Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia South Africa/2019

Extension until 6 November to make changes

Noting here that we requested that WMZA make significant changes after receiving their draft budget, and so extended the deadline for completion until 6 November. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:54, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Questions about your grant application

Thank you for your revised plan and budget. We have some questions for you.

Staff

As we spoke about over the phone, we are supportive of the idea of you hiring a contractor who is directed at increasing your team's capacity around a specific project. Both so that you do not lose all of the momentum you have gained, and so that you can test out managing a staff person with the new board. That person's work, however, should be directed toward a specific project and not toward general organizational tasks. Can you revise the job description accordingly, so this person's tasks are focused on WLM? The fact that your contractor is temporary and focused on a specific project is what gives us the flexibility to fund this, and that is why it is important that the job description match this idea.

Certainly, this will be no problem. I will work on it within the next 24 hours. --Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Budget

Next, specific questions about your budget. We don't question the usefulness of any of these items, but we just need a bit more explanation about them before approving since this is a restricted grant.

1. We saw you budgeted 66,000 ZAR for attendance at Indaba. We understand scholarships for participants are covered by the conference grant. Can you let us know why the scholarship funds are needed?

This amount is dedicated to sending a group of South African language Wikipedia editors to WikiIndaba. This came from a request from a number of our Afrikaans language editors for an Afrikaans Wikipedia conference. The chapter felt that it would be best to set aside money to send a diversified delegation of South African language editors to Wiki Indaba instead of hosting a South African language conference. The purpose of this scholarship is specific in that it is to help develop South African language Wikipedias. This is something that, to the best of our knoweldge, is not covered by the Wiki Indaba conference grant as it is South Africa specific.--Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1. You budgeted 14,000 ZAR for the Puku schools project "for two separate education outreach activities", but it is unclear what these costs are. Can you provide some details about what your expenses will be for each event?

Costs are for travel and accommodation expenses for two people for two or more trips to the Puku school locations in North West Province to do Wikipedia related educational outreach. It also includes funding for supplies and event support such as catering costs. The bulk of the funds, around R8000 (of the R14,000) is allocated to accommodation followed by R4000 for travel costs. The Puku project focuses on African language development which is mission aligned with the chapter's goal of supporting African language Wikipedias.--Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1. For the Wiki Fundi writing competition, you budget 5,000 ZAR each for prizes and catering. Can you break this down by number of prizes? Will these be cash prizes? Can you also break down how many people you are expecting to cater for?

There will be three prizes. First prize (R2,500), second prize (R1,700) and third prize (R800) These will NOT be cash prizes but prizes in the form of gift cards. The chapter took a policy decision in 2012 to not give cash prizes. I will need to lease with the event organiser (Michael Graaf) for number of expected attendees.--Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1. You budget 1,000 ZAR for WLM prizes. Can you break this down by number of prizes? Will these be cash prizes?

These will be broken into two prizes of R600 for first prize and R400 for second prize. The prizes will not be cash prizes but Amazon gift vouchers. --Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1. You budgeted 6,000 ZAR for three national flights a year. What would these flights be for?

These flights are for directors to make up to two return flights between two major South African cities. A significant constraint over the years for the operation of the chapter has been the lack of mobility of key chapter directors/project managers to run events and attend important meetings in different parts of the country. An example of this attending copyright reform conferences in Johannesburg when our copyright point person (myself) am based in Cape Town. Without this funding attending such an event would not be possible as has happened in the past thereby hindering chapter activities.--Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1. Contingency should be calculated as 10% of your budget before the contingency fee is added, not 10% of your budget already including the contingency fee. Please revise this accordingly.

