Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia India/Proposal form


Wikimedia India received a funds allocation in the amount of 3,325,000 INR (equal to about US$53,000) in 2013-2014 Round 1. This funds allocation was recommended by the Funds Dissemination Committee on 15 November 2013 and approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 31 December 2013.


Basic information edit

Overview of grant request edit

In order to support community review, in no more than one paragraph, please provide a brief description of your entity's forthcoming annual plan, with focus areas and key objectives. Please also include the total amount requested in US$.

  • The India chapter intends to do the following:
    • Based on the success of our Wiki Conference India - 2011 in Mumbai, we will conduct a national conference and 3 regional conferences to facilitate the knowledge sharing and best practices sharing among Wikimedians. This will enable replication of successful practices, formation of clusters of like minded Wikimedians, and make collaborations more effective.
    • Continue to run the Wiki Academy programs on demand, increase the number of trainers through 'train the trainer' programs for enabling easy availability of trainers locally, and also train editors in advanced skills. We will also create video based training programs to enable scaling. We will initiate technical training on MediaWiki too.
    • We will continue to participate in out-reach programs, and events to maintain public visibility of Wikimedia brand image. Based on the success of Wiki Loves Monuments, we intent to run a "Wiki Loves India" contest for covering photographic image contributions on various subjects apart from Monuments. We will also encourage members to develop innovative programs including those meant for cost effectively spreading awareness of Wikimedia Projects and training the contributors. We will drive GLAM activities afresh, and also support digitization of archival documents to help referencing.
    • We intend to facilitate greater communication among grass root Volunteers by enabling teleconferencing among them.
    • We intend to take legal protection for Wikimedia India Chapter governing body from frivolous law suits through liability insurance.
    • We will set up our first office in Bangalore with a training infrastructure. This will provide for a staff count of three, and house a training facility for 12 members at a time. We will use this facility for routine public training, train the trainer programs, and develop video based training programs. We will also set up a book scanning facility for supporting Wikisource, and archiving of documents.
  • The total amount requested from WMF's FDC grant is INR 9,265,212 towards annual plan, and INR 1,789,590 towards non recurring / capital expenditure, for a total of INR 11,054,802 (the total being equivalent to USD 178,303 @ USD 1 = INR 62)


Contact information edit

Table 1

Organization information Legal name of organization Wikimedia Chapter
organization's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) 04/01-03/31
12 month timeframe* of funds currently requested (mm/dd/yy–mm/dd/yy) 01/01/14-12/31/14
Contact information (primary) Primary contact name Sowmyan Tirumurti
Primary contact position in organization Executive Manager
Primary contact username User:TS-Sowmyan
Primary contact email tsowmyan[at]wikimedia.in
Contact information (secondary) Secondary contact name Karthik Nadar
Secondary contact position in organization Secretary
Secondary contact username User:Karthikndr
Secondary contact email karthikndr[at]wikimedia.in

*Timeframe should ideally be for a 12 month period that begins after the FDC decision.



Amount requested edit

Table 2

Currency requested: INR

Currency requested is defined as the currency in which you wish to receive funds (e.g., EUR, GBP, INR). Note that the FDC makes grants in local currency when possible.

Exchange rate used (currency requested to $US): INR 62 = USD 1 (date 09/19/2013)

Please use Oanda.com on March 1 2014 to determine the exchange rate. Please use five decimal points.
Currency requested US$
Total annual expenses of organization INR 13,467,069 USD 217,211
Amount proposed to the FDC for the coming year's annual plan INR 11,054,802 USD 178,303
Amount to be raised from non-FDC sources INR 2,412,267 USD 38,908
If applicable, amount of FDC funds allocated to organization last year NA NA
Based on the funding amount you are requesting, what is your entity's proposed rate of growth in budget since last year? Please explain your entity's rationale if your proposed budget will increase this year:
  • We received a fund of approximately USD 5000 for Q1 2013. For the rest of the year 2013, we were approved USD 24,859. The total was a little less than USD 30,000 for the year 2013 under GAC. The new request under FDC for year 2014 is for 178,303. This is a growth of about 497%. Mathematically this growth appears as a dramatic one. However, this is our first FDC. When we move from GAC to FDC with some capital investment and infrastructure, this sort of growth rate number should be expected, since it is related to a small base of the previous year. The community here is expecting such rate of growth. This is evident from the feedback we received from the community.

Note the FDC Framework funding guidelines on the rate of growth of year-over-year FDC allocations. These guidelines relate not to an entity's overall budget, but rather to movement resources (that is, what the entity received through FDC allocations or grants or what the entity retained via payment processing in the prior funding cycle).



