Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/AfroCROWD:Championing Communities of African Descent on and in Wikimedia and Improving the relevance of Wikipedia and open technology to communities of Color

Feedback from the Regional Committee

Hi Shanluan, and thank you for AfroCROWD's proposal for for the current funding cycle. The US/Canada Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal; to start the discussion, I'm offering some comments and questions for your review.

First, some comments:

• I am impressed by the very broad range of activities, audiences, and geographical locations in which AfroCROWD has been active. When reading your proposal I have the sense of an experienced project team and a mature, vibrant project.
• I appreciate that this project engages participants "wherever they fall on their Wiki journey" and is seeking to develop critical skills such as fact-checking, evaluating sources, and understanding media bias.

Next, a few questions:

• Would it be possible to provide an alternative view (or link) to your timeline? The link provided leads to a Canva display which is unreadable (much too small) on my system.
• In this & in previous AfroCROWD proposals, the list of activities has included engaging participants as contributors to Wikidata, but I see no metric associated with this. I'm just curious to know if any Wikidata activities have been attempted or completed.
• I understand that a key goal of AfroCROWD is to increase awareness of Black culture and the African diaspora. Have you considered monitoring the number of posts in Diff which relate to activities in Africa or within the African diaspora, as a rough measure of increased awareness within the WM community?

Thanks again for your proposal. Redwidgeon (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful assessment of AfroCROWD, and for recognizing the scope and prolific impact of our programs. It is encouraging to hear that our dedication to engagement of diverse audiences across the world of the African Diaspora in different regions and stages of their Wiki journey have been noted. This feedback reinforces our commitment to empowering our participants and audiences to contribute to and participate in the ever changing Wikimedia Movement as readers, users and editors and within the pages, pixels and coding and activities of Wikimedia projects.

Per your request, here is the updated Timeline link including an alternative view.

Thank you for highlighting our Wikidata engagement, which, while indeed incorporated in our integral activity as mentioned, we can surely move to publish our Wikidata metrics and make it more of an overall centerpiece.

Can you please clarify the final question? We are highly involved in this space and glad to be a part of its growth. Recently we even returned to the United Nations in celebration of Africa Day, increasing awareness of the Wikimedia community's part to play in closing knowledge gaps about Africa and the Africa Diaspora as seen widely in our social media here for example, spreading even further knowledge of the hard work of the Wikimedia community beyond internal awareness. We hope this will continue to grow and we are proud to be a part of it. Thank you again. Shanluan (talk) 10:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Re: our final question: This question was just a thinking-out-loud suggestion, really. I noticed in your Strategic Plan (on last page) that one of your goals is 'spreading awareness of the African Diaspora'. I follow the in-Wiki blog Diff and it seems to me (without any firm data, admittedly) that the number of Diff posts relating to activities in Africa or involving members of the African diaspora has increased over the last couple of years. I wondered if a) perhaps the increase in Africa-related Diff posts was at least somewhat influenced by the work of AfroCROWD?, & b) if this (# articles in Diff related to Africa) might be a metric worth monitoring, perhaps as a reflection of increased awareness of the African diaspora within the WM movement? Redwidgeon (talk) 19:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 150,000 USD

@Shanluan: Congratulations! Your proposal is approved for partial funding in the amount of 150,000 USD with a grant term starting 1 July 2024 and ending 30 June 2025.

The committee supports continued funding for AfroCROWD, and recognizes its strengths in its programmatic work and past reporting. These strengths include the breadth of effective partnerships that support AfroCROWD’s programmatic work with Black and African diaspora communities at the heart of its mission, and that AfroCROWD plays an important role in introducing Wikimedia projects to these same communities and welcoming them to contribute and participate in it. We also see that AfroCROWD is an effective collaborator with several other movement affiliates, and appreciate you are working closely together with organizations that share your values, which comes through clearly in your recent reporting (e.g. 2022-2023 Report and this Impact Report)

The committee also acknowledges some important concerns, which informed the committee’s decision for partial funding. Some of these concerns have been brought up in previous feedback for AfroCROWD, and the committee has suggested some ideas to remedy these concerns below:

• The committee had several concerns about the structure of the proposed budget during initial review:
  • While the proposal is framed as a one year-proposal, the budget document framed expenses for a three-year period, possibly aligned with the longer-term strategy for AfroCROWD. We appreciate that this was adjusted later, but this occurred well after formal review, which did introduce some difficulties in decisionmaking. In the future, please ensure the budget costs are consistent with the funding period for the proposal.
  • There are some calculation errors that could not be easily resolved, such as the budget document showing a total funding request of 178,456 USD, but the proposal on Meta-wiki showing a request of 178,156 USD. Another area of confusion was about the fiscal sponsor rate of 8%, but the total provided for this line item (10,288 USD) did not actually represent 8% of the total request (which would have been 14,252 USD).
  • Taken together, the committee felt that more care needs to be taken in preparing AfroCROWD’s budget documents. If needed, we recommend working with your fiscal sponsor to carefully review the budget for accuracy before submitting your next proposal.
• The committee agreed that AfroCROWD is a relatively mature organization in the Wikimedia movement. As such, the committee requests that AfroCROWD begin to dedicate more time toward looking at outside funding opportunities to support further growth in its overall budget, particularly for its programs. In the current budget, AfroCROWD currently receives in-kind financial support for its web management services, but not for any of its programs or other administrative expenses. As previously communicated, the regional budget is unlikely to grow substantially in the near future, which means that it may not be possible for larger budgetary increases to be considered.
• Regarding metrics, the committee is not fully clear on what one-year outcomes AfroCROWD expects for new editors. The proposal on Meta-wiki states a target of 200 new editors, whereas the annual plan document states very different goals for new editors. On this talk page, please confirm and update these metrics and documents to reflect AfroCROWD’s actual goals for this next year. Relatedly, the annual plan document should generally reflect a programmatic summary for AfroCROWD’s work over the next year, rather than capture both programmatic and evaluation/metrics.
• In terms of its reporting, the committee requests greater clarity in the specific roles and responsibilities AfroCROWD has around its reported activities, and whether those events are completed or still ongoing. Based on your reporting, the committee generally understands what activities and events your organization was involved with and who you collaborated with, but the substance of AfroCROWD’s contributions around planning and implementation was not clear. For example, the 2022-2023 Impact Report notes that AfroCROWD collaborated with WikiVibrance to organize an expo for youth. How did AfroCROWD contribute or help prepare that expo? To address this need, the committee requests providing a summary or table in future reporting that includes:
  • The event or program name
  • The specific role played by AfroCROWD for the event (e.g., primary organizer, equal collaborator, invited guest, advisor, etc.)
  • The event or program location
  • The event or program duration

Your Program Officer is available to reviewing this feedback with you where needed and generally support AfroCROWD to address these needs in your next application. We look forward to AfroCROWD’s work and contributions to the Wikimedia movement over the next year.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)