Grants talk:Simple/Applications/GLAM Macedonia/2019

Initial questions about your grant application

Hello, Zana:

Thank you for this detailed and well-formed application. We appreciate the consistently high quality standards you maintain in your applications and reports. We have not reviewed your programs in depth yet, but we are trying to make sure that we have all the information necessary for review. We have a few questions for you:

1. ​In the recommendation for your 2018 grant the committee has stated, "The Wikipedian in Residence model adopted by this group may not be sustainable. It is unclear what impact these residencies will have at the institution that will extend beyond the period of residency. These residencies should not be perpetually funded by Wikimedia Foundation." We understand that you felt this work was a successful way to strengthen partnerships with GLAM institutions, and that you have budgeted for two residencies at two other institutions​ in 2019​. Please share with us some specific information about what the impact of this work has been at the institutions since the residents left, and how the institutions have continued with or invested in their work on Wikimedia as a result.
2. From the recommendation by the committee for your 2018 grant, "We are concerned with activities that seem to overlap with the work that the other active User Group in Macedonia is doing, without adequate coordination between the two groups. Before the next application cycle (for 2019 funding), both groups will need to agree on the scopes of their funded activities, as a condition for their eligibility for the Annual Plan Grants process." Please report what progress has been made if any, to meet this condition for eligibility.
3. Next, we will not be considering any staffing changes this year and this includes adding honoraria. We realize you may need to adjust your plan and goals accordingly, if you cannot complete the work planned without honoraria. We ask you to please make these revisions before 9 November, so that we can continue with review. If you need more time with this, please let us know.
4. Would you please make clear what activities are involved in your community program this year? We did not yet get a good understanding of this from reading your proposal, although we appreciate the details provided about your past work. Thank you!

Would you kindly respond to these questions before 9 November so that we can proceed with review? If for any reason you don't think you can meet this deadline, please let us know and we will find a mutually agreed upon date by which you can commit to responding.

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Winifred, our answers to the questions:

1. People who served as Wikipedian in Residence are highly trained and professionally-mannered with the GLAM employees in the Institution they are in. After their residency finish, we remain in excellent collaboration with the institutions. This is one of the main causes why we don’t have to send WiR in the same institution over and over again. As an example of excellent collaboration after the WiR duty is over, I can list several activities we had with the GLAM institutions, such as: organizing Open panel discussion in the City Library in Skopje in January as a part of celebrate Wikipedia birthday (which is mentioned in the Community part in the grant request); collaboration which continues after WiR’s duty with the State Archives and the Institute of National History i.e. getting materials from them to check existing articles or to create new ones, and also organizing Wiki Tour throughout the institution. We have to send WiR in order to establish connections, because of the scope of Institution’s activities having in mind their semi-closed-to-the-public policy.
2. About collaboration with the other group, I can tell that GLAM Macedonia is careful not to interfere with the main activities of the other group: wiki expeditions and photo and editing contests. In May this year, me and Toni Ristovski, had a meeting in order to talk about the activities of the two groups. The meeting was smooth, my opinion was that we had mutual understanding. However, this October, when we noticed that they are continuing with the education program by engaging with new school, and that they add to their budget costs for education and also for GLAM conference, I sent Toni message asking why they are doing this. The answer was that on our meeting we didn’t agree on anything, and that he doesn’t like this conversation with me. I am not sure what to say, but it looks like we don't have any progress.
3. We didn’t understand that honoraria is part of stuffing changes, and we will remove them from the budget. Of course we are happy to get back Wiki conference for teachers, as those events are successful, but we will need more time to make changes in the budget lines, we will do it till 14 November.
4. The main activities of our community program is to engage as more volunteers as we can, and also to work with our members. At the moment we are having 88 members, according to signed membership list. In order to engage more volunteers, we had several events, mentioned in the grant request, such as: open panel discussion, workshop with NGO’s etc., and we would continue them in 2019: organizing workshops with NGOs, organizing public open events, etc.

Regards, - Zana (talk) 12:28, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses, Zana. Now I've had a chance to read this plan in more depth, and I have some more questions and requests for revisions. Can you please make your objectives for each program specific and measurable? I've added some specific questions below to help you think this through.

