Grants talk:PEG/WM SE/Annual Program Plan 2012/Report
Add topicQuestion about funds spent
[edit]Thank you for providing your detailed financial statement and activity report. Since you did not come up with a final number in Q4's grant, would you provide here a report on the total amount of grant funds spent against the budget presented in your plan here (by line item): Wikimedia_Sverige/2012_Programme_Plan? We didn't see it in the English versions of your reports but feel free to simply point us to it if it is there and we simply missed it. Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:28, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, of course. I agree that while the figures already are in the short summary linked from the report page, it make a lot of sense having it summed up as in the grant request. So here goes:
Budget Actual Actual from grant Community Support Technology 185 000,00 169 648,09 169 648,09 Reference works 99 000,00 10 960,09 0 Community driven projects 220 000,00 61 054,86 61 054,86 Edit-a-thons 137 000,00 32 838,32 32 838,32 Total 641 000,00 274 501,36 263 541,27 Quality Surveys 33 000,00 2 428,73 2 428,73 Content donations 260 000,00 207 050,57 197 050,57 Identify quality deficiences 71 000,00 11 718,80 11 718,80 Aerial photos 34 000,00 13 416,03 13 416,03 Total 398 000,00 234 614,13 224 614,13 Outreach Wiki-skills 259 382,00 251 366,90 55 300,72 PPI (Wikipedia in Education) 120 000,00 125 546,18 125 546,18 Student clubs 3 424,68 3 424,68 Establish relationships 81 077,54 36 077,54 Europeana Awareness 531 000,00 308 727,10 61 745,32 Total 910 382,00 770 142,40 282 094,44 Enabling Administration 92 000,00 170 713,55 170 713,55 Other personnel costs 0 58 528,39 58 528,39 Internal communications 33 000,00 37 503,18 37 503,18 Accounting/auditing 71 000,00 139 705,17 139 705,17 PR 89 000,00 81 801,98 81 801,98 Fundraising 115 000,00 76 191,31 76 191,31 Legal 50 000,00 24 750,00 24 750,00 Office rent 50 000,00 91 700,00 91 700,00 Office equipment 60 000,00 122 377,03 122 377,03 Board travels 50 000,00 28 193,20 28 193,20 Staff travels 80 000,00 61 673,24 61 673,24 Assemblies 10 000,00 9 495,22 9 495,22 Total 700 000,00 871 245,59 871 245,59 General Provision 157 500,00 157 500,00 157 500,00 TOTAL 2 806 882,00 2 339 390.16 1 830 382,21
- If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask me or Holger for details. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 06:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
- Do note that this summary can be a little missleading if read without looking at the annual report as such, since the incomes has changed and that the budget is not periodicized but the costs are. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 06:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
- I just updated the table which clearly shows how much of the FDC grant is allocated on each item line. Please note that we separated Other personnel costs from Administration to make it clearer and actually match our actual spendings. In fact, for accounting the scheme of the initial budget was not very suitable, and we have a much more structured accounting that has to be merged manually to match the classification in the budget. An example are some staff insurances or the recruiting costs for the CEO, both are now included in the extra item for other personnel costs among other costs that cannot be directly related to projects. --Prolineserver (talk) 20:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot for the updates for the table and your explanations - this looks clear! We'll have an update for you on the status of this report soon. Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 14:59, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
- I just updated the table which clearly shows how much of the FDC grant is allocated on each item line. Please note that we separated Other personnel costs from Administration to make it clearer and actually match our actual spendings. In fact, for accounting the scheme of the initial budget was not very suitable, and we have a much more structured accounting that has to be merged manually to match the classification in the budget. An example are some staff insurances or the recruiting costs for the CEO, both are now included in the extra item for other personnel costs among other costs that cannot be directly related to projects. --Prolineserver (talk) 20:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
- Do note that this summary can be a little missleading if read without looking at the annual report as such, since the incomes has changed and that the budget is not periodicized but the costs are. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 06:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Questions about spending
[edit]Thank you for this very helpful summary!
Would it be correct to summarize that, regarding the grant funds spent, WMSE spent less than planned in each program area while it spent significantly more than planned on administration? If that is a correct interpretation of your statement, would you please offer some explanations for areas in which you spent significantly less than planned and significantly more than planned?
