Grants talk:Project/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2020 coordination

Reminder: Change status to proposed today to submit

@Effeietsanders and M.Hekmat: today is the deadline for the 2020 Project Grants Round. If you would like your proposal to be considered for funding, the status= field of the Probox template will need to be changed from draft to proposed, per the instructions at the top of the application page. We have a strict deadline, so make sure to make this change by end of day today (February 20, 2020). With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): Thanks for the heads up. As a volunteer team, it would be helpful for such deadline to be end of week-end rather than middle of the week ; if that‘s not possible, then we will aim to formally submit before end of day, Pacific Standard Time. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:36, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jean-Frédéric, Effeietsanders, and M.Hekmat: Hi Jean-Fred, I would request submitting the proposal today, as it is complete enough to pass the staff eligibility review period we will conduct between 21 February - 2 March. This is basically to review the proposal for completeness and basic eligibility criteria. Importantly, you may continue to improve and revise the application during this time, and you will also be able to revise the proposal in response to feedback during the community review and Project Grant Committee review periods scheduled for later in the round. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Generally a good idea

I wanted to comment here that this campaign is of vital need for ongoing support in the movement: its an important touch point on the global calendar, and it should get ongoing support.

I don't see the resources in the Grant being applied against some of the ongoing challenges -- I know that the technical update pieces, traveling to regional events, and seriously documenting best practices are time intensive and labor intensive activities -- this budget seems to not be applied against that work in any substantial extent.

Moreover, I am curious what the global team is thinking about user retention? One of the biggest gaps from year to year on WLM is that we don't see high reengagement of the participants from previous years. Are you paying attention to these numbers? As one of the highest impact campaigns in the movement, how are we helping local organizers transition those participants into ongoing community participants, i.e. in other campaigns, etc? Astinson (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your encouraging words.

As always, our resources are probably found in three components: budget, volunteer capacity and goodwill. The budget can only reflect one of those three, which may distort the picture if you were to limit your analysis of addressing challenges to the budget. That being said, we do strongly believe that addressing anything depends on the budget items that we defined. Having a robust international competition may seem like an expensive line item, but it is an essential component to support national competitions because it reinforces their brand and capacity for outreach.

I think there's a range of other things we could be spending budget and resources on. We're however limited in those resources, and given the timing of the grant, this is what we were able to commit to. We have tried to commit to traveling to regional conferences in the recent years, but were unable to execute on that as much as we would have liked, so we're scaling back that commitment for that reason. Documentation remains a topic we want to keep making improvements for, but a single insertion of budget is not going to solve any of that, as it mainly depends on volunteer capacity and goodwill.

Your comments around reengagement seem to require a broader conversation that we have been about to have for at least a year and a half now :) It highly depends on definitions, how things are measures and what kind of assumptions you're making. I don't know what numbers exactly you're basing your remark on. My recollection is that user retention (defined as at least one other upload in the months Nov-Apr following the competition) was relatively high when we last measured it - but that is several years ago, and I don't have recent numbers for it. I expect it to be even higher if you would measure Nov-Oct. I'm happy to actually have this conversation properly sometime offline. It is a topic that you and I both care for deeply - I just have not had the time and energy to spend on it given the other more urgent responsibilities. This is again something I don't think is gated by budget, but rather by the lack of other resources.

Something that may be related to this point though, is that we have been talking about actually collecting data about where we are loosing participants (from banner view to second upload), but this requires a serious commitment of time and resources that we're struggling to find. If we are better able to collect and present this, we would empower national organizers to learn from and act upon it. This is not a trivial task though.

We could probably find more ways to spend budget - and I would not object if we were assigned additional budget ;-). If you have specific suggestions how you think additional budget would help without requiring additional significant volunteer resources, we're always happy to consider. Effeietsanders (talk) 22:03, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If we want to give the WLM international team more funding, I agree that "collecting data about where we are losing participants" would be an interesting way to spend money. If you want to increase resources without adding to the burnout of the few very committed core volunteers, the only solution is to outsource some semi-standard activity to a supplier with ample experience who can work independently towards the goal and perform a task that volunteers wouldn't be able to perform on their own. You still have to spend some precious volunteer resources to direct them properly, though.

