Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Czech Republic/2017

Eligibility discussion

Hello, Wikimedia CZ colleagues:

Thank you for submitting your eligibility form on July 20. We've determined that you are eligible to apply for a Simple Process Annual Plan Grant based on your eligibility evaluation for your most recent grant application that reviews your past work, as well as the midpoint report for your current grant. In addition to this, we conducted a site visit in June 2016, which included an informal financial and governance review. At this time, you were found to be modeling very good practices in governance, finance, and program management, for an organization of your size. Additionally, we found your volunteer board to be highly engaged. We understand that you will be requesting an additional staff person, and a total grant amount of about 65,000 Euro, and so it will be important to demonstrate strong program results to support your current application.

Some of this year's achievements at the midpoint include,

• The development of a new strategic plan.
• Continuing good practices for participatory grants management and review.
• Bringing on your organization's first employee, to manage your education program.
• Preparation of scaling up your education program during the current school year.
• Continuing your innovative work with seniors.
• A new focus in your media acquisition program on wikidata, in response to community interest.

You are welcome to submit your application at any time before 1 November, for a grant start date of 1 January 2017. We look forward to reviewing your upcoming application.

Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Questions

Thanks and congratulation on a well prepared plan both re content and form. I have two questions:

• You plan for one person to be placed in Brno. How do you envsion the day to day contact and relation between that perosn and the other two, specially the ED to work in practice?
• I do not find any evaluation of the activites for 2016, nor SMART goals for the 2017 one or how you plan to evalualte 2017 programs.

Anders Wennersten (talk) 08:44, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Anders Wennersten Hello and thanks for the kick-off questions. As for the "Wikipedian in Brno", I and Marek have been able to maintain regular employer-employee contact either by in-person meetings (occasionally) or by regular Skype calls once in 2 weeks. Every time we discuss what has been achieved, how it was reported and what is the plan for the next 2 weeks. It seems to work fine and we expect this responsibility will gradually shift from the board to the executive director in 2017 because it is ED's responsibility to manage the employee team. As for the evaluation of 2016 activities, I am happy to provide you with any information you like on top of the information already present in this proposal and in the July interim report for our APG grant. Especially the midpoint report is quite thorough but the full final report is of course only provided at the end of the year. We also made our best effort to formulate our plans using SMART criteria (and indeed the requirement for metrics for all our project falls within the SMART criteria). If you are interested in more long-term goals, I'd probably recommend our strategic plan.--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 10:19, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hello and thank you for your proposal! I really like your strategy and it also introduces some mission that gives answers to questions that could arise during the work of the chapter. I also have some questions:

• I do support request for SMART goals for 2017
• how do you plan to search for ED? Will you hire some agency or will the board perform own search? What triggers will be used to evaluate whether ED is suitable or not? Thanks rubin16 (talk) 18:53, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello Rubin16, thanks, we have just contacted Winifred Olliff to help us find the best way to include more SMART criteria. The truth is, there is no special section as such in the proposal template reserved for listing SMART criteria and they are mostly included in project descriptions. As for the search for the ED, we will use our experience gained from hiring the education manager this year. The largest Czech job advertising company provides us with a pro bono online ad space, and we are also reaching out to our collaborators in like-minded institutions and NGOs. We will also be contacting several past applicants for the position of the education manager who we thought would rather fit for the position of the ED. The ideal ED has a history of executing successful projects, leadership skills and a vision of the chapter's development, experience from public sector or NGOs and good communication skills. I am also pinging Jagro who is our board member coordinating the search for the ED and can probably give you a more precise answer or answer your follow-up questions.--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 21:55, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Rubin16 and Anders Wennersten. Confirming that Vojtěch Dostál and I are working on this together, and we realize it is a high priority. I think in this case the lack of SMART objectives is a result of a misunderstanding about how to use the renewal application form that I set up. Therefore, I feel responsible for this glitch and hope it doesn't affect WMCZ's application adversely. I've provided Vojtech with some advice about how to improve the application, and now I know how to better help future applicants. In the mean time, please remember to also reference the spreadsheet containing global metrics for each applicant, because that spreadsheet includes specific targets for each program in some useful areas :) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_qZxJ7B9U_Eo6pMG55ox-zCHppM9-lubQm0jKI2tn6g/edit#gid=1257248060 Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:45, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello from me, Nikola, member of the Simple Annual Plan Grants Committee too. Some of you know me from my work for Wikimedia CEE Spring 2016. I have some comments and a few questions:

• I like the fact that you are leaving space for volunteers to grow by organising the media acquisition support programme entirely volunteer-driven. In the meanwhile I also encourage the acquisition of an Executive Director. You seem to be finding the right balance.
• I find it very good that the working time of the employees gets tracked and they have to present monthly reports to the board. The is an example for accountability and transparency. Moreover, sharing the costs of staff with an institution is an example to follow.
• I am particularly impressed by your work with senior citizens - potential editors of Wikipedia and its sister projects with a lot of knowledge and time. It distinguishes you from others.
• The media grant is a good example for offering volunteers a possibility to combine travel with wikiwork. Though 3.000 used pictures out of 14.000 could be improved upon. Taking pictures of vernacular architecture and Czech vernacular clothes and customs is very good, because it is documentation of something getting lost over time. Perhaps you take more pictures than could possibly be used in articles, which would be fine, because Commons is a multimedia repository and it is not necessary that 100% of all images there find usage on its sister projects.

  The latter is mostly the case. We don't limit the number of pictures taken, why would we? Consequently we are mostly interested in numbers of articles improved with a picture, in other words, in picture usage.--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 19:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

• WikiTown is another good initiative. It creates an athmosphere of an event into the community. The amount of used images could be better than 20%, though, because the people know what they are after.
• I did not find information about the number of students and senior citizens who participated at workshops (640+150), who continued editing six months later. Did I miss it or you did not measure it and if is the latter, why did you decide that?

  The 2016 interim report can hardly provide these numbers because 6 months haven't passed since the courses at the time of writing. I don't have more up-to-date information but we will provided it in a 3 months time in our final report. We had a 22% retention in 2015 but these were really the top-quality seniors (we might not have this good participants forever). In 2017 we plan not only to collect one number by considering the active/inactive users as a binary system but a student working on a diploma thesis about this project will provide us with more specific quantitative metrics by analyzing all our participants' contributions. In our student program, we decided not to measure this metric because we don't think it is very efficient to try turning our students into regular contributors - the rate of success is very low and other countries have similar experience. --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 19:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

• Following sentence from the strategic plan impressed me, because it makes a very valid and important point: Volunteer work for the Chapter is valued by the WMCZ members, as well as non-member supporters. It is considered to be a prestigeous activity and members are encouraged to promote it publicly. WMCZ Board shows clear appreciation for the work of both the volunteers and employees. I do not understand how bidding for Wikimania would help your organizational professionalization. It should be the other way around - if you are already professionalized, you can bid for Wikimania.

All in all, thank you for all the good work you are doing! If you need help with defining your SMART-goals feel free to contact me privately, I am glad to help and I see it as part of the work of the Simple APG Committee. --Nikola (talk) 13:05, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Nikola and Wolliff (WMF) for your help on improving the proposal. I worked on it over the week-end and was able to:

1. improve information about the projects which continue from last year with a better description of what we intend to do (Mediagrant, Photo-Workshop, but also courses for librarians)
2. highlight our SMART goals for each of the programs and expand them in the program descriptions,
3. provide "assigned to" paragraphs for each of the programs.

--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 19:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your good answers, Vojtěch. I have a small little question, out of curiosity. Do you know or can you make a rough estimate how many of the in my opinion very high percentage of 22% retensioned senior citizens are female? Could it be that by chance you are also fighting the gender gap, although you have not stated it anywhere in your grant proposal? --Nikola (talk) 18:56, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Sure, Nikola, we just ran a Quarry for you (thanks Martin Urbanec for help) to sort our senior contributors by the number of bytes added. From the TOP 10 users, 5 are female and 5 are male, so I guess 50% is well above the average male/female ratio typically seen in Wikipedias. And by the way, the most active senior is a woman who already added 1,193,956 bytes to the main namespace - seems like quite a lot to me :-)! Indeed, when you sort participants by number of bytes added you get an exponential result - a few people typically make up a large percentage of overall activity. --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 17:34, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Vojtěch, thank you for your answer. This is quite magnificent. I now believe to know everything I needed and based on your adjusted grant proposal and your answers I can make a decision on your grant application. --Nikola (talk) 19:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Committee assessment and decision

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: We recommend full funding for WMCZ’s application, in the amount of 73,778 Euro.

