Grants talk:PEG/Shared Knowledge/WikiWomen Macedonia/Report

Hi Violetova and the WikiWomen Macedonia team. Thank you for this thorough and informative grant report, and for all your efforts in organizing a successful project! Your plans were very ambitious and we're impressed that you were able to establish good partnerships, organize so many events, and engage a significant number of women. Congrats! We have a few comments/questions below and look forward to your responses.

1. It's amazing that you held 28 editing sessions in just three months, despite the political challenges in May. It's also good to know that this was too much. What do you think would be better? Once a week? It sounds like there were only 3 main Wikimedians organizing the sessions a couple more admins who helped with online questions and mentoring. Was this enough?
2. Was it relatively easy to develop partnerships with the two women organizations? Our understanding is that their main roles were to do outreach to their membership and recruit participants. Was the memorandum of understanding signed with the groups just for the duration or the project or for longer-term work? Do you plan on continuing to work with them?
3. While you did not reach your participant numbers, we're much happier that so many women came to multiple events -- in the end, that's more important for skill-building, community-building, and editor retention. We've taken a look at the editing history of some of the participants that signed up on the project page and it's nice to see that some are continuing to edit. The report states the 20% remain active -- are you continuing to track this with Wikimetrics? Does active mean one edit/month?
4. It sounds like you have a plan for follow-up in place and the new editors are encouraged to reach out to specific admins for questions. Have they been doing this?
5. How did you spend the savings from the editathons (1,450 EUR)? Please remember that all budget changes need to be requested on the discussion page of the grant.
6. Please provide receipts for the editathons and celebration event costs.
7. Please let us know who received the project management fees.

Thanks again for your work and this great report. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Memorandum signed between Shared Knowledge and Community of Serbs in Macedonia

Memorandum signed between Leontic and Shared Knowledge

Hi Alex, and thank you for you kind words.

Our answers:

1. Once a week is the best option, we know now, after we had three session a week. Yes, three Wikimedians were involved very active, but more admins helped with new editors. The number of involved was enough, special that the women who were interested were calling us on the phone many times to ask questions.
2. Memorandum was signed for longer term work, with the two organizations, please see the scan documents. They are asking to continue with Wiki women sessions from October, but this time in the towns outside the capital. Yes, we planed to work with them again.
3. It is not one edit a month. Just look at this contributions or maybe this one. Meaning: they are active almost every day.
4. We spread our phone numbers, e-mail addresses and Facebook contacts. Most of them asked questions on the next session they come on, but we received many telephone calls with questions when the new Wiki women editors were editing from home. We still do receive phone calls from some of them.
5. We did ask and receive for half of the amount for sessions at first place, i.e. 1350 EUR. Please see the grant request, number 2 of Project budget table. There was no savings from sessions amount, except we did have 50 EUR savings which we spent on one more session. The savings are: 60 EUR savings from number of printed certificates, which added by 100 EUR of Unexpected expenses, are equal 160 EUR savings. Those amount we spent for celebration party of giving certificates in the two cities: Skopje and Kumanovo. I did send the costs from this savings (e-mail 4), we spent them for catering of the closing events. If there is problem with my e-mail, I can send the invoice again.
6. I was almost sure that I sent the costs for sessions, but somehow, I didn't. I did it now. Sorry for this.
7. Project management fees were paid for: Zoran Mechkarski, Toni Ristovski and Snezhana Shtrkovska.

Regards, -- Violetova (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Violetova. Thank you for your responses. For future reference, it is very important that board members do not receive any project management fees. This is seen as a conflict of interest. If board members are taking an active role and need compensation for a project, they must step off the board for the duration of the project. I apologize if this was not clear and just wanted to make sure the policy is clear for the future. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 18 July 2015 (UTC)