Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska/One-Year General Support Grant/2024-2025

Regional Committee feedback and questions

@Bojana Wiki PG: The committee has completed an initial review of the proposal, and has some initial feedback and questions to share, which I have summarized below:

• The committee appreciates that your user group has continues to maintain long-time partnerships where you are receiving some financial support. Are there any new partners or any possibilities that you may be able increase the level of financial support you receive from your organizational partners in the future?
• The committee also continues to be impressed with the number of organizers and general volunteer engagement your organization is able to support. From your perspective, what has helped your organization be successful in supporting many individual organizers in your programmatic work?
• The committee requests some clarity around the compensation plan described in your budget. Specifically, are there legal or other limitations on the number of hours an individual can be paid to work in their role? We note that the number of paid hours that the Administration and Logistics Manager has is six hours per day, according to the budget.
• The committee appreciates seeing your organization's interest in the inclusion of multiple sister projects (such as Wikibooks and Wiktionary) in the proposal as it relates to your programs. However, these Wikimedia projects do not appear in your evaluation plan. If you are hoping that your programs will have some content or other beneficial outcomes on these Wikimedia projects, would you be willing to add one of them to your evaluation plan?
• Finally, the Diversity of participants brought in by grantees in the evaluation plan lacks a clear description elaborating what aspects of diversity will be evaluated here. How do you plan to evaluate this aspects of your participation outcomes?

We request your response on this feedback by Monday, May 20th, which will support us to finalize a funding decision on the proposal. Please let us know if you have any questions or needs for clarity on the feedback. On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Responses

Dear Regional Committee Members and I JethroBT (WMF)),

Thank you for reviewing our proposal, for the comments and the questions. Please find our answers below.

• In addition to maintaining existing partnerships, the community works daily to attract new partners - both through targeted official activities and through individual actions of volunteers and members of the organizational team. Specifically, for the next year, the plan is to work with, in addition to the existing ones, the new faculties of the University of Banja Luka (the second most important in the country, next to the University of Sarajevo, with which a five-year cooperation memorandum was signed), 4 new high schools and the Faculty of Medicine in Foča, all within the Edu program. Also, within the GLAM sphere and Community Activities, work with new partners and organizations is planned (3 new museums, 3 new libraries, 3 new theaters and various organizations within the Community Activities program). As for partner support, it largely depends on the type of institution or organization with which it cooperates, of course, and the type of activity that is carried out. In most cases, institutions, mainly from the GLAM and Edu sphere, provide support in the form of space, equipment and sometimes refreshments for participants during the implementation of workshops or edit-a-thons. All support consists of the above. The reasons for this are the limited budgets that the institutions have, especially in the field of culture, in which the state invests very little. Their budgets are at the level of basic maintenance. For example, we had a situation of cooperation with a school where the principal is working alone to secure funds to pay for fuel for the school bus. The competent ministry did not provide even those basic funds. Taking into account the level of development of the country itself, we understand that we cannot plan projects like organizations in richer countries (eg Wiki Interns) where institutions can significantly support the project financially. In this case, non-material support is also acceptable for us (for example, when we get free use of the amphitheater or computer center, it significantly affects our budget in the form of savings).

• The work and engagement of our members and volunteers, in addition to identifying with Wikimedia's general goals, is most influenced by the sense of belonging and equality that the Community provides and strives to maintain. Also, a sense of freedom when expressing creativity and choosing and designing projects to work on. Specifically, projects are planned in accordance with the capacities and wishes of the community. Duties are immediately divided, so that everyone has room to find themselves in their own area. For example, photo projects are handled by people who are also professionally engaged in it and it is close to them, Edu projects are handled by professors and the like. We also believe that the fact that we have always insisted on quality, instead of quantity, since the beginning of the community contributed to everything. It was more important for us to have 5 quality people in the organizational team who have good communication and cooperation with each other, than 55 who are there just for the sake of order. Our organizational team is currently made up of very high-quality, highly educated people from different fields, with whom it is easy to cooperate and understand each other. Given that it is about volunteer engagement, we are convinced that in our case, the basic driver of the work of individuals is the humane factor and the satisfaction that comes from belonging to something as big as the Wikimedia movement.

