Grants talk:Project/Sudanese Content on Wikimedia 2021

Hello! Ola.mahadi, have you considered asking for a Rapid Grant instead? You would have to cut your budget ot $2000, but the process would require less effort both in request and reporting. --Papuass (talk) 16:37, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Reminder: Change status to proposed today to submit

Hello Ola.mahadi, today is the deadline for the 2020 Project Grants Round. If you would like your proposal to be considered for funding, the status= field of the Probox template will need to be changed from draft to proposed, per the instructions at the top of the application page. We have a strict deadline, so make sure to make this change by end of day today (February 20, 2020). With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposal Clinics

Thanks for posting your draft proposal for the Project Grants open call! I wanted to make sure you are aware that we are hosting proposal clinics for applicants to discuss, ask questions and get feedback about their proposals. Participation is optional. If you would like to attend, you can find the dates, times and videoconference links posted at this link. Let me know if you have any questions! Good luck finishing and submitting your proposal for the February 10 deadline!

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 14:12, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Reminder: Change status to proposed to submit

IMPORTANT: Please note that you must change your proposal status from "draft" to "proposed" by the submission deadline in order for your proposal to be reviewed in the current round. When your proposal has been successfully submitted, it will show up in the "Open proposals" list (it may take several minutes for the list to update after you submit it). Applications that are not completely filled out and correctly submitted by the deadline will not be reviewed. To submit your proposal, you must complete all fields of the application and then:

1. Click on "edit source"

2. Change "|status=DRAFT" to "|status=PROPOSED"

3. Click the "Publish changes" button.

Thank you,

--MCasoValdes (WMF) (talk) 02:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Dates need to be updated

Hello Ola.mahadi,

We are happy to mark this proposal eligible, provided that you update the dates listed in the project plan, which are currently in the past. We assume you have repurposed this proposal from a previous iteration. This is fine to do, but please make it clear when you intend to do the work using future dates. Please email us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org when you have made the revisions and we will mark your proposal as eligible for review. If we don't hear from you by February 28, 2021, we will need to mark your proposal withdrawn.

Also make sure that you have reviewed our COVID-19 guidelines. Proposals that include travel and/or offline events must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You must review and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you must be able to complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You must be able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You must include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project. If you have not already included this in your proposal, you have until February 28 to add it.

Also, as noted by Papuass above, if you can bring your budget down to $2,000 USD, you will be eligible for review in Rapid Grants, which is a much simpler process with easier requirements than Project Grants. You may have a better experience in that program with a project at this scale. You are welcome to stay in this process if you prefer, however. It is up to you to decide which you prefer.

Thank you! --Marti (WMF) (talk) 06:15, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2021 - Community Organizing proposal

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review in Round 1 2021 for Community Organizing projects. This decision is contingent upon compliance with our COVID-19 guidelines. Proposals that include travel and/or offline events must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You must review and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you must be able to complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You must be able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You must include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project. If you have not already included this in your proposal, you have until March 3 to add it.

The Community review period is now underway, from February 20-March 4. We encourage you to make sure that stakeholders, volunteers, and/or communities impacted by your proposed project are aware of your proposal and invite them to give feedback on your talkpage. This is a great way to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the people you plan to work with and it can help you improve your project.

• If you are applying for funds in a region where there is a Wikimedia Affiliate working, we encourage you to let them know about your project, too.
• If you _are_ a Wikimedia Affiliate applying for a Project Grant: A special reminder that our guidelines and criteria require you to announce your Project Grant requests on your official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by your group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced).

Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community review period. By March 4, make sure that your proposal has incorporated any revisions you want to make and complies with all of our guidelines. If you have not already done so, you can make use of our project planning resources to improve your proposal further, too.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 1 2020 will occur March 5 through March 20, 2021. We ask that you refrain from making any further changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are scoring the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, April 22, 2021. Sometimes we have to make some changes to the round schedule. If that happens, it will be reflected on the round schedule on the Project Grants start page.

We look forward to engaging with you in this Round!

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Mercedes Caso (platícame) 18:30, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

We look forward to hearing from you Thank you for your support Ola.mahadi (talk) 10:25, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WIki Love Africa Sudan