Background, history, and mission edit

This section provides the FDC an overview of your entity's background and history. Please respond to each question below with 1-2 sentences to a maximum of a paragraph.

When was your entity established?
  • 01/03/2011
What is the mission of your entity, and how does it support the strategic priorities of the Wikimedia movement (infrastructure, participation, quality, reach, and innovation)? We note that Wikimedia movement priorities will be interpreted and addressed differently in each context.
  • The Wikimedia India Chapter (Registered Name: Wikimedia Chapter) is an independent and not-for-profit organization that supports, promotes and educate the general Indian public about the availability and use of free and open educational content, which includes the ability to access, develop and contribute to encyclopaedias, dictionaries, books, images, etc.
  • The objectives of the Chapter are to (i) spread awareness among the Indian public about availability and use of free and open educational content - thereby increasing the reach (ii) build capacity to access and contribute to such resources in various Indian languages - thereby increasing participation (iii) facilitate interactions among community members for knowledge sharing and thereby improve quality and promote innovation.
  • The mission supports the Wikimedia goals.
  • For more information about our mission and vision see our Memorandum of Association here
What is your current leadership structure (e.g., executive staff structure, board / governance structure)? Please explain how budgets are managed and programs are executed between board and staff.
  • One Executive Manager
  • Seven Board Members (two year term), of which one President, one Secretary and one Treasurer.
  • We have operated with GAC grants so far. This forms part of our budget. We have a micro grant process where the community requests funds. Initially the grants were assessed by the Executive Committee. We are transitioning to a process where the Executive Manager vets the grant requests and makes recommendations to the Executive Committee. In 2014 we will have a group of grant assessors who will review larger value micro grant requests and recommend the suitable ones.
If applicable, how many members does your entity have, and how do you define membership (e.g., attendance at events, paying dues)?
  • There were 120 members as of 08/31/2013. Members sign up for chapter membership by paying a fee. To be eligible for membership they should be Indian nationals above the age of 18 years.
What is the role of volunteers in your entity (e.g., help develop entity plans, participate in programs, edit Wikipedia)? Approximately how many volunteers does your entity serve?
  • The members can help the chapter in various ways. These include developing entity plans,and participating in programs, apart from contributing to Wikimedia projects. Event participations are often done by volunteers. Volunteers run awareness programs and conduct trainings to new editors. Volunteers also do pilot projects for GLAM. Volunteers share knowledge and work together as a team to further the movement.
  • It is extremely difficult to put a number to the community in the country. The number of active editors stands at 450.
How do you know what the members of the community / communities you serve (including chapter members and broader online volunteers) need and want? How does this influence your strategic planning and decision-making?
  • We requested input before and after preparation of our strategic plan.

Reflection on past activities and innovations edit

This section provides the FDC with information about your entity's past programs, activities and strategies. Please answer the questions below with your reflections on the past fiscal year. Responses to each question should be one or two paragraphs.

