Grants talk:Project/Wikimedia UG Nigeria /Wikipedian in Residence/Final

Feedback and questions about your Final Report

Dear Olaniyan Olushola,

Thank you for submitting this Final Report.

In reading it, I understand that your project faced major challenges and that you were unable to achieve the goals you hoped to achieve. I am so sorry to hear that the photos you uploaded in the first half of the project were deleted. I am sure this was very demoralizing. More concerning though, is that the project was already very far behind schedule at the point of the Midpoint Report, and it appears that nothing further has been achieved since then. Even if the photos are recovered through your OTRS report, the outputs and outcomes from this project, both in terms of content creation and in terms of partnership development, are a small fraction of what you had planned. In light of the fact that the staff seem to have ultimately been unwilling to participate in making contributions to the Wikimedia websites during your project, it seems even more unlikely that they will make further contributions in the wake of it.

I understand that you realized at some point that this was the case, and that you were only likely to get more content uploads if you/your team did the digitization work. Let's talk about this some more in person so we can make sure I understand the challenges you faced.

It is not unusual for projects to face some degree of failure. Things can go very differently than we planned, for a wide variety of reasons. Of course, this is okay, but when it happens, we ask that our grantees work to make their Report a thorough accounting of what went wrong. Given the exceptional degree to which this project was not able to achieve its targets, I would like to try to work with you to document what you learned from managing this project, so that perhaps other future grant applicants can learn from your experience and avoid this situation. In light of this, I'm hoping we can set up a call to speak with each other live about your report. We can work together to fill in a bit more detail so that your report might be a more supportive reflection tool for you, your team and me as your Program Officer, and a richer source of learning for others who read it.

I will reach out to you by email to ask about scheduling a call. Before we meet, I'd like to request a few revisions to your report:

• Your summary section should provide a brief account of what you accomplished through this project. At present, your summary sets up the context for your project, but doesn't describe the project itself. Think of your summary as a very brief synopsis of the report as a whole. Some readers may only read the summary, so especially, it should tell the reader the things you are most proud of achieving through your project. Can you please revise your summary according to these instructions?
• In your targets table, you wrote "not achieved" for the second and third rows of the table. In the explanation column, can you please summarize what happened to prevent your project from going as planned?
• In your "Methods and Activities" section, I'd like you to create a comprehensive list of all activities that occurred over the course of the project. Please treat this like a log, with specific dates, if possible, and any other specific details you can provide. This is to help me better understand the sequence of events and what happened. For example, instead of saying "Working with other Wikimedians in writing contests for the use of the uploaded images," please list the specific activities/meetings/other forms of outreach that were part of the project.

When we speak, I'd especially like to talk further about this line in your report:

"Though the project failed because we didn't achieve our intended plans. However, our initial plan to train staff members of the organization and upload of contents by the staff members and our team could have achieved a major success but the program officer for the project advised that we allow the staff members to upload the photos themselves. This resulted in a set back as staff members were not readily available to do it. It just appears that they were not ready to spend their staff time on the project. Although, we uploaded 100 images before we were advised to allow them do it themselves."

In reading the email that you copied into your report, it sounds like there was initially an understanding that training staff would be a big part of your work, which implies that the staff would be using the skills from the training to contribute to the project. I'm interested to hear more about what happened next.

I appreciate the recommendations that you included in the report. I'd like to hear more from you about how you think the partnership could have been set up to make things go more smoothly. The idea of an MOU makes sense. I'm curious about when and how you would have gone about getting an MOU set up, if you could do it all over again.

Finally, we need you to submit receipts to accompany the handwritten expense list you submitted via email on November 11, 2018:

• For your own compensation, please submit an itemized list of hour hours and hourly wage, with total amount received. Please provide a weekly summary overview of activities. If you can't remember weekly, a general monthly summary is fine.
• If compensation went to others, please submit a similar sort of written acknowledgement from them, in a similar format as above, acknowledging their receipt of payment, along with their hours and hourly wage.
• Please provide receipts for the food and refreshments. If you don't have them, then create a separate page for food receipts, with an itemized list with any information you can remember about the vendor and the event (just looking for a sentence or two).
• Ideally, we'd like receipts for the phone calls (phone bill or receipt for phone card) and for transport, as well. If you don't have receipts from actual vendors, please provide any information you can for what each item was spent for.

Thank you, Shola!

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Report accepted

Olaniyan Olushola,

This report is accepted. Thank you for all of your work on this project, and for your responses to my requests on your Final Report and expense report. Woubzi updated me on the meeting she recently had with you, so thanks for that feedback as well.

In regard to your underspend, it be deducted from your next Rapid grant that is approved for funding. Alternatively, you can return the funds to WMF. The latter is preferred/cleaner for the book if your next grant will be paid to different bank account. Please email me and copy grantsadmin at wikimedia dot org with your decision in regard to the underspend.

Kind regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Underspend

Please keep the small underspend. Returning it would result in high bank wire fees, and it's unlikely we can transfer the funds to a future grant given account changes associated with your newly incorporated non-profit organization. We trust you can find a way to make use of the small underspend that will benefit the Wikimedia movement.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC)