Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 1/Wikimedia CH/Proposal form

Please complete Table 4

Hello, WMCH team! We noticed that there appears to be no information included in Table 4 of this proposal form, although we know you have several staff. Would you please add this information to the proposal form immediately, so we may begin our analysis? Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 11:01, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Update: The information was already included in Wikimedia CH's organizational chart, which is available here and linked to in section 4. Nevertheless we completed table 4 on October 2nd, see here. --Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 09:34, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Detailed budget in spreadsheet format

Hello, WMCH colleagues! Do you have a copy of your detailed budget in spreadsheet format that you could share with FDC staff? This would help us in our analysis. You can Email us a copy of the spreadsheet if that is easier than sharing it publicly. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 05:02, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Please note that a copy of the detailed budget has been provided to the FDC staff via E-Mail just a few moments after this comment was posted. --Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 09:29, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Independent

Thank you WMCH for your independence. You are among a few affiliates who rely for less than fifty percent of total spending on funding by WMF. You are not only an independent affiliate, but a financially independent one as well. I appreciate that. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 07:08, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Dear @Ad Huikeshoven: we are very grateful for your feedback, thanks a lot. --Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 09:23, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Questions from FDC

From Liam

Hello WM-CH - thank you once again for your honest and self-reflective documentation. As I note particularly from your progress report it has indeed been 'interesting times' :-) For your proposal for next year, I have a few questions:

1. In the "Develop major GLAM section you mention a "statistical tool" (named Cassandra?), and also an "administrative tool". Although these two are listed as priority 1 and 2 for the "GLAM collaboration group" the only details I see about them is "a tool to monitor the statistics and the impact of [GLAM] content" and "Improve the statistical tool creating a change control board with the most active GLAM partners".
   The only other time the word "statistical tool" is mentioned is later on in the application (in the Community program: project 2) where it states "...develop a statistical tool to monitor a subset of articles or files connected with Switzerland and to identify users that contribute to specific topics...". (Is this the same statistical tool, or a different thing entirely?).
   Could you please link me to the explanation of these software development projects? Also, if you are indeed planning to create some form of GLAM 'dashboard', are you already in contact with the relevant people in the WMF about this - do they know you plan to invest in software development for statistics? Wittylama (talk) 18:44, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

   Hi, thank you for your questions because they give us the opportunity to explain some unclear points and to summarize here information already submitted elsewhere.

   The two statistical tools (or better "monitoring tools") you are referring to are two different tools. The first one (we used the name Cassandra to try to differentiate) has a different origin and story while the second one is more connected with the aim of Wikimedia CH to assist and to support Swiss volunteers but also to have a tool to help and to address better our activities or to collect quickly metrics ("...develop a statistical tool to monitor a subset of articles or files connected with Switzerland and to identify users that contribute to specific topics...") which is connected with your point 4.

   There is an important preamble. In any project management the monitoring is a crucial aspect, so these two tools are not the goal of our activities, but they are essential to improve the quality and the efficiency and to check if a project needs to be corrected. Without these tools we miss an important aspect of the project management. Basically this is the need behind both.

   Let's explain the origin of Cassandra.

   Wikimedia CH is building a GLAM network who meets periodically and is trying to train and to support this network in order to incentive the donations of content. We explained it extensively in our program. During a meeting, this network declared that, after having donated a huge amount of content, they have difficulties to monitor and to receive information about the impact they are generating with their donations. Basically they miss an important aspect of the project management.

   The philosophy of Wikimedia CH is to reuse software which already exists, therefore we advised our GLAM partners again to use the existing statistical tools, which they were already using in the past.

   Our GLAM partners explicitly declared to be unsatisfied of the tools we have at the moment and they collected a list of requirements they were looking for. Wikimedia CH analyzed these requirements and the amount of statistics to produce. We afterwards defined that the better approach would be to develop something more related to the requirements, to replicate in a separate database the data to be analyzed, and to avoid to stress the infrastructure of Wikimedia Foundation with frequent and heavy requests.

