Grants talk:PEG/WM US-NYC/Short term funding program

Sorry guys, but before accepting such a proposal you must be more precisie and explain in more details all your points:

• Fees to start experimenting with basic marketing techniques: USD 500

What kind of fees, what kind of marketing techniques, what do you want exactly to advertise?

• Government and banking fees, nonprofit status and development fees: USD 1000

Seem to me quite high amount of money in comaprison with overal grant 1/3 - try to be more specific and show us more detailed budget for this.

• General funds for small projects and mixed appropriation: USD 500

Again - specify which ones

• WikiMania Takes Manhattan: USD 1000

This is clear - but again show us a proposed budget for this activity.

Polimerek (talk) 22:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the submission. I agree that we need more details about this. What are the hurdles you're facing in your chapter to start developing a such program? What are the strategies that you pursue to enlarge the number of members by 150%? How many of your members will be actively involved in the activities of the program? How can you measure the quality of your ability to deal with the general operational expenses and the sustainability of your chapter? Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 00:27, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

• I also would like to hear some answers to the questions above. If the grant applicant has "book of ideas", why not list some of them. Sorry, but so far I have an impression that the grant is "give us some money and will see what we can do with them". But even assuming that "experimenting with marketing strategies" works splendidly, how the Wikimedia Movement will benefit from increasing NY Chapter members by 150%?--Victoria (talk) 10:55, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
  • More detail has been added to this grant, so thanks for that! I am interested if more detail can be provided around "Government and banking fees, nonprofit status and development fees." I expect that some of the nondiscretionary expenses that would come under this label could be anticipated, such as the filing fees for the paperwork to attain nonprofit status. Can you give us any specifics, or is this just intended as a bucket of money for dealing with various non-programme related expenses that might come up? Craig Franklin (talk) 11:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
    • I would just like to remind everyone to assume good faith. This past week I have been swamped with high school homework, EMT class, and clinicals in a hospital so I have had little time to check the progress on this grant and I do apologize. One major part of the fees we need to pay is to our former intern, Roman Garcia, to whom we owe USD 500. We also have accumulated various fees from the IRS over the past months for our 501(c)(3) status (to the federal and now to the state government).

As for the membership we are working on creating strategies now which will increase the exposure of Wikimedia in the tri-sate NYC area (as defined below). The purpose of this will be to gain more traction in the community. Of out 45 members, I would describe 8 as highly active and of those 8, 4 contribute a good portion of their time and resources to our organization. By raising our membership we would ideally gain more motivated members who would be very active in the short term at the minimum and help us with our operations. We would accomplish this by using various guerrilla marketing techniques that put emphasis on low price-high visibility advertising.More specifically we would use p2p marketing (friends sharing Wikimedia with friends), social media (Facebook, Twitter, ect.), events (high visibility events will gain us membership and boost our image). These will all be depended on promotional materials such as business cards, letterheads, envelops, shipping, which will allow us to spread the word of our organization and connect potential volunteers with us via social media and inform them about upcoming events where we can use peer-to-peer marketing to encourage them to join out chapter and support the WMF projects. Peter.C (talk) 23:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

OK. Now this grant proposal seems to be more precise and I support it. Polimerek (talk) 09:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I still would like to see the budget to "General funds for small projects and mixed appropriation: USD 500" and "WikiMania Takes Manhattan: USD 1000". Is that possible? Béria Lima ^msg 22:24, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

We have no plans at the moment for the general funds. The purpose of them is to fund small projects we think of later on, that way we would not have to take further time to fill out for a small grant. It also is a safety net for us. As for the WikiMania Takes Manhattan money about USD500 will go to purchasing the food for local vendors and the other USD500 will go toward paying for tents and booths that will be required to make a "fair" on Governers Island located in NYC. Peter.C (talk) 10:58, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Tri-State Area

Can you please clarify for those of us not familiar with US geography exactly what area this covers, and how that relates to "New York City"? Craig Franklin (talk) 11:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

See w:Tri-State area (NY-NJ-CT) (and w:Tri-state area). Our bylaws say

This Chapter will serve a local community which includes (but is not limited to) the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, on a non-exclusive basis, with the understanding that other chapters may be established in overlapping geographic areas, also open to people in these areas.

Jeremyb (talk) 09:48, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, great, thanks :). Craig Franklin (talk) 11:47, 11 April 2012 (UTC).

GAC members who have read this request but had no comments

1. Ilario (talk) 08:42, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
2. Mayur ^{(talk•Email)} 14:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
3. Abbasjnr (talk) 03:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
4. Josepnogue (talk) 18:48, 10 May 2012 (UTC)