Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round2/Wikimédia France/Proposal form

Community review has ended. You are still welcome to comment on these proposals, but the FDC and the applicants may not be able to respond to your feedback or consider it during the deliberations.

Please do not edit this proposal form directly. If changes are needed, applicants can request them on the proposal form's discussion page. Thank you!

Proposal by Wikimédia France to support its annual plan with Template:Usamountrequested/2013-2014 round2/Wikimédia France.

Thank you for this proposal

Thank you for submitting a complete proposal form by the proposal submission date! We realize that you put a lot of effort into creating this proposal, and many of us are looking forward to reviewing it in-depth. Wikimédia France's proposal will be considered by the FDC in Round 2 2013-2014, provided Wikimédia France remains eligible throughout the course of the FDC process.

Please do not make any changes to your proposal at this time without requesting those changes first here on this discussion page, so they may be reviewed and approved by staff. We will consider changes that greatly enhance the readability of your proposal or correct important factual errors or broken links, but you need not worry about making minor corrections to your proposal form if you notice them after the deadline. The FDC will be looking at the substance of your proposal rather than focusing on the language used, and so these types of minor changes are usually not needed. This is also done to ensure that any changes made to a proposal are really intended by the organization submitting the proposal. Thank you for your cooperation, as this helps keep the proposal process fair and consistent for all organizations.

Please monitor this page for questions and comments from the community, FDC members, and FDC staff. Engagement during this part of the proposal process is important, and will be considered by the FDC along with other inputs into the proposal process. Follow up questions from FDC staff should be expected early next week and community review will continue until 30 April. Staff proposal assessments will be published on 8 May 2014 and linked to from your proposal hub page.

Please contact us at any time if you have questions about your proposal or the review process. We are here to support applicants throughout the process.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:55, 2 April 2014 (UTC) (on behalf of FDC Staff)

Suggestion

Thanks for your work on putting together this proposal. I look forward to reading through it in detail once it's complete. Just as a suggestion: since your proposal is so long (which is a good thing) you might want to consider putting summaries of the key points at the top of each of your different axis so that community members find it easier to skim-read. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:15, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mike, that is a great idea. We tried to do it, not sure if it fits what you imagined but we tried. Best Schiste (talk) 08:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

ESS

What does ESS (here) stands for? --CristianCantoro (talk) 19:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

This was corrected by Jean-Fred since, but for the record (and information) it is Économie sociale et solidaire (Social and in solidarity economy = Third sector). ~ Seb35 [^_^] 08:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Political activities statement

Don't forget to put an answer in the "I verify that this proposal requests no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation for political or legislative activities" box. -- CristianCantoro (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, we did it Schiste (talk) 08:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Copy-edit

This was already very well written. Nice work, WMFR. Please revert anything you don't like.

I'm emailing Nathalie Martin copy Christophe Henner to point out a few wordings I found unclear.

Tony (talk) 06:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all your feedback, it was much appreciated. Best, Schiste (talk) 08:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• "theses" -> "these"
• Section 5.2.3.1.6 more logical after 5.2.3.1.2

Asked for increase in FDC funding

Thanks for an excellent proposal both in form and content. My concern is the request for steep increase in funding from FDCs. As I understand it you received the equivalent of 525 KUSD 2013-20l4 and now ask for 826 KUSD for 2014-2015 making it an increase of 57%, while it seems your expected income from other funding is to be left the same at 496 KUSD (please corect if I got the numbers wrong).

What is your rationale of this huge increase, specially considering the Board directive to not increase FDC grants and that FDC for Round 1 was very reluctant to even give doubledigit percentage increases for the bigger chapters. Have you worked through a plan where the budget from FDC would be more like the same as 2012-2013, and what in your plans would look different, would it effect number of staff etc? --Anders Wennersten (talk) 07:08, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a specific question about this in the form, which Wikimedia France answered: "The total budget for 2013–2014 was 769,933€. We are proposing a budget of 960,903€ for 2014–2015, with a growth of 24.8%." Wikimedia France doesn't propose a higher budget. This is not because of a lack of ambition, but because of guardrails given by WMF/FDC to restrict growth to below 25%. The proposal form alone (without additional material linked to) totals 75 pages when printed. This is a very extensive and detailed grant proposal specifying programs and activities in great detail with SMART goals. Can Wikimedia France deliver what they promise for less than one million euro? You can read the proposed programs (axes) and decide per activity what you do buy and what not. The impact tables provided raise the bar for quality of proposals. Thank you Nathalie Martin. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 10:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

As I think you missed my point, I rephrase my quesion into two:

1.Why is there no increase in non-FDC fundings in the plan, and why not all the increase in speding by increased non-FDC funding?

