Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Shared Knowledge/2019

Questions on initial review

Hello, Shared Knowledge colleagues! Thank you for providing this detailed and thoughtful plan and budget. We have a few questions about your application. We haven't yet done a thorough review of your programs, but we are checking to make sure your application includes all of the information we need for review.

1. 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." Can you please report what progress has been made if any, to meet this condition for eligibility.
2. From the recommendation by the committee for your 2018 grant, "This is a large amount of money (and staff) invested in a small contributor community, a small number of volunteers, and in a small geographic area. Despite years of investment and sustained efforts on the part of group members, it has been a challenge to extend activity beyond a small group of prolific core volunteers, and increase the numbers of new editors involved in their work. It is good to see this team’s activities resulting in more content in the areas they are targeting, but it is still being generated by a relatively small number of people." Would you please let us know what progress has been made in this area of involving more volunteers in organizing your work, and what your strategy is for continuing this in 2019?
3. Would you please provide some explanation for how your "Community" and "Partnerships" programs fit together as programs? While detailed descriptions for each activity area are included, these programs lack program-level goals or explanations. This makes it more difficult to understand the strategy behind your work, especially in the community program which reads as a long list of distinct activities.
4. Please clarify what the "Fund for Wiki translate" included in your budget is. Are you planning to pay the participants?

Please respond by 9 November if you are able, so we can continue with review. If you are not able to respond by this date, please let us know and we can agree on a date by when you can respond together.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:10, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello Winifred and thank you for your questions. The answers sorted in a corresponding order are in turn:

1. We have always been open for discussion and attempted to discuss the issue of our future relations with Snezhana by initiating an informal meeting at which our board member Toni met with her earlier this year. They reportedly discussed about the two organisations in general but did not come to a conclusion regarding any overlap in the scope. The echoed concern by the committee last year is a bit overexaggerated, as both organisations differ in their target groups and final outcomes even when working on similar programmes. Considering the differences and our past experiences, we have concluded that there is no favourable environment for WiR positions in the country and little value added from engaging people to translate articles on general topics, thereby ceasing the WiR positions notwithstanding the memoranda of collaboration that we have signed with some GLAM institutions. Instead, we decided to focus more on working with the community on the Macedonian Wikipedia, nurture our existing partnerships and extend new with specialist groups or organisations, and generate research-based local content that has not been previously available on any Wikimedia project. This way of working has mostly paid off this year and, in few occasions, non-affiliated community members and our external partners were those who initiated activities.
2. The expansion of the pool of volunteers being involved in our activities is perhaps the area that has seen the largest improvement this year. To some degree, this is a result of the changed direction in initiating activities, but it has mostly come up from the endeavours by our employees in communicating with the community and external volunteer groups. In a brief summary, we have got four new participants in the expeditionary projects with two coming from last year's Wikicamp, and one from each of the active community of editors and past Wiki loves contests; one new coordinator in the educational programme coming from the active community of editors that helped expand the programme in another city; one new organiser of the Wikiindustry project coming from the active community of editors; one new lecturer in the outreach events coming from the educational programme; and one volunteer coming from the active community of editors who helped on improving the media coverage of our activities. Note that these people have taken roles in organising things but have not yet been considered for a seat in the board.
3. The interconnectedness between the Community and Partnerships programmes can be explained through multiple channels, where the quality outcome of the former is a function of the latter. Namely, partnerships provide access to materials that are distributed among the community to generate content (e.g. works acquired from our partners support the expeditionary projects, the editing challenges and the Wiki loves contests); partnerships help in enlarging the community by educating their staff (e.g. the GLAM training at the National and University Library engaged library staff and visitors); partnerships discover underrepresented topics for filling content gaps through community events (e.g. the photographic collaborations identify underrepresented country-related topics); and partnerships also help in providing space and logistics for community events (e.g. the Gender Gap edit-a-thon and the lectures at the American Corner Skopje were logistically aided by the Swedish Embassy in Macedonia and American Corner, respectively).
4. The budget for the Wikitranslate project is intended to cover for transport, meals, promotional materials and other incidental expenses. Participation in the project, like in all other projects included in our annual plan, is on a voluntary basis.

Please feel free to request further clarifications if needed. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 23:24, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Kiril! In your reply you wrote that They reportedly discussed about the two organisations in general but did not come to a conclusion regarding any overlap in the scope. The echoed concern by the committee last year is a bit overexaggerated, as both organisations differ in their target groups and final outcomes even when working on similar programmes. - if there's no agreement, how can you be sure that this is the case? It's problematic to spend funds on the same infastructure twice, wouldn't you agree? How can both organisations make sure that this won't happen in the future? Philip Kopetzky (talk) 14:11, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Philip and thank you for your comment. I agree that it is problematic to spend funds on the same infrastructure twice but we are not those who make the decision about it and we therefore cannot claim any responsibility. Our annual plan for the upcoming year mostly includes well established programmes that have been run for years and have important place in our ecosystem. The activities that proved to be incompatible with the environment and unsuccessful have been removed and replaced with others, while strong push for the expansion of our educational programme and inclusion of some GLAM activities was made by a non-affiliated community member and a strategically important external partner. Nevertheless, these activities differ enough in scope and their targets from the activities of the other organisation, which can be easily seen from the grant applications (especially the budgets) of the both organisations. Finally, if there is any indication of a clear overlap of activities that may pose problems in the future, this will appear in both grant applications before the review process so that the reviewers could question it before approval. Normally, this is something that we always take care about when planning our future activities because everyone in our organisation is aware about the review process and no-one is willing to waste time on something with little argumentation in support of its inclusion. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:21, 12 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) 10:37, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

@Philip Kopetzky: We are glad to inform that our Board decided to chose second option, same as our colleagues from GLAM Macedonia. --Ehrlich91 (talk) 16:07, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ehrlich91! Happy to hear that, we will be in touch with you soon :-) Best, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 10:13, 3 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 16,899 EUR (includes 1,536 Euro contingency), which excludes GLAM and Education activities, reduced your overhead expenses (including staff) 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 20:28, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Final report and unspent funds

Hello, we finished our final report for our grant for period 01.03.-31.12.2020 per requested deadline, along with our financial reports and metrics. Could you please advise us for further steps regarding unspent funds from our grant, along with unspent contingency fees from 2019. Thank you --Ehrlich91 (talk) 20:09, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Returning unspent funds

Hello Ehrlich91, thank you for reaching out to us regarding your unspent funds. At this time we would like to ask that you return the unspent funds to the WMF. You can find instructions on how to return funds here. Please let us know if you have any questions. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 19 February 2020 (UTC)