Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Suomi/2019

Comments on draft budget and plan

Cross-posting here so we can track how and why changes are occurring. This note explains why an extension for posting the final draft on Meta has been granted until 6 November, since WMFI sent us a draft plan and budget for review.

I've taken some time to review your plan and budget and I have offered some detailed suggestions on the google document, using the comments feature (and occasionally the suggest feature). Please review and resolve the comments in the coming days before completing your application.

Overall, I very much liked the changes you made to the program structure. I have provided specific suggestions in many of the sections describing your activities, but here are some general comments: 1. You are doing a good job of providing high level goals for each of your programs, and also specific measurable objectives for each of your activities; however, it is sometimes difficult to connect these specific measurable objectives to your overall goals. This is most noticeable in the outreach program, where it is not possible to understand how you will know if you've achieved your goal. 2. There are a few cases where some additional context will help the reader better understand what you are doing. For example, explaining your statement about geographic focus outside of Helsinki, offering background about consultations you have done with your communities to identify barriers, offering more information about specific partnerships or concepts specific to Finnish society.

Next, on the budget, the format overall is clear, but there are a few cases where it is not possible to link the expenses to specific activities you are doing. In these cases, I recommend using a "notes" column to clarify the expenses. These include, international travel, expenses marked "other program expenses", and equipment purchase. We will need more clarity about what these expenses are before approving the budget.

Since we are coming right upon the deadline, I will extend your final application due date until 6 November. This will give you a week to address my suggestions. Please let me know if you think you will have any trouble completing the application by that time. I'm happy to organize a call if you think it would be helpful to walk through any of these comments or suggestions together.

Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 17:57, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Questions from Chinmayi

Thank you for your submission. I think you are doing a lot of great work. I really like how it is structured and also involves communities outside of the wikimedia movement. I had a question about your budget though. You have asked for funding for 7 trips for internation conferences. I was wondering why such a large number of travel fund requests additionally

• Is there a rationale to this?
• How would these trips benefit the chapter apart from sharing your work outside of finland ?
• How would these travel grants be awarded and could there be lesser number of travel grants ?

I look forward to knowing more. Regards, Chinmayisk (talk) 07:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Chinmayisk, thanks for asking! Our situation will be a little different next year for two reasons. We need to send people to Wikimania Stockholm, they may be volunteers, helpers or planners of the event. The other cause for increased need is the Wikimedia Northern Europe, that was established this fall. It will have annual meeting next year in one of the Nordic or Baltic countries.

International participation fosters exchange and networking within Wikimedia movement, that we see important. International travel is not only for the board members, but it is meant to our activists or anybody in the community that want to apply to participate these important events. For example in Wikidata expertise our people have exchanged and obtained ideas that could never be reached in Finland alone.

Our board either calls for travel stipends and/or admits them to those who present a genuine proposal. It is possible to reduce travel grants, but according to our experience the need to grant international travel to participate important events usually arises quickly. We need to keep up readiness for participation. Note, travelling from Helsinki to Tallinn or Stockholm is considered international travel here, too. With regards, --Kulttuurinavigaattori (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Than you for your responses :) Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 17:43, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

WMFI’s grant is approved in the amount of 88,000 Euro for 12 months

Congratulations! Your grant has been approved in the amount of 88,000 Euro for 12 months, including an 8,000 Euro contingency fee. Your grant term will begin on 1 January 2019 and end on 31 December 2019.

Thank you for seeking out feedback about your plan and implementing improvements to your plan and budget. We continue to enjoy how innovative your work is, and how well-adapted your work is to your local context and the needs of your partners and communities. In particular,

• Your shifting focus to libraries in GLAM, including your partnerships with the national library network and national library.
• Your data-focused partnerships work, which builds on the growing interests of both community members and partners in Wikidata and related activities.
• Your focus on assessing and reducing barriers to participation in your communities through your “Top 5” approach.
• Your project on the Parliamentary elections 2019, which is a nice way of building on momentum around a specific topic in your local context, and raising your profile in Finnish society.

We congratulate you on receiving significant support from the City of Helsinki toward the rephotography initiative. Cultivating local sources of support for your organization and your projects will be important to your organization if you want to expand. We also continue to appreciate your engagement with other organizations in the Nordic region, and your interest in working with other Finno-Ugric languages.

We appreciate the ongoing work that is being done at the board level to clarify roles, and the consistent engagement of board members over the past several years. Recently, you have also done some work to restructure your staff. We hope this has benefits for your organization in the long term.

Improvements can still be made toward consistent and timely financial reporting and budgeting, and we hope that this is something that can be improved upon in the year ahead. We also need you to work with us by consulting us about things like major staffing changes or big changes to your plan or organization in advance, so that we have adequate notice to provide input or note our concerns.

We look forward to the results in 2019!

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 16:27, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for letting us know this. I will pass this letter to our board & close ones. At the moment we are working for our fall meeting, which will assemble next Saturday.

I want to thank you Winifred for your work during these years. You have been a great coach for us in many ways. Meetings with you have always left us with positive and encouraging feelings. We look forward to continue to work with you next year!

Cheers, --Kulttuurinavigaattori (talk) 13:39, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Midpoint notes

I noticed that there is a slight mismatch between our budget and the grant request. In total the grant was 88830€ (80830€ + 8000€ contigency. However, the requested grant was 80000€ + 8000€ contigency. The 80000€ was our target when we were making the budget. I don't expect that the 830€ will make an actual difference to our work so this notice is for documenting the issue and for explaining why 88830€ was used in midpoints financial part. --Zache (talk) 15:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Remaining funds?

Hello, Zache and fellow WMFI colleagues! Thank you for submitting the final report for this grant. In your financial report as I understand it, there are no remaining funds from this grant to be returned to WMF or deducted from future grants. However, please be sure to contact the Simple APG and Grants Admin teams in case you have any questions or updates regarding your final report or financials. Many thanks! -- Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

User:MJue (WMF) Yes, though the reason, why it is 88000€, is that we asked in December if can use rest of the contingency (€5,783.83) and the rest of the underspending (€6,324.11 currently in the report) as self-funding of Helsinki rephotography project for period 2019-11-01 to 2020-10-01. However, the exact underspending is smaller as the last taxes and compulsory employment payments for 2019 is filed at the early February 2020. This is told also to Simple APG team as we did know this beforehand even though we didn't know how much they are. I will ping when the information is updated. --91.145.86.182 15:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. We'll look forward to the updated information once it's available! Best, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2020 (UTC)