How does your entity define and measure "success"?
  • We asses success by the trends in wiki statistics and not overspending on the budget we proposed.
  • We also measure success through the public perception of events that we organized and the goodwill we build with everyone.
Please give at least three examples of successful programs or activities that your entity has completed, and explain why they were successful. If available, provide links to information.
  • WikiConference India 2011: Then the largest Wikimedia conference ever, bigger than any Wikimania at the time in the words of Jimmy Wales. The three day event had 700+ in attendance, over 7000 scholarship requests and over 500 speaker submissions. A parallel hackathon was organised - first by Wikimedia in India and WMF ended up hiring 3 Wikipedians who attended that. There was frenzied activity both online and offline in India post the conference. On English Wikipedia, Collaboration of the month was revived and a new Good Article Collaboration of the month was instituted with some success, a Tag and Assess 2012 drive was undertaken and completed assessment of a massive 1,00,000 odd article backlog from WP:India. The India Noticeboard started buzzing with activity, archives will show that it was relatively dead for the previous couple of years. Though we have not researched the impact on indic Wikipedia's, we do know Marathi Wikipedia saw a 300% increase in readership in the aftermath of WCI 2011. Offline, there were several workshops/meetups/photowalks conducted across the country in the months after the event. We cannot say that all this was a direct impact of the conference, we can certainly say that post conference we saw a spurt of activity in India, both online and offline. News reports available online: [1] (There was a lot more coverage offline, which are not included)
  • Wiki Loves Monuments India: Wiki Loves Monuments India was the largest project Wikimedia India organised in 2012. Whereas India participated for the first time, participation was enormous in terms of both quantity and quality. We received more than 15,000 freely usable images of Indian monuments, which was contributed by more than 1,200 participants; the maximum participation level among all counterspies. In the international contest, where 34 other countries competed, two entries from the India contest made it to the top 10 photos.[2] The first prize winner was from India, proving that the contest was successful in terms of quality as well.
  • Adoption of CC-BY-SA license by NCERT: In February 2013 one of our board members met Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Government of India. One of the matters discussed was free licensing of government educational material such as text books. Our board member was in touch with NCERT, the national board in charge of making text books as well as the minsters office with the in coordination with like minded organisations such as the United Nations. In August 2013, the Minister announced in his speech at the ICT conference in Delhi that the new open educational resources repository being launched by the government, www.nroer.in would be licensed CC-BY-SA. The Minister acknowledged our efforts in his speech. This was a major victory for us as it was our first formal interaction with the government in a matter related to our mission. It is also the first time the Government of India has adopted such an open license (in the past they chose more restrictive licenses). They plan to add 334 school textbooks to this open repository to begin with out of which 30 were up at the time of launch.
What are the plans/strategies that did not work for your entity in the past? What did your entity learn from those experiences? What changes were made after learning from these experiences?
  • In the past several board members have burnt out. Burnout at board level has been a serious concern. One of the things that used to take place in the past was board members traveling for regular outreach activities. In February 2013 we found the board was stretched and took a call to the effect that board travel for regular outreach activities should be avoided. Instead we begun encouraging local volunteers or in case there weren't any local volunteers in a place we receive an outreach request someone from a nearby area to deal with the request. In this way we aim to cut down on time board members devote and encourage volunteer participation. We have also been encouraging our staff member to attend community events.
  • In February 2012 an employee of India Programs/WMF took up a GLAM activity with the Crafts Museum in Delhi. Though IP was engaged in this initiative, the agreement was entered into by the Chapter. Later the project fell into disarray. The lessons learnt include:
    • Awareness that staff in such institutions may not be computer savvy
    • Internet connectivity in such organizations is poor
    • The staff at the target organization may not be able to spend time on the project
  • We have since decided to take our time and verify whether a GLAM project is workable keeping past failures in mind before signing any new MoU. This is one reason why we haven't yet had another GLAM project on a similar scale since. We are considering solutions such as providing internet ourselves in future projects as most GLAM institutions in India have little or no connectivity. We also plan to engage interns to help with GLAM work so that staff skills do not become a barrier.
What else has your entity learned or innovated upon that could benefit the broader Wikimedia movement?
  • India is a large country, extremely diverse in terms of language and the culture. Wikimedia India had thus decided to for a team of Special Interest Groups (SIG) for every city, language and projects. We have a SIG Chair for cities, for languages, as well as specific projects such as GLAM and Gendergap. The SIGs form an extended leadership under board level at local level aimed at decentralising ourselves. The SIG chair generally take care of all activities that comes under their umbrella, which reduced burden on Board members. Also, as they focus on a concerned topic, logistically, this structure has been successful in managing volunteers from various communities.

Link:[3]

  • Featured Wikipedian of the month: Each month one Wikipedian from a different community is featured on the chapters main page. The Wikipedian accomplishments are highlighted and celebrated.

Link to archive:[4]

How does your entity share its work with your community and with the wider Wikimedia movement? For instance, publishing case studies on Meta, blog posts, newsletters, speeches at conferences, etc.
  • We hold IRC sessions from time to time and run a chapter blog which several community members post on. We have a monthly report posted on our chapter wiki, a link of which is added on meta. We also publish an annual report on our chapter wiki and distribute physical copies. We have a newsletter, however it is very wide in terms of coverage and due to lack of resources it isn't regularly published. The mailing lists are used to keep in touch with the community. We have had one major event so far, WCI 2011 and speeches from that event have been uploaded on YouTube. We have been making submissions during 'state of the wiki' during Wikimedia Conference like most other chapters. Reports on grants are added on meta.
Link to most recently completed fiscal year annual plan
Link to most recently completed fiscal year annual report and financial report
Link to most recently completed fiscal year grant report (if your entity has received funds from the FDC)
  • Not Applicable
Link to your entity's strategic plan if you have one
Link to your organogram or organizational chart if one exists
Link to your entity's current fiscal year plan and budget
  • Once again this is broken into two, keeping in mind that we hope FDC funds kick in from January onwards. Details of current 9 months under grant program - April to December 2013.



