Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 2/Wikimedia Indonesia/Staff proposal assessment

The staff proposal assessment is one of the inputs into the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) proposal review process, and is reviewed by the FDC in preparation for and during the in-person deliberations each round. The purpose of the staff proposal assessment is to offer the FDC an overview of the expert opinions of the FDC staff team about this annual plan grant proposal, and includes (1) A narrative assessment; (2) An assessment that scores each applicant according to specific criteria in program design, organizational effectiveness, and budgeting.

Overview

Summary

	Current (projected)	Upcoming (proposed)	Proposed change (as a +/- percentage)
FDC or other relevant funding	$104,696	$227,385	117.19%
Budget	$487,660	$573,869	17.68%
Staff (FTE)	5.0	10.76 9.96	109.2%

Overview

This section summarizes the themes that emerged from the proposal, which are explained in the detailed narrative section of this assessment.

Themes

• WMID is entering the FDC process to align better with the Wikimedia movement and increase their capacity to be an effective organization.
• WMID has evolved differently from other chapters, and has a unique way of operating and observing how staff and volunteers work together. WMID has been very successful in a difficult operating context.
• The potential for future impact is huge given their focus on local languages with large numbers of speakers and their work on Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia, and their program work is likely to address some of these opportunities.
• Participation in the movement strategy should be a priority, to contribute their unique experience to the movement’s efforts to align with the strategic direction

Staff proposal assessment narrative

This section takes an in-depth look at this organization's past performance and current plans.

Context and effectiveness

This section takes a close look at this organization's context. Here are some questions we will consider:

Environment

How does this organization's environment (including its local context and its community) enable this plan to succeed and have impact?

Indonesia is full of challenges, and also opportunities. Bahasa Indonesia is a quickly growing language with a quickly growing Wikipedia, and the opportunities for impact in terms of content growth and readership growth are huge. While languages such as Javanese and Sundanese have large numbers of speakers, working with these Wikipedias presents many challenges because speakers are not always fully literate in their native languages. This has driven WMID to find other approaches to reviving these language communities, including thoughtfully designed competitions to motivate these contributors. They think deeply about ways to address the challenge of writing Wikipedia articles in these languages, and are working in partnership with volunteers who have the necessary local and cultural context to inform these strategies.

WMID has been successful in finding opportunities for external funding in their context, in an environment where many organizations struggle to do so. Indonesia’s GLAM sectors include many organizations lacking resources to perform even their most basic functions, such as housing or preserving important artifacts and manuscripts, and WMID must find a way to mitigate these challenges . This means they will have a different approach to doing GLAM work than those working in regions that are better resourced, and may have more of a role to play in helping institutions meet some of these basic needs.

As WMID expands their work to other language communities, geography is an important contextual aspect, especially as it is often time-consuming and expensive to travel within Indonesia. WMID is still committed to working with volunteers who are part of different language communities and in different regions, despite this challenge.

Past performance

Will this organization's past performance with program implementation enable this plan to succeed?

WMID is probably best known for their work on editing contests, which have been taking place since before 2010. They have been successful in engaging new people in their work through these contests, cultivating people without any Wikimedia experience and helping them grow in their involvement. This can be seen by their ambitious targets for new editors involved and their good performance in this area, especially as a proportion of total participants. For example, during their year-long Simple APG, WMID engaged 1,271 new editors over the course of the grant.

The evolution of Project Ganesha, which was developed in partnership with the Goethe Institut showcases how thoughtfully these competitions are designed, and the level of learning and analysis of WMID’s work on Javanese and Sundanese languages is impressive. While retaining new contributors in Javanese and Sundanese is still a major challenge, this work is involving new users and also generating articles. WMID’s digitization work is also focused on capacity building, including trainings for new and experienced users to be familiarized with Wikisource.

Through photo competitions, WMID is meeting their goals of increasing their geographic reach, which is a huge challenge in Indonesia. They achieved their goal of photographs from at least 20 provinces and the 5 big islands, and 95% of these participants were new users. They achieved a use rate of about 13% on the 3,000 images generated.

WMID’s WikiLatih training has generated enthusiasm among new editors in different language communities. Their trainings sometimes fill up, requiring them to turn interested participants away. Through this program, they also engage long term active volunteers, who are eager to help with these events. A key aspect of this program is generating opportunities for partnershipswith libraries, NGOs, and universities. Partners are eager to be a part of WikiLatih, which opens up doors for future collaboration.

