Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Taiwan/2020

Questions about your plan

Hello, WMTW colleagues!

Thank you for this quality plan. It’s great to read that being a part of the Simple APG program over the last three years has allowed WMTW to develop in a more stable and sustainable way. We have a few questions below and admit that some of this may be lost in translation.

Update on 2019 programs

Since you are still in the midst of your 2019 programs, it would be great to have an update since you posted the midpoint report.

• Have you made progress on developing a 3-5 year strategy?
• What useful info can be summarized from the community survey you sent out? How has this information impacted your programming for 2020?
• Can you provide an update on the GLAM programs?
• Were you able to organize the workshop to discuss community health?

Education

• It would be great to have some basic statistics on your education program. How many schools and students are currently involved? How many Wikiclubs and promotion ambassadors are there? Are you hoping to grow this in 2020?
• How are you hoping to use the study between the Wikipedia Education Program and student ability? Will it inform the curriculum design?
• In terms of the distribution map of Wikimedians in schools, what is the outcome you are hoping for? It seems like based on the related goals that this is an activity to encourage more participation. Are there other related goals?

GLAM and Wikidata

It’s great to hear WMTW has such a strong relationship with the Taiwan Art Gallery Association!

• How do you imagine a new technical staff person would support the Wikidata work?

Diversity and community health

WMTW has been a leader in supporting more diversity in your community and we’re excited to see how this work has developed over the last several years. Since the community health measurement scale was a large part of your plan last year, it would be great to have a link to where this is documented and a better understanding of how you are using it or plan to use it in the future.

• In terms of increasing awareness about diversity and holding events to improve diversity, has the chapter or community discussed what diversity means in your context and what areas you would like to focus on for improvement? Is there a shared understanding of the goals of this work? If not, what work could be done to have a shared understanding?
• What specific plans or goals are there around “creating and maintaining a newcomer-friendly environment”? It would be great to hear what ideas the group has.
• Working on a Code of Conduct is very important. What impact do you hope this will have? Will it be mostly for offline activities or other online spaces where your communities work?
• What plans are there to continue the great WikiWomen work you have supported in the past?

International cooperation

We don’t have specific feedback on this area but are excited to support WMTW and your communities in becoming more integrated and connected with the international Wikimedia movement. We are happy to discuss ideas or support this in any way possible.

Budget

• There is a line item in the budget for Grants, including international travel grants and Project grants. Can you please explain what these grants are for in more detail?
• Please confirm the amount of staff in the proposed budget. How many staff does the TWD1,430,000 include? To be clear, the minimum staff you would is 3 FTE, including the Secretary General, Project Manager, and Administrative Coordinator. Ideally, you would also like one part-time international Cooperation Coordinator and 2 contract Programmers. What is the impact on your programs if you are not able to hire the additional part-time person and two contractors?
• We have had a lot of internal discussion about the practice of adding 10% contingency to annual plan grant budgets and have developed some new practices. While we will not be approving blanket contingency amounts on top of the total budget, we do want to work with the chapter in thinking about contingency planning that is more specific to your potential needs. To provide you with better guidance around this issue, it would be helpful to understand where you have experienced the need for contingency funds in the past. Has it been around fluctuating exchange rates, miscellaneous operating expenses, programmatic areas, or something else? Once we have a better understanding of where you foresee needing more flexibility and possible contingency funding, we can support you in determining an appropriate number.

Please let us know if you have questions about any of the above. It would be great to have a response by Wednesday, November 13th so the committee can take your responses into consideration.

Thank you for all your work! Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

WMTW's Reply

Hi @AWang (WMF):, thanks for your questions and suggestions. I will answer all of them. --Reke (talk) 07:56, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Education

• How many schools and students are currently involved? How many Wikiclubs and promotion ambassadors are there? Are you hoping to grow this in 2020?
  • In the past 4 years, there were around 10 courses involved every year; in other words, 200-300 students participated in the program. The number of schools involved is fluctuating, it's decided by our programs. For example, in 2018, Wikiclub of National Taiwan University got several cooperation requests, so there is only 1 school but included 4-5 courses; however, the program for celebrating the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements in 2019, 6 schools were involved in it.
  • There are only 2 Wikiclubs and no ambassador now.
  • Now we wish we can increase the number of Wikiclubs and create the system of promotion ambassadors before growing the number of courses. Because assisting our partners in the education program would cost much time of staffs. If there are more courses joined, members of Wikiclubs or promotion ambassadors to share some workload is necessary.
• How are you hoping to use the study between the Wikipedia Education Program and student ability? Will it inform the curriculum design?
  • There are two uses that we expect the information will have. First, we can display it in the promotion brochure, to attract more people to join. And yes, it will also be used on the curriculum design. When we design our template lesson plan, we'll tag what abilities will be learned in it, to let teachers can decide what plan they want easier.
• In terms of the distribution map of Wikimedians in schools, what is the outcome you are hoping for? It seems like based on the related goals that this is an activity to encourage more participation. Are there other related goals?
  • When we push the plan about Wikiclub or promotion ambassadors, the schools with more Wikimedians will be our main targets. As I answer above, we hope that members of Wikiclubs or promotion ambassadors can do some works for assisting teachers. It means that will be better if there are some experienced Wikimedians to join our plan in the beginning.

GLAM and Wikidata

• How do you imagine a new technical staff person would support the Wikidata work?
  • She or he can help us manage the project with Taiwan Art Gallery Association(TAGA). Because in the project, we need 2-3 programers as contract employee to design a website that can search and visualize data on Wikidata. Our current staffs can't do this very well because we don't have much knowledge about that.
  • She or he can assist volunteers or communities which are interested in data applying also. At present, we can tell them to ask someone else on Wikimedia Phabricator or other open source communities in Taiwan, but a person knowing Mediawiki, having enough time, and speaking Chinese will be friendlier for them.

Diversity and community health

• In terms of increasing awareness about diversity and holding events to improve diversity, has the chapter or community discussed what diversity means in your context and what areas you would like to focus on for improvement? Is there a shared understanding of the goals of this work? If not, what work could be done to have a shared understanding?
  • We have not discussed this with communities before, and that's why "to make all communities understand what diversity’s purposes are" is one strategy goal for us. However, "diversity" is a common word on the media of Taiwan. Discussing gender equality or native language preservation is often happened between our citizens. So when we hold 3 meetups (as the first SMART goal) to discuss it, some specific work would be found soon.
• What specific plans or goals are there around “creating and maintaining a newcomer-friendly environment”?
  • In September 2019, we held a regular salon for Wikimedia 2030. Participants list 4 things we can do for newcomer-friednly:
    1. Hold an annual editathon for newcomers.
    2. Work on branding (Wikimedia Taiwan and all Taiwan communities)
    3. A newcomer-friendly guidance
    4. A comic or animation version wiki guidance may work.

  We would start from the last two suggestions.

• Working on a Code of Conduct is very important. What impact do you hope this will have? Will it be mostly for offline activities or other online spaces where your communities work?
  • Yes, we hope all Wikimedia communities in Taiwan will follow a CoC. All social network spaces which are controlled by WMTW or our partners will need to follow it too.
• What plans are there to continue the great WikiWomen work you have supported in the past?
  • WikiWomen is a mature community. They have their own plan to keep the growth. The Chapter just need to support them, make sure we have enough money for their events, and keep the organizers away from burning out. However, we will still forward some interesting stories overseas to them, that may motivate them to have some new ideas.

Budget

• There is a line item in the budget for Grants, including international travel grants and Project grants. Can you please explain what these grants are for in more detail?
  • In passed three years, "international travel grants" is used to fund one Taiwanese Wikimedian to participate Wikimania. The Wikimedian who want the grant can't be our board members or staff, and need to refer a plan to bid it. He/she can get the grant only after finishing the report. The grant had some positive impact before. For example, the first winning bidder is the organizer of Wikiwomen Taiwan. She didn't have any idea to manage the community before because she never touch Wikimedia movement before, but after meeting the Wikiwomen global in Wikimania, she became an active organizer with many ideas, and join our board voluntarily in the next year. The rule of the grant will be different in 2020 if we still get the budget. For traveling to Bangkok is much cheaper than to Africa or Europa, we plan to grant the plant ticket only but increase the number to be granted, to encourage more Taiwanese Wikimedian to participate the event.
  • Project grants is for some cost unforeseen, but different from 1.6.1 "Other program costs", "Project grants" only can be used to some small and short event, like a meetup, editathon, or workshop. Though we have budget for everything they need like food, space, print, local travel...,but it's impossible to forecast the number of cost every year. If the budget for some item is not enough, we'll use the project grants to cover first. A new project over 3,000 TWD won't be classified as an small event (before last year, it could be 5,000 TWD), that's why you can see "cost per" is lower than 3,000. If our budget can't cover every items of a big project, we'll apply a change to WMF.
• About the amount of staff
  • 1,430,000 is for 3 full-time staff only.
  • The paid for 2 contract programmers is listed on 3.2.3 Outsource, and as the column "Amount covered by other revenue sources" shows, it will be paid by resource from TAGA. We must and need to hire them after signing the contract with TAGA.
  • The part-time International Cooperation Coordinator will let us connecting to global communities much easier, but it need another 195,000 TWD for him or her. Considering our budget has a not less increasing in this year already, we have already prepared that we need to find some other sources to hire the person, or just to practice our English more.
• About contingency
  • I remember that we started to add contingency in our budget in 2017, by suggestion from staff of WMF. In that time, the amount of our reserve is too low for risk. But two years goes by, I think it's enough already. We just followed the passed budget, and it's ok to delete it. However, we still need to allocate some money to our reserve fund according to law of Taiwan. We'll prepare it from other income.