The objectives of the GLAM program are:

1. to deepen of GLAM collaboration in Macedonia -- How will you know if this is happening?
2. to educate the GLAM employees on Wikimedia projects, educate them to add references into articles, and create new articles or improve the existing ones; -- How many GLAM employees? How many articles?
3. implementation of WIkimedia projects within WiR work; -- What does this mean?
4. establishing connections and starting cooperation with new GLAM institutions; -- What type of collaboration? How many institutions?
5. improving the cooperation which already exists; -- What does this mean? How will you know if this is happening?
6. organize special events in collaboration with GLAM institutions, such as edit-a-thons; workshops and Wikipedian tours, which will bring Wikipedians on-site to work with staff on # content creation and improvement; -- What new content? How many articles or items?
7. enriching Wikipedia with new content. -- What new content? How many articles or items?

Objectives of the education program are:

1. establish new Wiki Clubs or Wiki sections; -- Why is this important? How many clubs and sections?
2. recruit new editors and contributors; -- When is a new editor considered "recruited"? How many new editors will you recruit?
3. add or improve the content of the existing Wikimedia projects in Macedonian. -- What content? How many articles or items?
4. spread the word about Wikipedia among the students -- Why is this important? How will you know if this is happening?
5. build connections between experienced and new participants; -- Why is this important? How will you know if this is happening?

Objectives of the community program are:

1. To increase the number of involved volunteers; -- Why is this important? How will you know if this is happening?
2. Increase visibility of the user group in society, by followers on social media (Facebook), number of blog posts and visits to them, and number of media and press mentions. -- Why is this important?

General questions about your programs:

1. In terms of your education program specifically, are you mainly targeting new contributors, more content, or better quality content?
2. I read your answer to Question #4 about your community program above, but we will need a more specific list of activities you plan to do as part of this program. Also your objectives focus solely on contributors, yet when you describe your achievements from last year you focus on content. It will be important to understand how you think these activities will lead to an increase in the number of volunteers, since that is your goal.
3. Can you be more specific about what you hope to achieve through the conference for teachers, now that you are planning on adding this back to your plan? Also, can you please update your program plan to show this change?
4. What will be the impact to your program in the current year if the Wikipedians in residence aren't funded this year. Would you still be able to continue cultivating partnerships with existing GLAM partners, without adding new ones?

If possible, please include answers and revisions by Friday 16 November so we can proceed with review.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 15:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The answers about the objectives of the GLAM program:

1. The collaboration with GLAM institutions is one of the key factors for expanding the existing project and Wikipedia content (articles, media files). So far this aspect of the work has been more than successful and for the next year our plan is to sent WiRs with at least 2 institutions, while expanding to scope of collaboration with the GLAM institutions that have signed an agreement for collaboration and have accepted WiR. The expanding of the scope of collaboration is planned to be measured by having at least 10 events with the GLAM partners with ones who worked with GLAM Macedonia in the previous years and with the new ones.
2. The plan is to train at least 10 employees from institutions where WiR will been sent. The GLAM employees are expected to edit at least 50 articles.
3. The idea and the one of the goals of the WiR is not only to spread the word about Wikipedia among the GLAM institutions, but also to actively implemented one of the Wikimedia’s projects in the institution where he/she is sent, which we have in the agreement signed with the person who served as a WiR. Moreover, the idea is to have at least Wikipedia or Commons used as a tool. (Last year Wikipedia and Commons were used as an exemplar and good tool for digitizing library’s content and WiR sends material for new articles to GLAM Macedonia members, and Wiki Clubs members.)
4. For the next year the goal is to establish new collaboration and agreement for collaboration with 2 new GLAM institutions, and we already signed an agreement to send WiR in 2019 with the new GLAM institution, Archaeological Museum of the Republic of Macedonia. The scope of collaboration is based on receiving from the Institution (depends on the type of the institution) books, articles, scanned materials, pictures, audio files and ethnographic and historical documents with the main purpose of enriching the content (articles and images) on Wikipedia. Also, GLAM partners allow us to have Wiki Tours in their institutions, and to organize workshops and other events.
5. The expectations and the plan of ours are that there will be at least 10 organized events with the institutions that GLAM Macedonia have signed an agreement for collaboration: Wiki Tours, workshops, and other events open for public. That will prove the continuity of the collaboration and unconditional support by the Institution for expanding the content (articles and media files) on the Macedonian Wikipedia, and to open the doors for other events.
6. We continue to work with the GLAM partners after WiR’s duty is over and collaborate with them in many aspects. GLAM partners are helping us with the materials and advice in terms of checking the existing articles or creating new ones on the particular subject. We work with them in order to make mk.wiki a place where the accurate information can be read. The last two years we worked mainly on the topic of history, and we still have a lot of work to do. Expected number of articles in 2019 as a result of GLAM cooperation is 1000.
7. Maybe this line looks similar as the previous one, but the content we mean here are articles on Wikipedia, items on Wikidata and files on Commons, altogether in 2019 we expect to have 1000 of them, some of them edited by GLAM employees, and much more of them by GLAM Macedonia members and Wiki Clubs members.

