Grants talk:PEG/MMandiberg/Art+Feminism Editathons

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC members who support this request

1. It seems interesting. If it works, the results would be good. But if we don't try we will never know if it works. --Ilario (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
2. This is a very great grant application :) The pyramidal aspect is very interesting ! Léna (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

GAC comments

Languages and projects

Hi and congrats on the great project :) It might seem obvious, but are the editathons only for improving English Wikipedia or other projects are aimed as well, such as Wikidata and Wikipedia in other languages ? Léna (talk) 16:20, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Léna, last year we had several events in non-anglophone nations (Italy, Netherlands). It is our goal to do more substantial international outreach to help catalyze events overseas. We are not proscribing what platform the events must work on, but the default is Wikipedia, in part due to the challenge of training new editors. Adding in other platforms (e.g. Wikidata) will likely lead to scope creep hence the focus on the language specific Wikipedia projects for this main March 8th event.--Theredproject (talk) 17:00, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Community comments

Wikimedia Diversity Conference

In 2013 there was a Wikimedia Diversity Conference. If that conference happens again, and this grant is funded, then it would be ideal for someone associated with this event to participate in that conference. This seems to be among the most ambitious projects for outreach to women and could be a model for others. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:09, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

We would be happy to send someone there, if it were to happen again. --Theredproject (talk) 01:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

There are not plans for a 2014 Diversity Conference, as far as I know. But, I believe DC is interested in hosting in 2015. --Another Believer (talk) 04:36, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

If such a conference happens again, I could see this project taking a leadership role in the planning of the part of the program about Women and Wikipedia, along with the #GWWI project, other coordinated organized efforts, and those studying/researching the gender gap using social research like the recently funded grant, Grants:IEG/Women and Wikipedia. Thanks. OR drohowa (talk) 16:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Labor and in-kind costs not budgeted

This project depends on a certain amount of volunteer labor and it is difficult for me to visualize how much is required and what number of people must volunteer. Other grants like this do not typically list these things, but I thought that I would share that I wanted to know how many volunteers this would take and I am having trouble thinking this through.

Also, this project presumes in-kind donations, perhaps for event spaces. These are not listed in the budget. My intuition is that this project promises to bring more value in in-kind donations than it requests in cash funding. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry Thank you for pointing these out. We will input some numbers re: volunteers. We will also try to put a number on the in-kind donations of space. It did not occur to us to add either of these, as we did not find them in previous grants we modeled off of, but as you point out: the scope of this is a lot larger, and it is worth accounting for.--Theredproject (talk) 01:27, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Marketing

This project is multi-site and depends on a volunteer network. I worry a little that the requested funding for marketing is too low to support the volunteer base. Volunteers need to look good, and to make them look good in their own area, they need to have nice looking invitations and notices to present in their area. Historically graphic designers have been hard to recruit as volunteers and I expect the advertising will have to come from someone paid.

It is a bit superficial but even in the places where this project is less successful I would hope that the marketing looks good online and off, and that it at least appears neat. I am not sure how much nice graphics cost but the budget now asks for little or nothing. Should it? Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Good points. What do others think?--Theredproject (talk) 01:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure a big splash on professional graphic design is necessary. Depends. Iberocoop did have one of their own volunteers make a superb logo, yes. Graphic design would be best if it can be re-used for subsequent events of similar theme. I'm open. Tony (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Tony1 comments and questions

An inherently valuable event with considerable potential reach and impact; and this is a high standard of application. Thank you for preparing and submitting this impressive proposal.

A few queries:

1. One mention of "Initiate press outreach". This is an important aspect: who will be doing this, and is there accumulated experience in writing press releases, reaching out to journalists and bloggers, and inviting the right people to selected events?
2. Measures of success: very strong, with lots of measurable benchmarks. Thus, I wonder why a few vague bullets can't be removed to strengthen this section—"We train enough trainers that our March event is not underfacilitated." (I'd remove or provide at least a numerical hunch of how many you think would be sufficient.)

   "Have an experienced editor facilitate all North American satellite events that are organized at least a month in advance, and are reasonably possible to get to for $500 airfare or less." (Well, maaaybe, but it's a bit circular; these three factors might be better in your activity plan. They look too essential to be expressed as measures of success, and you've got plenty already.)

   "Do our best to help get an experienced editor to the non-North American events to facilitate." ("Do our best" isn't externally measurable. An important rationale for measures of success will be in the report, and as a basis for the lessons we will learn as onlookers. Again, better built into your program.)

3. Glad to hear you'll be liaising with Learning and evaluation on the tracking.

Getting enough good facilitators seems to be the biggest challenge.

