Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/LSP multi year funding request 2024 - 2026

Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funds Committee on your proposal

Dear les sans pagEs team,

We want to thank you for your proposal that describes your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The NW European Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review.

• The committee is pleased to see your excellent focus on inclusion and the set of activities dedicated to under-represented contents in multiple areas of knowledge, together with the orientation towards the gender diversity (women and non-binary people biographies mostly), bearing in mind the intersectional bias.
• The committee appreciated the improvement in governance, obtained by the board’s increase.
• As well as your sustainability approach looking into the future and the transparency approach based on documentation and information sharing.

While elaborating on your proposed plans, the committee members proposed for you to consider:

• How to actively transfer to other affiliates the experience of some of the challenges and how to overcome them
• Based on the number of retained editors, we suggest an analysis on what motivates people to participate in your events or edit-a-thons and then find the way to keep engaging them with the project and the editing activities.
• We also suggest keeping under control and improving the metrics.

It would be supportive of the Committee’s understanding of your plans if you’d be so kind as to elaborate on our following specific few questions:

• Stated that managerial work essentially focuses on one person, which is the distribution of the workload to avoid burnout?
• About the 3000 printed copies of the Fanzine, as this is something not funded in the past by WMF, would be useful for us to understand how the printed version would be disseminated. Having the digital copy instead of the printed one, would have a different impact for your community?
• Seeing the salaries’ distribution, it is unclear for us which figures belong to what personnel?
• Given the general costs for African participants that might overlap with the African funding sources, is it easier for LSP to cover these costs versus the local partners applying for funding? How do you handle the financial support through other African affiliates, do you have reliable partners in Africa to do this or can you do this better together with a reliable African affiliate?
• Seeing the reduction of the support from WMFR and WMCH could affect the sustainability of your activities, do you have any plan or strategy based on the analysis of decreasing the support from those two chapters?
• Many of the names mentioned as part of your team are also part of the LGBTQ+ user group, and so how do you share or not share activities? Are they concretely engaged, are they willing to do some activities, or are only considered as allies?

Due to restrictions on our ability to adjust our overall General Support Fund budget for this round, it may not be possible to (fully) fund this proposal. However, we do want to understand what impact a partial funding decision would have on your budget and related activities or operations.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee — Camelia (talk) 08:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Question concerning Burnout

Stated that managerial work essentially focuses on one person, which is the distribution of the workload to avoid burnout? Translation in French : Étant donné que le travail de gestion repose essentiellement sur une seule personne, quelle est la répartition de la charge de travail pour éviter l'épuisement professionnel ?

Bonjour, merci pour votre question qui est l'une de nos préoccupation majeure ! Nous avons en effet à cœur d'anticiper et prévenir les risques de burnout.

Pour cela la présidente Sinkra, en charge de la gestion des ressources humaines, entretient avec notre directrice exécutive de nombreux échanges et est extrêmement vigilante sur ses récupérations, congés et sa charge de travail. C'est notamment pour cette raison que nous souhaitons d'ailleurs embaucher une personne supplémentaire pour s'occuper de notre administratif.

De plus nous portons une grande attention au harcèlement que l'association et notre directrice ont subi et pourraient subir afin de lui permettre de se remettre, de se protéger au mieux de nos capacités et d'en tirer des leçons pour améliorer les choses pour les membres de l'association. Enfin cette question reste très liée à celle de la stabilité financière de l'association puisque c'est d'elle dont dépend la rémunération de notre salariée. L'incertitude sur ce point est un source importante de pression. Le comité est donc très vigilant à ne pas faire reposer cette question uniquement sur la salariée et à anticiper au mieux cette gestion.

Par ailleurs la totalité du comité est également engagée dans la répartition de la charge de travail et son agrandissement ainsi que sa formation continue lui permettent de prendre en charge de plus en plus de projets et d'en lancer de nouveaux en compagnie des bénévoles.

Nous avons ainsi la communication qui est gérée par Celinea33, la comptabilité par Aiméeabibi, Alacoolwiki s'occupe de la quinzaine des autrices et du programme des sans imagEs, Laugriville du projet de Fanzine... Pour ce qui est des bénévoles nous avons formé et coaché les personnes, ce qui leur permet aujourd'hui d'être autonomes sur les groupes locaux. Nous avons aussi accompagné dans le développement de leurs projets, de leur compétences et assurances, de nouveaux bénévoles qui, par exemple, aident à l'organisation d'évènements, lancent des groupes locaux ou travaillent à la documentation de nos actions. Afin de les sensibiliser aux fonctions du comité et d'aller vers une meilleure répartition des charges et faciliter la prise de responsabilité, nous avons planifié l'organisation de réunions de travail ouvertes et mensuelles du comité, organisées par celui-ci.

