Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimédia Magyarország/Proposal form

Wikimédia Magyarország received a funds allocation in the amount of 67,477 in 2012-2013 Round 1. This funds allocation was recommended by the Funds Dissemination Committee on 15 November 2012 and approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 1 December 2012.

Please note that the proposals are now closed to community response. Thanks to all for your engagement with the Community Review process, and for your questions. FDC members, FDC staff, and entity representatives will still be communicating on these discussion pages over the next few weeks, but entities will not be responding to questions from anyone other than the FDC or FDC Staff.

This page should be used to discuss the entity’s submitted proposal. This includes asking questions about the content of the proposal form, asking for clarifications on this proposal, and discussing any other issues relating to the proposal itself. To discuss other components of this proposal please refer to the discussion links below.

• This proposal has not yet been created.
• This proposal form has not yet been created.
• Staff proposal assessments have not yet been published for this round.
• FDC recommendation discussion page: discuss the recommendation that the FDC gives to the Board regarding all requests.
• Board decision discussion page: discuss the board's decision.
• An impact report has not yet been submitted for this funds allocation.

Clarifying questions from FDC staff

Thank you for your proposal! Please respond to the questions below; do not hesitate to reach out in case you need any clarifications.

Budget and finances

1. Please confirm the following information:
   1. Current year budget: USD 64,886

      Confirmed --Bence (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

   2. Proposed year budget: USD 76,568

      Confirmed --Bence (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

   3. Current year movement grants received: USD 47,250

      We have requested 10 500 000 HUF, and after deducting amounts that remained from previous grants, we have received 10 004 252 HUF on 15/11/2011, using the same exchange rate as the other items use, that would be $47 727 and $45 473, respectively. --Bence (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

   4. Proposed year funds requested (from FDC): USD 67,477

      Confirmed --Bence (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

2. Please confirm your entity’s cash reserve position:
   1. How much do you have in your reserves now?

      About 5.2 M HUF ($23 636) of unrestricted reserves as of the end of September. --Bence (talk) 18:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

   2. How much do you expect to have by the start of the planning year period?

      We expect unrestricted reserves to remain at 5.2 M HUF ($23 636). --Bence (talk) 18:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

3. What is your long-term policy and strategy towards operating reserves (if you have one)?

   We are maintaining a fairly large reserve, which serves two purposes: allow us to weather any changes in the funding landscape and to allow us to fund new programme initiatives. In case WM Hungary fails to receive FDC funds (or the equivalent of the WMF sponsorship mechanism of any given year, as was in the past), we would need to rely on the reserves to be able to let go off staff, cancel on-going contracts (with their accompanying penalties, in some cases) and either adapt to a much smaller organizational footprint (or wait until the next FDC round). We included only programmes that have a high probability of happening but at the same time we have learned that a large number of our successful programmes are taken on or proposed at a shorter notice than the typical grant funding cycles, and therefore we keep our reserves available to fund initiatives and programmes that were not included in our grant applications.--Bence (talk) 12:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

   Please explain here how WMHU defines "cash reserve" and "operating reserve". Thanks, Wolliff (talk) 22:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

   Can you please clarify the reasoning for this question? We have not used the term "cash reserve" on this page. Otherwise I believe we apply the definition that is linked from the proposal: "The amount of net funds (revenue less cost) that your entity has accumulated.". I am happy to discuss this with our accountant and get back to you with a more detailed distinction between different kinds of reserves if it is important. I am also happy to discuss with her ways to translate our operational definition into one that is movement-wide.

   For the purposes of our planning we defined as "reserves" unrestricted funds earned previously that we do not plan to spend in the given fiscal year. (In 2012 we planned to spend from our reserves accumumulated up till 2012, but given our current spending levels this is unlikely – although there maybe a slight variation on this based on the final accounting and its acceptance of our annual WMF grant for this year.) Restricted funds even if earmarked for funding in a future year are not counted into our reserves, and - for planning and FDC-proposal purposes – are shown separately as "revenue" for the year we plan to spend it. --Bence (talk) 22:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

   Hi, Bence: We are asking this question so that we may ensure that the FDC can accurately understand the response of each entity to this question since there had been confusion around the term in a few cases. Though you did not use the term "cash reserve" in your response, we did use it in our question, which was why I referred to it specifically :) Thanks for being willing to participate in the discussion. Since we are merely seeking to make sure the FDC and FDC Staff understand your response correctly, the definition you have offered here is very helpful. Regards, Wolliff (talk) 02:25, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