Key programs / initiatives and objectives of the upcoming year's annual plan edit

These tables are intended to provide an overview of your entity's upcoming year annual plan and its alignment with the movement's strategic priorities; please provide short phrases or 1-3 bullet points for each program below. You can also link to any other documents that you think might be helpful as context.

Please ensure that your proposed programs are SMART; that is, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

If you feel you have a program that fulfills a strategic goal that is not immediately identified with a movement strategic priority ('readership' rather than 'editorship', for instance), please add that in the table and offer us your rationale.

Finally, please also note which programs are the entity's priorities.


Program 1 edit

Awareness creation

What are the objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • To increase the page views from India across all Wikipedia projects by 50% by the end of the year. (From 75 page views per month per article to 120 page views per month per article)
  • Create greater awareness of other Wikimedia projects as evidenced by upward trends in user statistics
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) does this program address and how?
  • Increase reach - By creating greater degree of brand awareness through participation in events, making the brand visible, and engagements of the public through interactive programs
  • Encourage innovation - By challenging people to develop cost effective sustained visibility programs, such as QR codes, and quiz programs
What key activities and/or milestones are associated with this program?
  • Participate in 4 major events in India to create visibility for Wikimedia brand
  • Participate in cultural festivals in popular educational institutions
  • Provide brand promotion materials such as standees, and banners to all Special Interest Group (SIG) chairs
  • Provide brand promotion materials such as stickers, and buttons / badges
  • Introduce QR code in Visweswaraya Technological Museum in Bangalore; Take this initiative further for places of interest to tourism in Bangalore
  • Build a network of all members in social media to spread posts on Wikimedia in the social media
  • Pilot a quiz program in 8 schools and 8 colleges with a view of increasing awareness; Also make them available publicly through a network of quiz masters such as Karnataka Quiz association
How will your entity document, track, and measure successes and challenges of this program?
  • Page views will be monitored through wiki statistics
  • Implementation will be monitored physically: for the procurement and distribution of give aways as well as implementation of QR codes in the science museum.
  • Network building will be checked through social media statistics
  • The quiz program execution will be evidenced by the availability of the quiz modules, event participation lists, and photographs

Any additional details:

  • Literacy, Article availability, computer and internet connectivity are major factors that can affect usage.
  • Considering the low article count, a new composite metric based on page views per month and the number of articles available has been proposed. This will be the Number of views per month per article.
  • All Indian language Wikipedia have a combined metric of 75 page views per month per article. Compared to the range of 500 to 1300 page views per month per article in German, Spanish, Japanese and English.
  • The further environmental characteristic that may dampen usage is lower penetration of internet access at 12.6%. Still we feel there is potential to grow the viewer-ship. India should perhaps look forward to 500 article views per month per article as in developed countries in the long term of 5 years
  • Awareness generates usage, and usage generates enthusiasm to contribute. Thus we see awareness as key to all other factors.
  • Participation in a large number of local exhibitions etc becomes costly and require a huge amount time from the volunteers team. A quiz program has the potential to be picked up and run by others. Eventually it has the potential to become as popular as some TV shows. If we can reach that level, we can create a degree of great awareness on a sustainable basis without a huge effort from us. At this time we are trying to test the concept through a pilot programs.



Program 2 edit

Capacity Building

What are the objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • To increase the number of active contributors by 50% in 1 year (from 450 active editors in India to 675 active editors)
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) does this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - By training editors through multiple means, and organizing contests that promote contribution
  • Improve quality - By training the trainers for effective skill development; train contributors in administrative tasks; increase references through digitization programs
  • Encourage innovation - By challenging people to develop an effective video based training program capable of high capacity; Also train people in Mediawiki, so that they can develop more solutions
What key activities and/or milestones are associated with this program?
  • Continue to run Wiki Academies as usual
  • Organize public training programs on week ends at the Bangalore office using a training infrastructure
  • Develop video based training program enabling capacity through self learning
  • Organize training for administrative functions
  • Organize "Train the trainer" program to make training resources available in distributed geographic locations
  • Organize training for other projects such as scanning and digitization for GLAM or Wikisource
  • Organize a photography competition to be called "Wiki Loves India" to trigger contributions to Wikimedia Commons
  • Organize 'intern' program and work with educational institutions catering to GLAM segment; Thereby increase capacity to support GLAM projects
  • Organize a Mediawiki training program
  • Facilitate interaction among contributors through large scale regional and national conferences, to improve collaboration and team work
  • Provide support to digitization in order to create a significant amount of reference materials
  • Work with 2 GLAM institutions on GLAM programs
How will your entity document, track, and measure successes and challenges of this program?
  • Track the number of active contributors through wiki statistics
  • Track number of events and schedule as per plan tracker
  • Monitor effectiveness of training through feedback forms, as well as conducting post training on-line anonymous surveys a month after the training
  • Monitor contributions of new contributors through wiki metrics
  • Physical verification of availability of video based training programs in the first 6 months; User feedback on these Videos through comments, likes and shares; Monitoring the number of views through analytics.
  • Verify records on the number of interns engaged
  • Monitor number of images uploaded from 'Wiki Loves India' Contest through Wiki Statistics
  • Verify capacity and operation of week end training programs at Bangalore training centre against the demand
  • Verify performance of Digitizing contractor and capacity utilization of book scanning facility

