Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/Wikimedia Armenia/Proposal form

Thank you for this proposal form and clarification around reserves

Hello, SusiMkr. Thank you for submitting this complete proposal form on time. That makes things easier for us (and others who may be looking closely at your financials.

Before proceeding, we want to make sure you are aware of the reserves policy here. You won't be able to carry any unused funds over into your reserves unless you budget for them now, in your proposal. Please let us know right away if you need to change your budget to include funding for reserves.

If we have other urgent needs for clarification, we'll contact you right away. Otherwise, you can expect questions from FDC staff in the next week or so.

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 01:06, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Winifred Olliff . Excuse me for delaying answer.

We know about reserves policy. We don't want to change our budget to include funding for reserves this year. May be next year we'll do it. Thank you. --SusikMkr (talk) 15:24, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming, Susanna. We wanted to make sure you understood the policy! Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:22, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Praise and one question

I like very much what I read in your proposal. Buildning on experince from last year, to work with Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikipedia and you apprach to Westen Armenina. Also your prorgam all make good sense and are well taregted. And I truly enjoyed yoyr littel Video attached to the proposal. My question is of the positition of President. It exist on the organsation chart but no staff is mentioned for this position, and a separate role would be a bit much when you are so small in personell. Anders Wennersten (talk) 10:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten, thank you very much for your kind words. There's actually no staff for the president and is not going to be. The organogram shows not only proposed 2 staff (administrator and program manager) but also the structure of the organization and hierarchy. As we have no staff now, president usually volunteerly does the work of the executive director.--David Saroyan (talk) 12:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, your answer clarifies this for me.Anders Wennersten (talk) 06:35, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Questions from FDC staff

Some minor corrections to your financial information

We have a few requests for corrections to the financial information in the proposal form. Please correct these areas of the proposal form by using strikethrough to show an approved change has been made. These changes are approved in advance. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:19, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Amount of funding received from WMF for last year's annual plan. For the amount budgeted for the current year’s annual plan, we will only include grant amounts for June 2014 - July 2015, or the 12 month period before your upcoming funding period. This affects the “Amount of funding received from WMF for last year's annual plan”. We ask you to change this amount to include only the WM AM 2014 Annual grant and WikiCamp 2015. This should not include the amount for WikiCamp 2014.
• In Table 5, which describes your revenues, please include the amount you are requesting for APG funding in the upcoming year.

Done Thank you!--David Saroyan (talk) 07:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the speedy corrections, David Saroyan. We have reviewed the changes and they are approved. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 22:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, David Saroyan. We're sorry to come back with this, but we think there might be an error in the exchange rate used in your correction to Table 1. By our calculation, 43,310,500 AMD would be 90,952.05 USD rather than 98,899.33 USD, according to 0.0021 US dollars = 1 AMD. Would you please take a second look at correct if necessary? Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:19, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Dear Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer), I explained the reason of exchange rate error below. --David Saroyan (talk) 12:13, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments

Thank you for the effort you put into creating this proposal, which is very thorough! One area we wanted to clarify together was your work on Wiki Loves Monuments. We ask that you answer a few questions about this specific program here. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:19, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Since information is not included in your interim report, we would appreciate any additional background on your most recent iteration of Wiki Loves Monuments in 2014, so that we may better understand the context of your plans for 2015. For example, how did you perform against your stated goals in the 2014 iteration, and what important things did you learn from that experience that have influenced your plans for the 2015 iteration?
• We note that while you have increased your targets for the number of photos uploaded through Wiki Loves Monuments, you have not proportionally increased your targets for the number of photographs used. Please tell us more about why your targets for use did not increase.
• We realize, based on your report on the 2013 iteration of Wiki Loves Monuments, that this contest is an important way for you to draw in new contributors, about 14% of whom continued to contribute to your projects after the contest. We appreciate that you have goals directly related to participation on projects other than Commons as well, like Armenian Wikipedia. Given this emphasis on participation, we would like to better understand why your goal of 100 participants is significantly lower than the 176 participants achieved in your 2013 iteration.
• Does WMAM plan to integrate work with Wiki Loves Monuments into other program work that reaches out to new contributors (e.g. Wikiclubs), or do you think of it as a stand-alone program?

Dear Winifred, thank you for your attention and comments.

