Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round1/Wikimedia Ukraine/Proposal form

Errors in the proposal page

Mistakes

• "owing to get" -> "aiming to get"
• "Little recordings" -> "Few recordings"
• "instution" -> "institution"
• "We will invite users to share our experience" -> "We will invite users to share their experience"
• "The participants are to report" -> "The participants report" (habitual present simple)
• "The ideas like that" -> "Ideas like that"
• "create or improve the articles" -> "create or improve articles"
• "Wikimedia Ukraine is to support it financially" -> "Wikimedia Ukraine supports it financially"
• "to both participate" -> "to both participate in"
• "These people provide have" -> "These people provide"
• "We are confirmed that it is reasonable" -> "We are confident that..."
• "communicated us their" -> "communicated to us their"
• "so they not always able to send" -> "so they are not always able to send"
• "willingless" -> "willingness" :)

Bigger adjustments

• too much is said about Crimea, is it possible just to move some of the background into a footnote? This whole part:

In March 2014 Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula was annexed by the Russian Federation. Since that time Russia has de facto administered the territory. As after-effect Russian Wikipedians included Crimea to the Wiki Loves Monuments Russia list. But while the Ukrainian community as well as the Ukrainian government and many world leaders do not recognise the annexation as legitimate, Crimea was expected to be on WLM Ukraine list in 2015 also. Notwithstanding our indignation, Russian Wikipedians are firm in their intention to incude Crimea on their lists.

• in the Wikiconference section adding a footnote that:

Ukraine is a large country, with more than one major city, thus there is value of having them in different cities

Targets

Please add

• WikiConference: a satisfaction target ("at least 70% of respondents find the conference useful")
• Hackathon: a satisfaction target "train attendees on one particular technology/skill, and have at least 50% of attendees report in a subsequent survey that they are now working in/with that technology/skill"
• Publishing and souvenirs: a satisfaction/motivation survey

Objectives

Please change

• microgrants: 5 (not 3) ideas.

Goals

Please add

• Publishing and souvenirs: add To "motivate volunteers", alongside the "support"

--アンタナナ 02:49, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi アンタナナ ! Thank you for posting this list of things you'd like to change. Given our conversation about the the limited changes we allow to take place on the proposal forms after the deadline, I ask that we restrict any changes to mistakes and not typos (though I know this is painful!). Therefore I'm happy for you to add the goals, objectives and targets you didn't include in the proposal, since you've noted it here on the talk page. But I ask that those in the "mistakes" category remain as is, unless you feel any of them fundamentally change the interpretation of the proposal. I don't see that any of them do. Let me know if you have any other questions! KLove (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

KLove (WMF) thank you! p.s. yes, it is painful... --アンタナナ 19:11, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

アンタナナ :) Thanks for tolerating the typos. KLove (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

General support

This proposal is very complete and thoroughly documented. I'm only sorry that I don't have the time to fully review it. My general impressions are:

• the proposal represent extremely good value for the Wikimedia movement with both good, creative projects and low cost.
• the GLAM programs could be greatly expanded, especially the digitization. Sometimes with GLAM projects it seems that we just duplicate what is already on other websites, but that is certainly *not* the case here. It looks like with these projects, if Wikipedia doesn't make this material available nobody will do it and the material may not survive. If this is the case, then please get your GLAM volunteers organized and pursue the digitization as aggressively as possible, including more funds requests.
• I'm impressed with the international efforts of Wikimedia Ukraine, e.g. Wiki Loves Earth. There's something in here about doing something with Poland and something about last year with Latvia. Perhaps I remember something in the past about cooperation with Armenia. I'll just say that this type of regional international cooperation should be pursued.
• I noted the comment about Crimea and the conflict with Russia. A Wikimedia grant request is not a place to invite conflict, but neither is it a place to ignore reality. I'd leave in the current note about Crimea. Please do understand that foreigners commenting on these matters are likely to seem like bulls in a china shop. Perhaps, with the best intentions they could cause lots of damage. But many of us would love to support Wikimedia Ukraine in what must be a very trying period.

All the best,

Smallbones (talk) 15:48, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Smallbones and thank you for your feedback!