   Wikimedia CH explained this approach already in the progress report of 2016: "The gap analysis has been conducted, the development has been moved to Q3 and Q4 (development of prototypes). The project plan for two tools has been started conducting stakeholder interviews. The delay in the implementation is due to additional requirements that were voiced during the interviews. These now need to be reviewed."

   Also in this case Wikimedia CH tried to reuse old material or experiences. This is not the first statistical tool developed in projects supported by Wikimedia CH. We contacted two groups of technician, a first group has already developed a tool to produce statistics of the Italian Wikipedia, a second group was in the past supported by Wikimedia CH in a project and this project developed also a system of statistics to monitor some articles.

   This is essentially the origin of this project and the GLAM are open also to contribute financially if the tool can satisfy their requirements. So basically the origin of the project has not been generated by a replication or of a redundancy but to address a specific request and need not satisfied elsewhere.

   We don't have communicated yet directly with the team at the Wikimedia Foundation because only recently we did this analysis. However, there will be surely an exchange and an involvement in the very near future. Indirectly the project was explained during the bi-annual visit of the Wikimedia Foundation staff in Switzerland. Last but not least this is a service we would like to provide and it is of course our intention to create a tool which can be used by GLAM institutions around the world.

   Thanks for the reply Ilario (and others of WMCH). I'd like to follow-up with regards to this topic in particular.

   The budget document (page 2) refers to 'develop major GLAM' with a cost of 55,000 CHF, which includes the sub-item "Statistic & admin tool". Could you specify how much of that budget is to be allocated towards those items?

   You quote your 2016 interim report that "development of prototypes" will happen in Q3 and Q4 - which is now - yet that stakeholder interviews have just started. Further, from my understanding of the proposal and your response above, this is a new project for 2017. So, I'm confused about what status these GLAM tools are currently. Do you have any project documentation?

   I understand only too well the difficulties of missing infrastructure in supporting GLAM partnerships, and I feel your pain in that regard! However, if you have already undertaken stakeholder interviews with GLAMs and a 'gap analysis', and are also in the middle of applying for funding for this project (this APG grant), that seems to me that it is beyond the time that you should have had interaction with the relevant staff at the WMF (e.g. Astinson (WMF), Erik Zachte (WMF) or Dario (WMF)) to get their involvement/opinion too? I suppose this also connects to my confusion about what stage you are with these GLAM tool projects, but can you point to specific documentation about what you are planning to do with this tech-project funding, and specific support from relevant organisations that your approach is a viable one? Wittylama (talk) 15:34, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

   Pinging another person: there has been a lot of work recently about the kinds of programs and projects that need more metrics support and consistent data (principally with @Shouston (WMF): in WMF Grants). Any work on a metrics dashboard seems like an excellent opportunity to benefit a larger part of our community of practice (even if its not in the first iteration of the dashboard, but in a second or third), especially if its movement resources invested in the project. Let us know where we can help, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

   Hi Wittylama, please find below the answers to your questions.

   For 2017 Wikimedia CH has send a detailed budget. The item of the GLAM tool includes two releases and also the costs of the infrastructure because the forecast is to monitor around 200'000 items and the creation of a different architecture is mandatory. Wikimedia CH is discussing with these GLAM to contribute financially to the project and we are also looking for external funds. To be clear the project is not a simple list of graphs to look at numbers but the tool, as designed, would also address the GLAM to fill the "knowledge gap", it means that it would address the action of the GLAM in the direction that can be useful also for Wikimedia projects.

   About the question of 2016. I tried to find the ambiguous points in the annual plan and I have found two. The first one mentions the metric "Development of a two releases of the statistical tool (Cassandra project) at the end of 2017" it means two additional releases. I suppose that another ambiguous point is connected with the goal "Develop a tool to monitor the statistics and the impact of content upload by GLAM partners" but this is a general goal, probably to be better specified with "To continue to develop a tool to monitor the statistics and the impact of content upload by GLAM partners". Is there any project documentation? Yes, there is, absolutely. Without a documentation there is no project. At the moment the version is the 2.2.