Any additional details:

  • Editors per million speakers is a metric that has been reported in Wiki Statistics. Considering access to computers and internet is far below international levels in India this metric is not a directly usable.
  • Internet access is at around 12.6% in India. So we want to look at many statistics with respect to internet users than with respect to speakers. This is a normalization to make benchmarking meaningful.Unfortunately this % is available at the national level, and not by language.
  • India has 2.7 editors per million internet users, compared to 27 of Russia, 38 of Japan and 41 of Germany. Internet users data we refer here is from United Nations. It would appear India can improve by 10 times.



Program 3 edit

Community building

What are the objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • To facilitate closeness of the Wikipedian network and recognize significant contributors. Bring community members together to share best practices, and find like minded people with whom they can build collaborative projects. Organize a national conference with 400 participants, and 3 other regional conferences with 80 people each. Recognize top 10 contributors.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) does this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - By enabling community members to recognize each other.
  • Improve quality - By enabling community members to share best practices and also identify suitable partners to collaborate more effectively.
  • Encourage innovation - By brainstorming on common issues and finding solutions
What key activities and/or milestones are associated with this program?
  • Organize one national conference over 3 days with 400 participants
  • Recognize notable Wikimedians and honour them
  • Organize three regional conferences with 80 participants
  • Enable discovery of like minded persons and formation of smaller clusters
How will your entity document, track, and measure successes and challenges of this program?
  • Through list of attendees we will track number of people attending
  • Through a survey of attendees, conducted at the end of the conference, we will collect data on the number of people each participant came to know closely because of that conference
  • Through registration of like minded groups, we will measure cluster formation
  • Network diameter and cluster coefficient are metrics used in social media. We do not have such data. We will begin to baseline and track improvement.

Any additional details:

  • Social Network theory suggests under critical parameters of network diameter and cluster coefficient viral spread of co-operation becomes possible
  • We can work on improving these metrics, and correlate their relationship with the the degree of collaboration activities.
  • Perhaps with a better understanding of these relationships, we can even do a better job of matching invitees to foster improvement where desired.



Program 4 edit

GLAM initiative

What are the objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • To carry out GLAM activity with two institutions per year
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) does this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - By opening up institutions with valuable artefacts for creating new articles
  • Improve quality - By enabling references
  • Encourage innovation - By creating an opportunity for the community to try and introduce new concepts
What key activities and/or milestones are associated with this program?
  • Choose two GLAM institutions to work with; one of them may be Visweswaraya Technological Museum; The other may be a newspaper organization
  • Contact the ministry in Charge of the institution and work from top down to create necessary approvals.
  • Enter into an agreement with clear legal terms to secure the CC BY SA license when the project is successfully completed
  • Do a pilot program, if necessary, to get the host organization to get convinced
  • Engage students from institutions that typically train professionals required for such GLAM institution as interns
  • Train the interns in editing as well as GLAM related techniques
  • Engage the interns to carry out the project during their vacations / college project durations
  • At Visweswaraya Museum get the team to identify articles related to the technology of the major artefacts on display, to create QR codes
  • At the newspaper organization work to digitize archival copies of old issues of the newspaper. We may engage a sub contractor to do the scanning and digitization for newspaper.
How will your entity document, track, and measure successes and challenges of this program?
  • By the availability of legal agreements with 2 GLAM institutions
  • By the availability of a letter of intent, or a review of conclusion
  • By the availability of a wikipedian on residence, and by the number of students we are able to attract as interns
  • By the availability of archival copies of the newspapers after digitization
  • By the availability of QR code on all possible major artefacts in Visweswaraya Museum leading to browsing of Wikipedia articles relevant to the artefact.

Any additional details:

  • Most GLAM institutions come under the Ministry of Culture, and need approvals from their head quarters.
  • Doing pilots in a few institutions and establishing their success will make the approval process easy for other institutions.
  • It is easy to work with Visweswaraya Museum and Newspapers.
  • In the case of the museum, most articles may not have to be created and they may exist in the Wikipedia already. Being a science museum, they have nothing to lose as content related to the artefacts. The prime need will be to identify the article relevant to the major artefacts, and create QR codes. We can engage students for this work, and have it validated by their Curators. Indian language articles may have to be generated where they do not exist.
  • In the case of the newspaper, digitization will also help the archive with digital copies of nearly 400,000 out-of-copyright newspapers since the 19th century. For Wikipedians, it gives great access to references which can seriously help boost the number of India related articles on Wikipedia - in English the number is a little above 100,000 while in Indic-language Wikipedia it is far lower.




Program 5 edit

Operations

What are the objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • To carry out the Chapter operations in a time bound manner, and make available the necessary infrastructure.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) does this program address and how?
  • Stabilize infrastructure - By establishing an office cum training infrastructure, Video recording facility, and scanning facility; By establishing systems and procedures related to grants, measurements, and reporting
What key activities and/or milestones are associated with this program?
  • Hire space, procure office equipment, and engage new employees
  • Establish the office along with training, video production and scanning facilities
  • initiate public training programs
  • capture video training modules
  • provide computers and infrastructure for Wikimedians / trainees / hackers
  • provide a scanning facility
  • Use planning tools and track plans till they are completed
  • Use analytical tools such as wiki statistics and wiki metrics to measure program effectiveness
  • Publish a processes for grants, allocating budgets, and measuring performance
  • Empanel three grant reviewers for approving larger value grants
  • Get plan requirements in advance from language communities through a dialogue process
  • Reinforce the organizational mechanism of Special Interest Group chairs. Create groups and initiate elections as necessary.
  • Engage a consultant and get the MoA reviewed and recast for getting Government approval, simplifying membership process, and making the governance approach flexible

Any additional details:

  • Office infrastructure provides for a training centre that can be run on week ends
  • Video camera and lecture capture activities will enable cost effective mass training
  • Grant process would bring clarity and transparency.
  • Special Interest Group Chairs are the distributed coordinators who take care of community clusters.


Additional context for the upcoming year's annual plan / SWOT edit

Please provide 1-2 paragraphs for each response below. SWOT stands for your organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

What organizational strengths enable your entity's plan (e.g., leadership, education program expertise, experience with outreach, governance structure, community participation, fundraising)?
  • Members and community consists of a large youth population
  • Leadership consisting of Wikimedians with experience who can lead from the front
  • Availability of earlier EC members for consultations when required
  • Executive Manager who has explored video, and web casting technologies for mass education
  • Positive image and sentiment towards Wikimedia among the public
What external opportunities enable your entity's plan (e.g., socio-political context, community participation, fundraising)?
  • Internet penetration potential
  • Multi lingual country
  • Government plan to improve language technologies and improve internet infrastructure
  • Government's enthusiasm for releasing educational material (NCERT) on CC BY SA
  • Untapped potential of a huge population segment
  • Potential for adding articles across languages through automated translation
What are key risks or threats that would prevent you from achieving your plan (e.g., leadership turnover, governance challenges, lawsuits, fundraising, community participation, socio-political context)?
  • Social media and other knowledge sites compete for the viewers' attention
  • Mistaken perceptual associations with organizations such as wikileaks
  • Volunteer burnout; Editors burn out
  • Small number of Active Wikipedians in Indian languages
  • Not so user friendly wiki interface
  • Difficulty in automated translation. Poor quality of current tools
  • Threat of SLAPP suits by vested interest groups
How will you minimize these risks and threats?
  • Use social media to attract attention
  • Clarify what Wikimedia stands for along with our awareness creation programs
  • Build a large pool of editors / volunteers to reduce burden per editor / volunteer, by developing massive online open courses
  • Work with institutions developing translation technologies
  • Insurance against SLAPP suits

Financials: year-to-date progress edit

This section provides the FDC information about how your entity is progressing against the current fiscal year's planned budget (revenues and costs).

  • We have completed a Q1 2013 grant successfully.
  • The next grant amount is expected to be on hand by end September 2013

Please provide the relevant information below. "Year-to-date" refers to the period between the start of your entity's current fiscal year and the date of submission of the proposal. Actual year-to-date financials should be provided as close to the proposal submission date as possible.