Alex, I note that although marked "open", this application is not listed under open submissions. You were probably about to do that. Tony (talk) 08:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this has been corrected. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Tony1 thank you for your compliments on the value of the event and the standards of the proposal. We appreciate your helpful feedback/questions. Some answers:

1. We do have accumulated experience re: press outreach, as represented by the long list of press coverage for the 2014 event. We will add a note to this effect to the proposal.
2. We will adjust our Measures of Success and Activity Plan accordingly.
3. We are happy to be able to liaise with them regarding this.

We feel confident we will be able to get enough facilitators, as per our section on that topic. We do agree that it may be one of the more critical challenges.--Theredproject (talk) 14:07, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Organizer Comments on Sydney Editathon

There is an Art+Feminism editathon being organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia this weekend. Over 150 people have signed up on Facebook. We learned yesterday evening (via several channels, including the care and diligence of User:Wittylama) that the organizers have no wiki experience beyond the training modules, which they have completed. We are very happy that Art+Feminism is able to inspire 150 new editors and organizers to get involved, though it is unfortunate that they did not follow the advice/guidelines on our HowTo page which we sent them.

We the Art+Feminism organizers, as well as members of the community, have concern that while well intentioned, this editathon may not result in the best outcome. While this is not our direct event, we have taken steps (below) to ensure the best possible outcome.

We want to make clear that Art+Feminism is rhizomatic: we do not vet events, and we do not have control over satellite events. This is part of what has allowed it to grow. We let Edit-a-thons pretty freely adopt our branding, and list their events on the Art+Feminism page. We provide clear guidelines and advice on the HowTo page, as well as mentorship/ambassadorship support when requested through our talk pages, email list, or email account. In many/most cases these events are spearheaded by a team that already has at least one experienced editor, and in every other case the group has read our HowTo, and followed up with a request to be put in touch with an ambassador in their city. In each of these cases, we have found someone.

During the international editathon on February 1st, 2013, we had extensive communication with the 30 event organizers leading up to the event, finding ambassadors for almost every location event. We also had a Livestream tutorial video during the event for the more remote locations that were not able to find Wikipedian facilitators. This coming year (March 8th, 2015) we plan a more extensive training and outreach program, as detailed in these two paired grants.

We first communicated with the organizer from Sydney in September, and directed them to the HowTo page, and encouraged them to be in touch if they had questions. Unfortunately they did not. This is a first for us, and going forward, we should consider checking in with every event organizer that posts an event on the meet up page.

For this event, within hours of realizing that there was a problem, we:

• arranged for an experienced wikipedian ambassador for the event
  • She will arrive early and do a train the trainers session, and then assist throughout the event
• arranged for the ambassador to be given Account Creator permissions (Thank you User:Lankiveil!)
• arranged to give video chat training to the facilitators
• created an event page
• urged the organizers to require that the editors focus exclusively on improving existing pages, rather than creating new pages, to avoid having new editors face speedy deletions. They will do so. They will be working from this list: en:Australian_feminist_art_timeline which has a four year edit history, and few redlinks.

It is worth noting that the IEG component of our proposal/project will ensure that this does not happen in the future by:

• systematizing and documenting best practices for organizing an Art + Feminism event (or really any Gender Gap event)
  • for example: we have found that attendance rates are typically 25% - 50% of total FB attendance, so they should probably expect 35-75 people, not 150.
• establishing a network of ambassadors to call upon to facilitate these events

We hope that this clarifies the origins, outcomes, and our takeaways from this situation. We don't pretend to know all the answers, and welcome the guidance and mentorship of more experienced organizers, especially as this project moves overseas, where we are less familiar.

On behalf of my collaborators--Theredproject (talk) 14:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed MoMA as Venue and Finalized Budget

I want to note that we have confirmed the Museum of Modern Art as the venue for the NYC event. I have adjusted the budget to reflect several changes: 1) our food costs will go up because the event will be in midtown, so I split the NYC event out for budgetary accounting purposes 2) we will need to rent laptops, but will not need to provide labor/security costs, so I converted that budgetary item from labor to laptops. --Theredproject (talk) 04:31, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

WMF comments

Echoing what was said above, thank you for this valuable, ambitious, and well-planned grant request. We appreciate you engagement with the GAC and community members on the discussion of the grant. Our main question is around timing. The IEG grant decision will not be made until early December. How much of this grant is dependent on approval of the IEG? Will you be able to complete all of this work without the IEG funds to cover people's time (is the budget for people's time in the IEG request all for work post the March event)? Please let us know.

