two languages.

Legal registration of WMBE.

Affiliation of WMBE with the WMF.

Support of and team-building for the WMBE team and volunteers to achieve the above goals.

NB: Statutes (nl: statuten, fr: statut de la société) contain the fundamental information about the organisation, its vision, mission and general structure. Bylaws (nl: Reglement van Inwendige Orde) refer to the internal rules and regulations of the organisation.

Project scope and Activities

This section describes what will happen if this project is funded.

List of Activities

An industry association providing legal services to NGOs at a beneficial price will be employed to review and if necessary rewrite the proposed statutes and bylaws in accordance with the Belgian legislation.
All the founding documents will be translated from Dutch (the current working language) into the three other federal languages and English.
A PO Box will be rented for 2 years to serve as the legal mailing address of WMBE.
A bank account will be open.
The administrative fees for registering a non for-profit will be covered.
A kick-off inauguration event will be organised to promote the "birth" and future current as well as future activities of the chapter.

Budget breakdown

Provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses.

Note that grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Total project budget

Part one: Get the organisation registered by Belgian legislation and the Foundation.

Item	Price
Legal due diligence of the statutes (by VSDC) (membership for one year + coordination on the drafting of the statutes)	€305
Publish the registration in the Governmental Gazette (quoted price)	€161.66
Hire PO box Paid up front for two years (bpost tariffs)	€240
Open bank account Approximate cost for two years	€100

Part two: Translations

(For cost estimates form translation offices please contact Dimi_z.)

Item	Price
Dutch-French statutes	€633.07
Dutch-French bylaws	€370

Part three: Kick-off event

Item	Price
WM cupcakes	€100 (examplary prices)
Drinks	€300 (30pplX€10 if we gather in a café 60x€5 if we find a free venue and bring drinks.)
Venue	(see drinks)

Total: Overview

Position	Budget
Legal	€806.66
Multilingualism	€1003.07
Social	€400
Total budget	€2209.73

Total amount requested

The total sum requested in this grant proposal amounts to €2209.73.

Are there additional sources of revenue that will fund any part of this project? List them here.

In the past years we organised several events with Belgian governmental agencies. We will try to get them to sponsor the set-up of the chapter, both financially and practically.

We will collect voluntary donations during the activities.

Non-financial requirements

Our non financial needs are perfectly met by the expertise provided by the Affiliations Committee.

Resources

Active team members include (list incomplete):

The community portal is the dedicated Wikimedia Belgium wiki.

Impact

This section will describe how the proposed project is related to the Wikimedia mission and Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It will also provide information about other benefits to Wikimedia communities.

Fit to strategy

How will this project support the key organizational objectives of WMF.

It will provide an organisation that people, media and institutions interested in Wikipedia and its sister projects can contact. This will increase the reach and thereby the popularity of the Wikimedia projects.
It will lead to the founding of a chapter that will in turn organise projects and events that attract more participation.
By having a legal status it will be easier to contact institutions and arrange co-operation projects that will provide the Wikimedia projects with more quality content.
Having an official address to write to or phone number to call will make Wikimedia, Wikipedia and its sister projects more credible and hopefully put an end to many imprecisions in the media.

Benefits

If your project will benefit a specific online community, please list that here. For example, English Wiktionary. This project is intended to aid the community found Wikimedia Belgium which will strive to gather all human knowledge and provide it freely too every single human being. This said the chapter will try to benefit and help any and all online communities sharing its values, regardless of language or type of involvement. Taking into account the community origins it is nevertheless to expected that the major contributions will be in the federal languages Dutch, French and German as well as in English.

Provide a brief statement (about 1 paragraph) about how your project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement. Does your project fit into a work area such as GLAM, Education, Organization Development, Editor Retention, or Outreach? This project aims to establish a national chapter which will empower Wikimedians and like-minded people to develop projects and work to achieve the goals of the movement. It will also create a legal home base for the community facilitating its interactions with other organisations and institutions as well as making it easier for newcommers to find "the movement" and "the community".

If successful, does your project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations? Please explain how in 1 - 2 sentences. This project is a replication of hugely successful chapter projects in neighbouring countries. Of course once successfully established everything possible will be undertaken to share the experiences made and best practices gathered with other chapters in founding.

Please list any other benefits that this project will produce.

It will facilitate and expedite the founding of a Belgian chapter of the WMF.
This in turn will boost the communities motivation and morale.
It will give the community a visible identity to be proud of.
Which will then motivate the community to tackle other projects.

For grantees

If you are the grantee or representative that wrote this grant submission, you may request changes by using these links:

Create a request for an extension of the approved project completion date.
Create a request for changes to the approved project budget.