   Everything can be explained stressing again that this is a project born from a specific request of a group of GLAM to leave a problem they face mainly in big projects. In this case the sequence is different from the usual sequence of other tools when the first step is to start to write code. In this case the correct sequence (I am reporting the PMBOK p.37 and 38) is Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, Closing. So there are steps to define the requirements, to agree with these requirements, to define a roadmap, and so on. Considering a project only like software development would also reduce the value of the project. Some incoherence can be generated because we wrote the annual plan 2017 when the documentation of the project was only a draft and there were not clear and stable requirements, but some additional incoherence can be generated if we would limit the project only to a software development. A software development will not start before a clear statement of the GLAM that the documentation describes exactly what they are looking for. The deliverable at the end of this phase (the document of requirements) has a big value because it identifies what is needed by GLAM to continue and to improve their contribution and not what we think that they may need. In this case the prototypes are focused to enrich the documentation. In the 2016 the biggest part of the project has been that to fix stable requirements and to improve the communication among stakeholders and to understand the needs of the GLAM partners.

   We decided to don't involve WMF staff before having a stable version of the requirements. We communicated the project to the staff of WMF during the bi-annual visit but there is no sense to involve the staff at the early stage. I don't know how much time the staff of WMF can dedicate to the projects of the chapters, but I can consider that probably they would appreciate if they are involved with a clear and well defined set of questions in order to don't spend the most part of their time to answer to "brainstorming" emails.

   At the moment we have the version 2.2 of the documentation, the development is started, we will approach the staff of WMF to answer to some open points for the releases of 2017 (considering that the release of 2016 can be developed using our own know-how). --Ilario (talk) 19:46, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

   "Is there any project documentation? Yes, there is, absolutely. Without a documentation there is no project." - Since, as you say, you are already at version 2.2, can you please link to this documentation? Wittylama (talk) 14:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

   The document is a MS word document shared within the GLAM network by email (they did the initial request and they asked to discuss by email or in presence and to use this format), I can send to you by email. Anyway it has been produced the assessment of the WMF staff and it's strange that there are a lot of mentions of lack of measures ("WMCH does not measure the quality or use of images generated through its GLAM work and many tools lack relevant metrics that can tell the story of their impact" or "WMCH is achieving progress in growing its network of GLAM partners, although we are not yet able to understand the results in terms of use or quality") when this tool (but in general the statistical tools) would exactly fix these concerns. In one hand it seems that the WMF staff (and the GLAM too) are claiming strongly to improve the measures and we need to fix these requests with this project, but in this place it seems to be the most debated point. --Ilario (talk) 16:19, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

   Hi Wittylama, as said the requirements from GLAM are at the moment stable. It is scheduled a call with Alex Stinton next week, I will share this documentation with him and with another member of the WMF staff. --Ilario (talk) 21:43, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

   Yes, Ilario please do send me this document. Or, better yet, publish it in a publicly-findable way (Meta, google documents...). If you were applying for a 'project grant' with the WMF then you would need to publish your documentation/planning publicly before the grant was reviewed, so I don't see why this should be different. As for the staff-review comment, I am not responsible for that text but I do see and empathise with the apparent contradiction you mention. Wittylama (talk) 09:54, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

2. I was interested to read about your intended expansion of the Kiwix in prisons program (under the heading Program 2; Education, project 3). Do you have documentation (other than the meta page Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline#Wikipedia offline in jails) which describes this project, especially so that other Chapters can adopt the idea? I couldn't find a relevant Learning Pattern[1] but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist :-) In short, what I'm saying is, if you're been successful at this activity over several years, and further rollout (now with Wikisource as a key feature) then it seems like something you could/should be assisting other affiliates to support too - for your and their benefit. Wittylama (talk) 23:44, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

   As for every Kiwix project, we always try to do our rollout through a partner that already has activities ongoing locally (be it North Korea or local prisons): we bring content, but it is always a tool within a larger program. In this case, our partner is OSEO/SAH, an NGO providing educational services for inmates. They've rolled out Kiwix in a few prisons and gave us feedback from the end users: that's how we know that inmates are more interested in geographical content (it is apparently a popular thing to share with other inmates where they come from), and how the WikiSource improvement project came to be: there were several comments on accessbility and navigation which we'll try to work on.