Strengths identified by the committee: WMCZ has laid a strong foundation for future success through past accomplishments. The committee appreciates the quality of WMCZ’s plan, and is glad to see that the organization has a long term strategic plan. WMCZ has made progress in strengthening institutional partnerships, and WMCZ is effective at engaging the communities they work with. The committee appreciates their approach to volunteer leadership development. The committee appreciates that this program plan includes several successful and interesting programs, like work with seniors, a training of trainers approach, and Wikidata-focused work. The committee believes that the funding requested is aligned with the potential results, and that WMCZ has a realistic plan for growth.

Concerns identified by the committee: While the committee is impressed with Wikimedia Czech Republic’s application and results, WMCZ is applying for a significant funding increase from 40,785 Euro to 73,778 Euro and is expanding their staff resources by 1.0 FTE. This growth in budget and staff may be a challenge to manage. While WMCZ has gained some experience managing staff in the current year, the organization is still new to managing staff. Managing staff in multiple cities (Prague and Brno) will continue to be a challenge to the organization, and for the new ED. As WMCZ grows their staff, it will also be important to see more engagement beyond their committed group of core volunteers. Some committee members note that WMCZ still depends on WMF for most of their funding. The committee is concerned to see a lack of gender balance on Wikimedia Czech Republic’s board, which does not include any female board members. Some committee members believe this may limit the chapter’s ability to engage in work that effectively addresses issues like systemic gender bias on the projects.

--Nikola (talk) 17:42, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for these recommendations. Due to the size of this funding request, it may take some time to deliver WMF's official approval. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 22:16, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

This is very pleasant news indeed :) thank you all for reading our proposal.--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 15:45, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Decision from WMF

Funding decision: Thank you, WMCZ, for this quality application and your engagement throughout the application process. We appreciate that you have submitted an early application to get a head start on the hiring process for your Executive Director. WMF will fund this grant as recommended, in the amount of 73,778 Euro for twelve months; however a minor budget adjustment will be necessary. We note that you have included funds for FKAGEU support, and are planning to use APG funding for this purpose. We are supportive of your involvement with this project, but we would prefer that you draw these funds from another funding source if possible. If this is not possible, we may need to secure additional approvals and draw up a separate grant agreement for this purpose. We can discuss this more and find the best way to implement WMCZ's FKAGEU support this year. Janice and I will be in touch this week to move forward with your grant agreement and arrange the first transfer of funds. We are looking forward to supporting your good work in the year ahead, as you move forward with your plan to hire your first Executive Director. All the best in 2017. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 05:26, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

@Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) Thank you. As for FKAGEU support, I am happy to discuss this; I completely understand if this is out of scope of APG (I thought other chapters use APG to fund FKAGEU, don't they? I may be wrong). Best to you too, --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 18:00, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer), after discussing this with you, I suggest that we repurpose the FKAGEU funds for the equipment of our new office rented since December 2016. This includes a new printer, an office chair and a cupboard among other things; we are also funding this from our internal funds. Thanks in advance --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 20:41, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Request for change in budget item 4.12

WMCZ would like to ask you change the purpose of spending in budget item 4.12. on the office equipment.
From budget 11.000 CZK we would like to buy office table, 2 work lamps, bins for recycling, shelf to niche, boxes for sorting documents and boxes for sorting leaflets.
Expected expenses are 10.929 CZK.
Details you can see at document https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15VtnweaTfFGVWB98Zxl2eFn3cOr6A1cJfJoVeYCrN34/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for considering our request. --Petra Pejšová (WMCZ) (talk) 15:55, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Tagging User:Wolliff (WMF) :-) --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 16:37, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this request, Petra. Where are you moving the 11,000 CZK from in order to accommodate these expenses? Thanks Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 19:16, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer), this topic related with the FKAGEU funds for the equipment of our new office see above. --Petra Pejšová (WMCZ) (talk) 09:57, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Petra. I approve this reallocation of 11,000 CZK from the FKAGEU funds we could not grant you to office equipment, as you describe. Thanks for seeking approval and providing this information! Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 03:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)