Grants talk:Programs/Hub Fund/The CEE Hub - Year 3

Feedback on the proposal

Dear members of the CEE Steering Committee,

The proposal has a clear structure and supporting documentation in the Theory of Change, evaluation plan, and timeline. There is clarity on roles and responsibilities and clear community buy-in. While the year 2 report has yet to be submitted, there is a connection between learning from year 2 about what is worth continuing and what innovations the CEE Hub wants to introduce. The Theory of Change has a clear vision of the impact the Hub seeks with its initiatives.

The focus on developing onboarding materials could be of great value to the Movement in creating learning resources for newcomer staff and board members.

Things to clarify/expand on

• Strategic planning for the future: The CEE Hub has been expanding its activities to several areas. This year, it will be important to measure the impact of this work in terms of your theory of change and to determine what areas the CEE Hub might want to concentrate more efforts on in the future. At this stage, it is worth starting to draft a longer-term strategic plan (3-5 years) to project what ongoing operations, budget, and impact look like. It is recommended to include this outcome in year 3 and the timeline of activities to develop this plan.
• Learning from year 2 outcomes: Can you share some preliminary outcomes data from the current year so it is possible to see what the results were and some of the key learnings you took from this? Considering year 3 is a continuation and expansion of year 2, how have CEE's services already impacted community and program growth, health and/or engagement? Are you on track to meet the targets planned for year 2? This does not need to be comprehensive as we recognize you will be writing a report and dedicating resources to learning & evaluation in year 3.
• Microgrant learning: Please share learning about the microgrant process and if the CEE Hub reached the target in year 3. If not, why not, and how are you hoping to change/improve the support system to reach this target?
• Focus and impact of organiser support: Based on the CEE Hub learning from year 2, it may be worth focusing on activities organisers find most difficult in campaigns. For instance, in previous learning sessions, volunteer retention measurement and volunteer management have been an area of concern.  Perhaps an interesting way to focus support and training is on tracking retention and testing approaches to retain newcomers. If this is done, it would be viable to measure if the support you are offering through training and guidelines is having an impact on campaign results in bringing in active newcomers.
• Clarity on the inclusion of Central Asian communities: What packages of support are including Central Asian communities? The proposal mentions microgrants. Is there a target for how much funding or communities you hope to support in these countries? Are you also reaching out to organisers in these communities to support them with campaign organising or any other form of capacity building?

• Support for other hubs: It would be interesting to know the outcomes of the meetings carried out with other Hub initiatives and if this will be the main form of support of other hubs or will there be different spaces/resource sharing. Particularly considering that hub initiatives are at different stages and few will be ready to access funding to pilot this year. Also, what care will be taken to define who is part of this support network, given that some drivers may not have the community buy-in to drive this process?
• Clarify governance outcomes: The outcomes require some clarity. The proposal states experimenting with a Membership model, the Theory of Change mentions including people in discussions and in the Steering Committee and the metrics document states that a new model will be “tested and finalised”. Can you clarify the outcome you are looking for and what process you would carry out for this?
• Youth work outcomes: Can you provide clarity on what impact you hope the youth work will have on community building in their geographies? For instance, are there any targets of how many new young people the Hub wants to be engaged in the network and what impact do you expect this work to have on their local affiliate/group or on Wikimedia projects?
• Clarity on overall metrics: There can be some integration of the metrics in the theory of change with the metrics in the Y3 plan metrics tab.
• Learning from staff hire and capacity building: It is stated that the learning around community support through hired staff will be documented in year 3, but it would be important to add some reflections in the plan of why this is not going to be continued in year 3 and what will happen to the work that this staff was doing, particularly for the staff that was developing ongoing organisational work and not consultancy products.

Please confirm that you would not be including a proposal for rapid fund (scenario 2), but that you will be working to prepare a timeline, process description, job description and budget to explain the CEE approach and requirements for the new funding programme that would be submitted for consideration by the Wikimedia Foundation.

As mentioned in our monthly sync, if it would be useful to hop on a call to discuss any points in this feedback we can arrange that as soon as possible.

The team looks forward to hearing from you. JStephenson (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)