   Concerning other countries / chapters, well we do have similar programs running in Germany, Austria, the UK and Northwestern US (except that in that case they found us rather than the other way around). As in Switzerland, those integrate Kiwix into their own programs (see, e.g. http://www.ibi.tu-berlin.de/projekte/aktuelle-projekte/4-e-learning-im-strafvollzug ) and technical improvements made for one country/language usually benefit all. So coming back to other chapters rolling out similar programs, there is no real Learning Pattern to share: meet the right people, present them with Kiwix, and then see if offline content addresses any type of need on their side (it usually does, at least in developped countries). If it does, send them our way. We've started ramping up our communication with movement affiliates and do send demo material upon request. Last but not least KIWIX has its own page on META which facilitates the exchange of information.

3. The FDC commented positively on your plan from last year to undertake activities focusing on the vision-impaired community, and this project was also mentioned in your interim report. However, the goals this year (about 'analysing content', 'involving associations' and 'make contact [with other wikimedian groups]') seem to be less ambitious, though perhaps more sustainable?, than last year's goal (which was "Build a process to monitor user accessibility of Wikisource documents by testing at least 100 items with blind/low sighted individuals". Why is this? On a related note - a good group to talk with from en.wp are these people w:Category:WikiProject Accessibility participants and in particular User:Graham87 :-) Wittylama (talk) 00:09, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

   Wikimedia CH considers this activity important also to help in some decisional processes. It's clear that the double value of the project is to share the results of the analysis with the community but also to give to Wikimedia CH sufficient material to address future decisions in terms of accessibility.

   We noticed about the presence of a Wikiproject in English language and also about some other initiatives connected with the accessibility but we didn't contact them at the moment because the aim of these projects are different. For instance the Wikiproject assumes to use this methodology: "The approach to make Wikipedia accessible is based on the W3C's official WCAG 2.0 (aka ISO/IEC 40500:2012) and ATAG 2.0 guidelines" but this is not our aim, there is not a preliminary assumption that the WCAG must be applied globally in the Wikimedia projects. Our methodology, as usual, is to do an analysis first, and then the evaluation of the gap, and as a third step to check if the solution to the problem can be easy implemented or not. This project is born from an essential question: "Are Wikimedia projects accessible to blind or visual impaired people (also without WCAG compliance)? In case of inaccessibility, can the gap be easily filled?".

   In 2016 Wikimedia CH planned to do this analysis using a valid sample of items, after to give them to the final users for a test, to collect feedback and afterwards to analyze the gap and to define if the filling of this gap can be done easily and can be a project of Wikimedia CH or if this gap is huge and, in this last case, Wikimedia CH will be aware of that and can propose Wikimedia projects in education or in culture for instance but considering the limits in terms of accessibility.

   Indeed the goal of this year is less ambitious for a more pragmatic reason: Wikimedia CH started this project because it encountered a visual-impaired student in engineering with all technical capacities to lead the project. Unfortunately, because of the difficulties connected with his disability (his university uses the old system of photocopies instead of supporting students with more advanced solutions like web pages), he is leaving the study of the master of science and he doesn't know what will be his future main activity and his availability of time. So we decided to be more conservative and to limit the project to the essential deliveries. The activity until March 2017 will be assured, after March we define the actions to do to give a continuity to the project.

   Anyway we asked this project leader to establish contact with the Wikiprojects to share experiences.

