Grants talk:APG/Learning/2012-2013 round1

Questions about presentation

Hi Jessie, here are my questions after watching your video presentation.

• For this slide

• Q. What is included under "program" expenses?

• Q. How are office space and related expenses categorized?

• Q. How are travel expenses categorized?

• Q. Were expenses for outside contractors like attorneys and accountants included in the "staff" category?

• Comment: Staff should be working in one or both of the "program" and "administrative" categories and the accounting for their compensation should be split according to the proportion of their time that is spent on each task.

• Comment: it seems to me that standardizing the reporting schemes across chapters and events would be good. The FDC and chapters might find it useful to work with comparable data, and chapter staff might appreciate this also because they would be spending less time on internal development of reporting tools. Is WMF working on this? I get the impression that the answer is yes but I haven't seen the issue framed exactly as I'm framing it here.

Thanks, --Pine^✉ 07:01, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pine,

We are pleased that you could participate in the Hangout last week - these are great questions. Jessie asked me to respond because I compiled the data and conducted the analysis shared in this report. Please keep in mind that every chapter reported their spending a bit differently with varying levels of detail. When pulling together the information in the impact report, we divided each chapter's expenses into three categories.

1. Program expenses typically refer to costs associated with GLAM partnerships, conferences, education programs, general meetings and other programs described in their proposal. Although budgets in the impact reports do not go into great detail, this spending likely includes the cost of renting space, food, materials, and equipment.
2. Office space and related expenses, such as insurance for events, web hosting fees, board meetings and fundraising expenses are categorized as "Administrative" spending.
3. Travel expenses were accounted for in a variety of ways. In some reports, travel expenses were not called out explicitly. When travel expenses were paid as scholarships, they were classified as program spending. Travel reimbursement for staff or volunteers were classified as administrative spending.
4. Costs associated with outside contractors were included in the "Staff" category.

• Some chapters did track the amount of staff time spent on programs. WMUK's impact report is a great example.

• There has been some discussion around developing a set of standard reporting metrics for APG grants, such as # of events, # and quality of photos/articles, # of people touched by programs, and # of GLAM/Education partnerships. Many tools already exist to track this information, and it is likely that many chapters have more data than they shared in impact reports. Part of the challenge going forward is getting staff and volunteers to use these tools regularly and share this information clearly. The APG program officers are discussing ways to facilitate this in future reports.

I hope this information helps! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 24 June 2014 (UTC)