Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Österreich/Proposal form

Wikimedia Österreich received a funds allocation in the amount of 220,000 in 2012-2013 Round 1. This funds allocation was recommended by the Funds Dissemination Committee on 15 November 2012 and approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 1 December 2012.

Please note that the proposals are now closed to community response. Thanks to all for your engagement with the Community Review process, and for your questions. FDC members, FDC staff, and entity representatives will still be communicating on these discussion pages over the next few weeks, but entities will not be responding to questions from anyone other than the FDC or FDC Staff.

This page should be used to discuss the entity’s submitted proposal. This includes asking questions about the content of the proposal form, asking for clarifications on this proposal, and discussing any other issues relating to the proposal itself. To discuss other components of this proposal please refer to the discussion links below.

• This proposal has not yet been created.
• This proposal form has not yet been created.
• Staff proposal assessments have not yet been published for this round.
• FDC recommendation discussion page: discuss the recommendation that the FDC gives to the Board regarding all requests.
• Board decision discussion page: discuss the board's decision.
• An impact report has not yet been submitted for this funds allocation.

Summary of staff expenses

The numbers are confusing (wrong?). The second line shoul only include addintion to existing staff. Is the number addons the totla is wrong, otherwise the number is not reflecting addons.Anders Wennersten (talk) 12:04, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

considering your explanation, the numbers are indeed wrong. first line shows 2012, second 2013 expected costs. so the proposed staff expenses would be EUR 18,000 for our project-contractor (prolong 2012-contract) and EUR 5,000 for the new working student. The remaining EUR 51,000 are costs for existing staff for 2013. can i change the numbers in the proposal? regards, --Kulac (talk) 14:25, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for you clarifying explantion. I let the FDC staff come back to you if it is correct from preocederual point of view changing or to let it be as it is.Anders Wennersten (talk) 15:04, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying this, Kurt and Anders. For all entities, changes can be made to the proposal during this period of community review, but *only* by striking through the previous entry and adding the new one, so that it is clear that it is a post-deadline modification. We would also appreciate the rationale for these changes being clearly stated on the Discussion page. --ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

done that. thank you! --Kulac (talk) 20:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Clarifying questions from FDC staff

Please confirm the following information (amounts are approximate since they are quoted in USD):

1. Current year budget: USD 169,284

   yes

2. Proposed year budget: USD 267,017

   yes

3. Current year grants received from WMF (includes annual grants and project grants): USD 183,067

   I calculated USD 182,148 (169,284 for the 2012-grant and 12,900 for the Wikicon-grant)

   Since this total is in USD and these grants were awarded in EUR, I believe this difference may be accounted for by variations in the exchange rates used in calculation. We are basing these numbers on a grant of EUR 10,000 for WikiCon and a grant of EUR 131299 for WMAT's program plan, or a total of EUR 141,299. Are these amounts in EUR correct? Wolliff (talk) 18:36, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

4. Proposed year funds requested (from FDC): USD 241,088

   yes, thats probably the source of the difference. we received EUR 10,000 for WikiCon and EUR 131,200 (131,299 seems to be a typo) for 2012-grant). --Kulac (talk) 12:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Please explain WMAT's cash reserve position.

1. How much do you have in your reserves now?

   Currently, the reserves amount to 52,000 Euro. This contains EUR 30,500 from WMF-grants, the other part from donations from our own fundraising. Until the end of 2012 the following expenses will be covered by this reserve: Employees+contractors: EUR 23,800, EUR 6,500 for refunding Wikicon-grants, EUR 7.000 for the newly established office in Vienna for, inventory, brokerages and rental bond and some of the remaining ammount for the projects of the 2012-grant proposal. There will still be a remaining ammount which will serve as a financial cushion which is necessary to cover for liabilities and responsibilities (rent, salaries) which WMAT entered, in order to provide for future contingencies. Please note, that due to our successfull fundraising activities, these reserves do not come from WMF grants but from donations and other benefits. Surpluses from WMF grants have always been correctly entered (see WikiCon 2012 grant).