Élément clé de cette stratégie notre directrice nous permet de coordonner toutes ces activités et d'aller beaucoup plus loin que ce que nous avions préalablement réalisé avec ses grandes qualités de formatrice, coaching et animation.

Answer in english Hello, thank you for your question, which is one of our major concerns! We are indeed committed to anticipating and preventing the risk of burnout.

To this purpose, President Sinkra, who is in charge of human resources management, maintains close contact with our Executive Director and is extremely vigilant about her time off, leave and workload. This is one of the reasons why we are looking to hire an additional person to take care of our administration.

In addition, we are paying close attention to the harassment that the association and our director have suffered and may suffer, so as to enable her to recover, protect herself to the best of our ability and draw lessons to improve things for the members of the association. Finally, this issue is closely linked to the association's financial stability, since our employee's remuneration depends on it. Uncertainty on this point is a major source of pressure. The committee is therefore very careful not to put this question solely on the employee's shoulders, and to anticipate this management issue as far as possible.

The entire committee is equally committed to sharing the workload, and its expansion and ongoing training enable it to take on more and more projects and launch new ones in the company of volunteers. Communications are managed by Celinea33, accounting by Aiméeabibi, Alacoolwiki is in charge of the "Quinzaine des autrices" and the "Sans imagEs" program, and Laugriville is in charge of the Fanzine project... As for the volunteers, we have trained and coached them, enabling them to be autonomous in their local groups. We have also helped new volunteers to develop their projects, skills and insurance, for example, by helping to organize events, launch local groups or work on the documentation of our actions. To make them more aware of the committee's functions and to move towards a better distribution of responsibilities, we have planned open monthly committee work meetings, organized by the committee itself.

A key element in this strategy is our director, who enables us to coordinate all these activities and go much further than we had previously achieved, thanks to her great qualities as a trainer, coach and facilitator.

Answer from LSP Committee

Question on distribution of salaries

Seeing the salaries’ distribution, it is unclear for us which figures belong to what personnel? We only have one person employed at the moment, but we have a contracctor contract with Comptabilis to do the accounts. The documentation is not done by them, they prepare the financial statements and the accounts. The minimum wage in Switzerland is 4000 chf per month (52 000 chf per year). The average wage in 2018 was in these sectors ː

   Education: CHF 8,570 per month, 
   Human health and social network: CHF 6,549,
   Financial and insurance activities: CHF 9,286,
   Energy supply: CHF 8,199,
   Water supply, waste management: CHF 6,179,
   Construction: CHF 6,218,
   Transportation and storage: CHF 6,097,
   Professional, scientific and technical activities: CHF 7,873.

For a management position the wage level is at the moment clearly insuficient, especially since the risk of harrassment is very high (see recent articles in le Point where the name of the employee alongside their pseudos both personnal and professional are disclosed).

Source ː https://studyinginswitzerland.com/switzerland-minimum-wage/ and https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/work-income/wages-income-employment-labour-costs/wage-levels-switzerland.html

Laugriville (talk)

Question concerning Africa

Given the general costs for African participants that might overlap with the African funding sources, is it easier for LSP to cover these costs versus the local partners applying for funding? How do you handle the financial support through other African affiliates, do you have reliable partners in Africa to do this or can you do this better together with a reliable African affiliate?

Translation in French :

Compte tenu des coûts généraux pour les participant·e·s africain·e·s qui pourraientfaire doublon avec les sources de financement africaines, est-il plus facile pour LSP de couvrir ces coûts ou de passer par les partenaires locaux qui demandent un financement ? Comment gérez-vous le soutien financier par le biais d'autres affiliés africains ? Avez-vous des partenaires fiables en Afrique pour le faire ou pouvez-vous mieux le faire avec un affilié africain fiable ?

Le montant qui nous est demandé par nos potentiels partenaires africains, données que nous avons collectés auprès d'eux pendant la Wikiconvention Francophone à Abidjan est indiqué ici budget Afrique est supérieur à 35 000 (quoique Haiti ai demandé 18 000 euros ce qui nous semble excessif. Pour 8 groupes demandeurs le budget moyen demandé peut être évalué à 2500 euros.

