Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia CH/Proposal form

Funding increase

Your propsal have a lot of good points in it, but I can not understand why you resuest an increase of funding from FDC with 38% when the guardrailes says maximum 20% and when you actual runrate is almost down to 50%. I understand though that the runrate for second half will be higher, but would anyway like you to elaborate why you have not kept your request within the guardrailes (and that you have a lot of great ideas for project I alreday seen).Anders Wennersten (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I imagine that with runrate you mean current expenses against planned expenses. At Wikimedia CH we try to do a good evaluation of our expenses, but we will never force to match the planned expenses. It's donors' money, and the efficiency of the expenses is the first goal. On the other hand, the year 2013 has taught us more about the conducting of programs. We may have overestimated the expenses for 2013, but we now know that in 2014 we will come closer to what our staff and our volunteers can do together.

If we were to follow the guardrails strictly, we put too much pressure on external funding which could be damaging for the programs. Anyway, it's our goal to rely less on donations in the long run. Still too few chapters or user groups in other countries can benefit from donations. Our idea is that if we became more independent from FDC funds, not only more funds would be available for other chapters, but we would also be able to actively help other movement actors. Something Wikimedia CH has already been doing by providing Wikimania scholarships or by joining the Participation Support Committee. Pakeha (talk) 21:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

One important point not mentioned in the answer above is that we have volunteered to organize the Wikimedia Hackaton in 2014, with a planned budget of 80'000 CHF/USD. This is a one-off event, as a service to the Wikimedia community, and is not an indication of the actual growth of our chapter (e.g. we are not hiring long-term staff or any other similar comitment -- the money mostly pays for venue, accomodation, etc). Without this event, the budget increase would be only 13%, below the value specified in the guidelines.

Given our size and experience, we believe that we have the responsability to organize such a Wikimedia-wide event (also, we have some very dedicated members who are really motivated to make this work !). In a sense, such a project (which is not part of our "regular" projects) should be outside our FDC application, and funded by a separate grant application. But since we are not allowed to apply for Wikimedia grants, it makes sense to include it in our application. Of course, it makes us look like we are growing a lot (the hackaton itself accounts for a 22% increase of our FDC application). Another solution would have been to ask several chapters to contribute, and so spread the funding (and thus the required increase of funding in 2014) over several organizations. But since the funds would come from the same source (FDC) anyway, it would make little sense to go down this route (it would only increase reporting requirements and administrative complexity, with little concrete advantage apart from lowering our percentage of increase). Hope this helps ! Schutz (talk) 07:39, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Education program

For the other programs i understand them fully but this program I feel uncertain of the focus. Is the ambition to increase number of ccontributers or is this manily an outreach activity?Anders Wennersten (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anders, sorry for the late answer, our Education program focus can be ranked like this:

1. improve Wikipedia articles: in quality and quantity, it depends of the grade of the students (university, we focus on quality, lower degree, we focus on creating articles on local topics)
2. increasing the number of contributors: the global observation of the Education program is that if primary goal of improving Wikipedia can be reached by volunteer-lead programs, adding a layer of retention is far more difficult and needs a lot of follow-up with the participants. That's why we develop long-term partnerships with schools, and in the future with teachers colleges. It's also one of the major rationale to have paid staff for the Education program, by definition most of the Education activities take place during work days, and even if several volunteers are willing to take a day off to initiate partnerships, they can't do it on the long term.
3. optimization of volunteers work: a part of the program ambition is to help the volunteers who do education activities. It can be by preparing and printing materials, supporting the day of the activity, doing the follow-up, survey, etc... The point is not to tell to the volunteers how to do trainings, but to support them in their activities.
4. diversification of the chapters incomes: In Switzerland we have a specific situation, where we are used to pay for all kinds of quality services. In the Education field, most of the schools and universities have a dedicated budget for external trainers. We cannot evaluate today if Wikimedia CH will be able to cover all the salary cost of the employee for Education program, but it's most likely that we can cover a non negligible part. We also still need to figure out what is the opinion of Swiss donors about that. We know that this question is a sensible one in the Wikiverse, but we are also in a period where the movement is asking to the chapters to find new way of funding, that's why we are evaluating all the possibilities, according to the local culture.Charles Andrès (WMCH) 07:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Administrative assistant

I fully understand the need of this resource, but wonder how you reached the figure of 0,5 FTE. Experience from other chapters indicate that the need ususally is somewhat smaller, like 0,25 FTE. Could you please elaborate on why this higher figure.Anders Wennersten (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, I am not sure if the name "administrative assistant" covers the same tasks in all proposals, as I don't know the job description for similar positions in other chapters. Some meaning may have been lost in translation, and I would be glad to have comments/feedback on this. For Wikimedia CH, the administrative assistant will mostly act as a secretary and a junior accounting person (it is extremely common to combine these two types of position in Switzerland); this is not primarily a position of "executive assistant" or "assistant to the director" as they exist in other organizations.

