Grants talk:PEG/WM CA/Operations Supplement 2012

Questions 1

Thanks for your submission. I would like to ask few questions. In section F: Program review & Strategy planning there is information about costs without details who will use funds for hotel and flights, and for how many days/nights fund users will stay in hotel. Another question is about target start date. You wrote that target start date is June 1st, 2012 and now is September 2012. Does that mean you have already started this project? If YES, can you give us some information about activities that have been started or completed. Thanks in advance! --MikyM (talk) 15:43, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

(additional question) In Budget breakdown there is section A: In person board meeting Jan 29th, 2011. Have I understood correctly - you need funds to cover the expenses of the meeting held last year?--MikyM (talk) 16:04, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes this was requested previously and accepted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you James. --MikyM (talk) 00:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Response 1

Thank you for the quick response on our grant application.

1. The budget for the strategic planning meeting is based on the cost of bringing 5 board members to Montreal to meet with Benoit and myself. This will average 640 / flight. The costs will vary as the board members all live in different cities, but we expect this will cover the cost. Depending on the actual cost, we may elect to bring in guest speakers to address some of our stragic planning ideas.
2. In addition to the board meeting, we had some accounting costs that had to be covered to file our tax return. Otherwise the funds of this grant are for future activities between now and December 31, 2012.
3. The board meeting in Section A has already taken place this year. Not all members attended, but we recruited our current treasurer at that meeting and we are hoping to have it funded.

Alan.ca (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for quick response. And what about hotel? How many nights is included in costs of section F (how much it costs per night/person)? About your response No:3 - there is probably mistake in date of meeting. There is Jan 29th 2011 and you just wrote that meeting taken place this year - or am I missing something? Sorry if there is a lot of question.--MikyM (talk) 00:29, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, I adjusted the details on the grant page, it was January 2012. The strategic planning session is upcoming in the fall of 2012. The event is not completely planned yet, but we are looking at 4 days. Two of the board members have accomodations for free in Montreal. Costs may vary when we actually book the event so we do not have exact figures and will need to adjust the event to fit the budget. Alan.ca (talk) 12:39, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Questions 2

D and E section needs more details.

• Regarding E: with which exactly GLAM institution are you about to cooperate, how this cooperation might look like, and who is about to lead it?
• Regarding D: Same question as above, where, when and who is about to organise this?

Polimerek (talk) 11:36, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Response 2

We have invested some time with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (approximately 8 meetings on site) and seek to invest more time in establishing relationships with instutions in Montreal. Wikimedia Canada members will be organizing and conducting this outreach. Alan.ca (talk) 12:34, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Questions 3

Thanks for the submission. The starting date in the project's overview is 1 June 2012. Does it mean that you're having ongoing activities? Can you tell more about the things that are being carried and those that were done in the previous three months? One of your measures of success is the development of a Strategic plan of Wikimedia Canada. Can you tell us more about this plan and its compliance with the four-year Strategic plan of the Wikimedia Foundation? Do you have it available somewhere in public? What is the extent that these operations might help the development of the plan? You also mention in the application an academic lecture about Wikipedia and its relation to the medicine. So, how the project at all is related to Wikimedia Medicine? Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:56, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Response 3

The question of ongoing projects was answered in Response 1. I will have Dr. James Heilman address your questions about the medical content. With respect to the strategic plan, the ponit of the meeting is to establish a good plan for 2013 mainly and talk about the future goals in the longer term. There is no document currently available, a document of such a nature would be a deliverible posted after the meeting. It should be noted however that we have not hired an outside facilitator for this planning meeting, if the review committee feels the funds would be better spent with that kind of support, we could ammend the grant to include the cost for this service. Some of the items on the table for this meeting are:

• Wikimedia Canada fundraising
• Progress in attaining charity status with Canada Revenue Agency
• Reporting / acounting framework for regulatory compliance and accountability to the members and to our donors including WMF.
• Goals for Wikimedia Canada, in terms of growth and reaching the community

Consistent with all of our grant applications, we will also be discussing the Wikimedia Strategic plan and how Wikimedia Canada fits into that vision.