4. One of the things which the FDC specifically praised as an interesting idea last year was "legal opinions" program, and your interim report is also positive about its success so far ("expecting a 90% satisfaction rate.... partnership in 2017..."). However, as far as I can tell, this project is not mentioned in this year's application. Why is this? Wittylama (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

   For 2017's APG submission, we wanted to present a flexible program, easier to read, a budget for legal opinion is actually provisioned so as to be able to provide a service to members of our communities who required the support of legal advice. It is presented differently as it is not packaged as a specific project but falls within the Community program and the support we wish to provide to them. As of today, the 2016 project has not been completed yet so we did not wish to overcommit on pursuing it next year. Indeed, this activity involves a pro bono partnership for which we are currently unsure we could secure.

5. In the "content monitoring tool" (Under Community program: project 2) you identify the problem as "identification of contributors operating in Switzerland or around topics concerning Switzerland" and propose a solution of developing a tool to "monitor a subset of articles or files connected with Switzerland". I see how such a tool (which will presumably track everything linked off wikidata:Q1456250) will help address the second half of your stated problem - Is the "community survey" what you are planning to use to address the first half? Wittylama (talk) 00:25, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

   Wikimedia CH has a serious problem to reach volunteers of Switzerland in the huge and unidentified mass of contributors. This is the problem to solve.

   A second problem we have is also connected with the absence of a system of monitoring of the knowledge gap about topics related to Switzerland in order not only to identify contributors, but also to propose online events in Switzerland to invite people to contribute to the Swiss content in all the Swiss national languages and, afterwards, to identify people who participated. The good model we would reply is that of Wiki Loves X because this contest helped us a lot to reach out to Swiss volunteers and we tried to increase the participation to the contest proposing new topics every year and also those where there was a lack of content. Last year Wikimedia CH followed the project Wiki Needs Pictures because this is exactly what we are looking for to propose future photo contests and to continue to identify Swiss photographers. We would have the same also for other type of content.

   As explained in the point 1 of your questions, a system of monitoring is crucial for project management, this project would supply a tool designed around our specific needs to help in our activity.

   About the identification of Swiss volunteers we only have two solutions: the first one is to use the centralnotice extensively because it is the only geotargeted solution we have (considering that we cannot access to the IPs), an example is connected with the use we do with Wiki Loves X, but the policy for the centralnotice suggests to limit its use.

   A second option is to pick up users who contributed to Swiss content, but this analysis is done manually and takes a long time.

   So we would automatize the monitoring of the articles related to Switzerland to identify Swiss volunteers and to support them, and in addition we would also propose new and interesting contests to fill the gap of content we have and to propose these contests around the topics more interesting for Swiss citizens like the Swiss traditions, the Swiss culture and the Swiss heritages. I hope that this exposition is sufficient to explain that this tool may be crucial to improve our efficiency.

   The coincidence is that a monitoring tool like this has been proposed by a Wikipedian in our call of projects. We investigated about the functionalities and he uses an algorithm to identify people interested to a specific topic which is similar to our manual activity of identification of volunteers. As consequence we decided to give him the opportunity to start a pilot tool and to check if there is the possibility to speed up our process.

From Lorenzo

Thanks for your proposal, and for the efforts you made in engaging your members and your community for defining the future plans of the chapter. I understand that the last year has been challenging.

1. You have chosen "number of people reached in Switzerland" as a grantee-defined metrics. Are you confident you will be able to reliably measure it? For instance, you include readers of newspapers; but it's difficult to measure how many people read a newspaper articles (if it's printed, you may know the average number of papers issued, and then you have to estimate how many of those people actually saw your article; if it's online, you are no luckier, since pageviews statistics are not usually public).