This being said, the 50% figure comes from our analysis of the work conducted by our first employee, who was Chief Administrative Officer. We realized that about half her time was spent doing tasks that should be delegated to a secretary. Without knowing if the job description of this position is the same as in other chapters, it is difficult for me to justify why our figure is higher, but I can pinpoint two reasons why our "administrative assistant" will be very busy (even with a 50% position :-), and which may not apply to other chapters:

• Firstly, the multilingual setting of Switzerland increases the complexity of our work. Every newsletter, press release, thank you letter, report, etc, has to be sent in at least 3 different languages (often 4, as we often write them in English as well). This means a lot of time spent doing translations, chasing translators (paid or volunteers), preparing the content, sending it, etc.
• Secondly, Wikimedia CH is a payment-processing chapter (a position that has served us and the wider Wikimedia community very well). Of course, direct fundraising expenses are outside the FDC proposal (as they are deduced from the money we collect before it is added to the FDC pool); however, this means that we get a lot of exposure during the fundraiser (for us, this means November to January, not only the 9 weeks during which the banners are up). This is very positive: we get many new members (130 new members during the last fundraiser, a 100% increase), direct donations that would not have been made through the WMF websites, many requests for information. As a chapter we are really looking for this type of attention which helps us make an impact, but it is very demanding in terms of resource. For 3-4 months, it is clear that the 50% administrative position would be dedicated to these tasks.

I hope this answers your question; let us know if you need more information (I'd be particularly interest in discussing the comparison of job descriptions I mentioned above). Schutz (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarifying answer. The language issue and the fundraising support is not customary for other likewise positions in others chapters and for me explains your somewhat high need for these adm tasks. The core task for adm assistants in all chapters would be bookkeeping etc, and sometimes this is the only task.Anders Wennersten (talk) 04:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Timeline for programs

Hi, Quoting from the proposal "Some projects planned in 2013 have been postponed to 2014. Most of our 2013 projects were proposed by volunteers and were ambitious." I feel that you are being very ambitious in your programs (which is not, in absolute terms, bad), but I think it could help you and everybody if you can detail more thoroughly your timeline of activities. Could you elaborate on that? Have you taken/Are you planning on taking specific advice on this point? Thank you. -- CristianCantoro (talk) 22:44, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Cristian. We think that the ambitions for 2014 are the same than for 2013, but with a major difference, we took care that all proposed activities are supported by the necessary manpower. It means that if a project lead by a volunteer is very ambitious, we allocated staff time to be sure that the project can be run in time. Several of our 2013 projects implied that the first contact was made by a volunteer, but were lacking the necessary follow up, in 2014 , we will have the manpower to assume this part. It’s one of our learnings from the past two years, it’s important to take care that the volunteer have the necessary support to accomplish their project, no matters the size of the project, otherwise the volunteer get frustrated and became reluctant to propose a new project or ask for support. That’s why our 2014 annual plan include a total of 4.2 FTE with 1.35 FTE dedicated to community support. But in fact, the support to Wikimedians project is more that the community support program, in the Education program, lot of activities are proposed by members, the same for the GLAM project.

For the Timeline, we created one here. You can see that the events or activities already fixed are mostly spread in the first half of the year. We are still waiting some official answers, and also some activities, like contacting each library in the country, will be conducted at the end of this year, and will have impact at the end of 2014.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 12:44, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Conflict of interest - transparency

I have a very delicate question regarding the request of WMCH.

Charles Andrès was the President of the Fundation until 09.30 and he has been appointed CSO (Chief Science Officer) since 10.01.

I wonder if WMCH advertised for the recruitment of a CSO (I am quite sure not) and how the creation of this function is justified (no other chapter has a CSO and what are the missions of a CSO ?). This is already a big issue that from my point of view justifies an enquiry.

This looks a function that was created to find a place to the President and this is embarrassing on the deontology's point of view. I also wonder what wages he was offered for this position and if he participated to the delibarations that fixed them ?

This makes trouble because the budget that is asked for these projects (500 k$) is highly disproportionnate with the missions that are announced. I have some concerns with the idea that WM CH will use these funds to place his different members.

Sorry for these embarrassing questions but they have to be asked.

LittleSwissApple (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC), Member of the WM CH

As the board member who led the recruitment committee within WM CH, let me reassure you: this question is neither delicate, nor embarassing. As I already mentioned on fr:Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/19_octobre_2013#Abus_potentiel_dans_la_gestion_de_WM_CH, I am not very keen on discussing such strong accusations with an anonymous account that was created specifically for posting them, and who did not provide any indication showing they are true. However, I can not of course let this defamatory message be left unanswered on the discussion page of our FDC application, so here is a short answer.

• Probably the most important piece of information is the email we sent the wikimedia-l mailing-list announcing the recruitment of two directors on 13 June 2013. In particular, it explains how the position was advertised (in particular: through several mailing-lists, on our website, on linkedin.com and on www.jobs.ch), and should be enough to answer the first "big issue" mentioned above.
• The second most important piece of information is the email we sent to wikimedia-l on 5 September 2013, announcing that we had hired two new directors. It includes the complete details about the process, explains how and why the position was created, why we chose to hire a CSO, how the selection was done, how we made sure to avoid any conflict of interest (using the help of an external specialist) -- and in particular, the fact that Charles Andrès was not involved at any step of the process.

These two emails should be enough to answer all concerns indicated above, and I won't repeat their content here. The sheer idea that the main goal of WM CH when requesting FDC money is to "place his different members" is completely ludicrous.

I'll finish my answer by indicating that WM CH members were told about the whole hiring process (not only through the wikimedia-l mailing-list, but also through the Wikimedia CH-specific mailing-list), that some members participated in the interviews and that we have not received a single complain about the process, neither from WM CH members nor from the wider Wikimedia community. If LitteSwissApple really has concerns, they should probably be sent to our association first.