2.Have you made a risk analysis where you look at what the consequence for the plan would be with a level of FDCfunding about the same as this year? Specially I am thinking of if this would effect the ratio of cost for employees/programmatic work, ie if it could risk either lay-offs or tbat funding would be missing for the most excellent parts of you planned programmtic work.--Anders Wennersten (talk) 07:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Anders, those are question for people form Wikimedia France which I can't answer, I'm not French, don't live in France and I'm not a member of this Chapter. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 19:37, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Anders, I'm sorry forgot to answer you here as your question was also asked by FDC Staff. I'll topo our previous answer with the following:

As I explained in the email we "cap our budget growth". Caping our FDC allocation would be meaningless as it would not ensure anything apart from asking more money. The growth caping is meant to last 2 years starting July 2014. It also is pending how much we get from the FDC this year as it seems to be a lot of focus on the 48% growth when, as we explained in our answers, we actually don't ask more this year than last year. It's just that due to the gap funding, our "let's rebuild everything" process and us stepping out of the payment processing, we had reserves. In our last year budget we spent first the movement money wehad saved through the process and only ask the FDC for what we neededto complement that.. We had 150 000€ that came from being PP. This money was used to pay our fundraiser, a good part of our tech infrastructure and our accountant. We also had roughly 200 000€ in the bank that we saved with the gap funding process. Even if we don't count the cash reserve, and only include the PP money, we are at our last year level; And if we had our reserves, which we used a lot, we are under what we asked for last year. Personal comment: I feel that we're experiencing one limit of the FDC process as I feel that we're gonna "pay" for us having the gap funding AND stepping out from the payment processing. Both events happening the same year changed a lot of things. I can't help but feel that our figures are looked at not taking into consideration the factor above. The data are looked at as equivalent from one year to the other. When they are definitly not. And the actual process is not good enough yet to allow sheer comparison of numbers. Finally, last year the FDC raised two concerns we dimmed true : The FDC is concerned about the rapid budget and staffing growth proposed by WMFR, and its ability to execute this plan without taking the time to hire and integrate a new Executive Director. Some programs are strong, and there is potential for innovation and impact. However, the programs overall lack a strategic focus, and the FDC is concerned about the lack of clarity on programmatic outcomes (impact and metrics). Schiste (talk) 15:54, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I am quite disappointed finding this answer 40 days after my question. I had wanted to understand the figures in your proposal better (which you critize FDC for not understanding...). But your late answer does not give me the opportunity to go further into this issue, with follow up questions, as it is now past the deadline of April 30. --Anders Wennersten (talk) 06:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Budget growth vs staff growth

Thanks for putting in this proposal. :-) The first question I have is, you are proposing a substantial increase in budget this coming year (as Anders is raising above), but it's not clear to me where that extra money will be spent. In particular, you say that you are not adding any more staff this year, and not increasing the money spent on your current staff either. (Side point: do you do any sort of yearly inflation-linked salary increases that might not have been included here?). So is the increase in the budget going to projects, or other administrative work (office, staff travel, etc.)? How does that tally with last year - were you spending more on staff last year compared to programs than you'd have liked to? (which would be understandable given the transitions that took place.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mike, I'm sorry forgot to answer you here as your question was also asked by FDC Staff. I'll topo our previous answer with the following:

As I explained in the email we "cap our budget growth". Caping our FDC allocation would be meaningless as it would not ensure anything apart from asking more money. The growth caping is meant to last 2 years starting July 2014.

It also is pending how much we get from the FDC this year as it seems to be a lot of focus on the 48% growth when, as we explained in our answers, we actually don't ask more this year than last year. It's just that due to the gap funding, our "let's rebuild everything" process and us stepping out of the payment processing, we had reserves.

In our last year budget we spent first the movement money wehad saved through the process and only ask the FDC for what we neededto complement that..

We had 150 000€ that came from being PP. This money was used to pay our fundraiser, a good part of our tech infrastructure and our accountant. We also had roughly 200 000€ in the bank that we saved with the gap funding process.

Even if we don't count the cash reserve, and only include the PP money, we are at our last year level; And if we had our reserves, which we used a lot, we are under what we asked for last year.

Personal comment: I feel that we're experiencing one limit of the FDC process as I feel that we're gonna "pay" for us having the gap funding AND stepping out from the payment processing. Both events happening the same year changed a lot of things. I can't help but feel that our figures are looked at not taking into consideration the factor above.

The data are looked at as equivalent from one year to the other. When they are definitly not. And the actual process is not good enough yet to allow sheer comparison of numbers.

Finally, last year the FDC raised two concerns we dimmed true :

• The FDC is concerned about the rapid budget and staffing growth proposed by WMFR, and its ability to execute this plan without taking the time to hire and integrate a new Executive Director.
• Some programs are strong, and there is potential for innovation and impact. However, the programs overall lack a strategic focus, and the FDC is concerned about the lack of clarity on programmatic outcomes (impact and metrics).

Schiste (talk) 15:08, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Questions and clarifications from FDC staff for WMFR

Thank you once again for this proposal. Please take the time to respond to a few questions about your programs and your finances, so that the FDC can better understand your proposal. We know this process takes time and we thank you for your attention. We would also like to emphasize that we are available to clarify anything asked or stated here. Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

WMFR’s proposed large growth rate beyond the guardrails

WMFR is requesting to grow its FDC funding from 400,155 Euro to 600,000 Euro, which yields a growth rate in FDC funding of 49.94%. This growth is well beyond the 20% guardrail recommendation for growth, yet there is no detailed justification for growth included in response to the specific question related to this (the second question in the Overview section of this proposal form).

1. We would like to invite WMFR to provide any additional information regarding the special circumstances that require this level of growth here.
2. If WMFR is funded at 120% of its current budget (i.e. a 20% growth rate), how would its plans change? What parts of the proposed work would be prioritized?