Alan.ca (talk) 16:07, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I gave a talk in Coventry in the UK to a group of MDs and medical librarian a couple of weeks ago. I meet with the World Health Organization 10 days ago and will be giving a presentation at WHO on Sept 25th. I meet in the UK meet with Cancer Research UK, the British Medical Journal, and PLoS medicine.

Outcomes so far have been that 1) Cancer Research UK are interested in both a Wikipedian and Residence and to release their content under a CC BY SA license 2) the WHO are considering a CC BY SA license as well (the difficulty has to do with their IGO status). Thus I have also been liasoning with the Creative Commons lawyers and we are making sure that the CC 4.0 license does what the WHO needs so that they too can start releasing content under a CC BY SA license. WHO is also interested in a Wikipedian in Residence. Links here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Editor_outreach The UK chapter was also involved with these efforts. I am one of the major contributors to WikiProject Medicine. The founder of WPMED also spoke in Coventry. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I have great confidence in James's ability to promote the interests of the movement. Tony (talk) 09:40, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Question 4

Do you mind putting out there the costs in USD? There are a few numbers that seem strange to me but maybe it's just because I am not familiar with the CAD. Thanks. notafish }<';> 08:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Delphine, the currency is pretty much at par these days. 1 Canadian dollar = 1.0180 US dollars. Alan.ca (talk) 12:21, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

GAC member status for this application

No objection

1. Mayur ^{(talk•Email)} 09:11, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Waiting for more details

1. Béria Lima ^msg 06:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC) I am not completely sure about this grant. I will wait a bit for other GAC review, and read it again in a couple of days.

Timing

Can I get some clarification on what was previously funded in relation to ongoing activities and this current request for supplement. A lot of this current request appears to be for past activities. How had that been paid for if you haven't gotten the money for it yet? And if money was spent before request and approval? -- KTC (talk) 22:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your question, however, this was addressed in Question 1. Alan.ca (talk) 23:00, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, no it wasn't. There's "Yes this was requested previously and accepted" by Doc James. If it was accepted, then money was given. Why the need for supplement? And I still haven't gotten an answer to "How had that been paid for if you haven't gotten the money for it yet? And if money was spent before request and approval?" I would have to voice my objection to this request if no answer is forthcoming. KTC (talk) 11:22, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes so we requested funding for the January 2012 meetup prior. I was told that it should not be a problem and that we just needed to submit the paper work. We had the meeting where I meet for the first time a number of the people involved. We also meet with some others in the wiki world who where interested in collaborating. I covered all my own costs (was their for other business) as well as the cost of the food and Benoits expenses personally. I just requesting that I get reimbursed for the meal and for Benoit's expenses. I can send you Asaf's email if you wish. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:39, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

That won't be necessary. I was just wanting a confirmation that there was some kind of okay somewhere along the line before the money was spent, and who paid for it so far. I have no more questions. KTC (talk) 20:42, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

General remark

I am a little bit unsatisfied. Project scope says to have a look in the budget, instead it should be different. I would evaluate costs-benefits, so I would know before the expected benefits and afterwards the costs. In this case I see a list of costs I don't understand the benefits that you had or you expect to have. In addition the composition of costs per objectives makes unclear also the budget and don't underline the costs of the projects. The travel costs may be aggregated as administrative costs so Point A, B, C and F may be grouped as administrative costs, afterwards you may explain the single items. D and E may be grouped as "community support" costs, so there are mainly two kind of costs. The fit to strategy and the measures of the success and the project scope must evaluate these two costs. Basically this grant should finance the travel costs and the meeting within the community and with some potential partners, so the measure of the success are good, but the organization of the grant doesn't facilitate this final evaluation. What I suggest is to have general items like "travel costs" or "accommodation costs" and to explain the average of costs per hotel in Canada and the average of costs of flight, to indicate the number of missions to do or a number of persons to refund and afterwards indicate an amount. It will be the persons in charge of the post-evaluation of the grant to check that you used the money for travels related to the purposes of the association. The grant as would propose some visits as projects, but personally I don't consider the first meeting as project but more as administrative costs. The project starts as soon you receive an informal feedback of the acceptance of your proposal. --Ilario (talk) 12:06, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