I'm happy to answer any other question here (as long as they are not asked using an account that was created solely for this purpose !), or by email. Schutz (talk) 20:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

What "accusations" are you talking about ? I have just asked questions. And why so much agressivity in your answer ? I was wise not to use my main account when I see the way that you behave. Instead of focusing on the person who asks you questions, you should focus on the content issue.

The fact is that Charles Andrès was President of the WM CH. Under his mandate, WM CH decided to create the function of CSO (Chief Science Officer). The reasons that you provided on the list are not clear at all from my point of view.

You claim that Charles Andrès was not involved in the process to decide what functions to create. I cannot believe that the President didn't participate to this debate. And if so, he would have been a poor President.

Permit myself to find asnotishing the coincidence that Charles Andres is a biologist with a PhD and that WM CH decided to look for a "Chief Science Officer". The message on the mailist doesn't explain why WM CH needed such a very particular profile. A Chief Operational Officer with managing competence would have been better. The candidate should also speak German by preference which the most spoken langage in Swiss... This looks like a function that was created to fit at best the President of the association instead of the best function to create.

In the mailist you explain that the former COO decided to leave because there was too much work and that for that reason you decided to create two functions. Why not to keep her and to create an additional function instead of leaving her go and create two new functions, the COO being replaced by a CSO ?

I add that Charles Andrès is a French speaking wikipedia. There is another coincidence with User Serein who also became appointed after being President but this time on WM FR in analog circumstances. It looks like the same, doesn't it ?

So could you clarify precisely the reasonnings that lead to the creation of the function of Chief Science Officer in a chapter ?

I would like also for transparency that the wages of the CSO of WM CH are communicated to us.

Again, these issues are delicate and you should not be so agressive but on the contrary try to answer these questions with the highest transparency.

LittleSwissApple (talk) 00:59, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

(this is mostly for the benefit of other readers who may not have seen the other pages where this discussion unfolds, for information). On Jimbo's page, you wrote a section containing "the President of WM CH created the function of "Chief Science Officer". This is an accusation, not a question. On fr.wikipedia.org (link provided above), you wrote "(Charles was hired) without a search for the best candidate being performed" ("sans qu'une recherche du meilleure candidat ne soit effectuée"). This is an accusation, not a question. You wrote: "he was hired without the job being advertised" ("il a été nommé sans appel à candidature"). This is an accusation, not a question. You wrote: "no ad was published on the site" ("aucune annonce n'a été publiée sur le site"). This is an accusation, not a question. These are the accusations I'm talking about, and they are not minor. I personnally feel that they are way more agressive that my answer, but I'll leave it to other readers to make up their mind. For the rest, I'll stick to my policy of not talking with a sockpuppet. User:LittleSwissApple remains very welcome to ask his questions under another account, and I look forward to having a real discussion on these topics.Schutz (talk) 06:21, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

This looks IMO like a FUD. Beside the fact that the accusations are really serious (and wrong IMO), the person behind them is (at this time) unknown to me, who is a really old WMCH member volunteer. Here are the information of the Global account manager. Kelson (talk) 16:26, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

the sentence "the former CAO decided to leave" and LittleSwissApple's conclusion "why not keep her" says a lot. an ignorance of facts. as a volunteer i am _very_ glad that WMCH did not hire somebody who manages me, plans my time. what i need is support, not a manager. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 22:27, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

LittleSwissApple, your accusations have been more than simple questions, but if you really believe yourself then I do not see a reason for you not to write under your established account. You claim, for example, that there has not been an advert for the job. Given the earlier answers by Schutz on fr.wp, you actually should know better already. You use the word "disproportionnate", without making clear what that is supposed to mean concretely. These are the reasons why I have decided for myself not to pay more attention to your claims. Ziko (talk) 11:06, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Neuchâtel Herbarium

One of the features of proposal I look for is leverage. We have very ambitious goals for Wikimedia relative to the funds available. In light of that I was pleased to read about the Neuchâtel Herbarium project which appears to have used some local funding, some specific funding from an outside entity, and (I'm speculating) integrated it into a class project to get help with the actual legwork. Well-done.--Sphilbrick (talk) 22:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks ! We entirely agree with your assessement; we indeed see funding from the Wikimedia as "seed money", that allows us to start a project, shows that it works and use the results to ask for funding from other sources. With regards to the herbarium, we are currently writing another, larger grant, so that the project can continue without direct funding from the Wikimedia movement. And, yes, we have trained students to use the digitalization material that we provided for the project so that they can contribute.

The same idea applies to our current "Wikipedia in Residence" positions: if everything works well, these pilot projects could lead to permanent positions funded through other sources. And worth noting, too: these projects are conducted on a "matching fund" basis; that is, we never provide more than half of the funds that are required for such projects, the collaborating institution providing at least half of the funds. This is also a way to get external funding -- although this has so far never appeared in our accounts, since the money is used directly by the institution for the wikimedia-related project.

