Grants:PEG/WM IN/Program Grant Quarter 1 2013/Report

Report accepted
This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2012-13 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
  • You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.



Compliance and completion

edit
Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?
Yes
Is your project completed?
Yes
Did you use any of the grant funds?
Yes

Activities and lessons learned

edit

Activities

edit

Outreach

edit
List of Activities organised and supported.[1]

January 2013

edit
  • Wikipedia Day 2013, Kolkata[2][3]
  • Wikipedia Day 2013, Mumbai[4][5]
  • Wiki Anniversary celebrations, Bangalore[6]
  • ML Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebrations and workshop, TEC[7]
  • Photo Contest and Wiki Workshop at Springfest 2013, IIT Kharagpur[8]
  • Kanya Wizard 2013, Kanyakumari[9]
  • Wikipedia Workshop at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai[10]
  • Somaiya College Workshop, Mumbai[11][12]
  • MediaWiki Workshop, BITS (Goa Campus)[13][14]

February 2013

edit
  • Wikipedia Mumbai Meetup 21[15]
  • Wikimedia and Creative Commons Workshop, Pune[16]
  • Wikimedia and Creative Commons Workshop, Mumbai[17][18]
  • Wikimedia and Creative Commons Workshop, Delhi[19]
  • Wikimedia and Creative Commons Workshop, Bangalore[20][21]
  • IIMB Wikimedia Workshop, Bangalore[22]

March 2013

edit
  • Gujarat Wikisource I anniversary celebrations, Junagadh and Ahmedabad[23][24]
  • Women's day edit-a-thon[25]
  • Wikipedia Women's Workshop, Bangalore.[26]
  • Chennai Wiki Meetup 5[27]
  • Wiki Academy, Gujarat Vidyapith[23]
  • CMI FIESTA 2013 - Wikilinks contest and photo competition, Chennai[28]
  • Wikipedia introduction, Ranade Institute, Pune
  • Wiki Women's Workshop by FSMK and WMIN, Bangalore[29]
  • Wiki Women's workshop by FSFTN and WMIN, Chennai[30]
Effectiveness measurement
edit

Lessons learnt

edit
What went well?
Community building - The sustained pace of outreach events have helped community building immensely. Also the symbiotic alliances we have built with other open source and open content organisations has led to resource pooling. This in turn has resulted in significant reduction in organising outreach events in the months that followed the grant period. It has also opened up possibilities for a variety of collaboration activities like the Tamil open source OCR project (in which we are collaborating with CIS-A2K).
What did not go well?
The expense reimbursement portion of our outreach process has been characterised by delays. Members take a while to produce the necessary documentation to process reimbursements and this in turn affects our own compliance with reporting. It is challenging to strike a balance being very accessible for members for outreach support and getting them to make claims and provide necessary documentation within reasonable time limits.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
We will put in more effort to create awareness about the need to expedite the claims / reimbursement process to our members when they conduct outreach events.

Project goal and measures of success

edit

Project goal

edit
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.
Yes we achieved our project goal. We organised and supported various outreach activities all over India during these three months. events have sustained and accelerated the pace of community building in various parts of India. They have in turn generated various other opportunities for content and community development. For example the Creative Commons events in February have led to CC offering affiliate status to WMIN. TESS India program of the Open University UK has agreed to donate their teacher training educational content under a CC BY licence to Wikiversity. The Kanya Wizard event in Kanyakumari has led to an expression of interest from Government of Tamil Nadu about what they can do for Wikipedia. The events have also led to strengthening of communities beyond the usual strong areas like Bangalore and Mumbai. Kolkata and Hyderabad have fledgling communities now. Chennai Wikimeetups have started again after a gap of two years. Gujarati community has started a series of events.
These outreach events have helped us to develop and maintain symbiotic relationships with other open source / open content communities like Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK), Free Software Movement of Tamil Nadu (FSMTN), Indian Linux Users Group (ILUG), Creative Commons and Mozilla India. This in turn has led to significant cost reductions in running outreach events through resource pooling.
We also have made good progress on evolving a framework for evaluating outreach programs. We have started setting a precedence for collecting attendee details in all events supported by us. We have started administering surveys for event participants. Provision of attendees names and wiki ids / email ids has been made mandatory (in the reports) recently for all chapter supported events. We have also running a pilot, person-to-person interaction during the events where volunteers talk to a cross section of participants and take down live in-person feedback. We are still working out a tracking mechanism for participants over a longer time period.
The chapter missed an opportunity to fund more activities at the Telegu Mahotsavam as the funds were not in place by the time the event was held, though we did support the event to the best of our ability. This meant a large sum was leftover in the outreach budget.
In terms of the server migration, it took a while as there was a lot of paperwork to get the money to India. Thereafter, we had to re-negotiate with the vendor as it had been a few months since we got the quote from him. The final agreed amount is slightly higher than we anticipated. We received an email from Manuel Schneider of WMCH informing us that we would need to find an alternate server by 31 May and complete migration. However, this was not possible by the given date and we requested for an extension of a couple of days. The migration is happening as this report is being written.
The grant also allowed us to retain our part-time Executive Manager, who has been of great assistance in the day to day running and planning of activities at WMIN. He has been in charge of managing micro-grants and accounting as well as supporting community led events and initiatives. We have also begun involving him in discussions with WMF as well as taking his input on important matters and having him present when we deliberated future plans of action during our February Board Meeting (non-confidential parts of the meeting).