Nous souhaitons financer directement une partie seulement des activités LSP relatives à l'Afrique et aider les communautés locales LSP à demander des financements directs, soit auprès de leur affilié local, soit auprès de la fondation à travers des rapids grants. D'une part, parce que nous ne souhaitons pas reproduire un biais systémique post colonial et il nous semble important que les communautés locales gèrent leurs finances à leur niveau, et d'autre part nous n'avons pas les ressources humaines suffisantes pour traiter la gestion financière annuelle de tous les groupes africains émergents (8 en tout avec Haiti en Amérique Latine), aussi nous souhaitons nous limiter à la Quinzaine des Autrices pour les 3 prochaines années. La la Quinzaine des autrices qui est un projet LSP et constitue une porte d'entrée aux sans pagEs à travers une campagne annuelle francophone. Dans tous les cas, pouvoir bénéficier d'un affilié local fiable est crucial. Pour tous les types de financement envisagés, il nous semble préférable, comme nous l'avons fait l'an dernier de passer par des partenaires locaux qui sont plus au fait des réalités du terrain. Par contre, comme la gestion financière implique une charge de travail non négligeable, nous ne pouvons aller au delà de la gestion directe de la Quinzaine des autrices (comme cela a été fait en 2023 avec le recours à des affiliés comme le User group de Côte d'Ivoire, Wiki Wake UP et le UG du Bénin. Il serait cependant pour nous plus facile d'avoir un seul partenaire africain, Wikifranca par exemple (comme le fait la campagne #SHESAID cette année).

Notre intervention est constituée surtout par une aide à l'intégration dans la communauté wikimédienne, par exemple en aidant les personnes à créer leur page de projet, faire le dashboard, proposer une présentation type et des affiches si besoin, ainsi qu'établir en amont une liste de travail avec des sujets balisés pour les novices, comme ici pour un évènement LSP financé par le UG RDC

Si le cas d'une demande de financement par rapid grant individuelle se présentait nous aiderions la personne à le poser auprès de la WMF en tenant compte de ses besoins spécifiques. De ce que nous avons vu, les besoins de chaque communauté sont différents et nous tenons à nous adapter.

Fanzine 2024

About the 3000 printed copies of the Fanzine, as this is something not funded in the past by WMF, would be useful for us to understand how the printed version would be disseminated. Having the digital copy instead of the printed one, would have a different impact for your community?

Première page du Fanzine des sans pagEs 2021

Translation in French : En ce qui concerne les 3000 exemplaires imprimés du fanzine, comme il s'agit d'un projet qui n'a pas été financé par le WMF dans le passé, il serait utile pour nous de comprendre comment la version imprimée serait diffusée. Le fait de disposer d'une copie numérique au lieu d'une copie imprimée aurait-il un impact différent sur votre communauté ?

Le Fanzine est diffusé lors de chaque rencontre internationale ou événement. Il n’y pas de coût de diffusion.Il a été distribué en Allemagne durant la réunion de Femnetz, durant les wikimedias summit et est utilisé comme «goodies» donné à toutes les personnes participant aux éditathons.Il peut être exposé, car la dernière page est un poster présentant l'histoire chronologique du projet des sans pagEs.

Teilnehmerin-vor-projekttafel

Distribution et exposition du fanzine pendant la Quinzaine des autrices francophones à Limoges en 2023

Editathon à la bibliothèque Marguerite Durand le 27 juin 2023 01

La forme magazine et poster du Fanzine lui confère une valeur d’objet bien supérieure à une édition numérique. Il a une durée plus longue de conservation et il est archivable dans les bibliothèques (en fait il a été archivé par le centre d'archive du féminisme de la bibliothèque Marguerite Durand à Paris et récemment à la Bibliothèque de Genève) Une édition papier pourrait être réalisée pour les 10 ans de LSP (2 000 ex seraient suffisants).

Les autres éditions pourraient être réalisées sous format numérique, par ex. en 2014. Mais l’impression ne représente qu’une partie du coût du document. Les postes qui restent incontournables sont : la conception, la récension des contenus, la traduction, les traductions, la mise en forme graphique (le format du Fanzine devra être adapté pour le numérique). Laugriville (talk)

Translation in English : The fanzine is distributed during each international conferences and local events to participants. There is therefore no additional distribution cost. The paper and poster format gives it a superior value compared to a numeric format. It has a longer life span, and can be archived in libraries (in fact it has been archived by the notorious feminist archives in Paris located at the Marguerite Durant Librarie as a feminist fanzine). A paper edition could be done in 2026 for the 10th anniversary of LSP (2000 prints would be enough) Other editions could be done using a numeric format like in 2021 or the one currently in production. The printing only represents a fraction of the total cost. The unavoidable costs are ː conception, gathering contents, translation, graphic design (the format needs to be adapted to a numeric format).