Schutz (talk) 12:43, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Questions for all entities from FDC staff

Please answer a few questions about your entity that we are asking of all entities. The purpose of these questions is to gain clarity about the information provided in your proposal, and also to request information that we can easily understand across all entities. We ask that you respond to these questions within 14 days, so that the FDC will have time to consider your responses during the deliberations. We apologize if any of these questions seem redundant. Thank you for your attention to these questions, and please let us know if you need any clarifications or have any questions for us. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:13, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Please confirm your rates of growth

The FDC reviews rates of growth, which are calculated using the amounts provided in the currency requested in the proposal, to understand each entity’s proposed growth in total budget, and proposed growth in movement resources (what the entity is requesting from the FDC this year compared with what the entity received from the FDC last year) requested. We are asking you to confirm these numbers here so we may be sure we are understanding your request.

1. Please confirm the amount you received from the FDC for the current FDC funding period in the currency you received it.

   362,000 Swiss Francs

2. Your total budget in 2013 listed in Table 3 is 658,710 Swiss Francs and that your total proposed budget for 2014 listed in Table 2 is 904,824 Swiss Francs. Therefore, we calculate a proposed growth rate in your total budget of 37%. Please confirm that this matches your records.

    Confirmed

3. Your movement resources in 2013 are 362,000 Swiss Francs, and your request for 2014 listed in Table 2 is 500,000 Swiss Francs. Therefore, we calculate a proposed growth rate in movement resources of 38%. Please confirm that this matches your records.

    Confirmed--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 08:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your timely responses about these numbers! Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:57, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Clarity around exchange rates used in this proposal

Please state how you calculated the exchange rate used in your proposal to provide the estimates provided in this proposal. Note that FDC allocations will be made in your requested currency (your local currency, in most cases), and amounts in US dollars are provided only so that entities and the FDC may understand allocations across entities. The FDC will use the exchange rate on the date of the proposal submission (1 October 2013) as calculated by Oanda, to ensure consistency across proposals.

The exchange rate used was the rate at the moment of the beginning of the application, 1.0640 rounded at 1. On the date of the 1st October, Oanda's rate was 1 CHF for 1.1048 USD, it means a request of 552'400 USD.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 09:06, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying your methodology, Charles. With an amount this large, rounding may make a significant difference! Your request is considered in CHF, but we will be using a number closer to the US$552,400 you quoted here to understand calculations across entities. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Questions about your entity’s staffing plan and strategy

Many entities plan to grow their staff in the coming year, and we would like some more information about each entity’s staffing strategy.

1. If your entity is increasing its staff by one or more people, please explain how your board and, if applicable, the staff person managing your new staff, will handle the increased responsibilities of managing more staff.
2. Do you think the decision to increase the number of your staff will change the way your organization or your staff interacts with volunteers or change the attitude of volunteers toward your organization? Will the role of volunteers shift as a result of the change in staffing? How were community members a part of the decision to grow your staff?

   The increase of staff members is mainly done to increase the contacts with the communities and to empower volunteers in their initiatives. The major change we expect is to have more requests from our members, but also from the wider community in Switzerland. We also expect a positive shift in volunteers role : for board members, it’s expected that they will have less administrative and executive task and then will have more time for strategy and other long term activities. For the volunteers who are running project, we expect that they will have more time to allocate to the project itself, and that the staff may help them for the valorization, external funding and reporting. Our members are mainly Wikimedians, so all activities or decision made by the association are made by the community, anyway we are looking to have inputs and feedback from more community members, and especially we have the ambition that community members, even if they are not member of the chapter, are entitled to discuss and comment chapter's activities. Wikimedia CH is a specific chapter by its multilingual aspect, for us it make difficult to consult the communities directly on the project, but our community manager and members try to get as much as possible of direct inputs from the “swiss community”. Another consequence of the multilingual aspect is that most of our internal discussion are in english, and this is not efficient to have a wider participation in switzerland, with the new staff we expect to have more one to one discussion, in members language, and that the staff will assure the transmission of each volunteer opinion. Bottom line the staffing strategy is think to increase the "liberty" of the swiss communities,member or not of the chapter.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

3. Who on your staff is responsible for your organization’s fundraising activities in 2014?

   The main responsible in 2014 will be Anh Chung our new Chief Administrative Officer, in close collaboration with me for the earmarked fundraising (fundings for specific project)--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 10:57, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Organizational context

We have noticed a few ideas that are included in many of this round’s proposals, and would like more information about each entity’s context.

1. Growth: We have reviewed your response to the question in the proposal form about your proposed rate of growth in budget and in movement resources. The rates of growth in movement resources for all entities in this round are at or significantly greater than the recommended maximum of 20% in the FDC Framework funding guidelines. It would be helpful to the FDC and FDC staff if you have any further details to justify your proposed rate of growth. Why do you believe your rates of growth are sustainable and that your plans are feasible? This request is also informed by the context of current underspending of movement resources (FDC allocations and WMF grants).

   About our budget, it’s important to note that the full cost of the Hackathon has been included in the budget. Without the Hackathon the amount requested would be of 420.000 CHF, ie 16% more than for 2012, and our budget would be 820.824 CHF, ie an increase of 25%.