Professional surveys, especially with an in-person component like focus groups, may be one such possibility. Another one might be observational usability testing. It's easy to spend a lot of money while learning little, but the potential for harm is low, as long as you're able to tell a low quality output from a good one (and to improve the next time). By selecting some region with high impact and growth potential, combined with low cost of living and a strong research tradition in the desired field, it may be possible to minimise risks and the cost/benefit ratio. (Maybe places like Poland or Brasil?)

It's however unfair to ask the grantees to spend time planning such complicated activities without a clear sign there may be appetite for funding them. Nemo 23:00, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2020

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 1 2020 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through March 16, 2020.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for Round 1 2020 will occur March 17 - April 8, 2020. We ask that you refrain from making changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are seeing the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, May 15, 2020.

Any changes to the review calendar will be posted on the Round 1 2020 schedule.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2020 coordination

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.8
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	7.3
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.3
Additional comments from the Committee: Continuation of a major international campaign in the community with significant reach. The format doesn't seem to vary from year to year. What is the opportunity to respond to the international context of COVID-19 and to documents and record sites of local importance that my not be reflected on the established NGO/governmental heritage lists. Some concerns about COVID. It's not sure if there will be a second wave or if the pandemic will finish in September. I cannot find any mention of the solution set for an alternative plan. The project itself is online, but the local groups will invite people to exit and to take pictures and, if there will be a second lockdown, the project itself will not produce relevant results. Is there an alternative? I don't see enough community support at least from past local organisers. Not a big budget but it would be good to stress to change the goals of the project and to consider a plan B in case of COVID still at the end of summer. By now most monuments would have been covered as this contest has been in existence for over a decade. I can't see a clear plan on how the team is tracking monuments that have been covered per country to prevent duplication. It can seem like the same photos are taken every year. Most countries are on lockdown in response to COVID-19 and violation of the lockdown directive is a criminal offence in some countries. So, I'd expect the goal for this year to change or the contest be postponed to later year. Encouraging people to go out to take photos of monuments at this time would be counterproductive. They could spend this time to design a mechanism to determine which monuments are missing and those that are already captured per country. There was mention of the special awards and other initiatives to address that the grant applicants have identified as "challenge 4" but there was little expansion on that as a project output. I'd like to encourage the project team to commit to addressing the challenges/gaps identified in previous campaigns (especially around participation) and pursue additional funding to support that activity.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

• Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal.
• If you have had an interview with a Program Officer, you may have orally responded to some of the committee comments already. Your interview comments will be relayed to the committee during the deliberations call.
• You are welcome to respond to aggregated comments here on the talkpage to publicly share any feedback, clarifications or questions you have.
• Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on May 29, 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Round 1 2020 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, 22,000 €

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to continue funding for international coordination needs for Wiki Loves Monuments in 2020 in its 10th anniversary. The committee appreciates the work dedicated to improving the infrastructure for the campaign, relevant best practices for local WLM organizers, and offering specific awards to highlight underrepresented regions participating in WLM.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

-- On behalf of the Project Grants Committee, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Extension request

@I JethroBT: I would like to kindly request a month extension. We need some extra time to actually get the prizes delivered. I think one month extra (until end of July) should be safe, but if delays hit, we'll get back in touch. Effeietsanders (talk) 16:40, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Effeietsanders: Sorry about the delay in my response-- this is my volunteer account, so I didn't see it right away this past week. Pinging Mjohnson (WMF) and MCasoValdes (WMF) to review this request. I JethroBT (talk) 03:12, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Mjohnson (WMF) and MCasoValdes (WMF): Friendly ping. Effeietsanders (talk) 22:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF), Mjohnson (WMF), and MCasoValdes (WMF): Effeietsanders (talk) 02:26, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Effeietsanders, sorry for the delay! I've approved your request here! Marti (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Mjohnson (WMF): Hi Marti, I would like to request another extension. While all the prizes were distributed, we are stuck with one which has to be delivered to Iran. Due to sanctions, we are figuring out a way to get the prize to the recipient, which is causing the delay. We are anticipating sorting this out in the next couple of weeks. KCVelaga (talk) 06:02, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

KCVelaga, no problem. For now, let's say your new project end date is August 31, 2021, and your new report due date is September 30, 2021. Let me know if that won't work. Marti (WMF) (talk) 06:15, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Mjohnson (WMF): Thanks Marti, that should work. KCVelaga (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)