Grants:APG/Proposals/2018-2019 round 1/Wiki Education Foundation/Staff proposal assessment

General introduction

As decided at the end of last fiscal year (2017-2018), Round 1 2018-2019 of Annual Plan Grants - General support has taken a much more lightweight approach, to allow resources from all participants to the APG process to be moved towards work intended to allow better alignment with the strategic direction. The process of working on grant requests has been conducted from August to November, where staff worked with organizations by offering feedback on past reports and plans and by working with them to develop their upcoming annual plan. Organizations have submitted a light-weight summary of their annual plan which has been used as a basis for recommendations for funding. These recommendations align with the decision made to not increase funding levels attributed through last year's FDC recommendations except for emerging communities. In this round, only Wikimedia Argentina was eligible for increased funding and has requested a grant increase. Wikimedia Amical has decided to not request funding this round and Wikimedia Österreich and Wikimedia Sverige have submitted their 2019 plan for review as part of the extension of their multi-year funding scheme.

Working with organizations in a more systematic way to develop their annual plan has allowed for the following:

• better space for alignment with the movement strategy direction in developing annual plans closely with the organizations
• funding amount capped at last year's level has prompted organizations to review and rethink some of their priorities, or to focus on securing external funding opportunities
• a more thoughtful approach to grants metrics (focused on participation and content) and their use and the introduction of more qualitative metrics.

The process for this lightweight approach will benefit from further investigation as to what worked and what did not, and will be adapted for the next round. This round has yielded 10 annual plan summaries for the next grant period. Overall, recommendations and remarks made by the FDC and staff in previous years have been taken into account.

Approval text for Wiki Education Foundation

Wiki Education Foundation: requesting approval for $400,000 USD, same amount as recommended by the FDC last year. Following FDC and staff advice, WikiEd has developed a strategy with key focus areas that are well aligned with the Wikimedia Movement Strategy. WikiEd has worked extensively to address FDC and staff recommendations from last year and have proposed a good annual plan, which shows innovation and interesting pilots, such as their revamped Fellows Program. While their main field of operations still is limited to the English Wikipedia, their work is aligning better with the movement strategy direction. No concerns. Delphine (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Approved on 11 December 2019 by the Executive Director.