• In our country, there are 5 types of employment contracts related to the state, profit sector, as well as special employment contracts related to the non-profit sector and NGO work. The main difference is flexibility.

"...State and entity laws on associations and foundations of Bosnia and Herzegovina do not regulate issues of employment or work engagement of association members and other persons in any sense. Therefore, the regulations that govern labor relations and work, that is, obligation relations in a general sense, are applied. However, it is important to point out that work or engagement in the non-profit sector has its own specificities. It can be permanent, but also occasional, paid or voluntary, it can be performed by members, volunteers, but also by some professionals who are not members, and therefore such work or engagement cannot in all its elements be equated with work in the civil service or in profit sector."

The only contract that our organization, considering its legal status, can conclude with an individual at the moment is the Service Contract. A Sercive contract is a type of contract that is not regulated by the Labor Law, and an employment relationship cannot be based on it. In other words, if a person is hired on the basis of that contract, it cannot be considered that that person is employed by the association in the formal sense. The service contract is in principle concluded between the client and the executor of the work for the performance of a one-time independent work where the time of work is not important, but the result of the work. There, the payment for the work is done once, with the agreed remuneration, usually after the completion of the work (in contrast to the employment relationship, where it is paid monthly).

The number of hours is determined in accordance with the current needs of the community and is in accordance with the aforementioned law on types of engagement in the non-profit sector.

• The community will also engage in work on sister projects through the educational and GLAM program and additional promotion of the mentioned projects. Specifically, within the Edu program, through cooperation with the Faculty of Philology and language departments, work will be done on the Wiktionary project, and within the GLAM program, in cooperation with museums and the liberation of museum material, in addition to Wikipedia and Wikimedia's archive, work will be done on the sister projects Wikibooks and QRpedia. Metrics are added to the evaluation plan.

• The community will also work during the indicated period to overcome the diversity gap through all program areas and correlation with different projects, wherever possible. In particular, in addition to working with women, we will work with minorities through an editorial marathon dedicated to the Roma as well as members of various religious groups. In addition to the created content, which is included in the general metrics, during the indicated period we will evaluate the number of participants from different groups, which is listed in the evaluation table. The number refers to the total number of participants, and the division by projects will be covered in the report. Bojana Wiki PG (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 101,250 RON

@Bojana Wiki PG: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 101,250 RON with a grant term starting 1 July 2024 and ending 30 June 2025.

The CEE/CA Regional Funds Committee is happy to continue supporting Wikimedia Republic of Srpska User Group’s proposed activities for 2024-2025. In its review, the committee noted that your user group has robust leadership and capacity as shown through your event organizers and healthy partnerships that also provide financial support for your programs. Furthermore, the committee appreciates the general structure of your annual plan and general strategic planning to set future priorities and set roles and responsibilities. Finally, the committee greatly appreciates your responses to initial review questions earlier in the review period, as these helped support the committee’s decision to fully fund your proposal.

The committee also offered some questions and points of feedback on the proposal:

• We appreciated learning more about the specifics of employment arrangements in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and how these relate to your organization’s current legal status. In the future, is your user group considering applying for a different legal status to have more options, or are the current arrangements using service contracts generally working well for your organizational needs? For example, it might be that preparing Service Contracts requires a lot of administrative time and effort, whereas other employment arrangements would be less administratively burdensome for you if they were doable.
• The committee also recommends incorporating Wikidata into some of your Wikipedia-specific activities, such as the editorial competition, Wikimedia CEE Spring, and 1Lib1Ref to help improve the impact of these events that supported better structured data for these topics.

We look forward to your work and contributions over the next year! On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)