   All important newspapers and magazines in Switzerland are measured and identified by Remp, an independent agency that guarantees the quality of our media and accurate statistics. The "number of reached people” or “readership” indicates the average number of readers for one specific media. To calculate this, Remp has developed an indicator based on a thorough study that is published twice a year. The study contains a survey based on 19’000 interviews of representative people living in Switzerland. It remains the more accurate tool to estimate media impact and readership for Swiss media and foreign media available in Switzerland as per today. Answer posted on behalf of Virginie Simon, WMCH's Communication Consultant. Gabrielle Marie WMCH (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

2. Can you point me to some page about your experiments using NPL techniques for Wikisource?

   The project was proposed by a volunteer, working in NLP for decades. He developed several tools of NLP (this is an example). The test was done with a standalone solution using some pages of the "Dicerie sacre" of Giambattista Marino [2]. Also in this case the approach would be to do a detailed and more extensive analysis before proceeding with the development. --Ilario (talk) 19:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

3. What is driving the 31.000 CHF expenses in the Education in Universities project group? (i.e., there is a specific projects that accounts for most of the expenses, or it's more evenly distributed?)

   The amount of 31K is indeed distributed among 4 sub-projects. This said, the biggest bulk (of 16K) is designated to finance the expansion of the Open Science Fellows Program from Germany to Switzerland. As it is stated in our application, the fellows program promotes opening up research and teaching in accordance with the principles of open science, a movement that enables researchers and society as a whole to access scientific research findings. Please note that the final decision whether we are going to introduce this fellowship in Switzerland will depend on the evaluation of the first year's track record. If the program delivers the expected impact and shows potential for a fundamental change, we are going to introduce it in Switzerland, to commonly work on this subject with Wikimedia Germany. However, if the expected impact is not accomplished, we very likely might decide to not run the program in 2017 in Switzerland. To conclude: The program will only be introduced to Switzerland if the first round was successful in Germany and the high costs are justified by the significant impact the program achieves.
   

   Besides the spending for the fellowship program, the second biggest amount (10K) is budgeted for supporting the Wiki2learn project in Switzerland, whose goal it is to create free collaborative and readily accessible textbooks. We would like to provide a budget to support outreach activities of Wiki2learn in Switzerland and for software development. Please note that Wikimedia CH only "partially" funds the outreach activities & software developments of Wiki2learn (e.g. the Wiki2learn user group also has to find further funding elsewhere to implement their plans in Switzerland).
   

   Last but not least please note that we provided the detailed budget to the FDC staff where you can see all break downs of our budget pots.

- Laurentius (talk) 13:25, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Chandice

Hello WM CH! thanks for your application. I have a couple of simple questions to ask you:

1. What are you referring to when you detailed the item "REPORT OF PREVIOUS YEAR" in the revenue part of the detailed budget? - Cande laspe (talk)

   We had reserved a budget for several projects or planned spendings in 2016 or before that either have not completely been used, might not be realised and/or will only be realised at a later stage due to shifting of priorities/work load. We therefore report the current approximate amount of CHF 80'000.- to the next year. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeeb1207 (talk)

2. Are you planning to expend some amount of your operative reserves? They represent half of your budget. - Cande laspe (talk)

   We are indeed currently spending a large portion of our operative reserves, as we do every year.

   Wikimedia CH performs its fundraising at the same time as the WMF, in November and December, to obtain the revenues that will be spent the next year. However, contrary to the WMF, our fiscal year ends at the end of December; at this point, the money collected has to be accounted as reserves, to be spent the next year. Early in the year, we still have some revenues (some leftovers from the fundraiser, membership fees, etc); however, in the second semester, the money we spend comes mostly from these reserves. At the end of the year, the cycle repeats itself.

   In the end, Wikimedia CH does not have large long-term reserves, and none of these reserves were created using FDC money; in fact, even reserves corresponding to half of an annual budget would be too low compared to the usual standards for a Swiss not-for-profit association like ours. In our case, where a large portion of funding depends on a single source on which we have no control (the FDC), the reserve should be equivalent to roughly the amount of our annual budget. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeeb1207 (talk)

Questions from non-FDC members

Hello WMCH, Thanks for this proposal. As a musician I am particularly interested in the 300 out-of-copyright music recordings :) I see many questions have already been asked about your programme, so I will ask about your resources:

• Staff costs. $450,000US/roughly the same in CHF for 3.5 staff members seems remarkably high. The budget indicates that 60kCHF is for consultants and c.35kCHF is what looks like employer taxes. That is still roughly CHF/USD100k per staff member. Have I interpreted this correctly? If so, what salary benchmarks do you look at to set these rates?

