Grants talk:Programs/Hub Fund/The CEE Hub - Year 3

Feedback on the proposal

Dear members of the CEE Steering Committee,

The proposal has a clear structure and supporting documentation in the Theory of Change, evaluation plan, and timeline. There is clarity on roles and responsibilities and clear community buy-in. While the year 2 report has yet to be submitted, there is a connection between learning from year 2 about what is worth continuing and what innovations the CEE Hub wants to introduce. The Theory of Change has a clear vision of the impact the Hub seeks with its initiatives.

The focus on developing onboarding materials could be of great value to the Movement in creating learning resources for newcomer staff and board members.

Things to clarify/expand on

• Strategic planning for the future: The CEE Hub has been expanding its activities to several areas. This year, it will be important to measure the impact of this work in terms of your theory of change and to determine what areas the CEE Hub might want to concentrate more efforts on in the future. At this stage, it is worth starting to draft a longer-term strategic plan (3-5 years) to project what ongoing operations, budget, and impact look like. It is recommended to include this outcome in year 3 and the timeline of activities to develop this plan.
• Learning from year 2 outcomes: Can you share some preliminary outcomes data from the current year so it is possible to see what the results were and some of the key learnings you took from this? Considering year 3 is a continuation and expansion of year 2, how have CEE's services already impacted community and program growth, health and/or engagement? Are you on track to meet the targets planned for year 2? This does not need to be comprehensive as we recognize you will be writing a report and dedicating resources to learning & evaluation in year 3.
• Microgrant learning: Please share learning about the microgrant process and if the CEE Hub reached the target in year 3. If not, why not, and how are you hoping to change/improve the support system to reach this target?
• Focus and impact of organiser support: Based on the CEE Hub learning from year 2, it may be worth focusing on activities organisers find most difficult in campaigns. For instance, in previous learning sessions, volunteer retention measurement and volunteer management have been an area of concern.  Perhaps an interesting way to focus support and training is on tracking retention and testing approaches to retain newcomers. If this is done, it would be viable to measure if the support you are offering through training and guidelines is having an impact on campaign results in bringing in active newcomers.
• Clarity on the inclusion of Central Asian communities: What packages of support are including Central Asian communities? The proposal mentions microgrants. Is there a target for how much funding or communities you hope to support in these countries? Are you also reaching out to organisers in these communities to support them with campaign organising or any other form of capacity building?

• Support for other hubs: It would be interesting to know the outcomes of the meetings carried out with other Hub initiatives and if this will be the main form of support of other hubs or will there be different spaces/resource sharing. Particularly considering that hub initiatives are at different stages and few will be ready to access funding to pilot this year. Also, what care will be taken to define who is part of this support network, given that some drivers may not have the community buy-in to drive this process?
• Clarify governance outcomes: The outcomes require some clarity. The proposal states experimenting with a Membership model, the Theory of Change mentions including people in discussions and in the Steering Committee and the metrics document states that a new model will be “tested and finalised”. Can you clarify the outcome you are looking for and what process you would carry out for this?
• Youth work outcomes: Can you provide clarity on what impact you hope the youth work will have on community building in their geographies? For instance, are there any targets of how many new young people the Hub wants to be engaged in the network and what impact do you expect this work to have on their local affiliate/group or on Wikimedia projects?
• Clarity on overall metrics: There can be some integration of the metrics in the theory of change with the metrics in the Y3 plan metrics tab.
• Learning from staff hire and capacity building: It is stated that the learning around community support through hired staff will be documented in year 3, but it would be important to add some reflections in the plan of why this is not going to be continued in year 3 and what will happen to the work that this staff was doing, particularly for the staff that was developing ongoing organisational work and not consultancy products.

Please confirm that you would not be including a proposal for rapid fund (scenario 2), but that you will be working to prepare a timeline, process description, job description and budget to explain the CEE approach and requirements for the new funding programme that would be submitted for consideration by the Wikimedia Foundation.

As mentioned in our monthly sync, if it would be useful to hop on a call to discuss any points in this feedback we can arrange that as soon as possible.

