Grants talk:PEG/WM HU/operational costs for 2014

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who support this grant request

1. 5,000,000 HUF are 22,140 USD. This is a decent amount to cover 75% of HR costs plus programmatic work. This grant request in total is also only 56% of the total Program Plan of 2014. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 10:27, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

GAC Members who oppose this grant request

1. Tony (talk) 15:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC) I'm sorry, this is a retrospective application, starting 1 April (eight weeks ago). This is a procedural problem. Can you please change the start-date to one that is reasonably in advance of today, so that GAC members' reviews and advice are actually functional and not in the shadow of a show that's running already. Tony (talk) 15:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC) As far as I can see, your proposed activities/expenses should be proposed to start 1 July and be for two, not three quarters. If you'd wanted funding from April onwards, the application should have been submitted in early March at the latest—and preferably in February. Tony (talk) 04:28, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
2. Until/unless WMHU comes up with full financial reports, including one that includes information about their cash position (including why they have over two years in reserves,) and provides significantly more detail in this application about their programmatic work, as well as why the PEG should fund things like a permanent office and an FTE that are normally out of our scope, I believe this request should be flat out rejected. Kevin (talk) 02:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
3. Purely on the basis of the apparent fact that WMHU has so much in the way of cash reserves built up already; I feel it would not be appropriate to hand out more funds at this time. This should not be read as opposition to WMHU's accounting and business practices, nor to the actual items that are in the grant itself. Craig Franklin (talk) 09:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC).

GAC Members who abstain from voting/comment

1. I may be wrong, But there seems to be a back story to this submission that needs to be clarified by the WMF before I have an opinion. --Shipmaster (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
2. With Shipmaster here, if Anasuya and/or Garfield have had a visit to WMHU, they might shed a little light on what's happenning. I don't oppose granting, but it seems that there should be more clarification to justifying covering operational costs if WMHU has sufficient reserves. NLIGuy (talk) 09:00, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

WMHU's response to Tony's initial vote

1. Hi, can I reply here? If not, feel free to move my comment to the appropriate place. Could you please elaborate what do you mean by functional advice that you can add to this project? If you take a closer look at the application, you might notice that the salary is a monthly fix, the rental fee is also and from those 10 other categories under the "operational costs" in our annual plan, the server hosting, the accountant and the IT costs (this means office internet) are also fixed expenses. This leaves only 400k HUF (~$1798) as "variable" (average ~$199/month). In other words about 92% of this budget is fixed spending. The banking and phoning fees also have fixed elements further lowering the net variability. This in turn makes little to no difference at all if you pick for example February or August and review it in lets say June or September. --Vince (talk) 21:11, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Further discussion, split off from the voting table

I'm afraid my view is that the two three months should definitely not be funded. Please start fundraising now, or trim your activities to what you can afford. When did you decide you'd ditch FDC and come to easy street here? Round 2 in October, or round 1 in March? Either way, you needed to act mighty quickly. You haven't even presented a proper description of the job and your programmatic activities. No. Tony (talk) 03:34, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Find the starting date set to June 1 then. What kind of programmatic activity are you looking for? Related to this project (i.e. detailed plans on buying ink and paper for the printer per month and other office spending?) or in general? For the latter, find the reports in the linked categories sorted in a way the ever changing funding and reporting system fragmented them. There is also a couple more in Category:Grants:PEG, what I did not link as I guessed you review your archives anyways. The latter ones can be categorised as PEG grants today. The final decision was made in late May as absolutely nothing would happen if we would not apply at all for any funds this year. We have sufficient reserves that can cover at least two years in full (100%) plus the funds remained from the lasd FDC round. Find further details on that grant's discussion pages. This grant requests 56% only and as I reset the starting date, now for a half year only. --Vince (talk) 09:24, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, 1 June is in the past, not the future. And it's normal to have justification within a GAC-reviewed application. When we sort out the start-date, I'll investigate the links and where we can go from that point. Tony (talk) 11:21, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Fine, let it be set to July 1 then. Are there any other bureaucratic issues apart from this? Or it would still not fit as you won't be able to review it by that time? --Vince (talk) 19:44, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• Vince, before I respond again, can you please confirm that WMHU currently has two full years of operating reserves *plus* leftover FDC funding? Kevin (talk) 01:17, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Vince, actually I think it would be good if we could peruse a full financial statement in relation to this request, including reserves. Also, we'll need more programmatic details specific to the request. Tony (talk) 02:50, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Garfield and Anasuya was on a field visit at WM HU in February taking a full review of our finances plus we had a couple of other discussions abt this up to the WMConf in Berlin. We're in an excellent condition, this grant request was concluded to be the most fair and clean way to keep the leftover from FDC. Other operational reserves were built up to ensure operational stability and financial security over the past few years from direct donations and other, non-WMF grants.