   We believe that the increase growth rate of the chapter will be much much slower in the next years, we are close to reach the critical threshold in terms of staffing, and it’s most likely that the volume of activities will reach its maximum in 2014 or 2015. At the end of 2013 the situation is 4 regular staff and a long-term contractor. Today the CIO’s contract is equivalent to a 60% position; but it should decrease in 2014 and 2015. The two community manager have a 50% position, and we believe this ratio will remain the same. We plan to increase by 30% the time allocation of our German community manager to support the Education program in eastern Switzerland. Today the French community is in a special situation, we do not have a dedicated community manager, but the CSO and the CAO are French speaker, we need to evaluate if the bias of language at the C-level can compensate the absence of a dedicated community manager. In the future we do not expect other stable recruitment than the proposed administrative assistant for 2014 and a french community manager if it appears that it's actually needed in 2015. In parallel to the regular staff (supported by movement funds) we plan that the temporary project manager will have independent fundings. The year 2014 will be critical for Wikimedia CH to establish us in the swiss fundraising system. We have done a major first step by receiving a grant from the Loterie romande, a major fundraiser here, but we need to develop the sustainability of this funding strategy.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:36, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

2. Partnerships: How does your entity define partnership? Do you have a process in place for bringing on new partners? What commitments do you require from the partner to begin the relationship?

   This is an open discussion within the association, and we had some interesting debate about the definition partnership. Today we use the term “partners” for each organization with whom we start a project, but in the near future we would start to make the distinction between a true partnership and the project with other party. The difference should be that a “true partner” is participating to the project from the start to the end and the result of the project is an unique result shared by all partners. Whereas for the other case, each participant may produce a different result (acknowledging the collaboration), or wikimedia CH can do all the real work, and the third party is just giving access to a resource or providing datas (Like many GLAM project). We do not have a defined process for bringing new partners, because it really depends on the topic of the partnership. In the Education and GLAM fields, it’s the duty of the CSO to develop such a process. Nowadays new partners are proposed by members. It’s difficult to define a hard list of commitments for a partner but there is at least one, all project should create a result under a free license. We may also request financial commitments, like taking in charge a part of the cost of the project or submit a letter of support for a grant request to a swiss fundraiser.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:36, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

3. Grants: If your entity has a microgrants, minigrants, travel grants, or other grants program, how much funding in your budget is committed to grants? What is your process for selecting who is able to receive grants and which grants to fund? How do you know if your microgrants are leading to good outcomes?

   Wikimedia CH use to distribute scholarships for Wikimania or other Wikimedia events. For Wikimania we define as eligible all applicants active in one of the swiss language or swiss resident (without regarding the language), for the choice, we use to take the x (depending of amount of scholarships we allowed) first applicants in the ranking made by the Wikimania scholarship committee. We choose this strategy to avoid any conflict of interest in the choice of the grantees. This year, when we saw that no swiss pass the cut, WMCH decide to allocate extra scholarships to swiss resident only, and in the selection, the priority was for applicants without a strong record of interaction with the swiss chapter and the higher impact on the wikimedia project. All wikimedians can apply for our grants, until now the board was reviewing all the request, but it was not efficient enough to assure a real follow up and evaluation of the impact, scholarships are expensive, we need to know the result of such expenses. That why we implemented, this year a Micro-grant committee in charge of handling all the individual support requests to the chapter, as well as reviewing Wikimania scholarships request. For the moment the design micro-grant committee has been more focus on good transparency and we haven’t set the evaluation process. Anyway, the first outcomes we expect is to have more different wikimedians making request, we believe that the micro-grant process is a good way to informed the member of the community about the support they can receive from the chapter.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:36, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Questions for all entities about operating reserves

We need more clarity on the state of the operating reserves of all entities. Operating reserves are defined as liquid, unrestricted assets available for an organization to use as a cushion, and to cover the costs of operations in case of unanticipated expenses or loss of revenue.

1. Please summarize your strategy or policy around holding operating reserves, and your procedure for determining the amount of operating reserves needed by your organization.

   The usual policy in Switzerland for the NGO is to have one year of budget, but in the context of the Wikimedia movement it’s not acceptable to try to reach this amount by movement funds. Our strategy would be to look for external fundings for most of our project and in case of successful funding, to not reallocate the amount to a new project but to move it to our operating reserves. At the time of the next FDC application we would evaluate which part should remain in the operative reserve and which part should be used for the next funding period.

1. What amount of funds are in your entity's operating reserves right now?

   290'000 CHF

2. Is your entity planning to use money from your 2013 FDC funds allocation (your current funds allocation) to add to your organization’s reserves, and if so approximately how much money are you planning to add to your reserves?

   We do not plan to use funds from our current allocation for reserves, we budgeted to use some funds of 2013 for 2014, but always for projects postponed.

3. Have you budgeted any funds for your operating reserves in this proposal (your proposal for 2014) and if so, how much?

   We haven’t budgeted any operating reserves in this proposal.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Questions about WMCH’s proposal from FDC staff

These are some questions and points of clarification that arose while reading your proposal. These questions are an opportunity to clarify information in your proposal for the FDC and for FDC staff. Thank you in advance for your attention to these questions. We ask that you respond to these questions within 14 days, so that the FDC will have time to consider your responses during the deliberations. In a few cases, we may need to follow up with you after you respond to gain further clarity around your answers. Thanks again on behalf of FDC staff! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:13, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Questions about the financial information in this proposal

Please clarify some of the financial information you provided in your proposal, so we may be sure we are understanding it correctly.

1. Please provide us with a detailed list of the expenses involved in your QRpedia work, or with estimates of how you will spend the money if a detailed list is not yet available.