The team looks forward to hearing from you. JStephenson (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Jessica! Thanks for your feedback. We confirm that the current plan is to submit a timeline, process description and job description as well as a “worst case” budget for the new project incubator program by December 18th. We will answer the questions in the feedback by the middle of next week. Philip Kopetzky (talk) 17:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Dear Jessica,

On behalf of the Steering Committee members, I am sharing the feedback from the CEE Hub regarding 10 questions/topics:

1. We will be working on a longer-term strategic approach, but considering the framework we currently work in and the lack of a long-term vision after the non-ratification of the Movement Charter, it is difficult to plan anything with any measure of certainty for hubs beyond the next annual WMF budget.

In year three, the CEE hub remains a pilot project, and the processes for detailed evaluation and impact measurement are quite comprehensive, particularly given the presence of 2-3 full-time employees and a robust annual plan.

Furthermore, does this question imply that we will be eligible to apply for multi-year funding? Accessing such funding would allow us to optimize our resource allocation and foster a more stable environment for development and planning.

2. To provide administrative support for the CEE communities, we concentrated on three key activities: a) Supporting a minimum of three individuals or communities in writing grant applications, b) Submitting one external grant application with several CEE communities as project partners, and c) Assisting two communities in event organization, including materials, logistics, and overall process management.

We successfully completed these activities and achieved the intended outputs. Our primary takeaway is that these tasks require more time than can be managed effectively by just two regular staff members. We provided support to Turkish, Cypriot, Polish, and Croatian Wikimedians in drafting their grant applications, resulting in the approval of three rapid grants, with the Polish application being incorporated into the WMPL annual grant application. In collaboration with WMPL, we also worked on an external grant application to USAID, which involved a joint effort between WMPL, CEE Hub staff, and the CEE Youth Group. Additionally, we supported the event organization for Cypriot and Greek User Groups by participating in their events—both in person and online—delivering speeches, and taking part in panel discussions.

The key learning from this experience is that engaging with more than 30 communities necessitates extensive interaction and consistent communication with volunteers to foster relationships and build trust, enabling us to provide meaningful support. This level of engagement requires more than two regular staff members to ensure activities are implemented and tracked effectively.

The Community Building Working Package focused on three main objectives: a) determining which Central and Eastern European (CEE) communities would receive our support; b) establishing a human resources process for selecting new staff members to work with these communities; and c) collaborating with the selected communities to ensure that our new staff members, hired by the CEE hub to support these specific groups, can effectively fulfill their roles as agreed upon. Furthermore, we were overseeing and tracking the outcomes of the newly hired staff, aiming for increased membership, more structured operations, and concrete plans for the supported CEE communities in 2025.

Initially, our plan was to concentrate on 1-2 communities; however, the final selection included the Wikimedia Community User Group Greece, the Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus, and the Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group. During discussions regarding our approach and activities, in collaboration with these user groups (UGs), it was decided to hire two staff members that will both work for both Cypriot and Greek UGs and an additional two staff members for the Romania and Moldova User Group. This decision necessitated a choice between adhering strictly to our original grant application, which proposed supporting 1-2 communities with 1-2 staff members, or expanding our support to three communities by hiring a total of four new staff members as they suggested. Despite the additional workload this entailed, we chose to honor the communities' preferences.

A key takeaway from this activity, although it remains ongoing, is the realization that supporting communities demands flexibility, time, and commitment. It is not surprising that these communities have achieved more with dedicated paid staff; however, this has resulted in increased pressure on regular volunteers who contribute to these communities and has also added to our own workload due to our decision to support them with more staff than originally planned.

Our activities also included several key areas focused on the implementation of the CEE meeting. These areas involved: a) participation in the program committee, b) organizing and updating the bidding process for selecting the host for CEEM 2025, and c) providing support to smaller communities interested in applying to host CEEM 2025, as needed. We successfully accomplished all planned objectives: we contributed to the organization of a successful CEEM 2024 program, facilitated the bidding process and selection committee that appointed the new host for CEEM 2025, and assisted those with inquiries about the application process for hosting CEEM 2025. A significant takeaway from this experience is the recognition that increased support from the CEE Hub will be necessary in 2025 to assist with CEEM organization. This is in response to requests from communities for adjustments related to program organization, as well as to ensure that delegate lists are maintained accurately and that hosts are well-informed about all conference-related responsibilities.