You have some good thoughts there. Do we have a reviewed guide for grants that discusses this idea? I may have missed the documentation, but whenever I enter this process the evaluation criteria / process are not completely clear to me. It would be great if that guide defined the methodology under which the grant should be broken down, the terminology and the scope of the process. Your idea of classifying expenses is a great one, in fact, we have this kind of discussion internally when our board evaluates the initiatives for which we seek funding. For example, in this grant Grants:WM ID/Free Your Knowledge Project 2010, the type of evaluation you mentioned is not given and it is listed in the grant documentation as an example of a proper submission. Outside of project scope I think we are clear about the benefits for each activity. The accounting costs are pretty self-explanatory. The meeting in January was endorsed by the WMF, therefore what is to discuss now? The Oxford talk is a professional presentation that is explained in the budget as sending an expert to a professional conference to speak about the movement. The strategic planning meeting is key to ensuring we have a good plan in place and are best equipped as volunteers to meet the obligations and goals of the movement in Canada. The only ambiguous component is the GLAM and Small event flow-through funding, which ironically, members of the GAC have identified as a need and have submitted their own proposal to do much of the same. I understand your thoughts, but it would be greatly appreciated if you would work with the GAC to define the audience and scope of this process. As it would be challenging to classify the grant using more than one breakdown methodology. I think the key is to have one clear idea and work with it. If you are interested to discuss your ideas with me in person, I can make myself available by telephone or Skype. Wikimedia Canada is a supporter of an effective and discerning grants process. Alan.ca (talk) 13:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Interim report

At my request, WMCA has provided an interim report on their "Start Up" grant from early 2011. They submitted it by e-mail, but after I asked that it be made public, consented to my posting it here, to inform the review of this proposal. I paste it below. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 22:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Total Grant: $6200.00 USD

Budget	Spent as of Dec 31st 2011	incremental as of Oct 5th 2012	Total spent
$2000.00 @ $100.00 / month - wikimedia.ca	$763	$254	$1,017
$500.00 (2 years) - SSL Certificate for wikimedia.ca, required as the site will collect personal information and handle donations.	$0	$0	$0
$1200.00 @ $60.00 / month - Teleconference meeting tool (Used for Board, director, outreach and member meetings)	$392	$98	$490
$1000.00 Promotional items & office supplies (cheques, business cards and other swag)	$379	$0	$379
$1500.00 Medical student outreach (Travel costs for medical doctor director to reach Ontario universities and present)	$1,500	$0	$1,500
Total	$3,034	$352	$3,386

Underspending

I am concerned by the fact WMCA is seeking a not insubstantial additional grant while this start-up grant is significantly underspent and nothing is yet known about progress on the other grant already given to WMCA -- the Quebec Programs grant. Funding additional meetings for WMCA with what seems like a very low level of activity is a questionable investment.

Could you offer some commentary on WMCA's level of activity, to support the benefit of this requested further investment? Perhaps a physical meeting is not the most burning need for WMCA to grow. The start-up grant above, for example, included funds to pay for a teleconferencing tool, this is apparently under-utilized. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:14, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall Merit

In general, WMCA will have to provide stronger evidence for its being a good partner for WMF to achieve its mission goals in Canada, if it is to receive additional funding. Starting to publish monthly (or at least quarterly) reports to the community would be a good start. Right now, there's no easy way to learn what WMCA has been up to. From the Wikimedia Canada wiki, some activity in Quebec is evident, as well as the national participation in WLM. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:14, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I have to respond to this last statement Asaf. Wikimedia Canada is relatively new as a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, our staff are basically volunteers and particularly thin at the moment. I sincerely believe that our activities and projects are in line with the Wikimedia Foundation. As you mentionned, reports to the community would be a good start. As soon as this draft is ready for release to the community, we will mention publicly our activities on the newsletter "WikimediaAnnounce-l". In the meantime, you can view the draft of our activities for the years 2011 and 2012 on the website of Wikimedia Canada.