   There are two different QRpedia projects. The one for the herbarium in Lausanne is more advanced. It needs:

   • staff time
   • stickers printing
   • one or two Kiwix-Serve devices to provide the network in the outdoor exhibition
   • a part of the remuneration for a civilian servant who will do the digitization of the herbarium, but also participate in the preparation the exhibition in Lausanne
   • We may need developer's time to improve the accessibility of the system, especially integration of audio content into Wikipedia Mobile and Wikipedia Offline

   The other QRpedia is planned to open in 2015 for the 700th anniversary of a famous battle in Central Switzerland. The focus in 2014 will be put on improving and creating content regarding this topic. Expenses will mostly be related to the holding of a couple of workshops with history buffs. --Pakeha (talk) 21:59, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

   Thank you, Pakeha. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

2. The information about your fundraising targets presented in Table 2 and Table 4 does not seem consistent, if we are understanding it correctly: 404,824 CHF from sources other than the FDC in Table 2, and 177,000 CHF from sources other than the FDC in Table 4. Please explain this difference.

   Thanks, the table 4 is lacking the part of "report from budget 2013/taken from our own reserves", ie CHF 227'824.00 --Charles Andrès (WMCH) 15:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

   Thank you, Charles. We see that this is also noted in Table 9, and we also believe we will understand this better when some details about your reserves are clarified above. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Information missing from this proposal form

1. For your GLAM program, please answer the question, “How will your entity document, track, and measure successes and challenges of this program?”

   Here the expected impact that should have been listed in the application, sorry for this mistake:

   • 25% of the contacted libraries answered us
   • 5 libraries host a Wikipedia initiation day
   • all the articles linked by QRcodes in the exhibitions are improved in the swiss languages
   • improvement of the wikipedia mobile application proposed to the WMF engineering team
   • 150 attendees to the regional GLAM exhibition
   • 20 new GLAMs collaborating with Wikimedia CH after the regional exhibition
   • 5 GLAMs adopting the GLAMwikiToolset
   • 15 000 CHF incomes from trainings
   • WikiLovesPublicArts supported by two Cities (no federal public art available, we are working city by city)

2. We notice that WMCH has not linked to a strategic plan. How does your annual plan for 2014 fit into WMCH’s longer term strategy? What are your plans for developing a strategic planning document in the future?

   The annual plan for 2014 is thought to be a preliminary work for the long term strategy of the chapter. The programs have been redefined to fit to the members motivation on the long term and according to the skills of the chapter. They also include long term metrics, for example the GLAM working group want to rules Switzerland within 5 years!(ie having contacted all the GLAM in Switzerland) In the past we have experienced that it’s difficult to organized strategic planning live meetings with several WMCH members. That’s why the CSO choose to visit and consult as much as possible of WMCH members to collect inputs and then proposed an annual plan that should reflect as much as possible the balance between members expectation and feasibility.

   The process to develop a strategic plan is an open discussion between the board and the CSO, but it’s likely that the CSO will be in charge of the strategy planning for the next months, with the goal to have a strategic plan discussed during the next General Assembly in March 2014. Like for the annual plan, the work of the CSO will be to interview the different stakeholders and prepare the necessary documents to prepare the association strategic plan.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 20:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Questions about programs

1. Please explain the statement, “Create a strong basis of readers to create good conditions to build an editing community.” How do you expect editing communities will emerge in places where offline access is needed, since it will be difficult or impossible for readers to edit without internet access?

   We use a statement of Asaf Bartov about the strategies for building editing communities in the “global south”. We know that Wikimedia CH cannot influence the development of internet in the global south, but we are following with the greater interest experiment like Wikipedia Zero. We know that one of the weakness of Wikipedia Zero is that it create a huge basis of potential editors, but this program is not designed to create editors neither to retain them. We believe that wikipedia Offline can help to prepare the ground in country where Wikipedia Zero is not already developed, or help to create the editors community in the country with Wikipedia Zero program.

2. What will be the outcomes of your initiatives to distribute offline Wikipedia in prisons and how do you plan to measure them? For example, how many readers do you expect to reach? Do you plan to track how participants are using this resource?

   Our ultimate outcome is to turn the Wikipedia readers reached with the offline Wikipedia into Wikipedia editors. We planned to join the distribution of Offline Wikipedia in jail with the education program in the prison. The usual target of Education program are the highly skilled students, in switzerland we have this traditional target, but we also have the ambition to bring people from “lower cultural background” to edit Wikipedia. It’s true that it’s easier to improve articles with editors already well experienced in the topic, but we are thinking about a more sustainable editors recruitment strategy, and in this strategy we believe that it’s important to reach all the people in the population. It’s hard to have metrics for the reader in jail because the data about the number of inmate, or inmate with computer is note public, that’s why our target for the moment is to contact all the prisons. Tracking the usage of Wikipedia Offline can be sensible, we can and we will documentate how many are contacted and how many ask for having Wikipedia Offline, but after we are talking about privacy.

3. We note you mention governance challenges as one of the potential risks. Can you explain what this risk might include?

   We know that governance challenges, no matter the importance, can be really time consuming, that's why we consider that governance challenges create risk. We will try to anticipate as much as possible the challenges. The most obvious challenge of managing a real team of staff, has been anticipated by the establishment of a bureau composed of the president, the vice president , the CAO and the CSO. The size of our community is also a type of governance challenge, that's why in 2014 we will put a specific effort on recruiting new editors, and we hope that they will also join the chapter to assure a stronger "community voice" in the governance of the association.

