Grants:PEG/WM PH/Chapter startup

Funded

This submission to the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2010-11. This is a grant to an organization.

IMPORTANT: Please do not make changes to this page now. They will be reverted.

• This project has been funded, completed, and a project report has been reviewed and accepted by WMF Staff.
• To review a list of other funded submissions by fiscal year, please visit the Requests subpage, and to review the WMF Grants Program criteria for funding please visit the Grants:Index.

Legal name of chapter

Wikimedia Philippines Inc.

Grant contact name

Josh Lim

Grant contact user-name or e-mail

Sky Harbor / jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com

Grant contact title (position)

President

Project lead name

Josh Lim

Project lead user-name or e-mail

Sky Harbor / jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com

Project lead title (position), if any

Head Organizer

Full project name

Wikimedia Philippines: Startup

Amount requested (in USD)

P195,150 (around $4,360)

Provisional target start date

July 1, 2010

Provisional completion date

May 21, 2011 (second WMPH annual convention)

Budget breakdown

(N.B.: For ease of computing and to account for currency fluctuations, rates here are quoted at P45=$1 if Philippine peso figures are given. All values given here are estimates.)

• Payment of legal fees incurred in the process of incorporation: P30,000 (around $670)
  • P15,000 (around $335) will be allocated for the reimbursement of the following:
    • Legal fees
    • Documentary stamp tax
    • Notarial fee
    • Name registration fee
    • Procurement of membership book
    • Registration fees
  • P15,000 (around $335) will be allocated for the payment of the following:
    • Barangay (village) clearance
    • Business permit from the City of Manila
    • NGO and/or charitable organization registration with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)
    • Permit to launch nationwide fundraising campaign from the DSWD
    • Corporate community tax certificate
    • Tax-related documents (i.e. authority to issue receipts, etc.) from the Bureau of Internal Revenue
    • Trade name registration with the Department of Trade and Industry (if needed)
    • Trademark registration with the Intellectual Property Office
    • Additional legal fees, if need be
• Procurement of office and presentation equipment: P90,000 ($2,000)
  • Office laptop computer: P40,000 (around $890)
  • LCD projector: P50,000 (around $1,110)
• Production of Wikimedia promotional materials for distribution: P25,000 (around $560)
• Hosting expenses for quarterly meetings: P16,000 (around $360)
• Rental and maintenance (for 12 months) of a virtual office: P12,000 (around $270)
• Office supplies (including commissioning of common seal): P10,000 (around $230)
• Web hosting for two years: P9,000 ($200)
• Acquisition of the wikimedia.org.ph domain name for two years: P3,150 ($70)

Any extra funds left unused after the procurement/payment of all the above items shall be reallocated for use in funding WMPH projects and programs for the 2011 fiscal year, with permission from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Project scope

As a recently-incorporated chapter, Wikimedia Philippines seeks to build up its structural support base in order to sustain the projects which it plans to pursue. During the first few months after incorporation, WMPH will be focused on getting people to know more about the projects (and, by extension, expanding the organization's membership base) through awareness drives and programs both on- and off-wiki, as well as preparing the organization for the challenges of being an entity with a juridical personality independent of that of its constituent members. Later on, as the organization becomes more established and becomes more capable of standing on a solid institutional foundation, focus will then shift to projects and programs which help get people acquainted with Wikimedia, help get the message of Wikimedia across and, in turn, make them into effective instruments of social change through the engagement of the Filipino people using education and the Wikimedia projects as a medium in doing so.

Project goal

The goal of this project is to build up WMPH's organizational base in order to allow it to be more capable of handling organizational requirements in the future, as well as to allow the organization's members to freely pursue both the aims of the organization and Wikimedia without placing undue burden upon them.

Non-financial requirements

None.

Fit to strategy

The project will help increase the reach of Wikimedia Philippines in order to get people to be more aware of the Wikimedia projects as a whole, and how they can be relevant to the Philippine setting in particular. While the Wikimedia projects have fairly strong name recall and brand awareness in the Philippines, particularly with Wikipedia, said awareness is dominated by a give-and-take mindset which more often than not leads people to take the Wikimedia projects for granted without them knowing how they can give back to the projects, and which perpetuates the mindset that the projects will always be left wanting because the content that they are looking for can't be found there.

WMPH deems it important that over time, this mindset needs to change if the projects will ever advance in the Philippines. Part of the reason why most Philippine-language projects have slowly tanked over the years (exceptions being Tagalog, Cebuano and Bikol, which have fairly vibrant communities) is because of a lack of interest among the community (or communities) involved, often without knowledge of them being able to contribute to the projects to fill in the gaps that they themselves complain need to be filled. We believe that in order to harness the full benefits of the projects, people need to be more proactive instead of reactive to the situations currently facing them, and people should be able to freely contribute to the projects in their own little way. Establishing a chapter upon strong institutional foundations is a major step in fulfilling that goal, and ensuring the long-term viability of vision of Wikimedia in the Philippines and the effectiveness of the Philippine-language projects in particular.

Other benefits

We believe that establishing WMPH will help galvanize the free content movement in the Philippines with the presence of a major organization like Wikimedia supporting them, and likewise generate significant publicity which can help increase awareness among the Wikimedia projects here. In addition, we believe that by establishing a chapter, we boost morale among the ranks of Wikimedia editors across the Philippines by establishing a support network which can not only help retain editors, but likewise increase the WMPH membership base to a level where projects can be effectively executed.

Measures of success

We will consider this project a success if we are able to launch meaningful projects and proclaim our advocacies with minimal help from the Foundation. In addition, we will consider this project a success if we are able to increase our membership base beyond the 48 members currently listed and, by extension, effectively promote the advocacy of Wikimedia to the fullest extent possible by the chapter.