Hi Reke. Thanks so much for these responses. I'll review in more detail and get back to you if I have additional questions. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I think I lost a part. Added in below.--Reke (talk) 12:29, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Update on 2019 programs

• Have you made progress on developing a 3-5 year strategy?
  • Yes, we've list our 3 year strategy goals during the "Education Program".
• What useful info can be summarized from the community survey you sent out? How has this information impacted your programming for 2020?
  • Students told us the reason they joined or wanted to join education program, and what can make them have a rewarding experience during the program. We will improve our project by their suggestions.
• Can you provide an update on the GLAM programs?
  • The most important news is that an gallery "Bamboo Curtain Studio" finished their project. Their volunteers updated data of every river in Taiwan, then designed a website can follow up these data. The gallery define the project as a socially engaged art. The website is just semi-public because they want add more functions.
• Were you able to organize the workshop to discuss community health?
  • Yes, we have done. We have a conversation with community organizers. In the end of the workshop, we have a detail list about what metrics shall we trace to evaluate a community is health or not. We will update the data regularly, and that will let us to see the community's demand more immediately.
  • We also hold 3 salons for strategy 2030, one of them is focus on community health.

Simple APG Committee recommendation

We recommend that Wikimedia Taiwan receive a grant of 2,374,315 TWD for one year. We understand Wikimedia Taiwan is in a strong growth period, with several key projects gaining momentum and able to organize fairly independently, including Wikimed, Wiki Women, and Wikidata projects. We also recognize that the core group of organizers are becoming burnt out and staff are at capacity. We are supportive of adding additional staff for project administration. We are not clear, however, about the goals and intended impact of the International Cooperation Coordinator and believe the activities outlines can be achieved without a staff member. In future, we also would appreciate understanding the budget per program. This allows us to better make recommendations in terms of program prioritization.

For the committee, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 14:30, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Taiwan’s grant is approved in the amount of 2,374,315 TWD for 12 months

Congratulations! This grant is approved in the amount of 2,374,315 TWD, for 12 months. This is a significant increase (20%) over the last year and we appreciate all of the work dedicated to organizational development and effective programming done in 2019.

We understand that there are several programmatic areas that have stabilized over the last year through dedicated organizers and regular activities, including Wikimed, Wiki Women, and Wikidata projects. These projects seem to be operating well and need little support from the chapter except financial resources for events. We also understand that in terms of the core organizing team, a number of key individuals have had to de-prioritize their work for WMTW and the chapter is feeling a lack of leadership capacity. We hope that your programmatic focus on diversity and community health -- engaging the LGBTQ community, implementing a Code of Conduct, improving training materials, etc. -- can create an environment for more newcomers to join your activities and develop leadership skills. We are also excited to learn how the improvements you plan to implement in the education program as a result of last year’s survey impact curriculum design, student engagement, and article quality.

In terms of staffing, we are excited to see how the addition of part-time admin supports the implementation of your growing projects. We also are very interested to see how the Wikidata contractors supported through the MOU with the Taiwan Art Gallery Association can increase the accessibility of Wikidata and resource materials in the Chinese language. In order not to duplicate any technical work done on the Wikidata API, we ask that you share the scope of work for these contractors with the Wikidata team at WMDE. We can help make connections as needed.

We do hope that the hosting of Wikimania 2020 in the ESEAP region provides an opportunity for more Taiwanese Wikimedians to get involved in Wikimedia projects at the movement level. We unfortunately are not able to fund the international coordinator, but would like to continue the conversation about how to engage Wikimedians in Taiwan more at the regional and international level as there is much to be gained in sharing your experiences and expertise.

We still need to better understand your context and improve regular communication. While we understand surveying over the last year has lead to a more developed strategy for the education program, we are unclear about the organization’s strategy as a whole moving forward. While we currently have limited staff capacity, we hope to address that over the next several months and be able to support the chapter as you move through this growth period.

We look forward to working together.

Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Midpoint Report Accepted

Hello Reke and Wikimedia Taiwan Colleagues, thanks for submitting your midpoint report. We have reviewed the metrics, budget, and report and marked them as accepted. Thank you for your work for the Wikimedia Movement! Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 11:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

About exchange loss and refund

The payment for 2020 has been settled, and the Taiwan branch needs to refund NTD 213,577 in 2020. However, due to the large fluctuations in the exchange rate in 2021, we hope that these refunds can be used to make up for the shortage of funds caused by the exchange rate in 2020 and 2021. In 2020, our exchange loss will be NTD 21,151 and in 2021 it will be NTD 98,169. We hope that the refund will be as low as NTD 94,258--Allenwang6212a (talk) 04:17, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for this update and supporting notes. We approve the reallocation of 98,169 NTD from SAPG 2020 to be used to cover the foreign exchange rate loss incurred in this 2021[current] grant.--VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 25 March 2021 (UTC)