Organizational effectiveness

Will this organization's overall effectiveness enable this plan to succeed?

WMID is an effective organization working in a difficult operating environment. They are effective in directing their resources towards goals, and in managing multiple large funding sources. Their governance system is unusual and complex, but seems to be working well. Furthermore, they have been effective in securing large amounts of funding from outside the movement. Beyond this, we see their strategy for engaging volunteers and putting the community at the heart of all that they do as effective in the long term.

Strategy and programs

This section takes a close look at this organization's programs. Here are some questions we will consider:

Strategy

Does this organization have a high-quality strategic plan in place, and are programs well-aligned with this strategic plan?

WMID effectively articulates the relevant context behind each of their programs in this proposal, and has provided some additional information about this on the discussion page. They also have a long term strategic plan in place until 2022, although it is somewhat activity-focused. While it seems obvious that WMID has thought through many aspects of their strategy and their approaches, this is not always clearly articulated. We hope to see Wikimedia Indonesia engage in the development of the movement strategy, as we think their approaches and unique experience would be very beneficial for devising the next steps of Wikimedia's strategy towards 2030.

Programs

Do proposed programs have specific, measurable, time-bound objectives with clear targets, and are program activities and results logically linked? Are there specific programs with a high potential for impact?

WMID is continuing to refine their approach to editing competitions and content drives, and is working to make it relevant across different languages. Rather than seeking a ‘one size fits all’ approach to this work, they adapt their approach to each language area.

WMID has been able to expand their geographic reach throughout the country thanks to photo competitions, which is a major challenge in a country like Indonesia where travel can be difficult. We appreciate that WMID is focusing on and measuring their geographic reach as an aspect of this work. These competitions also allow WMID to reach more new contributors and fill content gaps, since this work is still relatively new in Indonesia. The focus on intangible cultural heritage is likely to achieve great results in increasing the amount of relevant media content on these topics.

WMID has been working for several years to understand how they can be best placed to engage effectively with the GLAM sector in Indonesia. This is still a developing area for them, but digitization initiatives have so far been successful in generating content that can be used on the Wikimedia projects. While working in this area, WMID continues to emphasize the use rates of the content they digitize. They have also been successful in engaging partners that can help them gain traction in this sector, which is an uphill battle in a resource-poor environment. At the same time, the stakes are high, as many materials in Indonesia may be lost if they are not digitized soon.

Their involvement and interest in Wikidata is extremely productive, as it is coupled with high profile partnerships and a lot of technical challenges that they seem to be ready to take on. It is however not always clear how their activities in that area will be sustainable on the longer term.

WMID has presented adequate and relevant metrics in this plan, and we believe they have the capacity to implement the evaluation plan they have proposed. In past reports, they have done an excellent job of reporting their progress against the objectives they set and offering explanations about what was achieved and why. Still, we see this as an area for improvement for WMID, as deeper evaluation can lead to a better understanding of their work.

Budget

Is this plan and budget focused on the programs with the highest potential for online impact?

WMID in increasing their grant request and their total reliance on APG funding, in accordance with their revenue plan. They have previously relied on a major donor for much of their past funding, but are seeking to align their work more closely with the Wikimedia movement. They also need funding to support their general operating expenses in order to improve their effectiveness in the long term.

Their approach to staffing is unusual, but it has been effective for them in the past.

Given their long term potential for impact and their current capacity, we believe these funds are likely to result in commensurate impact.

Summary of expert opinions (if applicable)

This section will summarize any expert opinions or other research.