• We agree that GLAM programmes have potential for expansion. At the same time, we are somewhat limited in both technical (WMUA has one scanner, one large and one small camera) and human resources (we are quite new at GLAM projects, thus most people involved still have things to learn about GLAM). Thus we do not want to overestimate our capacities and expand our GLAM programmes successively: once we develop a number of partnerships in 2016, both we will get more experience of work with GLAMs and GLAMs will have more examples of successful partnerships from their colleagues, which will help us expand this programme.
• Wikimedia Ukraine indeed actively participates in regional cooperation within Wikipedia CEE. The projects you have heard of were probably Wikimedia CEE Spring 2015 (where we cooperated with most of CEE countries) and thematic editing weeks (with Armenia in 2013 or with Belarus in 2015) on one hand, and assistance to most of countries organising Wiki Loves Earth (includes Poland, Latvia, Armenia and others) in 2014 and 2015. We do intend to continue such cooperation in 2016

Thanks — NickK (talk) 12:59, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments

Thanks for you proposed plan which in my view looks very good considering it is you first APG propsal and that you are rather new as a operating chapter. I find your targetquality on par with what should be expected from an APG funded proposal, also many of the acrtivites looks good. What I am missing, which is related to you being new, is insight in what of your acitivities you have found are giving good impact in relation to used resources. I also feel you have a rather broad program considering your limited resources. I also find you have a potential to evolve some of the programs further, like community support, by using experiences learnt from other chapters. I also wonder if you are overusing resources in the education area, as it has in general been found to have limiteded long-term effect and also that impact in relation to resouced being used is not as high as in other areas. But these are things I expect you will imporve on in future years, and for this, first time effort, I want to congratulate you on a jobb well done.Anders Wennersten (talk) 06:54, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Anders and thanks for your feedback!

Concerning impact of activities, our main programmes for this proposal correspond to our activities that generate most impact:

• Partnerships. We are reasonably good at organising workshops (we have made some improvements to the format, in particular using lessons from other chapters), and we noticed that we make more impact when we have real partnership with an institution, organisation or group (not just one-time project or some cooperation on paper). We tried to avoid overusing resources, as we organised workshops only for audiences really interested in contributing, on the other hand, not all workshops made an impact, especially those that were one-time projects withour further involvement, thus we would like to concentrate on more formalised partnerships in 2016. For GLAM Partnerships, we had an impact in digitalisation (two days ago we published a post on how we digitised the Bible in Ukrainian) and in music projects were we published several dozens of very valuable recordings. Wikiexpeditions have generally good impact, which is even better when they are carefully planned and supported by experienced partners (historians, GLAM professionals etc.), thus we want to emphasise the aspect of planning in 2016.
• Contests. In all three cases (article contests, photo contests and thematic editing weeks/months) we consider that we are having high impact, definitely better than the average across the movement. This takes into account involvement of community and partners (a lot of people, including people who are not WMUA members, are involved in supporting contests), content generated (a lot of high-quality articles, good photos of objects that we never had before and many content gaps covered) and participants of these contests (quite a lot of participants, many of them become active in other activities, like WLM photo contributors who start editing Wikipedia or Wikivoyage or article contest participants who start editing and contributing photos). Thus we consider that our contests are very impactful activities. However, this does not mean that we do not want to improve them, for instance, we are currently planning activities to improve usage of WLM photos on Wikipedia and occasionally Wikivoyage.
• Community Support. Our WikiConferences turn more impactful in recent years, in particular, in 2014 and 2015 we paid a lot of attention to making the conference programme closer to the needs of our community, and we think we have reached good results and produced higher impact. We think that we still have a room for improvement, as we want to make it more result-oriented in future. Publishing and Souvenirs programme (incl. Wikizghuschivka) are quite impactful, and those are quite small things that either help people discover Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia Ukraine or motivate people to contribute more. We have limited track record in Scholarships programme (we had successful participation in CEE Meeting, GLAM-Wiki 2015 and several regional events) and in Microgrants programme (we delivered only small amount of photo and book grants so far), and we have not organised any training for volunteers yet, thus we definitely have things to learn here (and we are doing this, for example, using experience of Wikipedia Education Collaborative's Train the Trainers programmes or WMPL's Wikigranty).

Regarding limited resources and broad programme, we do think that having a full-time Programme Manager will help us resolve this issue, as we are really lacking someone in charge of running projects, arranging partnerships and collaborating with community on a permanent basis. In addition, an Office manager will help our volunteers spend less time doing administrative work, thus our volunteers will have more time to spend on organising projects and events.