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

1. This is the result of our "weird" past 18 months. During the very first FDC round, we received a gap funding. This is roughly when we started our reorganization process. With that gap funding and the reorganization, we froze development and saved money. On our second FDC proposal, we had roughly 300,000€ left of movement funds in our bank account. This was removed from the money we asked in our proposal. So, in the end, we do not have a growth per say, but we are back to our normal level of fund request.
2. Our top priority is volunteer support. We would cut programs that are not volunteer oriented. However, we do hope this would not happen as it would hinder the last part of our reorganization process. As said on wikimedia-l, we will now have a 6% budget growth capping for the next two years in order to allow us to focus on evaluation and consolidating our processes, but that is based on the assumption that we get the funding we need.

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 13:43 (CEST)

Questions and clarifications about the financial information in WMFR’s proposal

We would like to offer a few clarifications about how we are understanding the financial information in WMFR’s proposal. After reviewing your finances, we also have a few questions. Please let us know if there is anything we are interpreting wrongly!

1. For the purposes of understanding this growth rate, we use the rates recorded from USD to EUR recorded by Oanda.com on 1 March (the proposal submission deadline for 2012-2013 Round 2), or 0.76220. Therefore, the amount funded in Euro for the previous FDC grant will be 400,155 Euro. Our calculations of growth rates are based on local currency and we will use this amount for our calculations.
2. We see that the total budgeted expenses are 697,008 Euro, but that WMFR quotes the amount 769,9333 Euro at the beginning of the proposal. We can’t find this number elsewhere in the proposal or understand where this number came from, but we would like to make sure we are accurately understanding your total budget amount! Please clarify the total budget for the proposed year, or explain why different amounts are included. If this is simply an error, please go ahead and make the correction using strikethrough.
3. In Table 3, WMFR lists 559,836 Euro as its current fiscal year planned revenue, although that amount is significantly less than the year-to-date actual revenue and projected revenue listed, but also less than the planned spending of 697,008 EUR (although actual revenue and projected revenue is indeed greater than actual and projected spending). We just wanted to check that the numbers in Table 3 are correct, so we can be sure we are understanding the financial information in your proposal correctly.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

1. We forgot to mention the date of the year to date. This is the period from 1 July 2013 to 1 March 2014. The €769.933 included the establishment of an operational reserve of €72.925. The correct figure is indeed €697.008.
2. Yes, the numbers are correct. Some explanations:
   • 2013-2014 was the first year we raised money exclusively through our own means, so we made a poor estimation of the amount we would raise. These results served us as a basis for the 2014-2015 FDC proposal in order to be closer to reality for next year.

• The projected revenue is less than the planned spending because it does not take the cash balance on 1 July 2013 (around €299,000 on 01/07/2013 vs €84,946 on 1 July 2014).

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 13:46 (CEST)

Additional question about operating reserves

We apologize, but one more question came up as we are delving into the financial information in this proposal. In Table 9 WMFR does not list any operating reserves, and we wanted to verify that WMFR does not in fact have any operating reserves. Thank you, and apologies for not including this with our original questions! Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 22:20, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

We apologize for this missing information. Basing on our bank deposit of 03/31/2014, and our revenues/spending planned until 06/30/2014, we anticipate an operating reserves of 227.229 €. Compared to our total planned spending, it represent a bit less than 3 months. ShreCk (talk) 20:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC).

Questions about WMFR’s staffing plan

After reviewing your proposal, we had a few questions about your staffing plan:

1. From reading this proposal, it seems that WMFR is requesting a large increase in its budget (and in its request for FDC funding), and at the same time is not requesting to increase its staff. While we appreciate your thoughtfulness on increasing programmatic activity, do let us know if we are understanding this correctly. Please also explain how WMFR plans to manage such a large increase in budget size and activity without additional staff resources?
2. Please explain more about why it makes sense for outreach and evaluation to be managed by the same staff person. How do both of these jobs complement one another? How well has this been working so far?

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

1. The reorganization that has been undertaken since the end of 2013 onwards meant WMFr to recruit several various profiles. All these recruitments were not conducted at the same time but split between January 2014 and May 2014, taking into account the professional situation of each person recruited. Additionally, newcomers had to be integrated step by step. In our FDC proposal, we do not plan to increase our number of staff as it has already been anticipated before the FDC period start, and this with the aim of completely rethinking the way WMFr's activities are organized. Almost all these new comers have been involved in the present proposal process.
2. The reorganization of the staff was based on the expertise of each member of staff, to support our volunteers' actions. We switched from an organization by topic to an expertise-related organization. It appears important for us to regroup outreach and evaluation, as outreach is about trainings or actions meant to sensitize various audiences. We want this position to evolve towards a “train the trainers” position in the future. The impact assessment of our actions and programs is a top priority for Wikimedia France. We want it to be translated concretely into the missions of each member of staff. Training experts are used to assess and measure impact as they build their pedagogical route regarding general and operational objectives. Then, they must assess the skills and knowledge of the people they trained as well as their satisfaction level. Building on this, we looked for a candidate with pedagogical competencies and genuine interest for assessment. We wrote down a real job description, as follows:

• Internal missions: train volunteer trainers ; help various actors evaluate and improve their actions quality
• Missions linked to Wikimedia France's environment: coordinate outreach actions, trainings, conferences ; organize contests aiming at sensitizing audiences ; …

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 13:59 (CEST)

Questions about WMFR’s programs

These questions and requests relate to your programs and strategy. We have grouped them into a few sections:

• Understanding WMFR’s context
• WMFR’s program implementation
• Measuring WMFR’s work and its impact