I really hope that the efforts of Canadians will be a healthy collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, Canadians are working hard for this! Best ragards, Benoit Rochon (talk) 07:35, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Response to Asaf's comments on reporting and underspending

Thank you for your concerns Asaf, it is nice to see that your team is scrutinizing these grants and asking questions about how funds are dispersed. With respect to the Conferencing tool solution, after some time of meeting regularly and resolving some technical issues with a few of our board members, the need to use the Webex conferencing tool was diminished. In the mean time, enhancements to the Skype conferencing software came to meet the needs of our team. Part of our ongoing effort at Wikimedia Canada is to evaluate the need of our expenses and eliminate costs that are no longer necessary. Not only do we carefully estimate our needs and debate the importance of each funding item we request, but we re-examine this need on an ongoing basis. For this reason, we were able to recover some funds in this area. Please keep in mind we are working very hard to facilitate the organization of a group of people dispersed across a very large geographical area represented by two distinctly different languages and cultures.

With respect to funding reporting, I would like to remind you that when WMCA is funded for a grant we enter into an agreement about disbursement and reporting requirements for each grant. To date, we have not completed a grant for which a funding report was due and in fact are not required to do so until after the year end of 2012. Like any responsible group, we plan our efforts around the deadlines for these deliverables and work back from there. We take financial reporting very seriously and fully intend to provide the grant reports agreed to by the deadlines stipulated at the time of fund disbursement. In fact, the interim report that you are now criticizing was given to you with the understanding that it was a limited report given before the deadline. There are many issues with releasing data before all processes are completed.

One very large consequence of an ad-hoc report before the agreed deadline is that all expense reports would not have been submitted because our understanding with volunteers was that this data was not required before the year end. We are a group of volunteers attempting to operate as would paid staff, but in any case it is unreasonable to judge the quality and accuracy of a report that was requested long before the agreed deadline. Having said that, I would like to see more quarterly financial results in 2013, but this is one of the list of items we intended to discuss at our fall planning session.

You claim that the movement is not aware of our activities because we have not submitted some informal chapter type reports to keep all apprised. But the foundation and many members of the movement must be aware of our activities. Myself and James Heilman paid our own plane fare to our first Chapter's conference in Berlin to discuss our future with the delegates. There is a long list of expenses we have all incurred to travel to represent the Wikimedia movement of which a small portion some of us have asked for reimbursement. Benoit Rochon a computer engineer and Antoine Letarte a college math professor took time out of there working schedule to attend Wikimania in Washington to make a presentation to the community about our Wikipedia Takes Montreal and Quebec events, where in one case we in fact have broken the world record for participants in this very movement. That does not even include our participation in Wiki Loves Monuments both in Canada and internationally. In this very grant application, we have had to defend James Heilman asking for partial funding to give a presentation at the World Health Organization. An activity recognized by local chapters and the Wikiproject Medicine community. When you ask me to justify why this chapter and its volunteers deserve funding, my best answer to you is that you ask around.

I am asking for the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Grants Committee for a fall planning session that will allow us to invite Richard from Wikimedia New York to join our Board of Directors in Montreal to have a face to face meeting to discuss the long term strategy of this chapter. WM NY has proven to be a very successful partner, we have in fact modelled many of our ideas after their works. We are in frequent contact with other chapters and in fact have received funding from some of them as well. My goal as a leader of this chapter is to have good plan that facilitates alignment with a 2 grant per year request Cycle. Additionally to have the supporting reporting framework that allows us to provide comprehensive reporting not only to meet the WMF requirements but to put this chapter on the right path to raising its own funds in Canada. We have many ideas to discuss this fall and I hope that the WMF and the GAC will support our efforts to continue our great progress in 2013. Alan.ca (talk) 00:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Specific concerns

Let me express some more explicit concerns about this particular request, below. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Focus of spending

Of the ~$15K requested, fully half is to be spent on face to face meetings (sections A and F). I do realize the realities of Canada's geography, but I submit spending this much money on meetings in relation to the magnitude of WMCA's work so far is not a good investment. Especially in light of the availability of better electronic means now (as you say above), I would like to know whether WMCA thinks it is absolutely incapable of doing its planning and strategy work electronically (as e.g. Wikimedia Australia has done, with a similar geographical challenge), and if so, whether it expects this level of costs to support its meetings every year. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

The January meeting

We have previously encouraged WMCA to include the reimbursement for the January 2012 meeting in a future grant request, and so are willing to fund section A, specifically. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks currently I have covered some of the other members expenses personally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:54, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Administration expenses