2. How much do you expect to have by the start of the planning year period?

   As in 2011, we planned to have EUR 11,800 as a surplus at the end of 2012. With current expectations and the 2012 fundraising activities this ammount will increase to approx. EUR 25.000,--

   Please explain here how WMAT defines "cash reserve". Thanks, Wolliff (talk) 22:05, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

   with cash reserve we meant the total ammount of money, that is available at the moment for us, disregarding the amount that is already reserved for spending for fixed costs or expected expenses for ongoing projects. so this part (above the plannend EUR 25,000 of actual cash reserve at the end of the year) is not a real reserve, but a part of the budget. --Kulac (talk) 09:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions from FDC staff about the content of WMAT's proposal form

Questions about WMAT's budget and staffing plan

1. Question about your progress: In Table 3, you state WMAT has raised 100% of projected revenues; however you also say that you are "well on track" to meet targets. Where are you in your fiscal year, given that the fiscal year indicated begins on 1 September and ends on 31 August? Are these figures for a completed fiscal year, and are you experiencing a "bridge" year (a period of time between the end of your fiscal year and when you will actually receive funds through the FDC) before the period of funds request? If so, what is your plan and budget for this period?

   Our fiscal year is indeed not corellating to the calendary year, because we adapted it to the fundraising period, which takes place over the turn of the year. Considering that the funding of our budget is now mostly covered by a FDC-grant for a calendary year, we don´t know, if we will stick to this discrepancy, but to prevent a bridge-year, with all expected disadvantages, we will try to stick to the current fiscal year. since we already received a 2012-grant our budget plan was adaptet to the calendary year. The budget and all the planning is therefore actually adapted to the calendary year and the grant system, our legal fiscal annual closure is therefore just calculated for accounting reasons and does not have its own budget plan.

2. Question about staffing: Please clarify staffing information and make corrections with strike-through. If new staff is only 20%, what is the cost of that incremental staff member?

   the costs of staff are corrected now, as of the first explanation above. the 20%-staffer will cost us approx. EUR 5000,--. For this we are planning to hire a student as a marginal employee (intern).

Questions about the impact of WMAT's key initiatives

1. Question about impact: WMAT intends to track the "increased number and quality of edits" as a measure of the success of the community support initiative. Would you provide some information about which edits you intend to track, how you intend to track them, and what you believe this information will indicate about the success of this initiative?

   One example is that WMAT organizes field trips to regions which have cultural heritage and / or flora which is currently not fully documented in Wikipedia with photographs and written information. In the run-up to the trip the organizing WMAT-team analyzises which information should be collected during the trip and afterwards tracks how the respective articles profit from the new pictures / information (e.g. publications on cultural heritage by local authors, whom the WMAT team met during the trip and who either sponsor copies of their books or even agree to publish the content of their publications under creative commons). By doing this, we aim to increase the amount of free content about Austrian-specific topics as well as special-interest knowledge in general. Another project, that will be tracked is QR-pedia (see below), where the article-output can directly be measured against the todo-list of the project. Also the output of the Literature-schoolarships can be measured in the quantity of new or improved articles. We are planning to measure the success of the Photography-project not only by the number of contributet media to Wikimedia Commons, but quantitatively, by counting the linking of the media files in the different projects. Therefore the use of a bot is planned, but not yet operational.

2. Question about impact: Please provide more details about WMAT's funded inovlvement with QRpedia and what impact you expect your involvement to achieve.

   In the run-up to introducing QRpedia in Austria, WMAT contacted WMUK for lessons learned and best-practice, as WMUK has been applying this concept successfully to museums, historical sites in communities and the like. As a result WMAT developed the concept for a pilot project in cooperation with the botanical garden of the University in Graz. The project aims at providing the visitors with more information than ususally fits on the small-sized panels by using QR-Codes. Together with the botanists WMAT developed a list of approx. 300 plants which shall be provided with an QR-Code that leads to a corresponding article in Wikipedia. In the wake of this project, Wikipedia will profit from an increased quality and quantity of botanical articles. Additionally the University of Graz is going to donate us the missing pictures of those articles.

