Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/2023 GLAM Macedonia General Support Grant

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 30,050 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 30,050 USD with a grant term starting 1 January 2023 and ending 31 December 2023.

The committee is supportive of GLAM Macedonia’s continued good work in education and reliable community engagement and retention practices. These community engagement practices have built a strong foundation of volunteers and ability to maintain your programmatic work effectively. In education, GLAM Macedonia has a robust foundation of connections with younger students and educators through its WikiClubs, and there is a good potential for growth in this outreach work in the country, owing to your organization’s ability to communicate and support useful connections between Wikimedia projects and the priorities of school students and staff. Furthermore, your GLAM work also has promising areas for growth in important sectors, such as with the national park system and scientific institutions.

The committee is also supportive of GLAM Macedonia’s and Shared Knowledge’s intention to merge into a single organization for next year, and appreciates the joint letter declaring this plan and why it will be useful for both organizations (e.g. to improve recognizability). Efforts to increasingly collaborate together on both the CEE Meeting 2022, some regional campaigns, and other programmatic areas demonstrate the complementary strengths and capacities of your organizations. However, the committee expected more discussion and decisions around this transition to have been completed earlier in the year, and it was not clear what prevented this work from occurring. An earlier decision could have supported your organizations to provide a more concrete plan and schedule of what work needs to be done to complete a merge, and for that work to have begun already. The committee emphasizes the importance to prioritize this work this year, including discussions with the board and members and developing shared strategies as a joint organization.

Based on these circumstances, the committee is requiring specific reporting detailing the following for your midpoint report:

• a general timeline of tasks required support a merge for your organizations that will support your goal to submit a single General Support Fund application for next year

• an update on progress your organizations have made to support this merge.

This information can be submitted as a joint report with Shared Knowledge for your midpoint reporting.

Because this transition is expected to be substantial, and that it will be an important priority for your organization this year, the committee was not willing to fully support the proposed budgetary growth for your GLAM and Education programs this year via staffing. Instead, the committee supported a roughly 15% increase in the amount of funding provided last year. In order to support the extent of programmatic growth you are seeking, the committee would like to see substantive progress made towards the proposed merge.

We are aware that the work around merging two nonprofit organizations is difficult and nontrivial, and so we encourage you to reach out to your program officer if there is a need for conflict resolution, or funding support, or other guidance that will help you complete tasks related to completing this merge (such as meeting facilitation or mediation) during the year.

The committee looks forward to GLAM Macedonia’s work over the next year, and is eager to learn about and support your progress towards building a unified Wikimedia affiliate for North Macedonia.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, MikyM (talk) 20:48, 17 November 2022 (UTC)