Identify the year-to-date for which you are reporting, month/year to month/year:

  • April/2013 to September/2013

Table 3

Current fiscal year planned budget Year-to-date actuals Projected final amount
In currency requested In $US In currency requested In $US In currency requested In $US
Revenues (from all sources) 1,498,000 24,161 $ 67,357 1,086 $ 1,519,961 24,516 $
Spending 1,498,000 24,161 $ 521,298 8,408 $ 1,519,961 24,516 $

Table 3 details, if necessary:

  • We did not have a FDC grant for the year-to-date period. Based on clarity from Katy, this is being updated to reflect the state based on the GAC grant.
  • The plan was for April 2013 to Dec 2013 instead of the fiscal year April 2013- March 2014, as we were planning to cover JFM 2014 with FDC funds.



Based on the variance percentages above, please describe how your entity is progressing against revenue and spending targets. If your projected final amount shows your entity to be significantly under or over target on either revenue or spending, please provide a detailed explanation.
  • New GAC grant applications were made following the closure of the previous and thus we had gaps between grants. The April to December grant has been approved in end August 2013, but as on end of September, the funds had not come in. This explains the large variance in the revenues.
  • We have initiated spend based on grant approval. The variance in spend is limited by revenue shortfall.
  • Notwithstanding the delay, we intend to complete this grant's objectives.

Financials: upcoming year's annual plan edit

Please note that the FDC staff is currently exploring alternatives to wikitables for financial information. This issue will be addressed by the time the proposal creation tool is launched on September 1, 2013. Provide your financial overview for the upcoming year in the format below.

Please link to your detailed budget in a publicly available spreadsheet file (translation into English highly recommended) in addition to completing the tables below. Detailed budget link:


Financial sustainability edit

What other donors support your work through grants beyond those in the Wikimedia movement? If your entity does receive funding from other donors, please list a contact person. Note that the donor's contact details can be sent directly to FDCsupport@wikimedia.org if you prefer not to publish it here.

Note that the FDC staff may contact these donors.

  • In the year 2011, associated with the Wiki Conference India held at Mumbai, we were able to raise conference contributions and donations amounting to INR 924,570 (equivalent to USD 17,854 at the prevailing rates of Nov 2011)
  • In 2013 we ran a fundraiser around Feb 2013. This was by way of an appeal in the Chapter and India mail list and word of mouth reference through community. We got a moderate amount of INR 26,250 (less than USD 500) from 12 individuals.
What are your entity's plans for achieving long-term financial sustainability?
  • Conferences are occasions for raising funds by way of Donations / Contributions.
  • As an organization with a mission to "build a knowledge society through free and open education projects", we can not earn money through any commercial operations. We need to earn the goodwill of society to be able to get donations. In our current scale of operation, the goodwill is there, but cost of reaching out to small donors is high. We will build on this goodwill for long term sustainability.
  • It may help if we can have a banner message to the Indian Wikimedia viewers for a donation campaign for the chapter.
  • We will also look for other sources such as Government of India. They have a program to support NGOs.

Revenues edit

Please list anticipated revenues, by source (e.g., FDC, Wikimedia grants programs, grants from institutional donors, public funding, membership fees, local donations, event fees)

Table 4

Revenue source Anticipated (in currency requested) Anticipated (In $US)


Wikimedia FDC grant INR 11,054,802 USD 178,303
Local Donations INR 2,397,267 USD 38,666
Membership Fees INR 15,000 USD 242
TOTAL INR 13,467,069 USD 217,211

Table 4 notes, if necessary:

  • The FDC requirements include annual expenses budget as well as one time expenses for capital equipment and setting up an office cum training centre.



Current entity staff and long-term contractors edit

Role/functions might include program administration, finance, fundraising. Please include both part-time and full-time staff and long-term contractors.

Table 5

Role / Function Number of staff Percentage of staff time*
Executive Manager 1 50%

*Please include estimates of the percentage allocation of staff members. For example, for full-time staff, you would put 100% in this column. For half time staff, you would put 50% in this column.

Table 5 notes, if necessary:



Proposed new staff and and long-term contractors for upcoming year's annual plan edit

Role / functions might include program administration, finance, fundraising. Please include both part-time and full-time staff and long-term contractors.