Question about WMFR and WMCH support

Seeing the reduction of the support from WMFR and WMCH could affect the sustainability of your activities, do you have any plan or strategy based on the analysis of decreasing the support from those two chapters? WMFR has reduced its 2023 support (9000 CHF), but increased its 2022 support (30000 CHF). We have had talks with Rémy Gerbet to have a meeting in Paris in december 2023 to ask funding at different foundations in France. We also are currently filling out grant submissions to various funding agencies in Geneva. We have also gained our own revenue stream by asking institutions to pay for part of the events generating in 2023 approx 7000 chf, and this figure has increased regurlarly during the past years, allowing us to become more independent.

WMCH has not decreased it's support in 2023 (we obtained close to 19 000 chf from them), We just do not have the exact figures for 2024 as the grant submission are being asked at the same time as the WMF. Here is the amount we requested ː . We do not know however how much the financial support will amount to this year in the view of the general economic situation, and put a "low figure" expectation for both partners, which seems reasonable.

Question about relation with LGBT UG

Many of the names mentioned as part of your team are also part of the LGBTQ+ user group, and so how do you share or not share activities? Are they concretely engaged, are they willing to do some activities, or are only considered as allies? Some of of the people who put down their names there since 2022 were membrs of the LGBT UG because as one of our reliable partners the LGBT UG issued a support letter to us in september 2022. Wey the UG also have since 2019 led some initiatives in collaboration, like Wiki Loves Pride 21, Wikiloves pride 22 and Wiki loves Pride 23. There are some informal and formal relations with the LGBT UG which are very important to us. Further more, LSP participated to the Eurogames event in Bern which was organized by the LGBT UG as part of the Wiki Loves Pride campaign. We support and value the group, who is definitely one of our precious allies. The main difference is that LSP is a francophone project, and focuses on the francophone community, who finds it hard to be fully included in English speaking surroundings. Therefore LSP tries to maintain links between the anglophone and francophone community concerned by LGBTIQ issues (who overlap with gender gap issues). The main difference too is that LSP focuses more on gender gap issues and representation of women and non binary persons within the movement, being close to Women in red and groups concerned by female representation and agency within the movement and the project, that latter not being the main purpose of the LGBT UG.Natacha LSP (talk)

Proposition of the committee

While elaborating on your proposed plans, the committee members proposed for you to consider:

• How to actively transfer to other affiliates the experience of some of the challenges and how to overcome them : Thank you for this proposition. After discussing answers in our meeting on Monday, 6th of novembre, the committee and the director propose to : publish learning patterns on the way the LSP project functions and adresses challenges. We are allready participating to conferences and activities (for the subject of Burnout we were invited to A let's Connect session for exemple). Our 2021 Fanzine also documents our history and has been shared among affiliates and individuals in the movement during wikimania, wiki summit, wiki francophone convention, Femenetz meetings. This is part of our strategy to share our history with others (while at the same time having a paper issue distributed by hand ensures that it is given at events to people who are interested in gender gap issues not waisting paper or time with others).
• Based on the number of retained editors, we suggest an analysis on what motivates people to participate in your events or edit-a-thons and then find the way to keep engaging them with the project and the editing activities.One thing LSP has never done and could start doing is generating surveys to measure satisfaction of participants. One of the reason is that we do not collect emails and rely on mass messages and talk pages for communication on the project. This is one thing we could do in the future to start including a «satisfaction metrics».

̈* We also suggest keeping under control and improving the metrics.We are aware that we need to improve the metrics. Could you point us to an affiliate that has satisfactory metrics so that we may if possible learn how to improve ? We reflected together on what you meant by "keeping the metrics under control" and did not really understand what was meant by this proposition.

Natacha LSP (talk) 11:38, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Round 1 FY24 decision

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to partially fund your proposal for 140,000.00 CHF for the implementation period of 1st January 2024 - 31st December 2024, taking into account the current NWE regional budget for the year.

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee values the cooperations and partnerships built by Les sans PagEs, the involvement with francophone communities in many geographies and institutions, and the excellent focus on inclusion and gender diversity (e.g. women and non-binary people biographies). Important steps have been made to extend and stabilize the governance structure, as well as to extend your activities and increase demand and interest in Africa and globally. We hope you will make good use of existing materials and support to improve some of the identified fields (e.g. financial planning, metrics, and sharing your important outcomes and methodologies within the movement).

Understanding that the decision of not approving this application as a multi-year proposal is disappointing, the committee offered the lightweight review next year of this current proposal as a renewal application in FY25.

We thank you for your understanding, and wishing all the best for the implementation of your activities in 2024!

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, –ABruszik-WMF (talk) 08:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)