Thank you, again! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
- Well, that is a quite fair interpretation, however keep in mind that a general underspending is to be expected since we did not get the income we budgeted for. While we managed to keep costs down on most programs, the overhead for this kick-start for the chapter (with employees) took more time than expected. If we are looking at specific items, the significant underspendings on programs are in Reference works and Identify quality deficiencies. The first one lacked interest from the community in ordering reference literature in the scale we thought, on the other we did not get students to do thesis as we requested and some dropped out, but for what got done it was done as a research project at a University in Germany, we only payed a minor part of an additional student, the rest was financed by their EU project. These programs could be considered only partly successful but luckily they did not cost much. Other deviations were in edit-a-thons, where some were included within the Europeana awareness project. The Community driven projects had a lower demand than expected and the accepted projects got cheaper than what they applied for. In the aerial photos, the lobbying part were not really done, since we had no other funding outside FDC to do it with. Establish relationships: was in our first budget but were cut when we got instructions to lower the overall budget. However, we finally needed to do activities here which resulted in several cooperations and common project proposals like GR Education (which in turn led to the grant for Swedish for immigrants). Europeana awareness had a lower staffing cost than expected and it is a flexible two year project where some parts shifted to 2013. The additional costs in 2013 including our 20% share of the financing are actually not included in our 2013 FDC request, as it was not clear at the time of the application.
- Regarding the overspending on Enabling it is mainly Administration, Accounting/auditing and Office Equipment. Administration was an underestimation in the complexity of things starting an office with staff out of nothing and learning how to do things. Having people employed, and develop an organization at this rate took time, and then all these tiny costs like insurances that adds up. Holger is actually going to extract these costs to an updated table to make it clearer. We also used KPMG as auditors to be sure we had the best possible order on things, and while it was a big help, they were not cheap. Office equipment grew as we hired more than first planned, these are mostly one-time investments. We have learnt a lot from this and our grant request for 2013 was based on these experiences and will most likely see less deviations. I hope this make things a bit clearer. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 20:28, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you, Jan. We appreciate the explanation here. CHeers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:25, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
Funds remaining
[edit]Would you please confirm the amount of grant funds actually received by WMSE was SEK 2,806,882? That amount seems a little high to me, although I am verifying the exact amounts and currencies sent against our records right now, so I want to be sure I am interpreting your summary accurately.
If you agree, we will deduct the remaining grant funds from WMSE's next installment of its FDC funds allocation (amount to be confirmed after the total amount of grant funds sent to WMSE is confirmed). Please confirm this arrangement is also acceptable to WMSE. You also have the option to return funds according to the instructions here: Grants:Index/Return unused funds to WMF.
Best, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
- Oh no, far from it, that was the total budget for spending, not the actuals on amounts received. As can be seen here, we recieved 1,981,682.00 SEK from WMF. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 09:22, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks, Jan. This number matches our own records as well! However, we still do need you to provide the amount of grant funds spent and what you spent them on. It seems the table above includes spending from revenue sources beyond this grant. Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:29, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- We understand now that the amount remaining is 151299.79 SEK. Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks, Jan. This number matches our own records as well! However, we still do need you to provide the amount of grant funds spent and what you spent them on. It seems the table above includes spending from revenue sources beyond this grant. Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:29, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
Link to financial reports from English activity report
[edit]We noticed that this English report (thank you for providing it!) has a section heading for a financial report but does not seem to include information or a link: wmse:Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/2012. Please consider updating it. Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Fixed Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 09:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you, Jan! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- Now there is also the link to the English version of the audit report in case you didn't see the report earlier. --Prolineserver (talk) 20:40, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you, Jan! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
Quality analysis thesis status
[edit]In the Q4 report, you mention that the student's thesis about quality gaps or coverage on several wikis should be ready by February 2013. Has it been completed by now? If so, could you share a link? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 17:47, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- We will move forward with accepting the report, but please do answer Asaf's question here. We would be interested to receive an update on this project. Best, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:27, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
- The study is now available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.1776 Sorry for the delay. --Ainali (talk) 21:30, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
Report accepted
[edit]Dear Jan and Prolineserver: Thank you for your hard work on this report and for answering our questions about the financials so thoroughly. We very much appreciate that, as well as your excellent track record of good reporting. It has been a pleasure working together with you over the course of this grant, and we are pleased to accept this report. We will be working with you to make arrangements regarding the remaining funds, but you have WMF's permission to retain the unused funds until a decision is made. Best regards and thanks once again, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)