Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Igbo Wikimedians User Group/2021

Positive impressions

Hi dear Igbo Wikimedians User Group. I was just passing by to say congratulations for your accomplishments so far. For me, it is super important the consolidation in time of African wikimedian user groups inside the continent, particularly on the South of the Sahara. And this passes by the need of a grant/of money, clearly! My instinctive question is: can the budget lines of the events planned for 2021 be detailed? The way the budget is presented now leaves unclear information if the content creation will be paid. There can be a line for "incentive for wikimedian volonteers" but the amount dedicated to that needs to be explicit. How much for renting space, for internet, for F&B, for transportation, things like that + things I am not aware and make part of necessities of Igbo contributors. To remain on the positive impressions, I would like to congratulate you to have arrived where you are, to have overcome all the complexities and difficulties to be able to contribute on Wikimedia, to be able to create a User Group, to do events, to train new contributors, all that and more. Good luck and keep working that well. @Siarus1074 and I JethroBT (WMF): FYI. Galahmm (talk) 10:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

APG approved in the amount of 32,000 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 32,000 USD, with a grant term starting 1 January 2021 and ending 31 December 2021.

The Igbo Wikimedians User Group is a new affiliate in Simple APG this year. The organization began its movement activities in 2016, and has been running an impressive number of events each year focused on developing Igbo language content on Wiktionary, Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia projects. Many of these activities have been supported through the Rapid Grants program, for which the user group has shown good reporting practices, consistent participation from existing and new participants in its programs, and substantive outcomes in developing local language content.

In 2021, the user group plans to focus on three areas: a wide variety of specialized contests and routine events to support Content Creation, the development of educational documentaries for Culture Promotion, and building organizational capacity with Community Development work. The user group has experience in running several of the contests proposed based on their prior work. We also want to commend the user group on its plans to support volunteers to become leaders, and will evaluate the number of members who initiate projects. This effort shows that the user group aims for long-term organizational stability when it comes to maintaining programmatic leadership.

The originally proposed budget ($74,809 USD) was very high for a first-time applicant to the Simple APG program, due to the inclusion of several staff and a very high Content Creation budget. We will not be able to support this degree of initial growth in the user group, as it is not clear the user group has the capacity to support this level of work, and has not shown a history of managing multiple staff. We have the following recommendations:

• Community Program Coordinator role is reduced from a 0.5 FTE to a 0.33 - 0.25 FTE role, focused on Content Creation and/or Community Development programs.
• Based on the reduction in staff time, reducing the programmatic budget:
  • Content Creation program be scaled back to reduce the number of contests, and that the Translate-a-thon and Edit-a-thons budget is also reduced.
  • Culture Promotion program’s budget be reduced to focus on the development of one (1) documentary
  • Removing the microgrants program as we expect it to be too challenging to manage in your first year in the program, though we would like to support this program in a future year.
• Removing the contingency budget.
• We also would like to recommend seeking out a fiscal sponsor in the future if you are planning to substantially expand your programmatic or operational work in the to help reduce the work around management of finances and some aspects of reporting.

We understand that these changes will mean you will not be able to pursue all potential programs and events that your user group may have done previously, or could possibly do in the future. However, it will be important to prioritize what programmatic work and community needs are most important for your organization to engage with, while at the same time building and growing your organizational capacity.

We look forward to seeing the Igbo Wikimedians User Group’s first year in the Simple APG program, and wish you good luck in your work in 2021.

Best regards on behalf of the Simple APG Committee and Staff, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Remaining grant funds approved to be reallocated to Micro grants under the 2022 APG

There was $1794 remaining from this grant which has been approved to be reallocated specifically to Micro grants under the approved new 2022 Annual grant.

--Tochiprecious (talk) 20:05, 4 February 2022 (UTC)