Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/2023-2025 Art+Feminism WMF Grant Application

Review follow-up questions

Hi, @kiraface. Thanks for providing such a detailed application. Can you please answer the following questions by Monday October 31 2022, 5pm EDT, to facilitate the review of your application? Thank you!

• What is a "complete Board of Directors," from your perspective? Do you anticipate that you will have a full board by the end of 2023? If not, why not?
• What is the amount of line 6210, Bank, Paypal and Merchant Service Charges, and what is the WMF contribution? (Numbers are different.)
• Please provide more details about the following line budget items: 6550 Training and Professional Development / Consulting and 6720 Leadership and Staff Travel.
• From which budget line will microgrants for local A+F 10 year celebrations be allocated?

Emjackson42 (talk) 14:43, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kiraface, I have just learned that there is more time for responses based on our decision timeline! A response by Nov. 3rd would be helpful for the committee. If that's not possible, we can accept a response by Nov. 6th. Thank you. Emjackson42 (talk) 14:48, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Emjackson42, I apologize for the delay! I missed the Meta notifications and just became aware of this feedback via email from I_JethroBT_(WMF) with the note to respond by November 10. More soon! --Kiraface (talk) 12:02, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Review follow-up questions responses

Hi, @Emjackson42. Thanks again for your questions and for the time you’ve spent with our proposal. These responses have been generated collaboratively with the Art+Feminism leadership team. Please find our responses below:

What is a "complete Board of Directors," from your perspective? Do you anticipate that you will have a full board by the end of 2023? If not, why not?

When we say a complete board of directors we are referring to our process of board development. We currently have an interim board in place to help us remain in legal and financial compliance as required by US 510c3 law. As we've had to prioritize staffing (with a hiring process that dominated much of 2022), we recognize that Q4 of 2022 and much of 2023 will be onboarding those team members alongside us celebrating 10 years of Art+Feminism in Q1 2023.

Our plan is to establish three non-interim board members at the board annual meeting in January 2023 and spend 2023 in conversation and co-creation with those board members. Noting our other priorities, as a small staff our hope for 2023 is to begin to have documentation around clear expectations around the role of the board of directors and co-create processes and protocols around recruitment and onboarding for the board. We’re hopeful to be practicing the processes and protocols around recruitment and onboarding beginning at the 2024 annual board meeting in January 2024, and at the latest by January 2025.

What is the amount of line 6210, Bank, Paypal and Merchant Service Charges, and what is the WMF contribution? (Numbers are different.)

Thank you for highlighting that error. This budget was built from our 2022 budget. For 6210, we included a general 3% increase to help offset inflation that was reflected in the WMF column, but not the column of the overall budget. This has now been corrected.

Please provide more details about the following line budget items: 6550 Training and Professional Development / Consulting and 6720 Leadership and Staff Travel.

• 6550 - We recognize that there are times when we need outside expertise to do our best work. This includes engaging with language co-ops and language justice experts to provide translation and interpretation for our global community and specialized training like Anti-Racist Hiring Training. Specifically speaking to other points in the narrative, it’s this budget line where we will support things like the Communications consultant, accessibility training, and focus group facilitation.
• 6720 - This is a budget line we’ve held for several years that we hope to be able to fully realize (and even expand!) going forward as members of our team travel to more in-person convenings and wiki conferences and summits related to our mission and themes of interest

From which budget line will microgrants for local A+F 10 year celebrations be allocated?

These funds will come out of line 6620.

Again, thank you for your questions and your time in reviewing our proposal. We look forward to hearing more and please let us know if you have further questions. –Kiraface (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 381,685 USD

@Kiraface: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 381,685 USD with a multiyear grant term of three years starting 1 January 2023 and ending 31 December 2025.

The committee is pleased to support and sustain Art+Feminism’s mission to reshape the internet to adequately represent traditions of art-making and ultimately to correct injustices in how marginalized communities have been represented and welcomed into opportunities to document their own histories and experiences. The committee noted several areas of strength in this proposal:

• The evaluation plan for your work is thorough and covers important areas of capacity development, such as how you will be supporting your regional ambassadors, how event organizers feel supported through Art+Feminism’s tools and resources, as well as including more routine metrics around your annual campaign. Overall, we expect this evaluation will provide a clearer picture over what is working well and possible improvements in your regional ambassador programs, organizational practices, and specific approach for supporting event organizers.
• We appreciate your internal-facing work in building an organizational culture to unlearn and remove practices and systems that promote oppression. We see this work supported by other priorities you have set, such as supporting greater accessibility to your campaign across language communities, and supporting better translation and interpretation services to your meetings.
• It is also very helpful to see a high level of transparency and clarity in your organizational structure. Resources such as the organizational chart provided in this application serve as good examples to summarize roles & responsibilities reporting structures that can be useful for other affiliates to consider using.
• Finally, we are glad to see your connections and regular communications with other affiliates aligned with your mission in the region such as AfroCROWD and Whose Knowledge as well in other regions, such as Wikimedia Argentina.

In addition the committee wanted to offer some feedback and suggestions for improvement over the funding period and for your next proposal:

• First, there were two areas of the budget where the committee requested more clarity:
  • Training and Professional Development / Consulting ($45k): What kind of professional development and consulting services will Art+Feminism be focusing on in the next year?
  • Leadership and Staff Travel ($4k): Could you provide some detail over the general travel needs this budget is supporting?

• Second, the committee would like to see Art+Feminism use some of the multiyear period to explore other opportunities to support its funding needs and growth. The committee appreciates Art+Feminism’s current and past work to support its programmatic and staffing needs through other revenue sources, but it may be challenging to substantially grow your organizational budget in future years through the General Support Fund. If more capacity is needed to pursue these opportunities, this may be able to be supported in a future request.
• Finally, the committee recommends using your learning from the focus groups, learning clinics, and learning reports to consider more specific goals around global reach, equity, and accessibility (or other learning questions) in your second and third years. We believe collecting this information from relevant communities or internal staff is an important step to build further evaluation around these needs.

The committee looks forward to Art+Feminism’s corrective work over the next three years to address gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts!

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 19 November 2022 (UTC)