Thank you for pointing this issue out. It has been rectified. I was under the impression it was 10% of the budget before the contingency fee was added.--Discott (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Plan

Next, your program plan does not include SMART objectives for any of the program you are planning to do or have budgeted for. Your budget is divided into two program areas, but nowhere are these explained or is it clear what they consist of. Am I missing an important document somewhere that includes your plan with descriptions of your program and SMART objectives? That is a minimum requirement for the application

This is something I will work on shortly.--Discott (talk) 00:34, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

We ask you to implement these revisions by 23 November, as we are now late into the review period and need to make sure that staff have the information they need to make a decision by 1 December. If you need more time, please let us know now so we can set a schedule together.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 19:42, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the answers about your budget are clear, but unfortunately there is no more time left in this grants cycle to revise your plan. Also, WMZA still hasn't resolved eligibility concerns. You are going to need to resubmit on 1 January for a grant starting 1 February. I am sorry about that. We can talk about how that may affect your organization. Use of some of your contingency fee from the current grant to cover expenses in January may be possible. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedia South Africa not eligible by decision deadline (1 December), please reapply

Hello, WMZA colleagues:

We are sorry to inform you that WMZA will not be eligible to apply for a grant starting 1 January, for two reasons:

1. WMZA did not meet its obligations regarding past grant reports, in order to become eligible.
2. WMZA did not submit a program plan with SMART objectives meeting the standards for an SAPG application.

We invite WMZA to reapply once their eligibility status is resolved, and would like to do further work with WMZA in order to help them improve their program plan. We regret that this was the result, after the efforts we all put into organizing WMZA’s budget and discussing the staffing plan. We believe better results may be achieved in the future with more work on the program plan prior to the application deadline.

We hope this does not adversely affect WMZA’s plans for 2019, as we are enthusiastic about supporting them once these issues are resolved.

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 03:38, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Annual plan grant approved! (225,000 ZAR for 12 months)

We approve this grant in the amount of 225,000 ZAR for 12 months. We are very pleased with the work that WMZA has done over the past six months to create this new plan. We have seen increasing engagement from WMZA’s board, which gives us confidence in their capacity to do this plan. We like that WMZA has made some detailed plans for their projects and activities, and we encourage them to think more about how their projects and activities fit together as part of a coherent program plan. Right now, it is not clear how the activities in their plan fit together.

We like WMZA’s focus on language diversity, which is an important opportunity in their environment. We also appreciate WMZA’s work to expand their geographic influence beyond Cape Town and Johannesburg through their Kwa-Zulu Natal activation project. We are glad WMZA has assessed that they are making progress with building partnerships. We agree their strategy for working with partners on smaller scale events and initiatives may help them lay the groundwork for deepening partnerships in the future. We are interested in WMZA’s work with copyright reform in the region, in partnership with ReCreate South Africa.

WMZA has done some strategic work, thinking through their major challenges and strengths in their ability to implement programs and run their organization. We appreciated reading these insights and gaining some understanding of how they have informed WMZA’s program choices. We also appreciate that WMZA is open about sharing these in their grant application.

WMZA is an all-volunteer organization with limited resources, and they have identified lack of capacity as a significant challenge. We hope that increased funding for their programs and operations in the coming year can support them as they grow, along with the other measures they are taking to address this challenge. It will also be important to ensure that WMZA’s board leadership better reflects the diversity of the communities they would like to serve in the future.

We encourage WMZA to continue to pay attention to meeting grant requirements, in order to prepare to take on increasing responsibilities in the future.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the significant efforts that WMZA put into creating and recreating this application. We are excited to be able to continue our support of WMZA in the upcoming year. Thank you to the team, and congratulations!

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 21:39, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Taxes: request to spend unspent funds

Hello, as we discussed at our last meeting Wikimedia South Africa would like to know if we could use unspent money from the 2019/20 grant period to payoff an unexpected tax penalty to the value of R23,750? Our bookkeepers have recently discovered that a key document was not filed with the tax authorities back to the chapter's founding in 2012. Since then we have been charged a R250 monthly penalty. The chapter is not aware of ever being informed of this oversight until it was recently brought to our attention. We are in the process of resolving this issue but it looks like we will have to pay the penalty. Currently we have R57 513.68 of this grant amount left.--Discott (talk) 19:36, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Approval of reallocation of unspent funds

Hello Discott, thank you for putting your request here. I am approving your proposal to use a portion of your unspent funds to pay the tax penalty. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)