You describe a lot of expertise, care and effort as having gone into organizing the administrative side of WMCA's affairs, but the proposal still budgets for $2K (section C) to pay professionals to do accounting, tax, and record keeping. That level of expense would be fine if it supported a much larger volume of program work, but I expect WMCA to be able to make do with significantly lower spending on administration at this early stage of its development. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

WMCA as vehicle

The proposal includes funding (section B) for James Heilman (a WMCA board member) to travel to and deliver talks at several venues in the UK, related to his (admirable) work in the English Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine. I am concerned about the use of WMCA as a vehicle for what seems to me to be Heilman's own on-wiki work, which is explicitly international, rather than a program driven and motivated by WMCA's agenda and regional focus. Heilman is perhaps aware of this himself, as he is simultaneously working on setting up Wikimedia Medicine -- a separate entity that would no doubt be a better and more appropriate vehicle for his work. In this light, I think it would be best for both Heilman and WMCA to separate Heilman's global and on-wiki work from WMCA's own program work.

Until such time as a separate vehicle exists and has funding, James can secure funding for his individual work in an appropriately individual capacity, by submitting a Participation Support request (for events he'll speak at) or a Wikimedia Grants proposal (in his personal capacity, with him as recipient) for other expenses or opportunities he's like to pursue. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable Asaf. Feel free to strict this request from here. I do agree that as most of my efforts pertain to health, which is global in scope, a thematic group would be better situated to address this. However I did attend the meeting in Coventry, UK, London, UK and Geneva, Switzerland as a representative of Wikimedia Canada and it was these business cards I was handing out. No thematic groups currently exist and the affcomm has no intention of approving us by the sounds of it. Thus going forwards I will continue to use business cards and the logo through Wikimedia Canada. And Wikimedia Canada may partner on projects with Wiki Medicine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I think WMCA as a whole supports education and outreach in the medical community carried out personally by James. Since James is part of the organization, it sounds natural that this becomes one of the "topic" WMCA focus on. Amqui (talk) 16:20, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

No concrete plans

The two legitimate program items in your proposal (sections D and E) are basically contingency funds for a class of spending that may or may not materialize, and may or may not have impact. For comparison, past funded grant proposals budgeted for concrete GLAM partnerships that were either already negotiated or at least had well-identified GLAM partners and conversations in progress. If this happens to be the case with WMCA, the proposal does not currently reflect it. In this talk page, you mention the Royal Ontario Museum, but it is still unclear whether that institution is at all interested in a partnership (and what that might consist of). Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see below my short answer regarding those points. Amqui (talk) 16:21, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Measures of Successs

The measures of success are very vague. The correspondence between budget items and these measures is not clear. E.g. The $2000 to be spent on the equally-vague "GLAM relationship-building" are not listed as something WMCA intends to have a measure for. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A suggestion

Let me further explicitly say we are willing to support WMCA's incidental expenses, such as local travel, parking, and other small expenses, incurred in the process of meeting potential local partners, organizing meetups, etc. If WMCA wants to spend money on these things, we are happy to approve re-purposing the underspend from the the Start Up grant for the purpose.

We will not approve this proposal as it stands. I recommend WMCA attempt to do some assessment of its resources, strengths, and opportunities, and come up with some concrete plans and create a new grant proposal that we can confidently fund. I'm leaving this proposal open for now, as I'm open to arguments to change my mind, and also so that you may consider if you want to scale it down to section A only, which we are willing to fund. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A response

• Let me begin by repeating a message that you seem to keep missing: The start-up grant has not been completed, the report you requested in advance is not the full report and therefore the funds that appear to be available are for the most part already budgeted and will be spent. You and I had a long discussion by email where I explained this as my reason for being reluctant to disclose it as part of this grant application, yet here we are having this discussion on this grant page anyway.