Thanks for your feedback and your support! — NickK (talk) 14:18, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks för your answer. It is very nice reaading of the impact of the programs and I feel confident that you will do better in focusing when you will hav a full-time Programme Manager. Good luck in your upcoming years activities.Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:20, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

questions from FDC staff

Hi colleagues and friends at Wikimedia Ukraine, thank you for submitting this proposal to the FDC. We appreciate the work you all put into it. We have a few questions based on our review of your proposal. Please let me know if any of these is unclear. Many thanks! KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Katy and thank you for your feedback. Answers are inline, please do not hesitate to contact us if things are not clear — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, NickK. These answers are clear. Thanks for taking the time to respond in detail! KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Programs and organizations

• It was difficult for us to understand how the activities were grouped into some of the program objectives. Can you explain the links between the programs and the activities for the three programs you have proposed for the upcoming year?

  Our three programmes are grouped according to different ways of getting new content, new participants and new activities:

  • In Partnerships, involvement of partners is a key factor for getting new high-quality content, new expert contributors and activities with more institutions. For Wikipedia Education Programme and Wikiworkshops, we need to work with universities and other educational institutions to successfully involve editors. For GLAM Partnerships, we need to involve libraries, galleries, archives and museums to get high-quality content from them. For Wikiexpeditions, we need to work with local activists (historians, teachers etc.) to get a well-planned and successful expedition bringing us new photographic and textual content. Thus we put into this group everything were good involvement with partners is a key to success.
  • In Contests, involving contributors to participate in a contest is a key source for getting new content. The main accent here is the capacity to involve (and retain) both existing contributors and new users in filling particular content gaps. Our contests may either be backed by strong partners (for example, Crimean article contest was backed by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine) or have no significant partners (like Wiki Loves Earth article contest that had a number of minor partners among ecological organisations but had no major sponsor), but in all cases the major common feature of article, photo contests and thematic weeks is the capacity to involve participants and provide resources for them so that they deliver high-quality content and have fun.
  • In Community Support, all projects operate around supporting the Ukrainian Wikimedia community, its needs and initiatives. The main beneficiaries of this programme are our editors and volunteers, be it through attending conferences and training where they can learn about new projects or share their ideas, through getting funding for their projects through microgrants, through providing materials for event participants and souvenirs for motivating contributors. The key feature of everything organised in this programme is that everything we do here is to support community initiatives: unlike Partnerships where work with external partners or Contests where we engage new users, here we help existing users be more efficient, more productive and have higher motivation — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

• We note that one of the organization’s key areas of work in the coming year will be Community Support. Under that program, we see a significant focus on events. Can you please tell us in more detail what you expect the outcomes of some of those events to be?

  Yes, organising events is an important part of Community Support programme.

  • WikiConference is our annual event where Wikimedians can exchange experience and ideas, learn about new projects and get new skills (not only from fellow Wikimedians but also from external experts). Expected outcome: attendees present their ideas and suggestions (most interesting ones are supported / implemented), learn and get involved in new projects, get new skills useful for their Wikimedian activities (from organising workshops to CoI resolution)
  • Annnual General Meeting is our annual mandatory event where we discuss our progress in the previous year and develop our strategy for the following year using feedback and ideas from our members. Another expected outcome is our organisational routine, such as approval of Board and Auditing Committee report as well as election of new Board and Auditing Committee (these elections must be offline according to our bylaws and Ukrainian law)
  • Hackathon is a new type event born from a very high interest to technical questions during our WikiConferences 2014 and 2015. We have noticed that many Wikimedians are interested in developing tools and/or running bots but do not know how to start. We have a long list of wanted tools, and the expected outcome is that at least part of them are developped and more community members learn how to develop tools and/or run bots
  • Regional Event will be organised to target community developpment in underrepresented regions, most likely in Eastern Ukraine (these regions were underrepresented at WikiConference 2015 either as it took place in Lviv, Western Ukraine). This will be a small event targeting mainly local Wikimedians and mostly new users with little experience, and the expected outcome is that more users discover and join projects either online or offline — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

• WMUA is planning to run a significant number of events and activities this year, in addition to managing 1.5 FTEs. Implementing an increase in program activity while at the same time managing significant staff growth can be a major challenge. How will the Board manage the increased workload for the coming year?