   We have a few follow up questions about the introduction of the QRpedia project:

   1. To give an idea of the scope of this project's reach, would you be able to provide us with an estimate of how many visitors come to the garden annually and might benefit from use of these codes?
   2. Also, since this project is a pilot project, how do you plan to measure the success of the project and determine if it would be impactful to replicate it?
   3. Will measures of success of this project be focused primarily on the number of people benefiting from use of the QRcodes or on the generation of content through a partnership like the one described above?

   Thank you! Wolliff (talk) 00:30, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

   The entry to the botanical garden is free, therefore there are no exact numbers of visitors. However, the botanical garden is a mayor touristic site in Graz and the only University-based botanical garden in the Federal State of Steiermark. Accordingly, our measure of success is not primarily based on the number of visitors (also we plan to track the visitors who access Wikimedia by QR-Codes) but on the content generated by the project. The biggest benefit will be an increase of articles, a variety of photographs of of exotic plants, which can hardly be photographed anywhere else, as well as the access to the photograph database of the botanical garden. Another major benefit is that the project provides a good foundation for further collaboration with the institution's botanists/biologists.--Claude (talk) 22:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions about the activities included in WMATs key initiatives

1. Question about activities: When listing activities for each initiative, please list the activities that the staff will actually perform rather than listing that staff will perform them. Please specify what activities the staff will perform in order to complete the initiative.

   • Staff activties
     • Office staff and/or contractors facilitate technical/logistical support (plan, buy and distribute equipment / plan and maintain infrastructure / plan, buy and distribute give-aways / eventmanagement ...)
     • Office staff and/or contractors and volunteers for organizing, planning and coordinating ( networking / distributing information / project controlling / designing information material... )
   • Free content generation
     • Office staff and/or contractors facilitate technical/logistical support (allocate ressources (books etc) and equipment (e.g. photo equipment) / technical infrastructure / help and support for community members / consulting...)
     • Office staff and/or contractors support PR and marketing (communication strategy / marketing plan / networking with journalists / repuation management / designing information material / eventmanagement...)
   • Resources
     • Staff with dedicated time and professional skills (networking with existing donors and members / explore strategies to adress new supporters / reputation management / campaigning strategies and activities / eventmanagement / designing and distributing information material / controlling)
   • Organization (staff and office)
     • Director with dedicated time and professional skills (process management, project management, controlling, accounting, administration, quality management, manpower planing ...)

2. Question about activities: What is Wikimedium?

   Wikimedium is a newsletter (printed and online) for members and other stakeholders interested in our activites. It shall be distributet at community-events and meetups. It provides an overview over projects, events and other news concerning WMAT.

3. Question about activities: What is Wiki Loves Memories?

   It is a project to digitalize private collections of photographs and slides which are of potential cultural / political relevance (e.g. private pictures of landmarks in the Middle East, which have been destroyed by the Taliban) and upload them on Commons.

4. Question about activities: Would you offer a more detailed description of what you mean by "volunteer promotion"?

   This refers to all our acitivties which aim to gain more volunteers for our projects. Volunteer promotion comprises events (fairs, regular community meetings etc.) which are either organized by WMAT or in which WMAT participates with an information booth or the like. Futhermore it comprises information material, give-aways as well as activities to market WMAT to potential volunteers (PR, talks/presentations at universities and the like).

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to our comments. Please let us know if any of the questions above are unclear, and we will be happy to clarify. If any changes to WMCH's proposal form itself are required, please let us know so that we can make sure any changes to the form during this stage of the process are properly documented. Regards, Wolliff (talk) 21:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

answers inline. regards, --Kulac (talk) 20:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarifications, Kurt. We will let you know if we need to follow up with questions about any of your responses. Regards, Wolliff (talk) 19:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Question about volunteer participation

Hello WMAT, These are some general questions that I am asking to all the EEs regarding volunteer participation. All the entities have stated in their proposals that low turnover of volunteers in both online and offline activities have been a major obstacle for them. Most of them have also expressed concerns that reducing number of volunteers is a threat to their organizational effectiveness and to the movement as a whole. I feel we need to have short term, midterm and long term plans to tackle this problem.