Salaries in Switzerland are among the highest in the world as it is a very expensive country to live in. When it comes to NPOs, please find herewith a great report detailing the salary situation in Switzerland in 2014; on page 16 you will see that the average salary for NPOs in 2014 was about 101’999 CHF. Another great site explaining how the system works in CH can be found here . You’ll also find in it a link to a salary calculator where you can insert ages, years of experience, sector, industry, canton you live in etc. (only German and French). At WMCH we are well below these rates. The amount you mention, i.e. 454,525k CHF includes all the deductions (like e.g. the fee for the pension fund, survivors' and invalidity insurance, mandatory protection against the consequences of illness and accidents as well as several further mandatory insurances and fees which the employer has to pay in Switzerland) as well as the foreseen consultancy fees (which in CH are anywhere from 200,- CHF/hour for specialised people, like IT experts, comms. consultants etc. lawyers even only start at 600,-/h CHF). Please note that we always negotiate pro-bono rates and ask for various offers from across Switzerland before engaging with somebody.

Additionally, it is also worth mentioning that WMCH has the capacity to finance itself and doesn't receive money from fundraising campaigns conducted in other countries. WMCH raises its own money which is then sent to the WMF and this very successfully if you look at the past years and in comparison with other countries. So, even if the average salary is high, people are also very inclined to donate here in Switzerland (last year WMCH reached its overall fundraising goal in only two weeks) which puts us in a very good position and should not be forgotten. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeeb1207 (talk)

• Can you clarify what "fundraising via wikimedia.ch" means?

As we have stated in our application, WMCH owns the domain Wikipedia.ch. For the moment, the portal only hosts a copy of the Wikimedia.org page. With the introduction of the Wikimedia API, we could evaluate a different use of this domain for more effective action and support to the community. We would in fact like to inform the Swiss general public about what happens in Switzerland with regards to Wikimedia projects and to focus more on relevant Swiss content. Furthermore we would like to try to use this site to fundraise money for specific projects. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeeb1207 (talk)

• Where do you expect the CHF50k in the "External fundraising" line to come from? How are you going about doing this?

We are looking forward to exploring new ways of fundraising in 2017 by partnering with Swiss institutions and/or foundations who would potentially support specific projects of WMCH. We are also looking into submitting EU grants for specific initiatives, together with other European Chapters (as CH alone cannot apply for these funds not being a European Union Member state) where it makes sense. 2017 will be a year of exploration and learning; we hope to be able to strategically expand our fundraising activities over the years to come, even beyond the 50k CHF.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeeb1207 (talk)

Many thanks! Regards, Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 21:31, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Questions from RightCowLeftCoast

Why this amount? What is the minimum amount that the grant submitter believes is needed to accomplish these goals? Can the grant submitter accomplish the goals stated in your proposal, without funding? If the grant submitter can't, why not? If the grant submitters grant request is not approved, what alternative sources of funding are you seeking? If only one grant is approved during this round of grant approvals, why should this grant be approved rather than all the other grant proposals--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:07, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

We have calculated amounts as per our past experiences. WMCH has the capacity to finance itself and doesn't receive money from fundraising campaigns conducted in other countries. It raises its own money which is then sent to the WMF who decides how much WMCH will be granted. We then use the grants received from the Foundation for running our programmes and activities. Our administrative expenses are covered by money raised separately from the WMF campaign. We hope to be able to increase that amount over the years and to be able to apply for multiyear funding in future, where we would have to stay under a given amount of funds received by the Foundation per year. This model is right now being tested by Austria for example and we are looking forward to the outcomes and learnings from our neighbour's experience. If not enough funds are raised, programmes/activities for a year will have to be cut so that expenses can be held low, exactly as would happen in any other business (travel freeze, etc.).