Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 1/Wikimedia Österreich/Staff proposal assessment

Comments and complementary information from WMAT

Thanks to everybody who spent a lot of time and effort on these assessments. We are impressed by the work of the FDC staff and how they deal with the complexity of all those different proposals. We are also very grateful for the appreciation of our work reflected in these documents. The only information in our assessment which we would like to comment on (as it might be of relevance for some involved in the process) is the one concerning the staff breakdown: We do track staff time spent on projects and can aggregate that to programm level in case it is needed. As this number has not been required for the FDC process so far (on the contrary, staff costs are always asked for as a separate item) we only do this at the end of every fiscal year for our reporting for the fundraising quality seal and the external audit. Please let us know if you think that will be helpful for the deliberations and we'll provide the numbers for 2015. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 12:11, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Danke Claudia for the praise, it was quite a ride, and a very very interesting one for me to be on this side of the table, for example. I think we need to have a real conversation about how staff costs are presented in the FDC proposals and reports, as I think that there are both advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, but yes, I would very much appreciate if you shared this information with us, I think it is always extremely valuable to understand. Delphine (WMF) (talk) 08:28, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually Delphine I think you are one of the few people who has first hand experience from all three sides of the table: Affiliate, FDC, and WMF / FDC staff ;-) Concerning our staff costs: Of the 116,560.00 EUR we spent on staff last year, 47% went into projects of Program 1 (Community Support), 16% into Program 2 (Free Content), 17% into Program 3 (Reach/Free Knowledge Awareness), and 7% into organizing the Wikisource Conference. 13% went into administration. Most of the staff time can be subsumized as "providing resources and the organizational backbone" for volunteer projects, from support to raise additional funds or in-kind donations for the project, to stakeholder management (partner organizations, like-minded communities), providing access to other resources (e.g. tech equipment, information material, know-how), and event management. Hope that helps! --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 15:27, 11 November 2016 (UTC)