4. Please offer us some context for your fee-for-training model. Has WMCH used this model in the past, and do you have current partners expressing interest in these trainings?

   Wikimedia CH never used the fee-for-training model, but we receive several request for a person who could do it. We also participate to joint workshop with senior oriented association who ask a financial participation to the attendees. Until now we refused to receive a financial compensation because the workshops were always done by WMCH members, and most of the time by board or former board member. To avoid any COI, it was always better to have no financial aspect. We already have a paid intervention planned in two weeks, three conference and 4 workshop for more than 300 students in a day. We also have a request for a paid course for phD students.

5. As part of Community Support, you will certify 10 trainers. What type of training will they be certified in?

   Actually the community will be first consulted and involved to defined the type of trainings, this initiative is a bottom-up project coming from community members, WMCH will only support and valorize the project. You can find the description here

6. As part of your Offline Dissemination program you are planning to send "39 packages (pre-filled USB flashdrives, documentation, flyers/brochures, stickers, T-shirts) advertising our work to 39 fellow chapters“. How do you expect this to further the movement's mission?

   This part of the Offline Dissemination program has several goals. First, we notice during the last wikimania that the Offline Solution is well known in the movement but only at a theoretical level. With sending Offline packages, we aim to provide to the community members with the higher potential to use/disseminate/improve the offline solution a ready to use offline solution. We believe that, like for the wikimedia project, involving new participant necessitate to take an extra care of the first contact with the project, and being present for the follow-up. A second point is that we believe that the Offline Dissemination Program has the potential to create its own incomes, and for that we think that it’s important to start directly at the world while level, lot of international NGO’s have their seat in Switzerland, it means that we could find swiss funds to work on international project.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 21:10, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Question about strategic priorities

Thank you for clearly listing strategic priorities that align with each of your programs. Please also share with us briefly how these strategic priorities and goals listed are achieved through your programs. We understand that each program may contribute to more than one strategic priority. In some cases when you list three or more strategic priorities, we would like to know which strategic priority is most closely aligned with your work and why. We are asking this because your rationale for choosing these strategies is important to understanding the impact and feasibility of your plan. It also helps the FDC track progress against movement-wide goals.

• Program 1 / Community Support: You list ‘Increasing participation’ and ‘Improving quality’.
  • Please offer a brief explanation of how each of these priorities are related to this program.

    The community support is intend to cover each topic related with the communities, in this way, it may cover all strategic priorities of the movement, but we want to focus on two principal. We believe that it is by increasing our work effort with the actual community that we will be able to recruit new editors. We have an example in the French part, the community is really active on tweeter, and they have been able to made new contact with potential new editors. The result of such campaign is highly promising because they identify people with a web culture compatible with Wikipedia and most of the time a topic of interest. But what our community told us, it's that they don't often have the time to do the follow up after the first contact and especially to help the potential new editor to actually enter on Wikipedia. We (volunteer and staff) think that by working together on such strategy may have a significant impact in increasing the participation. On the German part, one of our member lead a program of welcoming and supporting new editors, the potential of this program is really high and together with our community manager the volunteer would like to extend the lesson to improve the search and welcoming of new editors. The increase in quality is more obvious, the Swiss community is small, but with high quality standards in term of edit in Wikipedia or pictures on Commons, each time we help them to accomplish their volunteer mission, we increase the quality on the wikimedia project.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 06:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

• Program 2 / GLAM: You list ‘Improving quality’ and ‘Encourage innovation’.
  • Please offer a brief explanation of how each of these priorities are related to this program.

    The improvement of the quality should be reach by donation of original media to Wikimedia Commons, and by the valorization of the GLAM project in Wikipedia and the sister projects. We list innovation for 2014, because we especially want to support the GLAMwikiToolset and encourage the GLAM to use it, we also plan to support some new ideas that should make GLAM donation easier.

• Program 3 / Education: You list ‘Increasing reach’ and ‘Improving quality’.
  • Please offer a brief explanation of how each of these priorities are related to this program.

    For us, the Education program means in first to improve the quality of the wikimedia project by having student assignments on topics that are not well covered. when we talk about increasing reach, it's more about increasing the penetrance in the Education world, and not recruiting (in first goal) new editors. In fact, if we could succeed to have Universities in Switzerland who introduce in the first year of bachelor an assignment resulting in a wikipedia article, the retention of the student in Wikipedia wouldn't be the most important, as all the year we would have new student.

• Program 4 / The Alps: You list all five strategic priorities.
  • Of these three priorities, which do you believe is most closely aligned with this program?

    The Alps program is a trans-program, it take ideas and activities in all the other program, as long as the topic can be the Alps. Considering that, the most aligned strategic priority would be to increase reach, because we believe that having a thematic program that talk to the heart of the citizen, we should have a good entry-point to their "mind".

  • Please offer a brief explanation of how each of these priorities are related to this program.

    The Alps program will be connected to the other strategic priorities through Education, GLAM and Community support Activities.