N/A

Staff proposal assessment framework

This framework assesses annual plan grant proposals across the three dimensions of (1) Program design, (2) Organizational effectiveness, and (3) Budgeting. To complete the assessment, we identify whether each criterion is a strength or a concern:

• Major strength
• Strength
• Neither a strength nor a concern
• Concern
• Major concern

Criterion	Assessment	Description
Program design
P1. Strategy	Strength	WMID has a strategic plan in place and has done a good job of explaining how they are implementing their strategy in their plan. We encourage WMID to participate actively in upcoming movement strategy discussions.
P2. Potential for impact at scale	Major strength	Working in Indonesia with several languages that have numbers of speakers, WMID has great potential for impact at scale; furthermore Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia is rapidly growing. WMID's approach to volunteer engagement and their innovative contests could produce results in the long term.
P3. Objectives and evaluation methods	Strength	WMID has a clear plan to evaluate their results of their work, and based on their past efforts we believe they will be able to carry out this plan. They can still grow in some areas such as setting more accurate targets and deepening their approach to measuring program results.
P4. Diversity	Strength	WMID is working in an under resourced region. Linguistic and cultural diversity is at the heart of the way this organization works; furthermore, WMID includes female leadership on the staff and board levels, as well as throughout the organization.
Organizational effectiveness
O1. Past results	Strength	WMID has outperformed in each of their grants metrics targets during their last year-long grant. In particular, WMID has had very good results with engaging new editors, although their progress in content is also significant. Beyond this, WMID is achieving good results in terms of their community-building work and has been successful in developing partnerships in a challenging context.
O2. Learning	Strength	WMID's programs are a thoughtful mix of new approaches and proven methods, and they show a good ability to experiment with different program adaptations and document the results. A good example of this is their adaption of their writing contests over the years.
O3. Improving movement practices	Strength	We appreciate WMID's role as a regional actor in East Asia, as demonstrated by their leadership in hosting the East Asian conference. We would still like to see WMID engage more at the international level, especially in sharing share some of their unique approaches to resourcing the organization, and their governance model.
O4. Community engagement	Major strength	WMID is testing interesting models for volunteer engagement and their work is strongly rooted in the communities they serve; beyond this, their approach to working with local communities in a culturally sensitive way is wise and thoughtful.
O5. Capacity	Strength	We appreciate WMID's ability to succeed in a complex operating environment in Indonesia, their past success in securing external funding, and their commitment to building the capacity of staff and volunteers. WMID has a different way of operating, and it is something the Wikimedia movement can learn from.
Budget
B1. Past budgeting and spending	Strength	WMID has transparent and effective (if sometimes cumbersome) financial systems and does an excellent job of regularly monitoring their budget and adapting it. For example, while managing their restricted grant, they were able to detect when funds were unspent in certain areas in order to direct the money effectively to other program activities.
B2. Budget is focused on impact	Major strength	WMID's plan and budget are focused on results.

This staff proposal assessment is the work of FDC staff and is submitted by: Delphine (WMF) (talk) 07:08, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Staff proposal assessment framework

• Major strength. This is something the organization does very well, and this is a strong indicator of future success.
• Strength. This is something that the organization does well, and this could indicate future success.
• Neither a strength nor a concern. This is something that does not indicate future success or make funding the application a risk, or aspects of this criterion conflict.
• Concern. This is something that the organization does not do well, and this could make funding the application a risk.
• Major concern. This is an area where the organization is not strong, and this could make funding the application a serious risk.

Criterion	Description
Program design
P1. Strategy	The organization has a quality strategic plan in place, programs are aligned with this strategy, and this strategy is aligned with online impact.
P2. Potential for impact at scale	Programs could lead to significant online impact at scale, and corresponding to the amount of funds requested
P3. Evaluation methods	Programs include a plan for measuring results and ensuring learning, and employ effective evaluation tools and systems. Programs include SMART objectives, targets, and logic models.
P4. Diversity	Programs will expand the participation in and reach of the Wikimedia movement, especially in parts of the world or among groups that are not currently well-served.
Organizational effectiveness
O1. Past results	This organization has had success with similar programs or approaches in the past, and has effectively measured and documented the results of its past work.
O2. Learning	This organization is addressing risks and challenges effectively, is learning from and documenting its experiences, and is applying learning to improve its programs.
O3. Improving movement practices	This organization effectively shares learning about its work with the broader movement and beyond, and helps others in the movement achieve more impact.
O4. Community engagement	This organization effectively engages communities and volunteers in the planning and implementation of its work.
O5. Capacity	This organization has the resources and ability (for example, leadership, expertise, staff, experience managing funds) to do the plan proposed.
Budget
B1. Past budgeting and spending	This organization has a history of budgeting realistically and managing funds effectively in the past.
B2. Budget is focused on programmatic impact	Based on past performance and current plans, funds are allocated to programs and activities with corresponding potential for programmatic impact.