  First of all, we already have such experience: in Spring 2015 we were already managing two employees: a 0.5 FTE PR manager and a 0.5 FTE WLE coordinator. It helped us get a valuable experience and we are confident that managing two employees in 2016 will not be an issue. Concerning time management, it is important to take into account that our volunteers (incl. Board members) spend a lot of time on tasks that can be easily done by others: buying and sending prizes and souvenirs, sending enquiries for WLM and WLE lists (will be done by the Office manager), organising events such as workshops, preparing agreements with universities and GLAMs (will be done by the Project managers), accounting (will be outsourced to a professional firm) and auditing (will be outsourced to a professional firm). This will leave a lot of free time that our volunteers can spend on projects. In addition, we want to expand our volunteer base and empower them by transferring some powers from the Board to committees dedicated to some projects (e.g. some kind of Wikiexpeditions do not need Board approval anymore but can be approved by Wikiexpeditions committee) — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Budget

• We see that approximately $7,000 USD is in your budget for publishing and merchandising. Can you tell us more about what these expenses are? What will the publishing materials and merchandise enable for the long run?

  We do not really like the word "merchandising" as we do not just use souvenirs for "selling" Wikimedia but also for motivating people and helping them learn more about us. Materials for events (like Ukrainian translation of the Editing Wikipedia brochure or cheatsheets) will help our workshop attendees and other people interested in Wikimedia movement to learn more about us and discover how they can join, which will help us organise more effective workshops in the short run and get more contributors in the long run. Materials about us (annual report, Wiki Loves Monument album, Wiki Loves Earth calendar and other materials about Wikimedia projects) will help establish cooperation with partners, help others better understand our goals and activities, which will help us get better partnerships in the long run. Souvenirs will be distributed to a large group of people: from newbies to experienced users to motivate them and help editor retention in the long run. Just a few case studies:

  • If we are present at a large barcampl-like event, we can distribute pens with cheatsheets to get occasional passers-by interested in contributing to Wikipedia and it will help us get more contributors in the long run.
  • If we organise a Wikiflashmob, we can provide a small set of souvenirs like badges, stickers and pens to show them that their contributions are valuable and get them interested in contributing more, which will help us get more active contributors in the long run.
  • If we organise a workshop, we can distribute T-shirts to the most active participants, this should motivate them to stay active and help us and it will help us get more contributions in the long run.
  • Finally, we reward two most active contributors (one newbie and one experienced user) of each month in each project (Wikipedia, Wikiquote etc.) with a Wikizghuschivka, a real can of condensed milk (our local on-wiki award, equivalent of enwiki barnstars). This is a way to reward these users and help us retain and motivate most productive users, which should bring us bigger volume of quality contributions in the long run — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

• We had a hard time understanding your budget for operating expenses. Can you explain in more detail what these costs are for?

  Our operating expenses can be split into the following groups:

  1. Office rent with all bills (cleaning, electricity, heating etc.) at about 300 USD per month, for a total of 3600 USD
  2. Office equipment and stationnery (for example, we will need a second laptop for the new employee), for a total of 600 USD
  3. Communications fees (Internet, telephone, postage) at about 50 USD per month, for a total of 600 USD
  4. Accounting services (currently done on volunteering basis) at about 100 USD per month, for a total of 1200 USD
  5. Auditing services for a total of 1000 USD
  6. Bank fees, equal to at least 20 USD per month, for a toal of 360 USD

  Please note that figures are approximate as exchange rates vary a lot and so do our operating expenses (for example, our bank changed fees twice in 2014 and once in 2015), so I rounded them to the nearest 10 USD, but hope this distribution is clear enough — NickK (talk) 18:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I understand this. Thank you! KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Questions from FDC members

Questions from Itzike

Hi WMUK and welcome to the APG process! We know it's not an easy process and I appreciate all the work invest on this proposal.

1. I must admit I am a bit concern with the budget. Almost half of the budget is allocate to contests. Adding the fact that the "Publishing and Souvenirs" item is also a big chunk, and as been mentioned in response to Katy, part of him is to support the contests, it seem like major amount of the budget goes there. It will be worth sharing (publicly or with the FDC) more detailed budget about the contests in order to understand this costs.
2. Are the scholarships event budget is only for volunteers/community or include board\staff costs to Wikimania & WMCon (I didn't saw budget for that). If so, I think it will be worth to split the costs in order to understand the costs invest with each groups.

