Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Belgium Yearly grant 2024
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Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funds Committee on your proposal edit
Dear Wikimedia Belgium Team,
Thank you very much for your proposal, describing your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The NWE Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review.
- The committee is grateful to see a realistic and defined proposal. We are impressed with the way you manage to handle a complex, colorful program in a challenging language environment with very limited resources and time availability. We welcome your intention to expand in Wallonia and with federal GLAM institutions.
- The committee felt that your willingness to invest in diversifying volunteers and the board are good priorities to focus attention on.
- Your proposals for your quantitative metrics were found very strong and reflect your strength to attract newcomers in your activities, campaigns, contests and meetings.
- Furthermore, the committee also appreciated in your proposal the continued support for volunteers in their Wikipedia and Wikimedia activities (e.g. by providing them documentation, books, museum pass, and travel expenses).
While elaborating on your proposed plans, the committee members recommended for you to consider:
- In future applications, clarify briefly the practices you apply to include the community of volunteers in the planning and the implementation of your programs.
- Explore the Wikimedia Foundation's leadership development resource pack to identify fields of capacity building for the Board, so training can be intentionally built into the program next year or during this year.
- Develop a plan to improve diversity, equity and inclusion for WM BE.
It would be supportive of the Committee’s understanding of your plans if you’d be so kind as to elaborate on the following specific few questions:
- In two consecutive years, the committee provided the resources to hire an administrative person, which has not been successfully materialized. We are aware of the bottlenecks the small team is facing with recruiting, onboarding and supervising this potential person. We are therefore concerned with the sustainability of the Board and the organization in the sense that such workload might lead to burnout without further help, and due to the language complexity, may result in distortions in the balance between the three different communities the organization is aiming to serve, as well as how documentation for handover is planned to be organized if a Board member steps down. The Committee would like to ask WM BE to prioritize actions that improve the organizational sustainability in the first 6 months of 2024 (i.e. the recruitment of new board members, part-time staff and organizers), how would this affect your delivery timeline of other planned projects and activities? What solutions could help you break down the current barriers you are facing with recruitment of staff and Board members? E.g. would a bit more money, or assistance in recruitment and HR, or other forms of support be helpful?
- You state you want to be attracting female editors, organizers, staff and increase female leadership as a priority. What intentional actions will be taken to achieve this? How do you plan to include women in these different roles, and what specific actions or support will you be able to provide for these specific potential contributors to join WM BE activities (e.g. will child care be provided during their activities)?
- How do you intend to evaluate your programs' effectiveness or potentials for volunteer retention? What practices have been already implemented that will help your organization to retain newcomers?
In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by November 13th, 2023. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision. Thanks again for your work on the proposal and supporting our review.
On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee - ABruszik-WMF (talk) 06:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Feedback by the Board of Wikimedia Belgium edit
1/ The issue of recruitment and training remains complex. In the specific case of the freelance person, who is either more administrative or more open to the digital humanities, the identification and recruitment will be a matter of negotiation with the services sector and a gradual transfer of the services to be performed (drafting of newsletters, administrative tasks, logistics, organise and prepare activities, etc.). But engaging a freelance person will require even more coaching and monitoring time by the board (or chair) and will increase the administrative work (a freelance contract can be fulfilled with an invoice; hiring employees requires social administration, additional insurances, etc.).
About ensuring the administrative continuity, the non-profit (legal) regulation becomes more and more complex. We continue to document all (legal and administrative) procedures on the wmbe website, in order to more easily distribute and perform the handover of tasks.
2/ For women, we are planning to attract new volunteers through collaborations in the education, heritage, museums, collections and archives sectors. We might assume that women could feel less attracted to administrative tasks or board functions? With our limited capacity and resources, and due to the complexity of Belgian law, it is difficult to introduce and administer certain types of support, e.g. child care support, but we will consider other approaches like e.g. financial support for child care during activities.
3/ We want to attract more younger, and female board members, project managers and organiser volunteers, and to involve volunteers in the planning and the implementation of our programs.
Our Wikipedia contributors volunteers are mostly invisible, but our data analysts (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons) are a little more identifiable and often work in the GLAM sector. It's in these two categories of users that we'll have the greatest chance of attracting our future colleagues and volunteers.
Of course, there are various approaches, but ours will or should be digital, at the very least interactive via the Wikipedia online banner, and at most via the YouTube channel and the delivery of well-targeted professional videos.
If candidates come forward, the next challenge will be to inform, educate and retain volunteers. There are many ways of doing this, and it all comes down to the ability to manage a small group of individuals and share tasks. The answer to all the above questions lies in leadership, and this subject is mentioned in the committee's report.
A general answer can be given for all the positions to be filled. In our opinion, the quickest and most productive way is to go out and use every opportunity to attract candidates. We are thinking of inviting candidates via more Wikimeets, writing sessions, or other activities (GLAM, education, heritage). To train volunteers, we think about possibly collaborating to publish a new edition of “Schrijven voor Wikipedia” (Writing for Wikipedia) in collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland, and by distributing a new book “Handreiking erfgoed ontsluiten via Wikipedia” (Guide to unlocking heritage via Wikipedia) that is currently published by the Pajot-Zenne heritage organisation.
On behalf of the board of Wikimedia Belgium, Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Review of Proposed Public Policy Advocacy Activities edit
Dear WM Belgium team,
The policy and legal experts have reviewed WM Belgium's plans in this area, and the described activities were found not to fall under the categories of public policy advocacy at this point of time, for which reason, it is not necessary to dedicate reporting and financial efforts to this activity. Should your organization plan during the implementation of this grant a more direct involvement in advocating for or against a specific national law or national policy with a structured advocacy plan containing elements requiring budget, you will need to notify the Program Officer who will coordinate the evaluation process again with the Global Advocacy and Legal Team.
On behalf of the Global Advocacy and Legal Teams, ABruszik-WMF (talk) 18:11, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Round 1 2024 decision edit
Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!
The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to partially fund your proposal for 20,000.00 EUR for the implementation period of 1st January 2024 - 31st December 2024.
Comments regarding this decision:
The Committee and staff highly values WM Belgium’s contribution and services to 3 language communities in Belgium, and to activities in education, culture and heritage, and gender. We acknowledge your technical expertise and methodologies for WikiData and WikiBase that the movement highly benefits from. We would like to see it continued and thriving, and we hope our recommendation to benefit from a strategic organizational review can assist to improve your plans for long term operability and sustainability.
We thank you for your heroic efforts and continued delivery of impressive results in a very complex trilingual context!
Next steps:
- You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
- If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.
Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, –ABruszik-WMF (talk) 06:52, 29 November 2023 (UTC)