We are making good progress on the majority of our planned activities. However, we have encountered additional, unplanned responsibilities that have become part of our workload. These include activities related to the ratification of the Movement Charter, negotiations for rapid grants, and the management of an additional rapid grants round by the CEE hub staff, as well as being part of the implementation of an external grant from the Swedish Institute (CEE hub also participated in writing that grant proposal). As a result, we have decided to postpone some planned activities, particularly those focused on the creation of guidelines and training concerning onboarding and knowledge transfer among volunteers, as well as those related to the implementation of the UCoC and Friendly Space Policy in the region. Additionally, the UCoC activities have been partially postponed due to delays from the WMF in preparing the necessary training that we must complete prior to proceeding.

3. Microgrant learning: Please share learning about the microgrant process and if the CEE Hub reached the target in year 3. If not, why not, and how are you hoping to change/improve the support system to reach this target?

Our objective was to fund seven micro projects, and we successfully exceeded that goal by funding eleven projects. We recognized that in order to engage more Wikimedians, it is essential to promote the micro grant program through a broader range of channels. Therefore, we have begun focusing on Village Pumps, a strategy we started implementing in October 2024. In the second half of Year 2, following the CEEM, we made the decision to include Central Asian countries in our micro grant program, making them eligible to apply starting in October 2024. At this time, we have received two application from the Central Asian region.

4. Thank you for this suggestion, we will take this into consideration when working with communities on their campaigns. Please note that the campaign we will focus on next year is the CEE Spring Campaign. We can focus on tracking retention and testing approaches to retain newcomers.

5. Participation in the CEE Youth Group and Micro grants are currently the only form of support. Central Asian communities are able to take part in communication channels, the CEE newsletter and other communication channels too, but there’s no active CEE Hub support in other areas.

6. Support for other hubs: the idea is to build cooperation among regional networks - there is no active support of other hub initiatives other than offering to share experiences from our own development.

7. Clarify governance outcomes: This is currently an agile process where the outcomes are unclear - neither the WMF affiliate strategy nor current structures offer any support in finding a fair and equitable governance structure. The process itself will probably include an experimental membership model suggestion, discussions with affiliates and communities, and a finalisation of the experimental model by the next CEE Meeting.

8. Youth work outcomes: The primary objective of the CEE Youth group was to establish a network of young individuals who can support one another, share knowledge, and create a safe environment for growth and learning. While we anticipated that this would lead to increased engagement among youth in their communities, it was not our foremost goal. We also envisioned that, as the group coalesced, members would collaborate on joint initiatives, such as social media campaigns and interregional projects. We aspire to ensure that all CEE communities are actively represented within the CEE Youth group. Although the group is experiencing growth, we acknowledge that we still have significant progress to make in achieving this goal. Our current objective is to have 12 CEE communities actively represented within the group.

9. Clarity on overall metrics: After we reach a consensus on the 4-5 areas to prioritize, we will be pleased to incorporate them into the Y3 plan metrics table. In the provided table, we have identified more than 10 areas that we believe would be valuable to track (and we suggested 7). If you would prefer for us to make the decision independently, we are prepared to proceed accordingly.

10. Last year, when we presented the capacity-building initiative to the WMF, we were clearly informed that it should not be treated as a standard (regular) activity, but rather as a pilot project lasting no more than one year. In response to this feedback, we adjusted our planning accordingly. Our intention was that if the communities we support are satisfied with the outcomes and progress made by the newly hired staff, the user groups (UGs) would then incorporate these employees into their annual grant applications, enabling them to remain in their positions with their salaries funded from different sources. Specifically, for the Romanian and Moldovan language user group, they will aim to retain the hired staff by including them in the next UG’s annual grant application for the second WMF funding round. To prevent any gaps and ensure continuity, given the ongoing nature of this organizational work, the CEE Hub will allocate a portion of its contingency funds to cover the salaries of these staff members until a decision is reached by the WMF regarding the annual grant.

• We confirm that the current plan is to submit a timeline, process description and job description as well as a “worst case” budget for the new project incubator program by December 18th

BKlen-CEEhub (talk) 16:26, 4 December 2024 (UTC)