Additional questions/comments:

1. Travel: We are not sure it is necessary to support travel for facilitators. If you send us a list of cities (Toronto, Detroit, Edinburgh, etc.) where you think getting facilitators might be a problem, we can help you identify experienced Wikipedians in these cities.
2. Webcast Train the Trainers workshop: Would it be more effective to host this more than a week before the event in case there are follow-up questions or tutorials that need to happen?
3. What type of support, if any, was given to the satellite events last year? In addition to establishing a network of ambassadors in each city to lead organizing efforts, you will also be processing payments for food and child care. Do you have the resources and systems in place to be able to support these satellite efforts? If not, have you considered a fiscal sponsorship for the financial tracking aspect?

Looking forward to your responses. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Alex Wang (WMF) for these thoughtful and helpful questions and comments. We have discussed this, and have some responses. Firstly, regarding timing of grant decisions & relationship between PEG and IEG: As I believe I specified in our pre-submission conversations where we decided to break these into two grant applications, some of the labor in the IEG is required for a bare bones March 8th event, and will take place prior to March 8th, while other labor is required for scaling up the March 8th event, and events beyond that, and some of this labor will take place before March 8th, while others will take place afterwards. In some cases, the core work will be accomplished in preparing for the events, but will need the extra push to make it reusable: The +feminism network building that happened last year, and will continue as we organize for March 8th needs an extra IEG push to be formalized and given a home on-wiki; our own NYC trainings will happen but will need an extra IEG push to formalize the curriculum, build handouts/etc, and help schedule & facilitate those trainings elsewhere. Etc. If we were awarded the PEG, but not the IEG, we would be able to find a way to make it happen, though the result would be closer to last year's impact, rather than the substantial scale up we envision is possible if we were able to dedicate our substantial capabilities to it. Furthermore, our measures of success would need to be revised downward, as these are based off of the paired-grant model we discussed over IRC.

1. Travel: Thank you for offering to assist in locating facilitators. We found last year that in certain locations it was nearly impossible to get someone on the ground. We were working with User:Pharos, amongst others, who was able to mobilize his extensive network of ambassadors. In most cases Pharos and his network were able to find someone, but in some cases it proved very very very difficult to find someone. One of two things happened in those circumstances: either the event went without an ambassador, which invariably resulted in extensive speedy deletions or worse OR Pharos convinced an experienced Wikipedian who was not a trained/experienced facilitator to attend, but because of a lack of outreach training and shared ethics, the results were less than ideal. Our conclusion was that having an experienced Wikipedian was not enough, the Wikipedian needed to be prepared for the social and pedagogical work of facilitating a gender gap editathon. Given your concerns, we will actively work with the WMF to locate trained ambassadors with a shared ethics, and we are happy to scale the amount requested back to $1500, which would cover three travelers, and to specify that the funds would be returned to WMF if not spent, but we strongly desire to retain this ability. We hope this is acceptable. Furthermore, as satellite events have not yet been organized, we cannot yet anticipate the locations that will be hosting events. While the Foundation may be able to provide support for identifying Wikipedians in the cities hosted last year, we hope to expand our efforts into the midwest, Southwest, and other regions with less reliable and organized Wikipedia groups that have a tendency to have difficulty locating Wikipedians when they have reached out for support in the past.

Thanks for this explanation. We realize that an experienced Wikipedian is not enough -- you also need someone who is a good facilitator for these types of events. We are comfortable supporting this part of the budget. Plesae let us know when you have a better sense of geographies and how we can help connect you with local Wikipedians. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

We will let you know when we have a sense of geographies and needs. We expect this will be concentrated in January and February.--Theredproject (talk) 03:02, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

1. Webcast: Yes, very good point. We will move that forward in time.
2. Support for satellite events: We offered an array of support to our satellite events. Some of the events involved putting together all of the main ingredients -- Wikipedia ambassadors, location, faculty/librarian support -- while others came to us pretty much prepackaged. We did create an email chain for all of our satellite event organizers in which we provided training materials, copy for marketing, and best practices. However, the satellite events were intended to be fairly autonomous, relying on local interests, expertise, and holdings. Prior to February 1st, organizers in NY Skyped with satellite organizers to facilitate basic editing trainings for event organizers and to explain the run-of-events and other training materials. We also did outreach to area Wikipedias on and off Wiki to connect them with satellite event organizers and help facilitate introductions. During the event, we offered some training via a Google Hangout with any satellite events that were interested in touching base with us in New York. Although, when we reached 150 attendees and started running out of chairs, we did find it pretty difficult to keep on top of our Google Hangout presence. In the future, it would be wonderful to have more of a connection between the different satellite events, to create a greater sense of community.
3. Processing Payments: This is a good point. There are two problems you point to: project management/accounting and tax exposure. When you refer to fiscal sponsorship, my understanding of this structure (from the arts) is when a 501C Non Profit accepts a donation for a non-incorporated entity, so that the donor can get a tax letter; the non-profit usually takes a ~10% fee for access to their NFP status. My understanding was that this was a pass-through relationship: the NFP merely accepts and disburses the lump sum, rather than handling all accounting for the receiver. Are there fiscal sponsors that handle accounts payable? If not, it seems like we should include a ($500?) Project Management/Accounting line item in the budget to account for the work required to process all these payments? Or should we be looking to an official Wikimedia affiliated user group to receive and disburse these funds? Or are you suggesting something entirely different? Please advise.