Understanding WMFR’s context

1. Would WMFR be able to explain more its approach to grouping together activities into programs? For example, it is interesting that WMFR groups its education programs and GLAM activities together.
2. We appreciate WMFR’s reflections on successful programs; however, we did not understand why WMFR chose to feature its work on aerial photographs at Versailles. Please share some more information about why WMFR included this project as a major success here, and what was learned as a result of this work.
3. We greatly appreciate that WMFR is thinking about ways to increase volunteer engagement; at the same time, it is clear that the expectations for volunteer engagement in the proposed plan are very high, possibly relying on as much as 522 hours of work for each volunteer based on 26,000 hours and 50 active volunteers! Given that WMFR has been experiencing challenges in this area, how is this plan feasible?
4. What does WMFR mean by, “Restraining ourselves to be innovative and creative,” which WMFR lists in weaknesses?
5. It would be helpful to better understand WMFR’s strategic priorities of focus for each program. For the following programs, is WMFR able to select one strategic priority that WMFR thinks each program addresses more than the others? We understand that each program is likely to also impact other strategic priority areas, but we want to get a better picture of where WMFR’s focus is.

   Axis 1 (increasing contributors and enriching content):

   Axis 2 (local support):

   Axis 4 (tools):

   Axis 5 (environment):

6. We appreciate that WMFR has many strengths as an organization! Thank you for sharing them in detail here. If WMFR had to pick just 2 or 3 of its biggest strengths, what would they be?
7. We notice that WMFR points to not knowing enough about members’ needs as a possible weakness. Please tell us more about how WMFR is working to understand the needs of members more, including perhaps, conducting needs assessments among members.
8. Please offer some details about how WMFR’s current and proposed locally-focused work is building on past learning in this work area? Has WMFR been successful so far in initiating activity (and sustaining it!) in regions where activity did not exist before; what are the lessons for the rest of the movement from this? Does WMFR think this model has been tested enough to roll it out successfully in all 22 regions of France?
9. In its work developing regional groups, how does WMFR intend to balance its top-down approach (developing groups where none exist) with its bottom-up approach (encouraging regional action plans developed by local groups)?

ANSWER

1. Programs were regrouped under six axes following the work we did with the members on a two-years action plan. Within the 1st axis titled “Increase the number of contributors and enriching contents through outreaching and training different audiences”, we chose to list the different fields we would like to outreach. In the same way we thought over the reorganization of the staff, the focus should not be on topics. We rather built a global strategy for both training and outreach which must allow us to reach diversified fields and sectors to eventually reach actors with different expectations. This will thus foster participation of new people on existing Wikimedia projects.
2. There are several reasons. First, the aerial pictures of Versailles are the follow-up of the partnership established in 2011, which started as a Wikimedian in Residence project. Since then, we have been able to pursue working with the Palace, in direct contact with their people. We work together with them to innovate in the ways we share knowledge. This partnership was not a one-shot project − it continues to bear fruits years after it was seeded, and we see this as a success as well as a good progress for us. Second, aerial pictures are a project initiated in 2012 with another partner, at a time where aerial photography started to gain traction in the Wikimedia movement and we were happy to develop it ans share our experience. The meeting of both these cool projects resulted in these awesome photographs, and for all these reasons, we see it a major success.
3. Wikimedia France thought professionalization did not work enough around the role and place of volunteer work in the organization. One of the major reasons that led to reorganizing ourselves and which appears very clearly in the strategic project is “how do we put volunteers at the heart of our actions ?”. The staff is no longer in charge of topics but has to be supportive from an expertise standpoint. In addition to that, the ambition set for regional development is to allow volunteers to get involved locally, which should enable volunteers to take initiatives more easily. Last but not least, through the “Membership & Volunteering” working group design, we want to put in place actions and processes to highlight volunteer work, i.e. a volunteer passport recognized at national level, funding of volunteers' adapted training, building a safe framework for volunteers to get involved in a secure way… We hope these measures will be a lever to increase the number of volunteers and the time they dedicate to the movement. We want to demonstrate this through our quality process which is composed of various indicators on this specific topic.
4. Building on the previous context of volunteering at Wikimedia France, volunteers did not feel legitimate enough to propose and co-create innovative actions, and propose ideas. Indeed, the “non-official” culture of our chapter would keep this type of creative design thinking at staff level, without involving volunteers. It is a real weakness, as we really think that − as our strategic plan shows − every actor should feel empowered to build the future of WMFR and think out of the box, collectively.

   • Axis 1 : GLAM
   • Axis 2 : Develop a regional organization
   • Axis 4 : Facilitate members' commitment
   • Axis 5 : Outreach on Wikimedia projects and free culture
   • Axis 6 : Have a clear and consistent communication

5. Our main strengths:

   • Governance: As highlighted previously in our answers, the Board was reorganized into working groups, as well as the staff team. Many efforts have been put into ensuring a permanent dialogue between the board and the executive directors, to constantly search for alignment both at organisational and political level.
   • Quality approach: Having designed a quality approach or process is a clear strength for our chapter because it will allow us to select and develop the activities which will prove to be the most impactful. Beyond this short-term benefit, our quality approach makes us similar to “Deming wheel” in a continuous improvement and innovation process.
   • Human Resources organization: We put in place a safe and secure organization for staff members thanks to specific human resources tools such as clear job descriptions, collective convention, etc. We also designed common tools such as a “project matrix” to have everybody on the same page and clearly know the scope of each projects, as well as the impacts expected.