Thank you and good luck! --Itzike (talk) 18:04, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Itzik, thank you for your questions and your feedback and I am sorry but we are WMUA :)

1. We are currently getting ready the more detailed budget of the contests. We are sorry for the dealy, we tried to postpone the answer till we have it ready, but as we have got the same question from Liam we decided to go ahead and answer all other questions. We will come back to you in a few days once we are ready to publish the detailed budget.
2. We do not make any disctinction between scholarships for board and scholarships for volunteers. Both board members and other volunteers apply for scholarships on a special page, and we have a transparent selection process where both self-nominations and nominating someone else is allowed. We already happened to choose a non-board member over a board member. We are not yet sure if we will have the same approach for Wikimania (we might be interested in using global scholarship process). So far we did not provide any scholarship to our staff (our PR manager did attend Wikimania but as a volunteer), and we are yet to decide which events our programme manager should attend. Thus we do not have exact figures, but it is more likely that WMCon attendees will be board/staff due to the format of the event and that there will be no difference for other events — NickK (talk) 22:38, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

@Itzike: thank you for the questions and sorry for the delay. Please find our detailed budget --アンタナナ 02:14, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Questions from Liam

• In table 3 you say that there will be 1,950 active editors involved and 3,250 individuals involved in the Contests component of your plans. I'm confused by this for two reasons. Firstly, the Ukrainian Wikipedia only has about 800 active editors per month (on average over the last year, 704 in September). This means that you expect to have more than double the number of currently active contributors to the wiki participating in your competitions. Is that a correct assessment? Does the number 1,950 include perhaps the same person participating in multiple events (and therefore being counted twice)? Secondly, the contests section lists three types of contests - Article, Photo, and Thematic. These have the targets for "participants" as 200, 600, and 150 people (note: "active users" is by definition a sub-set/smaller number than "participants"). Those totals combine to 950 people - which is 1000 people fewer than the number you targeted for active editors, and 2300 people fewer than the number you targeted for individuals involved. Can you explain this discrepancy? I'm sorry if I've miscounted, or missed entirely, a number somewhere :-D Wittylama (talk) 19:11, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

• In the "partnerships" section, you state that "In 5 years we organised almost 100 workshops". On that page I can only count approximately 50 items. Fifty is definitely an impressive number of any kind of event - I am NOT saying that is too small! - but can you tell me where the other 50 events are listed? Wittylama (talk) 19:19, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

• As with Itzik, I would also like clarification about the size of the budget that you've allocated to Contests. According to the detailed budget, you've allocated $31,800 or 42% of the total budget including administration (or, 54% of the budget for program expenses) just to the Contests component. The overwhelming majority of this amount is allocated to the "photo contests" component. So, could you please write what the expenses you expect for those photo contests are? Also, can you please clarify what you mean by "To have a fiscal sponsor for this part (8,300.00) would be less expensive and easier for us" - which is written in that detailed budget document next to the heading "Photo Contests (Wiki Loves Earth International part)". Thanks, Wittylama (talk) 19:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Liam and thank you for your questions.

1. Concerning active users, we have miscounted once and you have miscounted once :)
   • Our mistake is that we use a different definition of an active user: for us it was a user who had 5+ edits per month at some point and is still active (we have a few tracking pages for this in Ukrainian Wikipedia: total editcount, edits last month, active editors). As far as I can see, for the purposes of this table an active user here is a person who made 5+ edits in the previous month immediately before an event. This does make a difference, but we do not think that the latter definition is meaningful for photo contests: we have a lot (at least dozens) of editors who are active on their home wiki but uploaded less than 5 images to Commons in the previous month. We do think they should be counted as active users, although we understand this does not really match the "official" definition. At the moment for this line # of active editors involved = # of individuals involved - # of newly registered users, which is probably not correct but we can hardly find a more meaningful value.
   • However, you miscounted that these figures also include Wiki Loves Earth that takes place on Commons and involves active contributors of Wikimedia Commons. Metrics also include international part of Wiki Loves Earth, which we expect to involve exactly 1000 new users and 2500 users in whole. We did make an adjustment to avoid double-counting, estimating the number of Ukrainian participants of Wiki Loves Earth as 200 users / 100 new users. Thus we have the following maths for the total number: 200 article + 600 Ukrainian photo + 2500 WLE - 200 Ukrainian WLE + 150 thematic = 3250.
2. Some lines on that page actually correspond to about a dozen workshops each, namely, Wikiflashmob / Вікіфлешмоб and WikiDay / Вікідень. Those two events took place in many cities and towns simultaneously, up to 11 cities on the same day (WikiDay 2014). I think that this page in total lists something about 80 workshops, and we most likely forgot to list some, thus we used a bit vague "almost 100".
3. Two points here:
   • We will present the more detailed budget for photo contests in a few days. We are sorry, it takes a bit of time, and we are busy with Wiki Loves Monuments grant and other projects.
   • Concerning the phrase about a fiscal sponsor, this stands for the fact that we are not aware yet what will be the 2016 legislation for transactions in foreign currency by NGOs. As of now, Ukrainian NGOs are not allowed to make transactions in foreign currency and have to sent 75% of foreign currency they receive immediately upon reception. Thus it was very difficult for us to make payments for Wiki Loves Earth, as paying for a plane ticket for Wikimania from Brazil to Mexico in Ukrainian Hryvnia is not obvious. For Wiki Loves Earth 2015, we made an arrangement with WMPL to be a fiscal sponsor for a part of our expenses (Wikimania scholarship, international prizes plus postcards, just because they are cheap in Poland) and make payments in USD on behalf of WMUA. If 2016 legislation will be as unfavourable as now, we would like to have a fiscal sponsor as well to make our life much easier.