Answers about the objectives of the education program:

1. GLAM Macedonia runs four Wiki Clubs in the Republic of Macedonia, where we educate mostly underage students to edit Wikipedia, but also several adults were trained as well. The students engaged in the Wiki Clubs are coming from more than 20 schools, who edited more than 4000 articles in the last two years, of which around 2940 articles are edited in 2018. This is the link from outreach dashboard as a proof of everyday activities of Wiki Clubs members. The importance of Wiki Clubs is obviously high, as the students contribute with a large number of quality articles. We expect to have at least 2 new Wiki Clubs in the course of the year 2019, to engage at least students from additional 5 schools, and we expect them to edit at least 3000 articles in the year of 2019.
2. Editors and contributors mentioned in this state are students we work with in our education program. Maybe the word “recruited” is not appropriate, maybe “to engage” is the best description. However, the recruited editor is one who not only is trained, but who continue to contribute on Wikipedia throughout the year. In 2019 we expect to trained 100 new editors, and to recruit at least 50 of them.
3. The content of Wikimedia projects are articles on Wikipedia, files uploaded on Commons, and labels and items on Wikidata. At the time, we work with those Wikimedia projects only. We expect to have at least 4100 content pages in 2019, of which 3000 from education program.
4. The students are important part of our education program. We work with underage students coming from more than 20 schools in the Republic of Macedonia. In the Wiki Clubs we train more students, and not all of them continue to edit Wikipedia. The important part is that all trained students spread the word about Wikipedia among their classmates and friends, and we know this is happening, because the interest of the new ones to join the training and to became the Wiki Clubs members is increasing. We expect that the interest and the growth will continue in 2019. Also, by organizing events and Wiki Tours for students, and with media interviews about our events, the word about Wikipedia is spreading.
5. To built connection between experienced and new participants is very important, as the experienced editors encourage the newcomers to engage themselves more in editing Wikipedia. Usually when we work with group of only new participants, they are not motivated enough. It happens all the time. When the new participants work in the same group with the experienced ones, they are more motivated to edit Wikipedia, as they are in the contest between themselves of who will create more articles or who will create better quality articles. We know that this is happening because we have chance to observe them in the period of Wiki Camp.

Answers about the objectives of the community program:

1. The volunteers are highly appreciated and respected asset of any NGO, and particular in the Wikimedia organization. As we don’t have paid stuff, we work solely with volunteers, or to say in different way - we are all volunteers: coordinators, people who help with schools, students, institutions, people who help to maintain the blog, Facebook page, and of course all students, participants on our events, board members and the President of GLAM Macedonia. We will know that the number of involved volunteers increases if more of them involved themselves to help with the tasks than the number of volunteers we have now.
2. Many people in Macedonia, and among them intellectuals, have no idea of the nature of Wikipedia and how it works, nor GLAM Macedonia’s goals for the matter of fact. On the other side, there are people who think that Wikipedia’s editors are paid, and they have misled notions of the project itself. One example: this year we had 7 months negotiations with the Ministry of Education, in order to have them help with our education program. We were asked to make admins on mk.wiki several employees of Ministry, and when we explain that it is impossible, and we explain the process of getting status administrator, we were rejected for Ministry's support. Therefore, our idea is to inform the people, all of them, not just new volunteers or future collaborators, about that what Wikipedia is, what GLAM Macedonia is, what volunteerism is and what the free knowledge stands for. GLAM Macedonia members and friends were involved in more than 10 media and press interviews or mentions, including appearance on National TV. Link of video about Wiki Clubs and Wiki Camp, we are proud of.