Table 6

Department (e.g. Programs, Communications) Number of current staff Percentage of current staff time* Number of upcoming staff Percentage of upcoming staff time* Rationale for hiring new staff
Changing status of Executive Manager to full time employee with responsibility to lead the Chapter. Duties include administrative oversight, outreach organization, support to institutional relationship building, and Government relations
Focus on promotion of Community events (including tech) and GLAM
Focus on membership / Indic community requirements; Accounting and Administration;

*Please include estimates of the percentage allocation of staff members and long-term contractors. For example, for full-time staff, you would put 100% in this column. For half-time staff, you would put 50% in this column.

Table 6 notes, if necessary:


Summary of staff and long-term contractor expenses edit

Table 7

In currency requested In $US Percent increase
Current staff expenses INR 504,000 USD 8129
Proposed increase for current staff expenses INR 1,080,000 USD 17,419 114%
Proposed increase for new staff expenses INR 840,000 USD 13,548
Total staff expenses INR 1,920,000 USD 30,968 280%

Please estimate the percentage of overall staff time spent on programmatic work, as opposed to administration:

  • Estimated overall staff time on programmatic work is estimated to be 66%, and administrative work is expected to be 33%

Table 7 notes, if necessary:

  • Technically we have no staff currently as the Executive Manager is a part time and long term contractor. However in the table above, the expense on engaging the Executive Manager has been shown as current staff expense.
  • Field related to Percentage increase in new staff expenses has been left blank as it's interpretation is unclear



Expenses by program / initiative edit

Expenses are costs associated with any programs, initiatives, or projects your entity manages (e.g., event costs, materials, transportation). Please exclude any staff costs that are included above. “Programs / initiatives” might include education programs, outreach programs, microgranting initiatives, etc. Please include any administration costs (e.g., office space rental, utilities) affiliated with each program along with any overall administration costs that are not affiliated with any particular program (e.g., Administration should be considered a "Program" under the first column.)

Table 8a

Program / initiative In currency requested In $US
Regional or Topical events - Three events INR 911,720 USD 14,705
National Conference -1 event INR 2,050,250 USD 33,069
Wikimania and Chapter's conference - 3 sponsored attendees INR 570,000 USD 9,194
Brand promotion INR 44,500 USD 718
Outreach material INR 62,000 USD 1,000
WikiAcademies INR 148,720 USD 2,399
MediaWikiTrg INR 100,000 USD 1,613
Wiki Loves India photographic competition INR 661,000 USD 10,661
Innovative projects, GLAM, Digitization INR 1,458,000 USD 23,516
Events Participation INR 56,600 USD 913
General Outreach Activities INR 300,000 USD 4,839
Governance, Legal, Insurance INR 1,615,000 USD 26,048
WMIN Office admin INR 93,350 USD 1,506
Office rent, consumables INR 874,750 USD 14,109
Office equipment INR 461,400 USD 7,442
Office furniture INR 209,600 USD 3,381
Video production equipment INR 55,900 USD 902
Advance for Rented Premises INR 650,000 USD 10,484
Total program expenses (should equal the sum of the rows) INR 10,322,790 USD 166,497

Table 8 notes, if necessary:

  • Amounts indicated are total expenses;
  • Expenses above do not include salaries mentioned in previous table
  • Advance for rented office premises is a advance and not an expense.
  • First 3 of the last 4 rows is against capital expenses
  • Under Governance INR 250,000 (USD 4,032) is a provision for legal contingencies as a insurance protects only above this limit
  • Under Governance INR 800,000 (USD 12,903)is a Liability insurance premium

Link to detailed budget on chapter wiki: [7]


Summary of total revenues and expenses edit

Table 9

In currency requested In $US
Total cash balance as of proposal submission 0 0
Total revenues INR 13,467,069 USD 217,211
Total spending INR 13,467,069 USD 217,211
Net (revenues less expenses) 0 0
Operating reserves,* if applicable

Table 9 notes, if necessary:

  • This is our first FDC grant application. We operate on a GAC grant currently. Hence total cash balance field has not been filled.
  • The amounts in this table include a 10% contingency / variation provision



Verification that this proposal requests no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation for political or legislative activities edit

Enter "yes" or "no" for the verification below.

The term “political or legislative activities” includes any activities relating to political campaigns or candidates (including the contribution of funds and the publication of position statements relating to political campaigns or candidates); voter registration activities; meetings with or submissions and petitions to government executives, ministers, officers or agencies on political or policy issues; and any other activities seeking government intervention or policy implementation (like “lobbying”), whether directed toward the government or the community or public at large. Grants for such activities (when permitted under U.S. law and IRS regulations) should be sought from the Wikimedia Grants Program.
I verify that this proposal requests no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation for political or legislative activities Yes

-- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 17:39, 30 September 2013 (UTC)