• We organized Wiki loves earth contest in 2014 because the international organization team of Wiki loves monuments decided to have a break. As we saw that the participants enthusiasm and interest wasn't so high as compared to monuments' contest (one of the reasons is the fact that we have less natural reserves most of which are not easy to be taken photos), and as the international team has decided to organize the contest again, we decided to join Wiki loves monuments as well. In 2014 some of the participants of Wiki loves monuments 2013 remained active editors creating articles of monuments in Armenian Wikipedia, where they used the contest photos.
• We have defined low number of participants this year because in 2013 we had only 2 events to organize - Wiki loves Monuments and Wiki conference Yerevan and all our attention was focused only on these 2 events.
• Wikiclubs support all our projects in their own way. Within this contest they will help us in promoting the contest in their regions, if participants have questions concerning contest (any info, learning uploading tools, etc), they can always find the answers to their questions in Wikiclubs.--Lilitik22 (talk) 12:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Lilitik22, thank you for providing this additional information about Wiki Loves Monuments. We appreciate the speedy response. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 22:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Support this project

I'm not sure if there is some kind of voting process, but I would just like to extend my support to funding this project. Wikimandia (talk) 14:26, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

+1 to Wikimandia - I want to express my support to this proposal. As a regular Wikipedia user (mainly reading, sometimes editing, sometimes donating money) I don't have the energy to immerse myself into the quite complex details of the application and assessment process. But I feel that support for some of the "non-central" communities (= not in the Western World) is helpful to the whole project. JanSchmidt (talk) 21:54, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiCamp 2015 expenses, spending, and exchange rates

Hello again, Wikimedia Armenia colleagues. As we're delving into your detailed budget and financial data, we wanted to ask you specifically about your plans to fund WikiCamp 2015. As you know, this activity is funded through your PEG, but you will need to end your PEG before 1 July 2015 if your APG proposal is funded and return any funds not yet used for all PEGs. This means that any remaining expenses for WikiCamp 2015 after 1 July will need to be paid for out of your APG funding for 2015-16. We noticed that you did not include any funds for WikiCamp 2015 in your proposed budget for 2015-16, and so we wanted to clarify this. Is this because you plan to make all of the expenses for WikiCamp before 1 July, or did we miss where this was included in your budget?

Also, we noticed what seem like a few errors in the exchange rates used to show US dollar equivalents in Table 3. Would you please take a second look at Table 3 to ensure that exchange rates are consistent?

Finally, we note that you have spent only 8,774,598 AMD to date, but are projecting to spend 50,453,357 AMD by the end of June. Are you able to offer some additional context for why your year-to-date spending is so low, while at the same time you project to spend 100% of your budget? For example, does this have to do with the timing of certain expenses or program activities?

Thank you!Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:04, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Winifred. I can answer your question concerning Table 3 and its exchange rates. I have provided USD equivalents as they are written in the original PEGs and have not used the exchange rate provided by WMF staff for APG. USD-AMD exchange rate was significantly changed during this period. So if I converted using the current rate, values would not correspond those written in the PEGs. However, if WMF requests to change them using the rate provided for APG, I will gladly do it. Thanks!--David Saroyan (talk) 08:14, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, dear Winifred. Now we are negotiating with Voske getak rest house to organize the August camp there as well. If we reach an agreement we'll transfer the money to them before July 1. We'll try to organize and arrange our expenses this way for wikicamp in 2016 as well.

The majority of our expanses are in the second part of the year, i.e. till July:

• 25,740,500 AMD are Summer wikicamps expenses. We haven't received the fund yet.
• A part of 3,571,429 AMD which is funded by Gyulbenkyan Foundation was spent to organize a training weekend for Western Armenian teachers and journalists in Armenia. On May we'll receive from them the second fund (3,571,429 AMD) which along with the remaining money will cover 15 Western Armenian students participation expenses in Summer camps.
• At the end of May we'll have a wiki conference for which we have budgeted 4,000,000 AMD.
• We are moving to our new office these days, after which we'll purchase the laptops - 2,100,000 AMD.
• WM AM will have 2 participants in Wikimedia conference in Berlin on May for which we have budgeted 1,200,000 AMD.
• This year we have requested WMF to spend 1,000,000 AMD more on Wiki loves Science which was approved and spent.
• We have already purchased the DIY scanner for which we have spent 600,000 AMD from Annual grant.--Lilitik22 (talk) 12:32, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Support

I have briefly surveyed the grant proposals in this round. This application from Wikimedia Armenia seems to me the strongest, not least because of its clarity and economy. I support it.

Ambrose H. Field (talk) 03:32, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Confusion

Hi dear Winifred, I just noticed that I have confused the data and goals of Armenian Wikisource and Wiktionary in the section Community Support. I have written:

• Sustain and increase number of active editors in Armenian Wiktionary from 40-55 (now it is 40).
• Sustain and increase number of active editors in Armenian Wikisource 150-200 (now it is 100-150).

But it should be:

• Sustain and increase number of active editors in Armenian Wikisource from 40-55 (now it is 40).
• Sustain and increase number of active editors in Armenian Wiktionary 150-200 (now it is 100-150).

Can I correct it?--Lilitik22 (talk) 07:25, 20 April 2015 (UTC)