6. Please, see last question on the same topic
7. Even before the development of our new strategic plan, 4 successful local groups were clearly identified: Strasbourg, Rennes, Toulouse and Paris. Therefore we chose to leverage their experience by designing a methodology based on their knowledge and best practices, as well as key success factors, to then deploy it and roll it out for all local groups. In addition to that, as we are at the beginning of our territorial development process and the staff member dedicated to this area of work was only recruited in February 2014, the first step for him was to do an assessment of the local groups' needs in order to quickly respond to their requests. This new dynamic has fostered the birth of new groups: Bordeaux, Lyon, Grenoble, Angers, Saint-Etienne…
8. We designed a proper methodology as a tool to help regional groups design their own actions plans (1 per region), and which can be used by them if they need it. But their action plan is entirely defined among themselves, and the staff member in charge is at their disposal should they need further help. Some projects such as “the Month for Contribution” are defined at national level but the regional groups are free to chose whether they want to get involved or not. So the objective is more to create a new dynamic than being too top-down or too bottom-up minded.

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 14:06 (CEST)

WMFR’s program implementation

1. Many organizations do provide spaces for volunteers to congregate and work at their offices, but WMFR describes this program as particularly innovative. How is this welcome space different from what is provided by other movement groups currently? What does WMFR intend to do to leverage third spaces in France to support volunteer work?
2. We notice WMFR is developing guides and toolkits for some programs. Some of these programs, for example the education program, have guides that already exist in other languages. Is WMFR planning to create new materials for this work, or is WMFR planning on translating existing work?
3. What are “Microfunding task force operations”?
4. How is “Diversification of member profiles” an organizational opportunity?

ANSWER

1. The volunteer space planned for our new office is particularly innovative for us in the first place, as it was simply not possible at all in our previous offices. This is a key point for WMFR as it makes our shift towards more efficiency more tangible. From what we know of volunteer spaces in other offices (we may of course have overlooked some information :), ours will be different as the space dedicated to members will have special equipment for them: computers for contribution, a library we are building at the moment, a book scanner, as well as all equipment (cameras, etc) that will be lent to members.
2. Of course, it is up to every local working group related to the programs to decide what they want to do with each tool. From the Board and the staff team point of view, we will try and encourage the groups to capitalize and leverage what has been done already by other chapters or groups. We will also try to take advantage of cross-chapters programs to design specific tools that could be missing.
3. The Micro-funding group is formed of 7 volunteers of the chapter, all appointed by the Board of Trustees and one of those 7 volunteers being a member of the board. This committee consists of supporting volunteers’ actions by giving them grants under 2.000€ (applicants are not necessarily Wikimedia France members). The role of the micro-grant committee is to decide on these grants' allocations. This Micro-funding committee is very efficient and we think it is an inspiration for other groups, like local groups. In the future we would like to have more groups who hold their own budget. The Micro-funding committee is also a pillar in our liaison to the communities.
4. Diversifying members can only happen if we target specific sectors and audiences. We have identified a few of them, with whom we think there might be quick wins (because we share similar values or contribute to similar goals but in a different way) but also sectors which will help to reach out to bigger audiences to increase the level of awareness on Wikimedia projects and find new ways of involving potential volunteers. That's why, as listed in axis 1, we identified new targets such as Social innovation sector, sport sector, cultural organizations and territorial authorities.

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 14:07 (CEST)

Measuring WMFR’s work and its impact

1. How will WMFR know if its awareness and advocacy work is a success, given that there are no measures or metrics included for this work? How does WMFR plan to track its work in this area?
2. How will Axis 3 (favouring the international cooperation) have favourable outcomes for the Wikimedia sitesl? What are the tangible benefits to encouraging more cooperation between Wikimedia entities?
3. How will having 200 articles linked to portals contribute to WMFR’s goals of diversity on the projects? What is the role of portals and how are they related to diversity?
4. As part of WMFR’s institutional partnerships work, WMFR works to train museum staff. Does WMFR measure how many of those trained contribute to Wikimedia projects as part of their institutional work or otherwise, after receiving training?
5. How many people does WMFR expect to reach through its work on Axis 2 (increasing contributors)? How will the volunteer activities supported result in more edits and more new contributors?
6. Have past Afripedia activities resulted in a significant number of new editors from this region? If so, how many? How does offline access lead to more online contributions in this region? How does WMFR believe it leads to improved quality or increased participation?

Thank you once again for your responses! We greatly appreciate your engagement in the proposal process, and are available to clarify anything we have requested here. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

