Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia Nederland/Staff proposal assessment

Response of WMNL to the staff proposal assessment

First of all, we would like to thank WMF staff for their review of our proposal. We appreciate their time, energy and commitment! We think the review is professional and well-considered. Like many other chapters, WMNL is in development having only started the process of professionalisation last year. A lot of energy went into building up the organisation and we expect to see results from this investment in the coming years. The feedback from WMF staff gives us food for thought on how to improve our operations in 2014.

There are only a few items we would like to comment on:

Percentage of budget spent on administration

WMF staff state: ’[The WMNL] Proposal is not focused enough on programs that will have strong online impact; more than 50% of its budget is dedicated to administration and travel’

According to the official -and strict- guidelines for the budgets of non-profit organisations in the Netherlands, WMNL will spend 68% of its total 2014 budget (including staff costs) on activities directly contributing to its mission, and 32% on overhead (fundraising, reporting, governance, administration). Therefore this statement in the assessment was confusing to us, and quite worrying as it gives the community a very strange impression of our operations.

We now understand that WMF’s statement does not relate to the entire budget of € 356.068 but only to the programme costs (€ 179.568). Furthermore WMF only sees the costs of the programmes Community and Content as ‘real’ programmes. The other programmes (WMNL, Resources, Global and Governance) are taken to be administration.

We have no problem with the fact that the programmes WMNL, Resources and Governance are considered to be administration. Indeed, that is how interpret them ourselves. We are surprised that the Programme Global is seen as administration, especially as the largest part of the costs of this programme is a € 15.000 budget for community scholarships and does not contribute to internal WMNL operations at all. The remainder of the budget is used to allow WMNL board and staff to take part in international Wikimedia events such as the Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania. In this way we contribute to the global movement. We see this as relating directly to the WMF goal: stabilising infrastructure.

Program costs	€		%
I Community	30.050
II Content	43.100
V Global	26.500
		€ 99.650	28%
Administration costs
III WMNL	4.540
IV Resources	9.300
VI Governance	12.500
Administration	53.578
		€ 79.918	22%
Staff costs	176.500	€ 176.500	50%
		€ 356.068

Response from FDC staff: Yes, as you note, the percentage mentioned ("more than 50% of its budget is dedicated to administration and travel") included travel and administration, and is considered as part of the program budget, as included in the proposal. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Underspending in 2013

WMF staff state: 'WMNL is requesting 323,000 EUR (US$363,680) or a proposed 20% increase in movement resources, which is within the 20% maximum recommended in the guardrails; however, this is in the context of a planned underspend of its it budget.'

The assessment by WMF staff gives the impression that WMNL will be underspending in 2013. In our Q3 report and in our response to questions on the talk page of our FDC proposal, we already stated that we adjusted our budget half way through the year to bring expenditure in line with disappointing results in external fundraising. In Q1 - Q3 we spent 71% of our 2013 budget, and our prognosis is that this year we will spend 100.2% of the available funds all in all.

Summarised:

Original budget 2013: € 361.350

Revised budget 2013: € 309.231

Expenditure Q1-Q3: € 221,028 (= 71%)

Prognosis total expenditure: € 309.828 (= 100.2 %)

Comment from FDC staff: The underspend projection came from Table 3 of WMNL proposal, which predicts a 19% underspend. We will share with the FDC your current projection in the Quarter 3 report with the revised budget. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Reporting on challenges

WMF staff state: 'WMNL provides regular monthly reports. Reports are submitted on time, but past reports have lacked reflection around challenges. See, progress report for Q1.'

We took WMF’s comments on our Q1 report to heart. The challenges we encountered in Q2 and Q3 are in our opinion adequately reported. We have especially reported on challenges encountered in raising external funds, and on the disappointing results of editathons and editor trainings organised in Q2 and Q3.

SRientjes (talk) 08:41, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response to the Staff Assessment. I'll take your remarks into consideration during the deliberations. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 18:12, 15 November 2013 (UTC)