Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Korea Strategic Annual Plan 2023

Follow-up Questions from ESEAP Funds Committee

Dear Wikimedia Korea,

Thank you for providing your written responses to additional questions from the ESEAP Funds Committee. See PDF document for more details. Thank you also for joining us on the call with the Committee on 3 December 2022. Your presence and participation was very well appreciated. Thank you.

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of KRW 80,000,000

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of KRW 80,000,000 with a grant term starting 1 January 2023 and ending 31 December 2023.

The changes we see:

• In the last 12 months, we have observed that the Board of Wikimedia Korea took on the feedback from last year about "having more helping hands on deck". The stronger Board engagement is evident through being in regular conversations with WMF ESEAP Programme Officer and Wikimedia Korea Executive Officer, participating in the strategic planning process, co-drafting the general support fund application, taking on the role of community organiser(s) and connecting to new partners.
• We also observed a strong intent by Wikimedia Korea to welcome more diverse contributors to the movement - young people, LGBTQ+, neurodiversity partners. We would encourage thinking about distilling key learnings and increasing the visibility of your work within the movement so that your stories/impact can be more widely shared with the ESEAP community for peer learning.
• We are excited about the comprehensive list of learning questions that you have compiled in question 19 of your application and will be happy to support you in brainstorming and designing the evaluation framework to answer some of these key learning questions.

The changes we hope to see:

• The ESEAP Funds Committee and ESEAP Programme Officer is of the view that you may require more support in budgeting and encourage more willingness to examine different ways of budget reporting so that there can be more clarity on reporting expenses - both in terms of general support funding and your internal annual audits.
• In your learning reports for the grant, we also encourage you to provide a more detailed analysis of your metrics (compared with previous year), to better assess if a specific intervention or innovation has led to more desirable outputs or outcomes.

For more details, refer to the summary table below.

Next steps:

• Let’s continue having regular conversations over the course of your grant implementation. Do set up a regular schedule to connect with your ESEAP Programme Officer based on your needs.
• The reporting requirements for the grant can be found here and templates are available here. Timelines for reporting can be found in your grant agreement or on Fluxx. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.

Once again, Congratulations! We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on a new year of project implementation.

Categories from Proposal Review Framework	General Observations about Application	Suggestions and Recommendations from ESEAP Funds Committee and Programme Officer
General Clarity (e.g. vision, change, strategy, learnings)	(KSH): The applicant has a clear vision and goals to be achieved through this proposal. They did a gap analysis and plan accordingly. They also provide some well-thought learning questions.	These questions were partially explored during the application process and can be looked into further during the course of the grant implementation (TL) South Korea is an advanced economy where the wage is generally high. How do you ensure welfare of staff, retention of staff as well as compliance to employment law on this budget? This may be useful for other communities to learn from your experience (Share both good points and areas of improvement?) (JC) Is it possible to share the percentage increase in salary for staff? If I recall correctly, there was an increase in Wikimedia Korea's budget for staff salary last year, so that the salary is exceeding minimum wage.
Impact potential and strategic alignment(e.g. strategy, activities alignment with knowledge equity, movement strategy, welcoming underrepresented communities, community support)	(KSH): In terms of the general strategies and programs/activities, Knowledge Equity is well addressed. However, the budget is a bit unclear. There is a lack of details and unknown external funding. (EW) Applicants take a more traditional approach to implementing activities. (BB): The grant addresses knowledge equity. However based on their recent pictures, there is still a high dominance of men participating in events or campaigns. (EW): In the answers to Q13 and Q13.1, the applicant only responded to collecting opinions from council members, but did not explain how to collect opinions from community members outside the Korean Wikimedia chapter. It is important to encourage their participation prior to the event.
Organisational capacity and budget(e.g. budget, learnings, strategies for engagement)	(KSH): They have a proven track record in conducting this project. One missing component from this proposal is how to increase the capacity of their long term Executive Officer and Project Coordinator. They focus more on the capacity building of the community which is great but needs a balance. What can we do to encourage multi-year grant planning? How do we keep the long-term staff to stay motivated? (BB): I believe they need to increase the number of paid staff to manage their social media presence and project management. They should also consider contracting a vendor to video record their activities and share it online. (EW): The lack of items makes the budget less transparent, and specific items to increase the transparency of the budget are necessary for review. There is a need to increase budget transparency and reporting.	(NF) Wikimedia Korea has board members and paid staff. Perhaps Wikimedia Korea can consider expanding to include providing internships or Wikimedia in Residence in future? Majority of ESEAP Funds Committee members are of the view that the proposed budget breakdown needs to be more detailed and aligned with your proposal. Based on the current format, they are not able to a) assess if the proposed budget adequately reflects the investment needed to achieve the proposed goals and b) understand how the resources are going to be invested c) The budget also does not include investments in key areas such as learning and evaluation
Learning and evaluation(e.g. learnings, metrics)	(KSH): Great learning question, most of metrics, and tools needed for evaluation are mentioned. However, might need to evaluate their target. Does 10 Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors are sufficient to answer their question? The procedure of collecting this data is also not stated in the proposal. (BB) I have not seen any graphs or metrices presented to compare their activities from previous years	This question was partially explored during the application process and can be looked into further during the course of the grant implementation (JC) The learning questions are well thought through. Next, you need to make the connection from questions to metric (i.e. what to measure) and tools (i.e how to measure). For example: How do you plan to answer the learning questions listed in question 19? What will you measure or document these learnings? How will you share them? Resource: Quick tips for applicants to include Learning, Evaluation and Sharing efforts in proposals
Others	(KSH): Need clarification on allocated budget and staff remuneration.	(NF): Perhaps in the next grant cycle, Wikimedia Korea can think about expanding to communities outside Seoul? For example having local communities also active in other cities.
Categories from Proposal Review Framework	General Observations about Application	Suggestions and Recommendations from ESEAP Funds Committee and Programme Officer

JChen (WMF) (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2022 (UTC)