Grants talk:APG/Impact report form v1

This page and discussion page is maintained for archival purposes. For the current version of the form see Grants:APG/FDC portal/Impact report form

Out of Date????

If the page is "out of date" why is it being updated so regularly? If it is current, Why isn't the 'out of date' banner removed? Regards, Ariconte (talk) 23:55, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Ariconte. We are just making some changes to the form to align it with the updated FDC proposal, and then we wanted to ask for community input / feedback more broadly, once these changes are in place. Thanks for reminding me to update the message bar! Meerachary TBG (talk) 00:00, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Edits and queries

Thank you for creating this draft. I've made some changes in the expectation that the staff will variously accept or reject them.

A few queries:

1. Depth of scrutiny. I'm not quite clear what this means, and if it sends the right message in advance to entities: "Therefore, although line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals."

   If line items can't be examined, is it clear to funded entities what can be examined? And isn't the requirement to explain variance between planned and actual expenses delving into line items?

   It's not that I'm trying to undermine the notion that entities have a lot of freedom in how they spend the money; scrutiny and discussion after the fact is a different matter from the freedom with which decisions are made within the funded entity.

2. Currency rounding. The expression of currency values in this context can be too coarse-grained for disciplined reportage, or alternatively so fine-grained the it clutters for no useful purpose—a very real concern in an efficient application and reportage system.

   First, the course-grained: the examples are rounded to thousands of US$. While rounding to the nearest thousand of some currencies wouldn't make much difference where the basic unit is worth a few cents US; but I'm surprised that the signal is being sent out to round to such a coarse-grained extent (e.g. plus or minus US$500), not only here, but in other FDC-form examples. The accountant and verifier in me sees no reason for not expecting exact dollar values (so could the examples be not rounded to thousands of dollars? I'm prepared to go through them and make them look "real").

   On the other hand, there's a practical limit to exactness, which I've already suggested the GAC adopt, by avoiding the clutter factor from currency cents; this is standard practice in accounting. For example. GAC applications have sums like RSD 684,000.00 (US$7,354.84); it's unhelpful to have to write and read such a forest of inconsequential numerals, rather than, say, RSD 684,000 (US$7,355). I suggest a note somewhere in the lead of the "Financial summary", like ... "Please round dollar values to the nearest dollar; do not include cents."

3. Date submitted. Somewhere (I can't quite see where ... perhaps at the bottom, or added to the table at the top?) there needs to be "Date due" and "Date submitted". There needs to be some discipline about this reporting process! Tony (talk) 14:13, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

My feedback on the Impact Form as it is:

1. It's clear to me what is requested, and it is a very important form for the FDC to understand the importance and consequences of the activities developed by the entity that received the funds.
2. I was going to indicate the lack of dates (due and submitted), but i see they have been added in the mean time.
3. The examples shown on how to respond to some requests are very usefull. It's only a detail, but i would add, on the "total spending" box, that the entity can insert as many activities as needed. Maybe there should exist a "Example-Form" completely filled, in case any doubts arise.
4. On the "Progress against past year's goals/objectives" section, the request for metrics should also, in my opinion, be included in the results of the initiative. It is usualy easy to obtain them, and they can give a clear and efective idea about the activity's success (comparing them to the objectives of the initiative).
5. Great job overall! Lusitana (talk) 21:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Few suggestions on FDC impact report

The structure of FDC Impact report seems okay for now. However, I feel it would be good to add the names of Wikimedia projects (e.g. English Wikipedia, Wikitionary etc) that a chapter/entity is mainly focused on(in general or for a particular year). Additionally, I think we should also include some growth indicators in the report. That may include increase in number of members of an entity, increase in number of active editors in a Wikimedia project that an entity is focused on, increase in number of articles (also considering size & quality), number of meetups/workshops/other similar outreach activities organized in a year etc (these numbers are really a good way to have a quick overview of an entity's activities). However, we may have to review the impact report in the first year since new things will surface as the time progresses. - Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (talk) 17:00, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion for avoiding the huge rounding up/down

I've chosen one table as an example of more realistic figures, assuming they're almost certainly translated into US dollars except for the previousFDC grant. The expectations might have been decided:

Revenue source	Anticipated ($US)	Actual ($US)	Explanation of variances from plan
[e.g. FDC grant round 2, 2013]	$205,000	$205,000
Grant from [funding agency X]	$51,024	$45,121	The agency's budget was cut, so their grant to us was $5,000 less than expected.
Corporate donations	$25,020	$19,889	We did not have the time/capacity to reach out to as many corporations as we had hoped.
Individual donations	$20,560	$21,071
Membership fees	$4980	$7104	Our membership grew by 19%, from 249 to 296, and we raised the fee by 20%, from $20 to $24, so anticipated revenues were higher than expected.
Total revenues	$306,584	$298,185

Tony (talk) 10:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for comments!

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments, feedback, and edits. We (the FDC staff and support team) are taking a look at these edits and incorporating them along with some edits we've received off-Meta. Next, we'll turn this into a form and include it on the FDC Portal. So the examples you see (with the rounded numbers) won't appear on the form. That said, we'll probably have a separate example, filled out (as we did with the FDC proposal). In that example, we'll have more realistic (not so rounded) actual financial numbers.

Stay tuned -- we'll note here when we've moved this to the FDC Portal. Until then, if you have additional thoughts, please provide them here on the talk page.

Meerachary TBG (talk) 23:03, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Incorporating learnings into future planning

I would be interested in seeing a series of questions added to include a reflection of how these learnings would change the way the entity plans for the next cycle:

• What should we keep doing?
• What do we need to change to improve?
• What strategies to add? to drop?

Jwild (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Lessons Learned

If this section is to remain, I think it should expand to incorporate the flexibility of sharing failures as WELL as accomplishments. In fact, perhaps we want to have two sections: one for the best program executed and ones for the "worst" (i.e., the one where there stands the most to improve upon). Jwild (talk) 22:10, 11 December 2012 (UTC)