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.4
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.6
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	7.7
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.5
Additional comments from the Committee: this is one of the well-received projects with good experience and results in the wiki community The proposal obviously fit with our strategy. I am so excited to see the applicants enunciated their proposal clearly and it is practicable. A creaking gate hangs long, no matter who made this, I believe they completely understand what they are doing. It's important to have the right people participating in photography contests. The Wikimedia movement is in dire need of professional photographers and having a training that would also serve as a recruitment strategy fits neatly with the Wikimedia's strategic priority. This proposal may be more suitable for a rapid grant, since that program has less burdensome administrative requirements for a program of this scale. It would be good to make sure that the applicants have been introduced to all options among the WMF grant making programs. Wikimedia Sudan is a recently new affiliate, which has demonstrated a growing capacity to connect to movement-wide campaigns. This proposal is not different: it intends to benefit from the infra-structure that successful movement activities have put together (i.e., Wiki Loves Africa, 1 Lib 1 Ref) to catalyze a local community. What I miss from the proposal, and I suggest applicants work on, is a general view on how growing, sustaining and strengthening a community works, that is, a compass point that could eventually place your project in a strategic perspective. I am positive a strategy for Wikimedia Sudan in which this project is included can be built with the support of the WikiArabia community and dedicated officers from the movement. Wikimedia Sudan is a new emerging community and this grant will certainly help the group to hire new members and increase content on the Wiki projects. I would like to recommend to review the number of photographers and librarians to have smaller groups but with highly motivated people It would strengthen the proposal if the applicants clarify the impact on Wikipedia: as Wiki Loves Africa contest is photo contest, the impact on commons is clear but it's not clear how 100 articles can be edited using photos related to health and wellbeing (which is the theme of this year). To make this sustainable it will be nice to select motivated people based on a selection process in order keep them in the movement. The theme of Wiki Loves Africa for this year is Health and wellness and not Transportation as it's stated in the grant application. In the summary it's mentioned that Wikidata will be a target but it's not mentioned elsewhere. I found some difficulties doing the math and validating the figures for the budget, it will be nice to ask the participant to rewrite it and make sure that the figures are clear: e.g.: "Stickers and pen : 30 * 0.5$ = 35$" should it be 15$ ? The role of the librarians in this project is not very clear: are they students or librarians working with the 3 universities mentioned in the grant? how they will be selected? will they be in charge of the Wikipedia editing part? Will they be part of the Wiki Loves Africa theme or Wikipedia in general because editing 100 articles in relation of the Health and Wellbeing in Sudan maybe is not realistic. I'm unsure about the potential project outcomes, because the grantee doesn't describe their previous experience. There is no way to measure if the project is on the right path or needs other focus to meet the goals. The time frames are unclear. The applicants cut to the chase. The proposal does have realistic measures of success for evaluating impact even though I believe more qualitative indicators could be set. Wikimedia Sudan is a newly recognized affiliate, which is still in the process of establishing its successful record track. It will soon reach it! What I miss from the proposal as is remains a more detailed account of risks and opportunities for each event. To thoroughly work on risk assessment is a good practice to plan successful activities. I understand this might be the first Wikimedia grant application from the proponent, and I strongly recommend support is given on how to build an effective risk assessment analysis. Although it's not an innovative project, this project iterates on a proven solution and for a new community (the user group has been approved in June 2020) it will certainly have a high potential for impact. The KPIs are clear and realistic ( though I think they must make more clear that the 100 articles are not new articles but edited articles and I suggest also to reduce the number of the participants) and we should expect long term impact for this community. I see offline meeting in any point of time to do a prize ceremony. This budget is hard to read and seems unbalanced between the training phase and contest. scope can be accomplished in the proposed time (hope covid will not affect the realization). the budget is detailed, clear and reasonable. Olla Mahadi have skills and experience in organizing and I really believe in her possibility The budget seems reasonable. However, on other side of the budget, I did not see any preparation for COVID-19. And I do concern we did not see any introduction of background of the applicants on the "participants" section, especially when they likely do not really understand how to use Wikitext. I don't think the grantees have the necessary to implement the campaign in the targeted country Wikimedia Sudan has against all odds emerged and the willingness of this community to contribute to the movement should be embraced and supported. This plan should rely as much on the actual group that is organized around this proposal --and I see at least two editors with +500 edits are leading-- as on the movement ability to support emerging communities in areas in which we want and need our movement to grow. I strongly suggest that this proposal is directly supported by a regional officer and advised by affiliates in the region. Yes the scope can be accomplished in less than 12 months and the budget is realistic/efficient with some concerns regarding the food and drinks : total of 600$ sometimes it's mentioned for 40 people (which should be the number of photographers) and sometimes 100 people (bear in mind that the total of targeted people are 40 photographers and 30 librarians). Ola is an active and motivated Wikimedian from Sudan and she has the basic skills to deliver the program with the help of other members of the community. I see a good choice of communities to tell about this project. I don't see a WIkimedia notification (Wikipedia or any sister project). This is useful to reach other Wikipedians and local users groups. target community is clear. i am happy to see they did a good preparation and have already contacted Sudanese Photographers group. There is no community engagement. The grantee would need to announce it in the relevant community portal , talk pages or mailing list Communication was done on affiliate social media. There is no community endorsement. I wonder whether communication was sent out to communities organized around Wiki Loves Africa, WikiArabia, 1Lib1Ref, as I believe members of these communities would be eager to support this proposal. Yes the target community is clear and they have support from Sudanese active members and whenever they need help they used to ask the help of the large Arabic and African communities as well. This project fits well into Rapid Grants. There are a lot of problems to be resolved before support this grant request. The budget seems unclear and the activities are too general. It's worthwhile to funding this proposal. Although it does need some changes I believe it's getting closer to become a well-organized proposal. However, if the proposal is under executing right now, I think the committee may need more in-private discussions before we approve it. I'd not be recommending this proposal for funding for the following reasons. The grantees should consider a rapid grant to support the Wiki Loves Africa contest The contest is already running and entries would close in April 2021. Grantees should consider organizing the contest next year during the next edition and consider applying for a rapid grant then. Fully support this grant. Does the budget need to be increased to support participation beyond the events outlined in the application. I would like to suggest reviewing the number of people for the foods and drinks and then allocate the full funding. The main goal of the project which seeks to organize training to equip Librarians and Photographers and liaisons them on how to contribute their works to the movement is Laudable.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Friday, April 22, 2021.

Questions? Contact us.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:46, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Round 1 2021 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $10,000

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support training for new users in Wikipedia (Arabic and English), Wikidata, and Commons, with a focus on librarians and photographers. They appreciate the background, experience and dedication of the project coordinators will bring to building the local Wikimedian community.

NOTE: Funding of any offline activities (e.g. travel and in-person events) is contingent upon compliance with the Wikimedia Foundation's COVID-19 guidelines. We require that you complete the Risk Assessment Tool:

• 14 days before any travel and/or gathering event
• 24 hours before any travel and/or gathering event

Offline events may only proceed if the tool results continue to be green or yellow.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:47, 23 April 2021 (UTC)