Answers about the general questions:

1. In our education program we welcome all who want to contribute in Wikipedia in any way: with more content (articles, files), or with better quality content. We want to have and also to train new contributors. Moreover, we want to have contributors who will edit Wikipedia constantly. Speaking of this, we know that we have active students editors - around 60 of them yearly. We are proud that we have editors who were trained from the beginning of the Wiki Clubs, and who are still active, as User:Ina pet, User:Velichovskas, user:Jtasevski123, user:Damjan Dojcinovski, and many others. There are users who were active in the first year and then stopped contributing, and there are users who contributed with one to five edits and stopped, and of course the students who passed the training and never engaged themselves actively. About the content, we encourage them all the time to create better quality content, of course, and we have a lot of articles with high quality, such as: Сергеј Трифуновиќ, Јенс Столтенберг, Гранада, Златен пресек, Билијард, Мартинус Бејеринк, and many more.
2. Activities in this program are mainly connected with the collaboration with the existing NGOs in the Republic of Macedonia. Many of them already have a huge number of members and volunteers who are happy to learn on how to edit Wikipedia, or to collaborate in the events about Wikipedia which we organize. Some of their volunteers become GLAM Macedonia members and started to help in our work. That is why those activities can lead to an increase in the number of volunteers. Also, we have a duty to engage the GLAM Macedonia members, as many of them become more active after we organize meetings and events with them.
3. Conferences for teachers are valuable for us as we get in touch with the teachers who are the ones in touch with a lot of students. Since Wikipedia belongs to education, we educate teachers on the various ways of using Wikipedia in the classroom. We expect to have at least 150 trained teachers about Wikipedia in 2019, and also to involve at least 20 of them to start a Wiki Club or to engage students in the existing and active Wiki Clubs.
4. The Wikipedian in Residence while on duty, has to work part-time, every day, in order to achieve the results we expect from them which are included in the agreement signed between person who served as WiR and GLAM Macedonia as organization. We do not need to send Wikipedian in Residence in the GLAM institutions where we already have a good collaboration because of the WiRs who left a good impression to the GLAM employees and the managers. Even in the institutions where the management was replaced with new persons, the good contacts remained. But, we have note that the collaboration after the WiR’s duty is not on daily basis, because the volunteers who continue to serve as liaison between Wikipedians and the GLAM partner, are not able to do it every day, but occasionally and as needed.

We already signed a new agreement to send a WiR in 2019 with the Archaeological Museum of the Republic of Macedonia, and we are in negotiations with two new institutions, in order to realize the cooperation with at least one of them in 2019. The impact of not sending WiR in 2019 at least in the Archaeological Museum with which we already signed an agreement, and in the institutions we are already in negotiations, is that we will leave an impression of frivolity and not serious organization. Much more, the result we expect of GLAM program (1000 content pages, 10 new trained GLAM employees, 10 events in collaboration with GLAM partners, etc.) will not be achieved in 2019.

We will also add numbers in the objectives lines in the application form. Regards, -Violetova (talk) 20:21, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed responses! I am sorry if I did not explain myself clearly. I meant that your objectives should answer each of the questions I listed, not that you should answer those questions on the discussion page. So yes, please do revise your objectives so that these questions are addressed in the objectives themselves, and so they include concrete targets.