Anyways, this is not a WM HU audit request. As far as I know, you are not entitled to financially review any chapter, neither to review, comment or suggest/request/force/etc to change any of their financial policies or practices (i.e directly or indirectly force them to spend their reserves) or to ask for any statements. This review has been done by the appropriate people already.

Could we move on to the actual content of the grant as we are still stuck at the first line? The line which is now showing 1 July. Please read my previous comment as well and reply to it so I can better direct you to the answers on meta. --Vince (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Vince - my understanding is that GAC members are entitled to ask pretty much any question they find relevant to whether or not a grant should be approved, including questions about the financial situation of a chapter. As GAC members, one of our goals is to ensure that project and event grants money is handed out in a way that maximizes the benefit of the donor money involved to the Wikimedia movement. This grant request actually includes a couple things that the PEG program normally doesn't fund at all - PEG as a general rule does not fund the salaries of full-time permanent employees, nor the rental of a permanent office. We can't dictate your internal financial policies or practices to you, but we can ask for information that we believe would help inform our judgment about whether or not this is a worthwhile grant. We can also "indirectly force" applicants to spend their reserves - if you equate "indirectly forcing applicants to spend their reserves" with "recommending against funding a grant." We're also certainly able to comment on whatever we desire, in the same way that every other member of the Wikimedia movement is free to comment about whatever they desire, as long as they stick to policies/avoid personal attacks/etc.

Despite the fact that we do not generally fund permanent employees or permanent office space (and doing so actually contradicts our written policies,) I'm not necessarily opposed to doing so in all situations. The reason I asked specifically about your reserves is because two years of reserves is a lot - it's significantly more than is typically recommended for most non-profits, and is in fact a greater period of reserves than the Wikimedia Foundation itself has (last I checked, WMF had about twelve months of reserves.) I'm curious if there is a particular reason why WMHU has decided to build up two years of reserves - if there is a really good reason for doing so, I'd feel a lot better about the idea of funding this request, even though it involves several types of funding the PEG program typically doesn't give out. I, like Tony, would also like to see a full WMHU financial report - I looked around some (including on your chapter website,) and couldn't find one.

You don't have to answer any of our questions, but answering them is probably going to make us more likely to support giving you a PEG grant that asks for funding that isn't in the scope of what the PEG program officially funds. Without further information, my final !vote is likely going to be "I can't see funding this grant, because it asks for money to fund things that are outside the scope of the PEG program, but would encourage WMHU to apply for future P&E grants that do fall within what we fund as needed until they choose to pursue FDC funding again." Best, Kevin (talk) 22:18, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, you haven't asked anything about the grant request yet. Not even close.

Actually you admittedly didn't even take a look at it at all [1], instead you jumped on a line of mine and you demand (softly) a full audit and a reason why WM HU has reserves and what are their intentions with that asap in order to "make you consider" changing your vote (what it imo means in this case: before you're willing to read it) This is very unfriendly and far too bossy for me, sorry.

Please contact the people referenced above for a verification that WM HU is in an excellent shape and operating with high efficiency.

I have asked numerous times from them and other WMF seniors directly in person if it is fine to create an application like this. The answer was a clear yes if we are not applying for the full overhead. This application now aims to cover 6 months. This also means only half the yearly salary of the FTE, what equals with a 50% PTE.

Funding such costs is not as unusual as you (or I feel you try to) interpret it. The last such (retrospective) pure admin-cost grant was approved in this April for Wikimedia Eesti.

Even being retrospective is not an automatic reason for denial. It is even in the FAQ you've linked. Note, I've changed that part, now having a future start date.

Tony, please clarify what kind of programmatic activities are you asking for. --Vince (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

• Hi Vince - I'm sorry if I've come off as overly aggressive in asking questions of you. I actively want the PEG program to fund pretty much as many applications as it can; I don't approach grant applications looking for reasons to say no, but looking for ways that I can say yes, which includes pretty often stuff like working with applicants to address areas of concern, or making suggestions about how to improve the outcomes of their work (I more often than not suggest giving applicants more money than they are requesting than suggest denying anything.) That said, none of the questions I am asking are particularly unusual, let alone things that are inappropriate for someone to ask. Honestly, I would expect a chapter to do things like provide their financial reports or details about their planned programmatic activity to anyone who asked, let alone anyone who asked when the chapter was applying for a large grant. I trust both Anasuya and Garfield implicitly, but transparency is the norm in the Wikimedia movement, and more eyes means fewer holes.

The retrospective grant provided to WMEE in April was extremely unusual, and was also less than 10% of the size of this grant. I can only think of a few similar grants that have gone through the PEG program during its history. Additionally, full time employees and recurring expenses like longterm office rentals are not things that the PEG program normally funds - they're against the written guidelines of the program, and even though those are sometimes deviated from, you won't find very many cases where the PEG program has funded either a full time employee or a longterm office rental. If you look at WMEE's application that got approved, you'll notice that even though it was asking for a fraction of the amount of money that this one is it's significantly longer, and the person from WMEE who was handling on-wiki responses spent a ton of time answering people had about the grant on its talkpage.

To be clear, I've read your entire grant application, the entire program plan linked in it, every document about WMHU in English that I could find, and a lot of gtranslated stuff from Hungarian. I'd be asking more specific questions about what you're applying for a grant for, but there's not really enough detail in your application or in the linked programme plan to figure out what to ask. Currently, you're more or less asking for a decent chunk of money from the PEG program without really giving us any details about how giving it to you will benefit the Wikimedia movement. In the end, GAC members do only make recommendations to Asaf and Alex which they're free to ignore when they see good reason to do so - but I'd honestly be surprised if they ended up approving this application unless/until you provide a lot more detail. Pretty much everyone involved in the PEG program in any way, including Tony and myself, actively want to approve as many impactful grants as we can and are looking for ways to say yes rather than reasons to say no, which is worth keeping in mind when deciding whether or not to answer questions we ask. Kevin (talk) 05:04, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Vince, you say: "you are not entitled to financially review any chapter, neither to review, comment or suggest/request/force/etc". Can you point to where this is stated in official text? On the contrary, I see that a fundamental goal of GAC is "to encourage and mentor chapters and other groups to ... draw up compelling project plans with an emphasis on strategic alignment and measurable goals"; and "to help the Foundation evaluate requested grants, not by a yes/no vote, but by deliberation and evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of individual proposals on the talk page of each proposal."

I should point out that the rules for the eligibility of applicants and projects seem to be in a state of flux, although the Committee hasn't been formally advised of this to my recollection. This bid sits uncomfortably with both aspects of the rules. I suppose in the light of the upcoming revamp of GAC, the rules are being bent; I just don't know which ones, exactly, and to what extent. Tony (talk) 06:03, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, thanks for the apologies; I had no problems with the content of the question, but a lot with the approach as it was lacking at least the minimal respect that can be expected towards the subject (WM HU) and to myself. On top of that, I felt being ordered, what I really don't like. Except from my boss at work. This is definitely not the way you should communicate with anybody.

Our own (non WMF) funds can cover up to 1 year of operations (full, including administration) while the remaining WMF funds can cover an additional year or more, depending on how we organize our spending or what amendments we make to our current structure and practices. For exact numbers, see the yearly plan; easy to calculate. We use and therefore wish to keep our reserves to keep up the cash flow, so we can pay for everything (anything) on time. Simply: for financial risk reduction. This reserve was built up by the previous boards over the past 5 years.

WMHU was the only chapter that received 100% of the requested funds in 2011 (WMF-Grants), in 2012 (FDC) and in 2013 (FDC) too. Three years in a row or in other words ever since there are annual plan grants. The estimated non-financial donations received in 2013 equaled about 20% of the actual total expenditures. Find some other details in the 2014 plan. We're very good if not one of the best in the Wikiverse when it comes to financial efficiency/operations.

I've actually made a full review of our operations (2008-2013) in April and organized my findings into a report, but I published it in Hungarian only and only for our members. As I'm a volunteer, I simply had no time/energy to translate it into English ever since.

If you don't know what to ask then why pushing for any questions? For me this means that the application is well-written, clear and simple, there is nothing to clarify. I really don't want to always refer to the same people above but I have to: there is nothing wrong with WMHU. Ask them, that's what they said multiple times.

I thought common sense answers this question, so no need for any explanation in the application, but here it is: we use our office as a site for meetups (general assemblies, board meetings, etc.), for storage (fixed assets, non-financial donations - i.e. books -, wikip/m/edia merchandise and other stock items - like awards -, etc.) for a centre of administration (all official /physical/ documents are centralized and kept there, mails are coming there and the authorities can find us there if needed), for project support (any, from offering office space for talks to awards ceremonies and really whatever needed, etc.) and for a handful of ad hoc reasons (like offering free usage for like-minded organizations as a site for their general assemblies/meetups). The FTE is doing everything for us, so the board and the members (as everybody is 100% volunteer, all having daily jobs) and others volunteering for us don't have to deal with anything they don't want to; keeping them happy, reducing frustration and the risk of burnout. The office and the FTE gives our organization an absolute mature outfit, making it easier to approach/cooperate with other (mostly public) organizations. It helps us to appear as a "serious" organization in front of our (possible) partners. In general: it supports our members, board, supervisory board, other volunteers and all the Hungarian wikipedians (for example wikiproject meetups). Probably I've missed out a couple of other direct or non-direct aspects of support an office and an FTE can give (especially when you have both) but this is the longest paragraph from me already.