Thanks again for your questions and please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any further details — NickK (talk) 22:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

@Wittylama: thank you for the questions and sorry for the delay. Please find our detailed budget --アンタナナ 02:14, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Questions from Aegis

Добрий вечір and greetings from Warsaw. :) I would like to follow on Liam's questions: @NickK, do you happen to have the mentioned detailed budgets already?

I've been thinking on your biggest items: competitions and publishing. In terms of photo contests: to use WMPL as a benchmark, for our last WLM (2014) we have budgeted 30k PLN (8000+ USD now, 9000+ then), and the same was for WLE 2015 (30k PLN ~ 8k USD). These amounts included awards, a dedicated event, jury costs and a compensation for a temporarily employed co-ordinator. If you are e.g. running both WLM and WLE in 2016, the $13.2k amount seems to be in line with this benchmark but it would be nice to know details. :)

Regarding the international competition (Wiki Loves Earth International part) - $12.6k / $8.3k I don't have such a good benchmark so I would love to know details, like for the Article Contests ($5k - we don't run them in WMPL with such high rewards - maybe we should?) and the Publishing and Souvenirs ($7k).

Other budget items seem to be quite in line:

• our FTE cost is higher (but comparable when taking a look economic differences); AFAIK Kyiv, if your staff is located there, your costs are pretty modest (as the real pay and living costs are pretty different there than in the rest of UA).
• Scholarships: that should allow you to send 4-8 people to the conferences (depending on which ones, standard of lodging&travel etc.)
• Microgrants ($3k) - looks O.K., WMPL budgeted more but this year we granted less than before, so far less than $3k (last year below $5k).
• Community events - $5k - WMPL spends more (although we used to be on a real shoe-string budget and it was still fun :) ).

Kind Regards,
aegis maelstrom δ 17:24, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

@Aegis Maelstrom: Dobry wieczor! Thank you for the questions and sorry for the delay. Please find our detailed budget. @NickK will answer later on, I am too sleepy to do it now :) --アンタナナ 02:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Dzień dobry Aegisie :) and thank you for your feedback.