About the WiRs, it's not a good idea to sign an agreement that depends on funding that you don't yet have, and it's regrettable that you're now in that position. We recommend you don't do so in the future, especially without consulting with us first (if this depends on WMF funding). You shouldn't assume funding is guaranteed unless you have a good reason for assuming this, because this does put you in a bad position with your partners if the funding doesn't come through.

Thank you, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 21:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Notice about this grant request

Preamble: The following statement was created in collaboration with the WMF staff responsible for the annual plan grants and addresses both affiliates in Macedonia. Therefore it will show up on both grant application talk pages.

Dear Shared Knowledge and GLAM Macedonia colleagues,

As we have discussed with both groups, the Wikimedia Foundation is not willing to continue to fund two groups in Macedonia with overlapping scopes, who are choosing to work separately and maintain two distinct organizations (with associated overhead costs) due to unresolved personal conflicts among the group leaders. This is not an efficient use of movement resources, and raises concerns with respect to working with overlapping partners and constituents, now and in the future. We acknowledge that while it is not within our scope as funders to make a decision about how these two groups choose to work together or define their scopes, it is our duty to consider the potential impact of the initiatives we fund. Funding initiatives that are not coordinated, or that seem to work at cross purposes rather than hand in hand, does not constitute a good precedent for meaningful impact. Thus we find ourselves in a place where we are required to make a decision about how to resource both groups in the coming year.

In past interactions and as a condition for eligibility for future grants, the Simple APG committee has required that both groups work together to come to a clear agreement about their scopes. During the course of 2018, that has not happened.

Therefore, we are moving forward with the following decision, which we realize is imperfect in many ways. We know this will have serious impact on both groups and your abilities to operate and do your work. We very much regret this, as we admire the many accomplishments of both groups over the past several years. We are offering two options for moving forward. Both groups are required to agree on which of the following options to go forward with.

OPTION 1: We will not fund GLAM or education activities for either group in 2019, nor WikiCamps for either group. Accordingly, we will ask both groups to make a 50% reduction in their overhead expenses, including staff. Groups will also be permitted to make further reductions in programs if these are impacted by reduced overhead costs, but will not be permitted to add additional program expenses.

OPTION 2: If both groups agree to accept and arrange mediation, we can instead allow both groups to withdraw their applications and reapply at such time as they have found a mutually agreed upon solution (an application submitted by January 1st will enable a grant to start on February 1st if the grant is approved). This solution must also be acceptable to the Simple APG Committee and APG staff, if either group hopes to secure funding. Both groups will be permitted to use their contingency funds to continue their operating expenses, until those run out. Neither group will be eligible for other types of WMF grants.

Both groups must notify us how you would like to proceed by noon (12:00 UTC) on 3 December, or we will proceed to reject both grants on 4 December.

Best regards, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 10:38, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Philip Kopetzky, thank you for this announcement. The Board of GLAM Macedonia voted to choose Option 2. Regards, - Zana (talk) 10:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Zana, personally I'm very happy the board chose that option. :-) Best, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 14:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Decision

Dear colleagues,

We understand that you would not like to continue mediation, and instead would like to choose the first option we offered you, which is a significantly reduced grant. We recommend approving this grant, so that you may continue with your community-focused activities during the remainder of 2019.

We are disappointed with this outcome, and we realize you also must be disappointed.

If this conflict continues with no resolution, we recommend that neither group be eligible for an Annual Plan Grant in 2020. A resolution would consist of a mutual agreement between the two organizations that clearly defines their scopes, and a cooperative working relationship.

Sincerely,

Simple APG Committee

As communicated by Email, WMF supports the committee's decision and would like to move forward by offering you a reduced grant of 1,526 Euro (includes 10% contingency of 138 Euro), which excludes GLAM and Education activities, reduced your overhead expenses by half. Your grant term will be 1 March - 31 December 2019. In line with the committee's recommendation, we will not consider either group eligible for funding in 2020 unless you can reach a mutual agreement about your scopes before the application deadline for your 2020 grant. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:29, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Remaining funds

Noting here that the underspend of 136 EUR was deducted from the payment of GLAM Macedonia's portion of the 2020 Simple Annual Plan Grant. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 19:14, 4 February 2020 (UTC)