4. Please explain why you are still requesting a budget increase when there was significant under-spending this year.

   A big lesson from this year was that a number of our programmes did not succeed this year due to a paucity of volunteers. This year we have focused our plan on those that have a highest value and intend to utilize an employee to conduct those programmes (e.g. organize the Wikipedia-workshop opportunities for volunteers) that lack volunteers – the employee, and the office to work out from are significant drivers of cost (although still relatively cheap in international comparison). If one compares our plan with last year, one can see that we have cut out a big number of ideas that either did not work or does not need repeating yet (e.g. re-printing of brochures is not necessary until the existing ones last), and that we have adjusted the costs of the working programmes and especially admin costs based on actual experience (e.g. the travel support programme, the article writing contests and the postage fees cost were expanded, while board and staff travel was reduced). --Bence (talk) 12:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

5. Please also explain the high administrative costs (since admin costs are assumed to be separate from staffing costs). Is this due to the establishment of a physical office, as outlined in the proposal?

   (Please note, the original table contained a numerical error, which was not noticed due to the final sums being correct. It has been corrected post-deadline at [1]). The exact breakdown of the costs is available at Wikimédia_Magyarország/2013_Programme_Plan, the biggest cost-element (>50%) is the office rent (the establishment of the office is also a one time cost, but it is included in the "organizational development" bracket), followed by the server's maintenance, official travel, accounting, stand by funds for legal and IT costs, and then the rest. Given that many of the administrative costs are associated with programmes (i.e. most of the telephone and postage costs, etc.) we don't see administrative costs as too high (given the small size of our organization and the fact that many activities can be achieved with little funds, our administrative costs will continue to remain above most proposed "ideal" thresholds). –Bence (talk) 12:36, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Missing or unclear data

1. Can you provide more detail on the revenue from 2012 that was received in 2011? Even with this revenue included, there seems to be a discrepancy between what was projected in 2012 and what was received (for instance, when exactly was the Grant from the Council of Internet Providers received)?

Here is a breakdown of planned revenues as stated in our 2012 programme plan, and their realisation as of August 2012:

• Membership fees: 100 000 HUF planned, 81 000 HUF collected
• Income tax allocation (1%): 1 000 000 HUF planned, 0 HUF collected (it is expected we will receive before the end of the year ~1.2 M HUF)
• Amount requested as WMF Grant: 10 500 000 HUF, 10 004 252 HUF received on 15/11/2012 (this includes the repayment of $2303.34 owed to the WMF from previous grants, which was planned as an expense for 2012 but was thus paid in 2011)
• Grant of Council of Internet Providers: 420 000 HUF planned as part of a 4.3 M HUF grant received in July 2010 which included the purchase of a server and two years hosting, the server was delivered at the beginning of 2011, so the grant expires in 2012. As these restricted funds were included as planned revenues, but were in fact money already received, it doesn't show up in 2012 actual revenues.
• From reserves: we planned to spend 2 255 000 HUF from reserves, which would not show up as actual revenue.
• We have not planned for donations, earned interest and "other income" (such as refunds from a bankrupt airline) of about 850 000 HUF.

Based on the above, our revenues are in a healthy state compared to our plans (while in practice, our budgeting could improve by using clearer terms and categorisations, but it has so far been difficult with the WMF and FDC annual grant terms changing from year to year, and before that due to the difficult to plan results of the annual fundraiser, in certain years showing a 10-fold increase in donations.)--Bence (talk) 12:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Staffing

1. With a relatively small community being served, and a history of under-spending on programmes in the past few years, what is the rationale for WMHU wishing for a full time staff member at this time?

As explained above, it is this history of lack of volunteers for certain important programmes that necessitates a gradual shift towards professionalization of some of the activities (the ones that lack volunteers, and the administrative background – e.g. mailing out prizes, booking venues – that come with them).

There is a distinction to be made between underspending for being unable to carry out a programme (due to lack of volunteers to take them on) and delivering results under budget. In the first case we have tried to identify a number of key initiatives that we would like done with the help of staff and volunteers (who would thus need to provide less time, or be able to focus on the elements of the tasks they enjoy), these will need a full time staff member (initially he would continue to be responsible for administrative tasks as well, which would take up about 35% of his/her time). In case of the latter, we do not consider underspending a failure but rather a learning opportunity, and consequently in this years' plan we have adjusted downwards the costs of items that we could deliver cheaper than expected.

It should be noted, that the Hungarian Wikipedia is the 20th largest Wikipedia with an estimated number of 13 M speakers, which is a testament to the potential of this community, and its continued health and reversal of decline is of great concern to us. --Bence (talk) 13:11, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Key Initiatives, Strategies and Impact

1. Would you elaborate upon the benefits of establishing a physical office at this time?

   The principal benefits would be to provide a sort of home to the community in a central place (centre of Budapest close to public transport and access to the train stations for out-of-town members' easy access), a constant meeting place for chapter activities and community meetups. It would also serve as the primary workplace of our employee, who will benefit from a stable work environment and provide a constant accessibility to our organisation by being available in the office. The office will also serve as the warehousing space of equipment and items in the chapter's possession that are being stored in the homes of various members (creating quite complex logistical problems based on the availability of those members, the size and weight of the items and the intended destination).--Bence (talk) 13:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

2. You have talked about using 'champions' to ensure high programmatic impact; please explain more fully how this works. Does it extend to the WMHU board 'championing' different key initiatives in the annual plan? If so, will the new Board also be following this strategy?

   We have indicated the lack of "champions" who are willing to spearhead given planned initiatives as a reason we could not deliver on some of the planned programmes in 2012. To mitigate the risk of important programmes failing due to lack of volunteers that wish to lead them we plan to utilize our staff member as the primary person responsible for certain initiatives. Obviously, we will give preference to members and editors who volunteer to lead initiatives, and we have designated our reserves to be available in support of "championed" new programmes.

   Certainly, there are programmes that are supported and lead by particular existing board members, and we expect any new board to provide the same space to any outgoing board member in leading initiatives and they themselves might take on certain programmes. It is impossible to tell with certainty what a future group of unknown composition will do, but it is quite likely that our membership assembly will approve a plan very similar to the one proposed here and the future board (which might or might not contain members of the current one, but will certainly de-brief it as part of coming up to speed) will be chosen with the understanding that they follow the approved plans. --Bence (talk) 13:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

3. You currently define success according to participation in WMHU's activities: are you planning on moving in the direction of actually measuring the effectiveness of these activities as well (in other words: moving from output to outcome indicators; e.g. the number of people showing up to a presentation, and the conversion rate into active editors)?

--ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 02:30, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Where possible we do try to measure outcome indicators (such as the participation of new editors, etc.); in the case of conversion rate of editors after trainings and workshops there are a number of factors involved: e.g. if the lecture or event is given "offline" without the audience holding laptops it is impossible to know whether they go on to become editors (still, we find that the educational component itself is important and useful), and in other cases it is still quite difficult to measure results without proper access to user statistics, which we do not have. --Bence (talk) 18:11, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful questions, we will respond in a few days' time. --Bence (talk) 20:04, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful responses, Bence! I'll get back to you with any additional queries, if necessary, as soon as possible. --ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Question about volunteer participation

Hello WMHU, These are some general questions that I am asking to all the EEs regarding volunteer participation. All the entities have stated in their proposals that low turnover of volunteers in both online and offline activities have been a major obstacle for them. Most of them have also expressed concerns that reducing number of volunteers is a threat to their organizational effectiveness and to the movement as a whole. I feel we need to have short term, midterm and long term plans to tackle this problem.

Does your organization have -

1. Any short term plan to recruit new volunteers for both online and off line activities?
2. Any midterm plan to train, motivate and convert them into regular contributors?
3. Any long term plan to retain them and continue the growth?

If you already have any such plans, please mention them and elaborate how your plan/s is (are) going to achieve the goal of recruiting new volunteers, converting them into regular contributors and retain the volunteers as well as maintain the growth? - Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (talk) 17:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your questions.

The number of active offline volunteers is indeed a big organizational worry, and we are currently mostly discussing the ways to remedy that (e.g. trying to get more university students involved), without a fully fledged plan. That is why a big part of our current annual plan for the next year relies on making becoming a volunteer easy, by putting certain tasks on our employee and giving opportunities for volunteers to be involved in and receive support for projects they are interested in.

As for online volunteers, a big part of our hope falls on technical developments outside our hands (e.g. the Visual Editor, with a planned deployment somewhere in the second half of 2013), and as far as our involvement goes, we are still in an exploratory stage of seeing what could work. I am only aware of two possible activities that had a good rate of return in getting new online volunteers: the Global Education Programme and WLM. We are again planning of organizing Wiki Loves Monuments next year, which is a good way to include "offline" volunteers in the organization and to get "online" volunteers to participate in the contest - unfortunately, this year we did not get the monuments database and there was not enough time for a plan B. As far as I understand, the education programmes run by other organizations are useful in getting content and perhaps a few percent of participants become editors; unfortunately we do not have volunteers wanting to initiate such a programme here in Hungary, but we do follow the developments in the field (including planning to meet a presenter involved in the German chapter's education programme who is planning to give a lecture in Budapest in November) and our reserves are sufficient to support either an education programme or any other programme that has a great potential in attracting new volunteers, if there are local activist willing to take them on (or do them in cooperation with our employee).