• On the subject of general funds, it is obvious that an organization cannot respond in a timely fashion to the need to meet with partners or the community by going through an 8 week grant process every time an opportunity arises. It essentially incapacitates the organization from responding. I understand your need in this grants process to tie funds spent with specific strategic goals of the foundation, but I propose that can be done by granting funds with clear general guidelines that meet the need identified here. The greatest risk is that funds will be under utilized and need to be rolled into future project objectives. I propose there will always be some number of funds tied up in this fashion, but that is the risk you take when you want to stimulate the growth of an organization. Funds are not wasted, the downside risk is that a small sum is committed, but not used. When I proposed the idea for D and E, I expected there would be some meaningful discussion on this subject from the GAC members as members of your GAC have submitted another grant request to have an operations fund of this sort in place for projects of their interest. Grants:WM Movement/Flow Funding Pilot Project The idea is that the WMF develops a trust relationship with WMCA where there exists an understanding and trust about how this type of funding would be used at a level comfortable with the WMF. Having said that, if you don't want us conducting these small events and activities with your funds, we will put this on hold until we can raise our own funding.

• Section F, funding our planning meeting. I have covered this topic at great length in previous posts and I will not repeat myself again. In summary, the WMF is investing in a meeting of the WMCA Board which spans Canada wide to have an in person meeting to plan the next year and discuss the future of the organization. These types of meetings are quite common for boards to have and will be a good investment in Wikimedia Canada's future. We have clear goals for this meeting and it comes down to if the WMF is really supporting our efforts to establish the organization or not. We have some ambitious ideas for 2013, some of which we hope will make us less dependent on WMF funding. It has been a goal of the founders of Wikimedia Canada to, in future, be a financial supporter of the Wikimedia Foundation, not a benefactor. Raising funds independently in 2013 will be a good step in that direction. If you are unable to fund our meeting, you will delay our efforts and may in fact set us back significantly. I am sure any of the consultants hired by the Wikimedia Foundation would support the value of having a board meet annually to review its progress and set strategic goals moving forward.

• Section C, is $2000.00 of which at least $500.00 is paid to the accountant that files our tax return. Linda is in fact a Chartered Accountant, but she works in an area of that profession unrelated to charities and tax returns. I personally pay an accountant to file my corporate tax return $2500.00. The accounting services that Linda is seeking to fund in this grant are coming a significant discount. Proper financial reporting is essential for Wikimedia Canada to remain compliant with Canadian law and to have confidence in its financial reports including those disclosed to its members and the Wikimedia Foundation. In fact Asaf, I am really amazed that someone who is reviewing and approving grants does not understand these costs. I don't know what more I can tell you because I am becoming exhausted explaining things that are common sense to anyone running a charitable organization. Possibly Linda has the energy to argue with you about this point.

There is nothing more I can say on these subjects Asaf. I thought the Wikimedia Foundation was looking to provide the chapter with financial support while we were establishing the organization as long as were meeting the obligations outlined in the grants process. We have two grants completing at the end of this year for which I was looking forward to delivering fully compliant grant reports. I want to grow the organization further in 2013, I thought it would be responsible to hold a planning session before the end of the year to position us well. The flow through funding was ambitious, but it was intended to address a need that arose several times in 2012 and the attitude on grant submissions seems to be funding past events was not welcomed. I never expected you would give us a hard time about paying for accounting services and having an in-person meeting to plan an ambitious agenda for 2013. Alan.ca (talk) 03:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding points D and E, I feel WMCA missed and will miss some opportunities by not having budget to fund small events and initiatives as they arise. I, and I think I can say "we", think that WMCA activities must be bottom-driven to be more successful, as long as they are in line with WMF's vision and WMCA's strategy, but in order to do so WMCA needs the ability to support those initiatives and local activities by members as they request it and the 8 weeks grant process for such small amounts doesn't make sense in my opinion and maybe more details such as guidelines can be written as in what kind of small events and GLAM activities will be funded, but it is impossible to detail the exact events, and obviously a detailed report of each funded event will be submitted as part of the grant report. I believe WMCA can be trusted to make sure those funds will be spent in compliance with the WMF objectives. Thanks, Amqui (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Not funded

Given the disagreement about several items in the grant proposal, and WMCA's reluctance to revise it per the suggestions made above, this grant proposal is hereby declined, on the basis of insufficient impact. WMCA is encouraged to rethink its approach and to submit a new proposal with more concrete program work and a smaller percentage of overhead and planning expenses. I am happy to advise WMCA in this process, or to review future draft proposals before they are submitted, if asked. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Bringing down the costs

I am sure we can decrease these costs. We will look at switching the strategies meeting to via skype. And will work on cutting down banking / accounting expenses. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:32, 18 November 2012 (UTC)