Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Argentina/Impact report form

Thank you for this report

Thank you for submitting this complete report on time!

We noticed that you provided strategic priorities addressed by each of your programs but did not explain how these strategic priorities are addressed by these programs. Would you be able to provide a brief explanation for each priority listed for each program? This may be a very brief one sentence statement. Check out the other impact reports for examples of how other organizations have done this!

We look forward to reviewing the report in more detail in the coming months, and learning more about your accomplishments in the past year. Please monitor this page for questions and feedback about this report, and reach out to us at any time if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments on WMAR’s impact report from FDC staff

Thank you for submitting this report, colleagues at Wikimedia Argentina! Congratulations on involving 160 students and 100 teachers in your education activities. In the future, we encourage you to track and report on how and if these students and teachers remain engaged with Wikimedia work over time. We know it is challenging, but it is crucial to understanding our progress. It seems like you are laying a lot of fine groundwork for your activities in this sector, although it is taking time for these activities to build momentum. Since this is a new area of emphasis for you, we look forward with interested to seeing it grow.

We were pleased to learn of your partnership with the Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires! We hope it enables you to support a lot of content acquisition as part of your continued GLAM work. You mention that edit-a-thons are a key activity for Wikimedia Argentina and it seems like you see the primary benefit of these events in terms of actual content contributions rather than retention of new contributors. This is an interesting approach, but it is worth thinking about how Wikimedia Argentina will scale this in the future since these types of one-off events can be a significant investment for a relatively small (but hopefully valuable!) amount of content. When compared to the GLAM work of other organizations, the amount of content produced through WMAR’s GLAM activities is relatively small. We realize that not all content is created equal and also that there may be many other benefits to these activities beyond the amount of content created, and we urge you to make sure to express that clearly in future reports so we can understand the value of this important aspect of your work.

Contests are clearly a strength of Wikimedia Argentina! Congratulations on your success in this area and your impressive results from the international Mujeres Iberoamericanas contest, which produced 1,227 improved articles and an outstanding retention rate of the contributors, and also focused on content that is not well-covered on the Wikimedia projects. We appreciated how you intentionally leveraged your international network of other Spanish-speaking Wikimedians to get the most out of this regional event. On the other hand, you were disappointed in the results from Wiki Loves Monuments, which was an event on a larger scale that did not produce results that lived up to the expectations created from last year. It’s worth thinking about what may not have worked about Wiki Loves Monuments and about what did make your targeted Mujeres Iberoamericanas contest successful so that you can build toward even better results in future years. We are glad to see your work in this area, and to see that you are trying to understand how many participants continue their involvement with Wikimedia activities after the events.

Wikimedia Argentina is one of many Wikimedia organizations that have experienced challenges working with older people. You wrote “In our opinion, the fear of failure and the insecurity that older adults can feel when they must face young people (already familiarized with new digital tools) can explain their absence. This forced Wikimedia Argentina to look for new and different ways to include this age group in a way that they find comfortable.” If you decide to continue work in this area, we are eager to know what solutions to this problem you have identified. We encourage you to create learning patterns to document what you discover so that many more can benefit from your learning.

We appreciate that Wikimedia Argentina is trying to reach out to groups that are currently less represented in the Wikimedia movement, including new and existing female editors, older people, people in non-urban areas, and members of minority language groups, and is also trying to gather content in related areas. We also see that WIkimedia Argentina is looking at qualitative ways to understand its work: we do need more solid metrics to understand Wikimedia Argentina’s activities (beyond outputs like number of events or number of participants, which you are already tracking well ) so we can know whether or not you are achieving your goals. We appreciated when WMAR included the numbers of articles created or improved, as you did under “Contests.” We are glad you are already thinking about how to improve in this area and we look forward to learning more over the course of the next year.

Congratulations on some solid planning with respect to your budget. We see that much of your spending was on track, with some significant adjustments in your outreach budget and your federalization budgeted needed. If you have money leftover from your grant, you will need to return it to WMF since funds from Annual Plan Grants may not be allocated to your reserves unless you have planned for that in advance. We realize this policy is different from our policy around Project Grants (like your 2012 grant). We can deduct this remaining amount from your upcoming installment of funds for your 2014 grant. We can continue the discussion by e-mail or phone to make sure we find a solution that seems fair to WMAR.

Best regards, and with thanks, KLove (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Note regarding your underspend

Hello again, WMAR colleagues! We also wanted to follow up regarding the underspend form this grant of ARS 30,673.05. We will need you to return the amount to WMF since we don't allow organizations to retain underspent funds from annual plan grants for their reserves. We do realize that this is different from the policy we had for Project and Event Grants and the Annual Grants you received as part of the transition to the FDC process, and so we apologize if that is confusing. We are happy to discuss this with you more to make sure everything is clear.

In the mean time, you have the option to wire the funds back to us or to have them deducted from your next installment of your 2013-2014 grant, which will be sent in the coming weeks. Please let us know which option is best for you.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 23:57, 22 July 2014 (UTC)