• Program 5 / Offline Dissemination: You list, ‘Increasing participation’, ‘Increasing reach’ and ‘Encouraging innovation’.
  • Of these three priorities, which do you believe is most closely aligned with this program?

    the increase of reach is the most obvious, but we consider that it's not enough for the long-term strategy of the movement and it would be an under usage of the potential of the program

  • Please offer a brief explanation of how each of these priorities are related to this program.

    we plan to increase reach by allowing more and more people that couldn't do it to access Wikipedia (global internet access challenges like in Africa, north Canada or central Australia or specific limits like in jail)

    increasing participation should be the step after increasing reach, we do not want to limit ourselves to just distribute Wikipedia, we know that when people became addict to read Wikipedia, then they can be turned in new editors. In the collaboration with Wikimedia Canada, Indonesia and Australia we are specifically thinking to target population with low acces to internet, but with also low coverture in Wikipedia articles (like "native Canadian").

    Using Wikipedia offline goes with some technical challenges. We already know that some people request to add editing possibilities in Kiwix, but this is a big step in term of software. This innovation has always been delayed because we were not able to identify context were the added value was significant enough to justify the investment, but In Indonesia and Australia we have context where we can set-up project with the creation of hundreds of new articles, without the problem of synchronizing with already existing articles and with a big impact on Wikimedia projects. Charles Andrès (WMCH) 06:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

With the efforts of my colleague Amqui in the Canadian Aboriginal Languages Wikipedia Coordination, Wikimedia Canada is currently in touch with First Nations for instance the Atikamekw community in Manawan (QC) to create articles in Atikamekw language. But Manawan is particuliar because the Band Chief is really pushing new technologies and students have internet access in schools like Otapi, but it is not the case for most First Nations communities.

This is why at Wikimania Hong Kong, we were pleased to meet WMCH at the Chapters Village and be able to see (and try) the Kiwix technology ; we talked about Aboriginal outreach projects and we would like to join our forces to provide offline access to remote First Nations communities who does not have internet access so far... and God knows they are numerous! In the incubator, User:Amqui is coordinating and develop Wikipedias in a dozen Native languages and that would be great we can offer these future Wikipedias offline using Kiwix to Northern communities in Natives languages but also in French and in English. Let's knock on wood to make it happen! Best regards, Benoit Rochon 11:28, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Question about impact

WMCH is proposing a growth rate of 38% in movement resources with a request of 500,000 CHF (approximately $550,000 USD). Please explain how your activities are having an impact on the Wikimedia projects at a level that is commensurate with the amount of movement funding requested here.

We have at least to type of impact, on wikimedia projects and for the movement. The impact on the Wikimedia projects is what we want to improve, until now we are really good in improving the quality of Wikimedia Commons by the work of our photographer or some large donation/creation through GLAM project, but we are not satisfy by these results. Volunteers involved in such activities notice that the true impact will be when we will be able to use all the media import in Wikimedia commons in one of the other wikimedia project. We all know that it's not possible, but we decide that we do not want to have new GLAM projects without having an associated project to valorize the content, this is for example one of the goal of the edit-together. At the movement level, an important part of the growth rate is the result of the Hackathon, the expenses associated are totally for the movement and not for the local activities, we obviously hope that we will be able to recruit new swiss mediawiki developer, but it's not the main aim of the Hackathon for WMCH.

Wikimedia CH is a paiement processor, last year we used, for the first time, localized banners during the annual fundraising, and we notice an increase of donation, by improving our infrastructure and our visibility with projects that "talk" to the swiss citizen, we believe that we will continue to improved the efficiency of the fundraising in Switzerland, and then participate to the financial sustainability of the whole movement. --Charles Andrès (WMCH) 21:37, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Indonesia Support for WMCH funding request

During Wikimania in Hong Kong 2013 WMID and WMCH specially scheduled a meeting to talk about continuing partnership that has been forge since 2012 Javanese Language Wikipedia Revitalization Project.

The meeting mainly talk about;

• WMCH continued support for Javanese Language Wikipedia Revitalization Project and will put the time and effort (in addition to co-funding the project) to formulate a new system to enable participant to group and work together. The new formula injected in the already applicable system hope that new editors, after being trained to contribute to wikipedia, will be long lasting. We believe this effort align with WMCH request and support - Program 1/ Community Support: for ‘Increasing participation’ and ‘Improving quality’.
• WMID interest of kiwix to be put in universities in Indonesia in cities where Wikimedia Indonesia already have stronghold and previous engagement. However WMID is lack of technical skill and engineers to do so, and would like WMCH to send trainer and train the universities staff in order to be independent in rolling out offline wikipedia in the future.
• WMID follow up with one of the Indonesia Ministries personnel in an unofficial talk, and got confirmation of the Ministry support to do this. One organization already appointed by the ministry to receive the training. The conversation will be moved to official support once there are green light from WMCH that they can commit to send someone to train while we schedule a suitable time for all parties (WMID, WMCH, NGO, Indonesian Universities interested to do so). We believe this effort align with WMCH request and support - Program 5 / Offline Dissemination: ‘Increasing participation’, ‘Increasing reach’ and ‘Encouraging innovation’.

Considering the points above, WMID support WMCH for their funding request. Siska.Doviana (talk) 15:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC) (Chair of Executive Board WMID)

Reference

Lack of Coordination with other Wikimedia affiliated organisations

(moved to Talk:FDC portal/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia CH/Staff proposal assessment)