1. Actions by WMFR as participation in conferences, seminars... are difficult to measure because it's about the values ​​of the projects. However WMFR strives to collect all the participation of its members during these events for inclusion in the reports in parts "timeline". We specify whether it is a seminar, study day or round table. Under each category intends that the participation of WMFR will not have the same impact (10min during a round table exchange versus an afternoon at a seminar).
2. Here are a few examples of cross-chapters cooperation that we could imagine :
   • we would like to try and reinforce the collaboration inside the Wikifranca project to support Wikimedia Canada in its framework building process, and start a reflection on a Wikicamp project that could be worked on by all French speaking countries, as a first cross-chapter event.
   • we want to be active contributors to cross-chapters discussion and knowledge sharing. During the wikimedia conference in Berlin, several ideas to facilitate cross-chapters collaboration emerged and we would like to support this dynamic. Especially, we would like to be able to share more broadly our reflection around WMFR quality approach (and our indicators scorecard) as well as launching a discussion around the types of position that can be looked for in staff teams.
   • We also want to work very concretely on communication tools and goodies together with Wikimedia CH for example.
3. This objective wants to measure how many different portals have been linked to articles. Having 200 differtent portals on various subjects linked to articles means 200 differents topics have been covered, which is a good representation of diversity.
4. Yes we track it (please see the metrics overview of the Program 4 in our Q2 report). In our new quality and evaluation process this figure will be aggregated with all the different projects of the axis, however we will keep to track results of each project in order to have both global indicators giving the big picture and indicators by projects. You can see this approach in our Q2 report on program 1 where we have our metrics overview which aggregate everything from the program and details information on specific project or grants in the additional information part.
5. We want to open ourselves to different audiences. We will propose activities related to projects supported by Wikimedia France: provide training to communities which are actually remoted from our projects, propose actions and outputs to contributions for social and cultural organizations, enabling structures to upload content on Wikimedia projects. This is with a strong and a daily support than we allow them to participate to our projects. This proximity and volunteer support will allow projects to expand and increase the number of contributors and contributions.
6. In total, following the various formations : we have 206 users'accounts with 192 which have at least made ​​a change, edit... Offline access allows firstly to organize training for local populations, due to technical problematics. The formations take place in buildings of the partners. Training taking place in these areas, local people can identify these places and subsequently contribute through the provision of computers with internet connection. Offline access has therefore not directly intended to increase contributions because it is not possible to contribute by definition but mainly indirect.

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 14:10 (CEST)

Missing information

After reading through your proposal, we found some information was missing and wanted to make sure WMFR had the opportunity to add this information here.

• Thank you for providing us with information about WMFR’s volunteer strategy; however, we find that the third question in the overview section has not been answered. The question is, “How does WMFR know what the members of the community / communities your organization serves (including chapter members and broader online volunteers) need and want? How does this influence WMFR’s strategic planning and decision-making?” Through this question, we are trying to learn more about how you know what your important stakeholders (members, volunteers etc) need, and how you take this into account when deciding what your organization does and how you do it.
• In response to the question “How will what your organization learns from measuring these results direct your future program planning and decision-making?” WMFR references its quality approach. It was helpful to learn more about this approach. Beyond this, is there any information WMFR wishes to share that is specific to each program? If there is anything else to share about each program, please add it here.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

1. This has been, and still is, a main issue for most of the Wikimedia Movement for years. We're tackling in different ways are still experimenting as to how to get people inputs. We use to mostly work on our internal wiki, with a public decision making system, and let members of Wikimedia France step in and share their views. Even so members could get involved, it is now pretty clear people do not have the time, energy or will to get involved in long and complicated strategical discussions online. Our first measure was to move those discussions offline. First with local face to face meetings in the French cities where we have an active community in order to bring the discussion to our members (see narrative for Toulouse & Rennes). Secondly we organized a 2 days retreat to work on Wikimedia France strategy with the board, staff, some Wikimedia France members and some active Wikimedia projects editors. The feedback we got was that, even face to face those discussions are really hard to step into. We're now working on reducing the amount of energy needed to participate by splitting the broader discussion in smaller topics. The goal is to get people involved in the parts they're actually really interested in. That way, if someone is interested in photos initiatives, they can share and get involved in that very topic. We're also increasing our presence on projects and Meta to have more accessible information and point of contacts for editors. Finally, one of our programs, territorial development, is all about bringing people together in real life. We believe that way we'll increase their engagement and recruit new editors. But also, by developing a more personal/day-to-day relationship with editors we'll also be able to get much more feedback about what they want and need.
2. Please find the quality approach here

Sbaijard 30 April 2014 13:40 (CEST)

Thank you and follow up questions

Thank you for these detailed responses to our questions and clarifications. We appreciate your engagement during the community review period, and the information provided here is very helpful. We did want to follow up on two points, because we think more clarify around both of these points is important to understanding your proposal:

1. It seems like one of the questions may have accidentally left out of the list of responses to questions about WMFR's context: this is Question #5, about alignment with the strategic priorities. We were trying to ask WMFR to identify one strategic priority area (for example, "Increasing participation" or "Improving quality") that WMFR thinks each program listed addresses best. The reason we are asking about this is to gain a clear understanding of the strategic alignment and focus of WMFR's programs. It would be helpful if WMFR could identify one strategic priority that fits best with the focus of each program listed below, and to provide some brief rationale along with each priority identified.

   Axis 1 (increasing contributors and enriching content):

   Axis 2 (local support):

   Axis 4 (tools):

   Axis 5 (environment):

2. We do realize you are tracking the direct outcomes and results of programs in your progress reports for your current grant, and we noted your comment here with interest: "In our new quality and evaluation process this figure will be aggregated with all the different projects of the axis, however we will keep to track results of each project in order to have both global indicators giving the big picture and indicators by projects." At the same time, while we very much appreciate that the big-picture global indicators are provided in this proposal as part of your quality approach, we did not find much information in this proposal about how WMFR plans to track the immediate outcomes or results of its activities. Are you able to share any of these more detailed plans for tracking your work in the upcoming year? We believe this information would give a much deeper understanding of your plans for measuring your future work.

