Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia Österreich/Impact report form

Report received

Thank you, colleagues at WMAT, for submitting this impact report! We're looking forward to delving in and learning more about the impact of your organization's work this past year. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Feedback from FDC staff

The FDC staff (Katy and Winifred) shared their thoughts and feedback and asked questions about both the 2013-14 Impact Report and the 2014-15 Progress Report over a Skype call / Hangout held with each organization receiving an Annual Plan Grant. What follows is the summary of the conversation covering these two reports. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:48, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Appreciation

• WMAT continues to submit high quality reports (both its impact report from 2013-14 and its progress report from 2014-15). We think this is important not only because we think this report is a useful way for showcasing WMAT’s work, but because these skills also contribute to our overall view of WMAT as an effective organization with an ability to understand its own progress and document its programs well. We consider these reports high quality because they contain a good balance of providing relevant context that doesn’t detract from the report’s clarity, they include clear reports on relevant metrics in an organized way by using progress bars tables, and they demonstrate a growing ability to effectively tell the organization’s stories.
• We continue to see WMAT as an effective organization with a lean organizational structure.
• WMAT demonstrates that is continuing to act as a learning organization. In the past, this approach seemed more focused on organizational structures and practices, but that focus appears to be shifting as program learning is now a growing focus. This was demonstrated in the number of high-quality learning patterns about both programs and organizational effectiveness submitted as complements to this report.
• We are very interested in WMAT’s efforts to better understand its community, through a survey that also showed high satisfaction with WMAT’s community support work.
• Through its focus on content, WMAT continues to contribute significant numbers of media files, as well as media files of unusually high quality (e.g. EuroVision contest). WMAT tracks how media files are used in order to understand the impact of its work.
• WMAT is growing its capacity and interest in advocacy work, including significant contributions to EU advocacy efforts across chapters like its database of EU advocacy contacts.

Concerns

• While we appreciate WMAT’s lean organizational structure, WMAT’s highly personalized approach to community support is not scalable. Achieving significant impact with respect to the investments WMAT makes in this program may continue to be a challenge.
• WMAT has had success with leveraging its in-kind contributions but has not had success in cash fundraising. This is a challenging area, but more success in fundraising outside of the APG process will be needed to sustain WMAT’s work in the future.
• WMAT’s targets continue to seem low with respect to what this organization accomplishes and do not effectively reflect WMAT’s potential, especially with respect to grant amounts requested. We urge WMAT to consider more ambitious targets as part of its future plans.
• As WMAT deepens its program works, we encourage WMAT to work on ways of understanding the longer term outcomes of its work. This may be particularly critical for programs like advocacy, but it will also be important to move beyond metrics focused on outputs (e.g. participation) for its other programs.