Next year the Hungarian Wikipedia is going to be ten years old, so we are definitely going to try to take advantage of the resulting good will in trying to attract new people. We are still in quite an experimental mode trying out different things whether they work (e.g. just in the last months, we have started a strong social media campaign trying to attract new volunteers both offline and online), and have some experience with things that don't seem to work. We will continue to try new things, replicate what seems to work elsewhere, repeat some earlier projects once the visual editor is running to see if that changes things and hopefully some things will move the needle (and in the process, we hope that even if few new people join, the existing people decide to remain and the quality of the content improves).

Let me know if you have any proposals or ideas for things we could try, or things that are proved to work that we might have missed and we will be happy to try to replicate them! --Bence (talk) 19:03, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Past expereince of improving quality

You highlighted Competitions as key strategy for improving Quality of Wikipedia articles. Can you share the best practices from your previous experience on this topic? What worked for text quality improvement? What worked for visual quality improvement? What variations are being proposed for the year for which funds are sought? --Arjunaraoc (talk) 18:18, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Arjuna,

Thank you for your questions. We have run a few article writing and improving competitions; and two photo-related ones. With text, the basic lesson is that there are about three parameters you can play with 1) topic of the contest (e.g. we have tried topics related to certain Wikiprojects; we've done a competition focused on reducing template backlog, which was very successful; and are currently running a literature themed contest), 2) length (if it is too short, people don't have time to write articles; if too long, people lose interest; we have now settled on about 6 weeks for bigger, and 3 weeks for smaller contests) 3) prizes (which can range from barnstars, Wikipedia swag or other valuable items – we are still experimenting with this one; our current hypothesis is that with good enough marketing non-digital and non-wikipedia related prizes are needed to involve outsiders – e.g. new editors –; while for contests that are aimed at current Wikipedians, some good Swag can still work).

We have not yet found the perfect parameters yet, but as noted, we are trying to get there. With every contest, a few newcomers start editing, but we still can make improvements in tying together contests and editing workshops; including marketing, and really really hoping that by autumn next year, the visual editor will finally be enabled on the Hungarian Wikipedia, which is probably a key missing link in getting new editors en masse.

With photo contests, we had a very successful WLM in 2011, which we couldn't replicate this year because our contract to use the monuments database was not renewed. Photo contests have a huge potential of involving new people, but it is probably an important lesson to focus a lot on marketing and involving external partners to reach the right audience of (semi-)professional photographers.

We also have a little bit of experience with organizing photo walks and capturing images of notable buildings and objects in a given area. Here the main lessons are that they involve only a handful of people, but if they have the right equipment they can make a real difference with a few hours of work and minimal expenses. --Bence (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Bence for your response. I find the insights from your experience useful. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 02:28, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions about current cash position and monthly spending patterns

Please clarify WMHU's cash position and usual monthly expenditures.

1. What is WMHU's current cash position (as of 30 September 2012)? In other words, what is the total balance in all of WMHU's accounts (including operating reserves and cash for WMHU's programs and operations)?
2. What are WMHU's typical monthly expenditures? We would like a sense of about how much money WMHU spends in an ordinary month during the current fiscal year.

Let us know if the questions above require any additional clarification. Thank you, Wolliff (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

1. We have 13 107 531,20 HUF + €300 on our various accounts, this includes reserves, and restricted funds such as grants. --Bence (talk) 22:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
2. Average monthly expenses January-August are 624 446 HUF ($3122.23), which typically include payroll costs, server maintenance, telephone, post, bank, travel, programme costs. To get a sense of how expenditures are distributed, take a look at our Q1 report: [2]. –Bence (talk) 22:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Extension

Request for extension

This comment has been moved to this page from the proposal hub discussion page:

Dear FDC, we wish to open a discussion about the extending our 2012/2013 grants proposal and/or other possibilities. --Vince (talk) 10:33, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Extension granted

If WMHU agrees, WMF will grant a 3-month extension of this grant. The new grant term will end 31 March 2014.

If an extension is granted, WMHU will also need to do the following in addition to fulfilling the terms and conditions of its existing grant agreement (effective 1 January 2013):

• WMHU will provide a fourth progress report for Q4 by January 30, 2014 (within 30 days of the end of Q4).
• WMHU will submit a final impact report for this grant by 29 June 2014 (within 90 days of the end of the new grant term).
• WMHU will submit any other reports requested by WMF, or agree to meet with WMF as requested to discuss the progress of this grant.

WMHU may agree to the extension by replying to this comment here on the discussion page, and WMF will send an amendment to the existing grant agreement for signature by both parties to formalize the agreement.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 23:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for approving our request! We agree to your terms and conditions. Cheers, --Vince (talk) 18:36, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your agreement, Vince. We look forward to our continued work together. Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 23:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Impact report reminder

Greetings, Vince and all: We just wanted to send a reminder that the due date for this impact report is approaching soon, on 29 June. Please let us know now if you have any questions about submitting your report. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 00:11, 21 June 2014 (UTC)