We hope these follow up questions are clear, and please reach out if we may clarify what we are asking further. Since we are composing the staff assessments presently now that the community review period has ended, a timely response would be very much appreciated so that we can be sure to take all of the best information into account before the assessments are published.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 20:32, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

ANSWER

Thank you Winifred for this questions.

First answer

Following a bullet point mistake, the answer was in the answer number 4. So please find here our answer with more explanations.

• Axis 1: GLAM

We want to continue our efforts in this area. We have identified new targets and we want to facilitate the contribution through the upload of the different institutions' contents.

• Axis 2: Develop a regional organization

This action seems a priority to us because it allows us to create an organization for mobilizing volunteers on their own territory.

We hope that the implementation of relay groups will increase the number of actions as well as the number of volunteers involved in them .

• Axis 4: Facilitate members' commitment

Currently, our tools do not facilitate the involvement of members. Their complexity and number may even break this involvement.

Also, the action is a priority. We have to clarify the process and strengthen our offer of support.

• Axis 5: Outreach on Wikimedia projects and free culture

We want to raise awareness about programs we offer to many people and, through large public shares or special actions.

Programs developed in our proposal are diverse enough to allow everyone to get involved. We hope to show than sharing knowledge affects all areas.

• Axis 6 : Have a clear and consistent communication

We wish to review all of our communications (strategy and tools) to be more effective relative to our various target (press, potential members, members wishing to participate in activities, partners…)

Second answer

To track the immediate outcomes or results of the activities, we use several tools such as tracking categories which we integrate into each page user during training, workshops, events… With these categories, we can follow in real time the contributions of people with a tool externally. Then we can see who changed what, how many items have been edited, over what period…

We also set up various monitoring tools on Wikimedia Commons to know the number of mass upload.

The work on the assessment and evaluation is a work in progress that we will finalize in early July. We will meet our working groups on the assessment to finalize a framework for monitoring of ongoing actions. We will put in place a set of prerequisites that each trainer, event coordinator, etc. will have in his possession and that will allow us later to have metrics. For the moment we are implementing several actions related to assessment but we set early July the whole picture.

Best, Sébastien Baijard (WMFr staff) talk 11:00, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit request: header styling

Following modifications made to {{FDC proposal/Program}} after the publication of this proposal (see talk page for background), h3 headers under section 5 appear twice in the table of contents. I therefore request permission from FDC staff to edit the proposal to remove the redundant headings 5.1, 5.3, 5.5, 5.7, 5.9 and 5.11 to increase the readability. cc Winifred. Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 08:38, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

This request is approved, Jean-Fred. Thank you for the suggestion! Our apologies for any confusion caused by the change in formatting. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 22:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Winifred, this is now Done. Jean-Fred (talk) 11:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

General comments

I have been asked to provide a general comment on this FDC bid. Overall, I am very impressed by this proposal. In particular, these positives stand out:

1. The operation seems to be lightly staffed and volunteer led
2. Strong relationships in partner organisations - something that can only be done by Wikimedia organisations "on the ground" - seem to be a strong element of these plans
3. The organisation appears to have a strong track record of projects and a clear idea of what they want to achieve
4. Great to see that the organisation has significant independent funding streams - a clear endorsement of their worth to members and other supporters

Just one negative to consider:

1. I don't think the main focus of the global Wikimedia community should be on languages in rich countries where there is already a large amount of widely available information online, rather the majority of our spending should be on smaller languages in countries where there are lower rates of literacy and less published material. Perhaps WMFR could do more with immigrant language communities, or could use its resources to partner with a chapter in the developing world?

AndrewRT (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, we are already supporting french communities around the world. But we "support" we don't want to do things in their stead. Or as little as possible; However, the Territorial Development will allow us to get in touch with local association and local communities. This is an area where the movement still has to improve: who is entitled to develop Wikimedia presence in countries where there's no affiliate organization. Schiste (talk) 05:56, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

It's probably less problematic/controversial if you work on some immigrant languages of countries not previously conquered by France. Random examples: if Romanian and Albanian have 11 and 8 editors per million speaker vs. 20+ of French, and there are big immigrant communities, something very nice may arise from partnerships. ([1] looks terribly incomplete, please help fix.) --Nemo 22:17, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Languages

What's possible needs to be figured out on the ground, so if people only want to work on Wikipedia one must let them work there and give them directions to make it less painful, but please don't actively encourage creation of more Wikipedias. A sustainable wiki in such languages is one that plugs into, or better supplants, alternative and less efficient platforms. Imagine a linguists group developing a dictionary in Word documents or HTML websites, or a cultural association gathering texts on some ad hoc website: both would save a lot of time, energies and money by adopting MediaWiki on Wiktionary and Wiktionary; their previous momentum/inertia would be enough to keep the project sustainable. --Nemo 22:17, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit request: table of contents readability

I have been working on improving the readability of the humongous table of contents and using some wikitext black magic came up with this version : draft − cross-page diff.

Summary of the changes:

• Table of contents is limited to a depth of five
• Level-4 headers (5.1.1., 5.1.2 etc.), which match the FDC questions, are given shorter names in the table of contents
• The “In-short” overviews at the beginning of each axis are now wikilinked to the level-5 headers (and serve as mini-TOCs)

I believe these changes greatly enhance the readability of the proposal, and are thus eligible per FDC staff guidelines. I therefore request from the FDC staff permission to implement all (or subset of) these changes. cc Winifred.

Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 10:21, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. These changes make the proposal easier to read; they are approved. Thanks for your work. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 22:36, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Winifred, I implemented these changes (I also used {{Clr}} so that the resources charts do not go over the following header, assuming this was harmless in the spirit of the change set). Jean-Fred (talk) 23:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is approved! Thanks again. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 00:59, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, so there was a complete TOC. I just had difficulties referring to specific sections, so I'd appreciate a complete TOC at the end of the page. (Though I don't remember a way to place two TOCs on the same page; I guess I can always use transclusion.) --Nemo 22:24, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Scope of the organization's work

Thank you Wikimédia France for your proposal and for the work you do for the Wikimedia projects. I've read the proposal, and I can't help but notice how many different items you have on your program agenda. In fact, in a lot of ways you are an organization representing the entire Francophonie, not just the République Française. I also notice you only have a few staff members carrying out these projects, with some staffers getting their paycheck from many different projects that they are responsible for. (Let me know if I have misread your statements.) Considering the essentially worldwide scope of your proposal, combined with the relatively small workforce, I would like to know how you account for the risk of mission creep. How have you determined your priorities, and how have you decided on the number of personnel needed for these projects? How large is the workload of your staff? Keeping in mind that the ultimate goal of any Wikimedia organization is to improve Wikimedia projects, how effective would you say the current iterations of your programs are in doing so? If by some circumstance you were forced to scale back your programs, what would be your core focus as an organization? harej (talk) 06:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

The employee team is positioned to support the work of volunteers. The entire activity is not based only on employees, that is explains the wide variety of proposed action. Actions towards the Francophonie are not carried out by a single employee as show on each axis, more employees are positioned. This reorganization was carried out on the action plan through strategic weekend led by all groups of the association. Sbaijard (Sbaijard) 13:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Traduction en français

J'aurais aimé en savoir plus sur le demande de fonds de Wikimédia France et sur les autres demandes de fonds d'autres acteurs, mais tout est écrit en anglais. Y a-t-il des traductions en d'autres langues quelques part ? 85.170.120.230 10:14, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Bonjour, vous pouvez trouver la version française de la demande sur le wikimembre de l'association. Pour les prochaines fois nous tâcherons d'en mettre également une version sur meta pour les francophones non-membres de WMFr. Sbaijard (Sbaijard) 13:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Detailed budget

Please could you provide a copy of your detailed budget on this wiki, either in wikitable or PDF format, rather than providing a link to a google document? Please also consider translating the headers and description. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

You're right, we were out of time to copy our detailed budget on the wiki. But you have the same information on the financial part Sbaijard (Sbaijard) 13:33, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Number of contributors and diversity of point of view

One of the major goal of this proposition is to improve the number of contributors. I don't think money will be able to stop old contributors to stop to contribute. The major problem when contributing to the French wiki is politics. As soon a subject is political in one way or another, it become almost impossible to contribute because it is gangs of users that want the corresponding articles to contain only their point of view. The consequences are multiple. As example, a lot of peoples I know are just joking about wikipedia, and a friend of mine which is teacher, forbid its students to use wikipedia because "c'est n'importe quoi" (it's just about anything).

The ground of this is in many cases, the neutrality which impose to tell about all the point of view is replaced by a subjective measures about the "quality" or the "representativity" of the sources. All of these imply it is no objectivity but a vote of the editors, which means no neutrality of point of view in many cases.

I think more than a found proposition, the French wiki need a overall redesign of its rules in order to get back some true objectivity into the editorial choices of the articles. Neutrality must be synonym of diversity of point of view, not of uniformity.

Anyway, that proposition contain good things too, and I will not oppose it. Good luck!144.85.248.171 09:23, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Community review period has ended on 30 April

Thanks to all who have engaged so actively with the discussions about this proposal! Community discussion during the review period is an important input into the FDC process, and is considered very carefully by the FDC. We appreciate everyone's engagement with this proposal, but we would also like to remind all that the Community Review Period for 2013-2014 Round 2 proposals has ended on 30 April. While everyone is free to continue to comment, the FDC or FDC staff may not be able to take further comments into account when preparing assessments of this proposal or consider new comments during the deliberations. While we ask organizations to be responsive to comments and questions during this review period (until 30 April), we do not ask organizations to reply to new comments and questions made after that date within any particular timeframe; therefore, it may take some time for organizations to reply to any new comments. Thank you to everyone for your engagement and your understanding. Best regards, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 04:01, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Extending reports due date.

Dear FDC team, in the past reports, we didn't included indicators tables like we will do this year (you could find an exemple of these in our proposal). It will take into account all the projects' indicators we have identified previously. In order to collect these informations, we need to get all feedbacks from all peoples involved in our projects. (including WMFr staff, members, partners etc.)

Knowing that we have to take into account the time of translation of this report by a translation agency (one week), the time of collective reading and to make corrections, it leaves us only two weeks after the quarter to recover all the informations, close our quarterly budgets and prepare the report which is quite short for us. It would be perfect for us if we have two more weeks to complete our report. However we will of course do our best and will work hard to make it well and give you the report as soon as possible. We really understand the importance to give you this report on time in order to integrate your suggestions, ideas and feedback in our next quarter. Could we set the extended report due date as 15 November?

Thank you in advance,

Sébastien Baijar (WMFr staff) talk 12:30, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the request, Sébastien! We look forward to the new reporting format, and look forward to receiving your Q1 report by 15 November. Cheers, 50.185.138.198 15:27, 7 October 2014 (UTC)