Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Colombia/2021

Positive impression

Hi dear Wikimedia Colombia and @Mpbonillap: I was just passing by to say congratulations for your accomplishments so far. For me, it is super important a de-centralization of Wikimedian user groups in Abya Yala. In other words, I totally support the empowerment of Wikimedia Colombia through a Simple Annual Plan, I think that it is important that many/different national wikimedian groups develop equitably. Good luck and keep working that well. P.s: I have visited and read the website wikimediacolombia.org: congrats! @Siarus1074 and I JethroBT (WMF): FYI. Galahmm (talk) 09:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Budget details

Budget lines and information are cool for me. Gracias por haber añadido la línea "incentivo voluntarios". Primero, porque así hay transparencia de qué monto se dedicará específicamente a eso. Segundo, porque también reconozco la importancia de que eso exista. Galahmm (talk) 09:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

APG approved in the amount of 30,227 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 30,227 USD, with a grant term starting 1 January 2021 and ending 31 December 2021.

Wikimedia Colombia enters into the Simple Annual Plan Grants program with several major accomplishments and skills, including their past work to support Wayuu indigineous communities’ participation in Wikimedia projects, efforts to share skills and collaborate with affiliates in the region such as Wikimedia Argentina, and hosting events coinciding with major movement campaigns like #1Lib1Ref to reduce the gender gap. In this year, Wikimedia Colombia will focus on programmatic work in education, building partnerships with cultural institutions, and to engage both the volunteer and movement community at large. We also appreciate that Wikimedia Colombia’s transversal line of work that aims to reduce gender inequity in participation across its programs.

We advise some more thought to be put into some of your programmatic goals and metrics:

• One goal reads “Contribute from the chapter community to the activities of the Wikimedia Foundation”, does not make clear what parts of the community or what kind of contributions that your organization wants to support in the next year.
• One of the grantee-defined metrics is the number of activities run, but the completion of activities does not convey a lot of direct information about the importance or benefit of those events.
• Finally, we would like to see Wikimedia Colombia consider metrics or other ways of evaluating its transversal line of work on gender. This could replace the “number of activities run” metric in your grantee-defined metrics.

Wikimedia Colombia has also undergone recent changes in its Board leadership, which affected the organization’s eligibility to the Simple APG program in the previous round. We would like to see greater stability in this important leadership body in the organization’s first year in the grant program.

We are recommending funding to support one (1) program coordinator role for the chapter. We understand this role is intended to support work in the proposed Education program where the need to maintain connections with relevant schools is demanding. Regarding this role, the committee requests the following: That the roles of the program coordinator and volunteers are clearly defined. It should be clear what work is uniquely held by the coordinator, and what work is shared between volunteers and the coordinator. That the amount of administrative work (e.g. general communications, finances) the program coordinator performs is minimal, to avoid causing the coordinator to become overwhelmed.

We appreciate your proposed work for the upcoming year, and look forward to supporting Wikimedia Colombia in 2021.

Best regards, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Changes to the budget resources

Since February of this year, the Board of Directors has been working to consolidate the execution of the annual plan. In this process we have identified the need for an internal movement between two of the budget resources.

The proposed internal adjustment is between the resource for financing the project coordinator profile and the resource for volunteer incentives. The reasons for this requirement lie in the difficulty in finding a person with the appropriate experience for the position, a situation that impacts the time and resources allocated to their recruitment and the reflection within the chapter on the quality and confidence in the human capital of the volunteers.

It is worth mentioning that the proposal was approved at the members' meeting held on March 27th. Finally, we would like to state that as a board we see this situation as an opportunity to refine the impact of the execution of the annual plan of activities.

According to the above, we kindly request the revision of the proposal and its subsequent approval by you in order to continue with the activities we have planned. Below are the supporting documents.

Budget expenditures Wikimedia Colombia 2021

Area	Description	Requested and approved	New projection
Administrative	Taxes, accounting consulting, bank charges, and administrative.	2.845	2.845
Staff	Project Coordinator	16.800	10.080
Activities	Volunteer incentives, design, contest prizes, and other activities.	5.746	9.526

Basically, the adjustment consists of decreasing 10% of the value of the project coordinator's payment and expanding the volunteer incentive pool.

We propose to strengthen the volunteer base and provide incentives to reward them. We believe that the most important thing in Wikimedia Colombia is to motivate and maintain the group of volunteers, also because they are the ones who maintain the community and also know the ecosystem. So, before making payments or retribution for their work to people outside the movement, we think about incentivizing volunteers with their work. There are three issues we took into account:

1. Volunteering is not a job, so someone cannot contribute more hours than stipulated to work full-time o part-time.
2. Another rule is that for every 2 hours of volunteer support, the person will receive an incentive for 1 hour.
3. Many of the activities are intended as projects and will require proposal development, so we anticipate making incentive payments for deliverables as well.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Monica On behalf of the Wikimedia Colombia Board

Dear Wikimedia Colombia Board and team,

Thank you for reaching out to us and for sharing in detail the reallocation request of the funds as follows [ Administration 2,845] + [ staff 10,080] + [Activities 9,526]; the reallocation is focused on the strengthening of the volunteer community who remain critical for the achievement of your goals. We approve this request and look forward to learning about the unfolding impact and learnings from this opportunity of volunteer engagement. Wishing you the very best. --VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 10:39, 5 May 2021 (UTC)