Does your organization have -

1. Any short term plan to recruit new volunteers for both online and off line activities?
2. Any midterm plan to train, motivate and convert them into regular contributors?
3. Any long term plan to retain them and continue the growth?

If you already have any such plans, please mention them and elaborate how your plan/s is (are) going to achieve the goal of recruiting new volunteers, converting them into regular contributors and retain the volunteers as well as maintain the growth? - Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (talk) 17:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

• Shortterm

Our shorterm activities aim at getting people started at Wikipedia / Wikimedia and include events (e.g. information booth at fairs and other events, arranging photography workshops and the like), information material on how to get startet at Wikipedia (e.g. a "cheat sheet" with the most important terms of the wiki coding language) to show the various ways to get involved in Wikimedia/Wikipedia, contests (e.g. photography contests like "Wiki loves monuments") as well as talks and presentations for different stakeholder groups (at schools, universities and other stakeholder groups e.g. elderly people).

• Midterm

In order to keep volunteers in line we organize or support regular community events (e.g. local Wikipedia crackerbarrels in various Austrian cities like Vienna, Graz or Linz) as a platform for face to face information and mobilization. Another important incentive is the community budget, which provides volunteers with ressources to implement their own ideas or book grants in order to promote certain volunteers and their subjects. In addition we cherish the commitment of our volunteers with travel grants and scholarships for major events (e.g. Wikimania or WikiCon).

• Longterm

Delegating responsibilities is an important factor to foster identification with the organization as well as longterm commitment. Thus, we try to enable and motivate volunteers to become project managers or even to take over responsibity by becoming board members.

--Claude (talk) 23:23, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Ratio salary/non salary cost

In this year budget you intend to spend 65KUSD onsalary in a total of or around 190 KUSD (33%). For nest year you plan to spend 95 KUSD on salary in a total budget of 241 KUSD (36%). Could yo elobarate what the other 60+% is/will be spend on?.Anders Wennersten (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

hi! if i get you right, you are seraching for the projects, we will implement next year, right? you can find the list here in the left (blue) column. regards, --Kulac (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

no I want to know what type of costs that are not going into salsies is in~tended to go to. Is it office rents, travel tickets or what (150 KUSD in 2013)?Anders Wennersten (talk) 07:05, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The other part of the money will be used for rent, utilities, insurances, travel costs, infrastructure (e.g. server, websites) and ressources (e.g. books, journals), events, projects, give-aways, information material --Claude (talk) 21:04, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Questions about current cash position and monthly spending patterns

Please clarify WMAT's cash position and usual monthly expenditures.

1. What is WMAT's current cash position (as of 30 September 2012)? In other words, what is the total balance in all of WMAT's accounts (including operating reserves and cash for WMAT's programs and operations)?

   As explained above, the cash positions amounts to 52,000 Euro. This contains EUR 30,500 from WMF-grants, the other part from donations from our own fundraising. The salary for the managing director will be paid from October on, rent for the office (including inventory, brokerages and rental bond ) from November on. --Claude (talk) 21:08, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

2. What are WMAT's typical monthly expenditures? We would like a sense of about how much money WMAT spends in an ordinary month during the current fiscal year.

   Beginning with October 2012 the monthly costs for overheads including all salaries (office staff, contractors etc.), rent, utilities and insurances are approx. 8500 Euros. Additional expenses for events, travel and projects vary extremely according to the projects phases. Before October 2012 the overheads were approx 2000 Euros, including a part-time contractor, insurances, infrastructure like telephone etc. and of course additionally also project expenses which vary according to the respective project phase. --Claude (talk) 21:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Let us know if the questions above require any additional clarification. Thank you, Wolliff (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2012 (UTC)