Measures of success

edit
List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

We had a goal of organising or supported of atleast two outreach events a month and against that we organised 9, 6 and 9 events during the months of January, February and March 2013 respectively. We have also taken steps towards forming a rudimentary success measurement system for outreach activities.

Impact

edit

Various events and activities done by the Chapter have created awareness about Wikipedia. We have also conducted workshops on Indic Languages, which has motivated others to become editors.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

edit

Documentation

edit

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

Yes

Expenses

edit
All Amounts are in INR
Sl No Description Nos Planned Actual
1 Staff salary - Executive Manager Pay 3 months 126,000.00 126,000.00
2 Outreach Events 10.00 100,000.00 39,990.00[31]
3 Board meet travel expenses 1.00 50,000.00 9,031.50 [32]
4 Wikimedia.in servers 1.00 50,000.00 53,142.17
Total 3,26,000.00 2,28,163.67
Total grant amount requested 2,69,000
Total grant amount received 2,67,941.6
Amount spent 2,28,163.67
Unspent amount 39,777.93

Remaining funds

edit
Remaining funds are retained by the grantee with WMF's permission until until a decision is delivered on WMIN's new grant submission. After this date, please return any remaining unused grant funds to WMF following the instructions at Grants:Return unused funds to WMF.
Are there any grant funds remaining?
Yes
Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
39,777.93
If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.
Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.
We request the remaining funds to be repurposed for organising and supporting outreach activities in India till we apply for and receive the next grant.
Note that this is not approved, but that WMIN may retain the funds with WMF's permission until a decision is delivered on a new grant submission. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 17:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Notes and References

edit
  1. Not all the events organised have required the Chapter to spend funds. By being resourceful we have managed to eliminate or reduce costs in most of them.
  2. Event report in Wikimedia India mailing list
  3. Commons Category page for Kolkata meetup
  4. Event page in English wikipedia
  5. Commons category page for Event
  6. Event report in Wikimedia India wiki
  7. Grant application
  8. Commons category link
  9. Event Report in Tamil Wikipedia
  10. Event report in Wikimedia India wiki
  11. Event and report page in English Wikipedia
  12. Commons category for the event
  13. Quark 2013 Events Page
  14. Event report in Wikimedia.in
  15. Event page in English wikipedia
  16. Event schedule for Gnunify/CC Pune
  17. Event report in Wikimedia India Mailing list
  18. Commons category page for the event
  19. Delhi Event page in Wikimedia.in
  20. Event report in Wikimedia India mailing list
  21. Commons category page for Bangalore CC event
  22. Commons category page for IIMB event
  23. a b Announcement in Wikimedia India mailing list
  24. Report in WMIN Wiki
  25. Project page
  26. Planning page for 9 March event
  27. Event planning page in En wiki
  28. Event page in WMIN wiki
  29. Event page in English wikipedia
  30. Event and report page in English wikipedia
  31. Alliance building and symbiotic relationships with other open source / open content communities like Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK), Free Software Movement of Tamil Nadu (FSMTN), Indian Linux Users Group (ILUG), Creative Commons and Mozilla India has led to significant cost reductions in running outreach events through resource pooling.
  32. Board meet travel expenses was significantly reduced by synchronising it with CIS-A2K training (paid for by them) and using teleconferencing extensively.