When we talk about fiscal sponsorship, there are two aspects. One is accountability (who is doing the reporting on activities and outcomes) and one is financial responsibility/payment processing. Yes, there are fiscal sponsors that do handle accounts payable and some Wikimedia chapters and other institutions have done this task on behalf of a group of individuals. However, if you are comfortable being responsible for the satellite events in terms of both reporting and payment processing (through your added budget for accounting), then there is no need for a fiscal sponsor. We would encourage you to establish a good process of reimbursement in advance for satellite events to avoid complications and unreasonable bank fees. If you need some guidance on this, please let us know. You could adapt the reimbursement claim form and request for advance payment form developed by Wikimedia Netherlands for Wiki Loves Monuments International. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

While we are capable, we would much rather have someone else handle the accounting under a fiscal sponsorship arrangement, as that will allow us to dedicate more time to the project. Do you have a sense of the cost (% of funds) for a sponsorship with accounts payable? Is it the same 10%? I have changed the grant budget to reflect a 10% sponsorship. Is there a sponsor who has worked with WMF before that you would recommend? I will also make an inquiry over here, though I don't know if they do accounts payable.--Theredproject (talk) 03:26, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

We look forward to your feedback on the remaining questions, and will strive to respond. --Theredproject (talk) 00:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF), I've been thinking about the Fiscal Sponsorship angle you brought up, and am wondering if part of it is about assuring our accountability, as we are not a regularized Wikimedia group/entity. If you would prefer to route the funds through a fiscal sponsor for this legitimization, we could arrange that. We haven't approached them, but we would expect that Eyebeam would likely be an option, as would NYFA. This will result in a 10% cost increase for the service of transferring the money (this is a standard arrangement). They will not do our accounting, so either way we should probably include a $500 line item for project management & accounting. I am going to add that now. If you want us to run the funds through a sponsor we are fine with that, with the understanding that the total grant is increased 10% to account for the cut the sponsor will take. --Theredproject (talk) 22:52, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Confirming that WMUS-DC has agreed to be our fiscal sponsor, receiving the funds, and reimbursing event organizers for their costs.--Theredproject (talk) 04:34, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Consider this another project endorsement...

• http://globalthinkers.foreignpolicy.com/#chroniclers/detail/evans-mabey-mandiberg-ptak-howard-knipel :) Well earned! Great job, all! -Another Believer (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Reallocation: Project Management & Web Dev

We are at the end of our reimbursement submission process and nearly finalized our PEG budget from the 2015 Art+Feminism March editathons. We have one final request that has not been paid out yet. We have underspent the PEG, so we are requesting that it be reallocated inside the PEG and IEG.

Our most recent update from our fiscal sponsor WM US DC indicates we have a current balance of $2,567.58, with one remaining payment left. We expect this payment to be about $120, with a likely $30 wire transfer fee. We believe this will leave at least $2400 in the account, which is the amount required for the the reallocation.

We have some reflections on how we ended up under budget that will go into our final report, as will a discussion of our underestimation of the hours required to pull off this event (both from the PEG and IEG side). At this time we would like to request that we reallocate our remaining PEG funds to pay for some of unexpected costs we encountered both on the PEG and IEG site.

Specifically:

1. We hired a project assistant to take some of the PEG project management and accounting load during the two weeks leading up to the event, and afterwards. As per above, overall, we found that we underestimated the hours required and bringing this project assistant on was the only way we were able to get through that period without exhaustion and catastrophic failures(!) Again, we will reflect on this aspect in our final report, and propose revisions for next year, but for the time being we would like to request to pay this $1400 cost (70hrs @$20/hr) out of the remaining funds in our PEG budget. This is a PEG cost, and will be included in that budget.

1. We hired a web developer to install and configure the Social Hashtags plugin, that made the social page possible (http://art.plusfeminism.org/social). We were intending to pay their $1000 fee through the IEG grant, though that would substantially cut in to our Designer line item. This is an IEG cost, and will be included in that budget.

Thank you.--Theredproject (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm approving the second item, ($1000) reallocated to your IEG, in Alex's absence today, so that we can move IEG disbursement forward, as discussed on our last call. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 9 June 2015 (UTC)