Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 in the United States (ID: 22216150)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello SuperHamster, and thanks for your proposal supporting Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 again. I really appreciate that you've been able to help lead this campaign in the United States for such a long time! I have approved the proposal, and also have a few comments and questions:

• Thinking about next year, is there any possibility of incorporating the budget for WLM into the annual budget for WMDC moving forward, where you're serving as a board member? I'm asking mainly because of this aspect of eligibility criteria:

  Board members, leaders (contacts submitted to AffCom), presidents, bank account signatories, executive directors, and other paid staff or contractors of Wikimedia affiliates/groups/organizations with existing Wikimedia Foundation Fund awards (Community Fund, Research Fund, Conference Fund, Movement Strategy Implementation Grants) are not eligible for individual grant requests. When there is no significant overlap between the volunteer role (especially board members), group activities, and individual grant, the program officer may make exceptions to this criterion.

Basically, board members can't request additional funds through Rapid when their affiliate is already receiving broader operating support through General Support Funding, and instead, we would generally want to adjust the existing General Support Fund rather than award a separate grant for someone serving in a major leadership role for that affiliate. While the criteria doesn't apply in this case because WMDC's work and activities are basically not related to these kinds of content campaigns, this may change in the future, and would present a conflict with this criteria. There are some other approaches that could be considered here, so happy to talk them through if you'd like to at a later time.

• Other than funding, is there anything that I or the Foundation could help with to support the campaign (e.g. messaging, tools, best practices, etc.)?
• In terms of learning more about ways that people are interested in both capturing and consuming historical and cultural heritage, how do you expect to collect information to learn more about this? I think this is interesting topic about the quality of relationship of participant to the heritage and histories they are capturing.

When you're able, please respond to my questions / comments above. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): As always, thank you for the support!

• Yes, I think this is something that can be added to WMDC's annual budget. I'll bring it up the next time the Board starts discussing our next grant. I'll note that I'm very much against completely preventing affiliate Board members and other leaders from applying for grants in a personal capacity for the reasons I outlined here. If future restrictions are on the horizon, I'd love to learn about the reasons for them, and myself and other community leaders may be interested in discussing.
• Regarding Foundation support, I can't think of anything in particular at the moment. I'm not sure if the WMF comms team is planning to promote the international event on social media this year, but it'd be great if they can.
• That's a great question, and something I'll have to think about. We've never really formally captured this data. I think it's interesting to see how people capture monuments using newer technology, such as drones and photospheres. We've also seen many top-placing photos of monuments at night, which are pretty amazing and greatly contrast to the usual daytime pics we see on-wiki (examples: 1 2 3 4 5). While not technically admitted into the judging pool, we get dozens if not hundreds of photos of informational signs and plaques at historic sites, so people have an appreciation for those as well. Based on feedback, we've also been working on better-documenting ways to discover Native American historic sites.

Thanks, ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 17:59, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Requesting extension

(cc @I JethroBT (WMF):) Hello! I'd like to request an extension of the grant through February 29, 2024. We will need to finalize sending out prizes + ordering shirts for the winners and jury. Thank you! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 20:03, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello SuperHamster! Noting here that the end date of your project will be 29 February, and the final report submission date will be 30 March 2024. Thank you -- Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)