The FTE's full job description as it was advertised can be found here: [2] (in Hungarian). We don't have it published in public. The same description (in the same order) can be found in the employment contract. --Vince (talk) 00:50, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't doubt that WMHU's finances are in perfect order - but in the Wikimedia movement, especially when asking for a grant, transparency is the norm rather than an exception. I trust Garfield implicitly, and I trust Anasuya implicitly - but we shouldn't need to rely on their word about it; imo, all members of the Wikimedia movement should be able to examine the finances and programmatic work of any organization financed with movement money - and besides that, both Garfield and Anasuya usually have things to do that are more important than answering emails from GAC members that could really be answered with a single link to something that most countries require all registered non-profits to produce on a yearly basis anyway. It's absolutely fine if you link me to a financial report or more details about your planned programmatic activities in Hungarian - if I can't figure it out with gtranslate, I live with two people who speak Hungarian natively. But I have trouble coming up with a good reason why you would be unable or unwilling to provide details of your financial information publicly. To be clear, I don't mean details like your direct bank account number, but just the typical financial information that nonprofits pretty much everywhere are expected to report. To me, being unwilling to supply such information does indicate something wrong with WMHU - not financial malfeasance, but an unwillingness to adhere to the transparency that is expected of pretty much all Wikimedia entities.

I can't ask additional detailed questions about your planned activities, because as far as I can figure it out, there aren't very many publicly published details about your planned activities for the upcoming year that go in to any amount of detail, in English or in Hungarian. Your combined grant application and programmatic plan are - and I mean this completely literally - the shortest and least detailed application that I've ever seen to the PEG from an established entity of any sort, and even shorter than most applications seen from individuals. If you are curious about the level of detail I would normally expect in an application for anything close to this amount of money, it would be worth taking a look at the level of engagement that was involved with WMEE's approved retrospective request, with WMDC's recent grant request, or with this grant request from an individual. My concerns about the extremely low level of detail in your grant application about both your financial situation and your planned programmatic work is furthered by reading the FDC staff assessment of your previous FDC proposal. To me, when that sort of concern is raised in a previous round of funding, coming in to the next round of funding - even though you're only asking for a third of what you did in the previous round - is a red flag. It also confuses me pretty significantly that the same sort of questions I am asking of you here were also asked of WMHU during their FDC proposal in a public setting and were answered by Bence at the time without any apparent hesitancy. I am sorry if you've interpreted my previous questions as overly aggresive, but at the same time, none of them are unreasonable questions, and they'll realistically need to be answered before this grant can be funded. (And, for the record, besides for possibly coming off with excessive initial surprise at the nature of the request, I don't think I've been particularly inappropriate in how I've approached this request.) Kevin (talk) 02:35, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Should be all here: [3] including the 2013 report and as a new element: the inventory. It seems that these were never uploaded thus not published. Fun stuff that I checked the site for any missing documents three weeks ago which resulted in uploading and publishing all the reports that "stuck" somewhere [4] in the past years. Probably this gave the false impression that everything got published. Well, it seems only up to May 2014. I thought it is there, sorry. Check back on Monday.

It is still not clear what kind of details you require as you referred to the "level of engagement" in two previous applications instead of giving example(s) or at least a rough description I can start to work with. Comparing this to the IEG grant you cited is like comparing an apple to a pear. WMDC also applied for programme funding, not for overhead costs. Maybe we're not using the same vocabulary here. For me project(s)=programme(s), or in other words the actual activities excluding all non-project administrative costs, like office rental (though administration itself can be considered as a "project"). The 2014 programme plan makes a very clear distinction between overhead and programme costs. This application is for the first category, like WMEE's. WMDC's is for the second. --Vince (talk) 22:49, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Find an overview here: Wikimédia Magyarország/State of the chapter and 2013's impact report here: Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimédia Magyarország/Impact report form --Vince (talk) 18:59, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Reports for 2014

Thanks for the submission. I really want to support this request as it secures continuity in the working of the chapter but it seems that we have lost track on the activities done by Wikimédia Magyarország during 2014. Therefore, my suggestion is to update the page as soon as possible so that we would have a better and clearer overview on all the things that were going on throughout the first half of the year. To summarise from the discussion above, we generally need two types of reports: progress, and impact reports. Progress reports are usually prepared more frequently than the impact reports since it is not possible to measure the impact immediately. Financial statements could be either reported separately or included in the progress reports.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 23:05, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Find Q1 (Hungarian-only) at wmhu:Beszámolók. Q2 report is in progress; will be completed by mid-July as usual. Cheers,--Vince (talk) 05:43, 8 July 2014 (UTC)