• The detailed Contests budget was published by Antanana here last night, sorry for the delay. Just a few comments:
  • Our photo contest budget includes three contests: WLM, WLE and European Science Photo Competition. WLM/WLE have budgets at roughly 5,500 USD, which is mostly because we expect high number of participants and want to provide quite high number of prizes (top-10 quality photos, top-10 by number of monuments pictured, and top photos + most monuments pictured for each region) so that more participants feel they can win something. European Science Photo Competition has a lower budget at 2,125 USD as we expect less participants, we do not expect same type of outreach and we have less nominations
  • We definitely do not organise contest with prizes worth 5,000 USD. The budget of an average article contest is at 1,000 USD (with 750 USD for prizes), and WMPL should definitely try doing those: you are already a part of CEE Spring, but WLM and WLE article contests are definitely worth organising :) We also have a more expensive WikiScienceContest (we had a Biology contest in 2013, in 2016 it will be most likely something about Physics): we expect to involve scientists both as participants and as jurors, and we expect them to write GA- and FA-level articles about their scientific interests. Thus we offer more expensive prizes to get more experienced participants and we need to have a professional jury of experienced scientists. This is also a format of contests you might be interested in, as it generates content of very high quality.
  • International part of Wiki Loves Earth is very much in line with our 2015 grant. There are only two changes: firstly, we want to secure abililty of additional technical support if needed (e.g. some tools for natural heritage database or statistics that are not done yet due to lack of volunteers' time), and secondly, we want to add a small budget for supporting local organisers (e.g. to provide small prizes to those organisers who are not chapters/user groups and have no budget).
• Publishing and Souvenirs is quite hard to split into items as we do not know prices that in advance. This line takes into account publishing materials for various events (like Ukrainian translation of the Editing Wikipedia brochure or cheatsheets), materials about us and our projects (annual report, Wiki Loves Monument album, Wiki Loves Earth calendar and other materials about Wikimedia projects), Wikizghuschivka (real cans of condensed milk for most active editors of each month) and all types of souvenirs from badges and stickers to T-shirts. Unfortunately we cannot provide line by line distribution as we simply do not know what prices we might get in 2016 and we do not have a precise plan: we order printed materials and souvenirs depending on our needs (e.g. we can order new cheatsheets and new T-shirts when we run out of the existing stock, or we can order some special souvenirs if we anticipate that we will need a lot of them for Wikiflashmob).
• Concerning staff, please note that our expenses correspond to gross employer's expenses, while in Ukraine it is common to report net salaries. A very simplified formula is: if gross salary is 10,000 UAH, an employer will pay 37% of it in employer taxes (thus their total expenses are 13,700 UAH) and employee pays further 20% of it in employee taxes (thus their net salary is 8,000 UAH). In a summary, only 8,000 UAH of our total expenses of 13,700 UAH get to an employee (roughly 60%). Here is a 2015 salary calculator (and of course we do not know 2016 taxes yet). Thus net salaries are about 385.84 USD/month for the project manager and 105.88 USD/month for 0.5FTE office manager, which is indeed in line with the average for the sector.
• Our scholarship system was inspired by WMPL's one, so it is not surprising that amounts are similar :)
• Finally, we also used to have a smaller Community Events budget, but we plan to increase it for 2016 as we plan to add a hackathon and a regional conference-type event

Thanks again for your comments and please do not hesitate to ask us if something is not clear enough — NickK (talk) 12:31, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Дуже дякую! / Dziękuję bardzo / Many thanks for your answers!

Sorry for being specific and detailed and I hope I am not overstepping my position with sharing my personal initial thoughts publicly but I hope this conversation will help us all to understand WMUA and its model better :) - and some chapter people to exchange experiences and ideas. I liked the mutual learning part of GAC (and I remember WMUA's submissions) and AFAIK not only I believe that APG/FDC should be more than an approval of x USD of requested y USD". :)

Going one issue by one, as I find WMUA comparatively similar to WMPL in terms of activities, environment etc, I will keep using my home chapter as a benchmark. :)

• Competitions: your items are pretty similar to WMPL: prints (we found it useful even when it cost us more = we print them in a form of a painting and they do attract people's attention), snacks, travel, jury (Polish can cost more), venue (not always one can manage to get a proper venue for free), prizes. Personally I do applaud some contractor to make some dedicated tools for WLE/WLM/... Volunteer time is not often available here so WMPL did contract a Wikimedian-programmer and saw that such tools can improve the competition a lot. A new thing for me are regional stages, looks like something to try. :)
• Contests - yes, it looks like a volunteer support worth a try. :) Regarding their metrics: as FDC we see that particular chapters understand an "improved article" in different ways (any edit, substantial factual improvement, added x kb, something different). How do you understand "1000 new or improved articles"? :)
• Souvenirs as a help to increase a retention of Wikimedians - WMPL uses it to some extent but e.g. I still have not managed to persuade some of us to print postcards or to start a programme of sending stuff to the wikiheroes who don't show up on meetings etc. This method is disputable as, in fact, we are not sure what makes people that motivated and how much it would help (and it is very hard to measure) - but OTOH our anectodal evidence says that many people love such recognition and I personally would go with it. :)
• Hiring and salaries level: personally I find your FTE request as substantiated ( sidenote disclosure: WMPL has two people officially titled "PR" - however you could notice that in fact one of them is more community-oriented/volunteer-supporter, and a second one is more mass-media oriented/trainer and in their job descriptions we expanded their roles far beyond the abbreviated title). Regarding the salaries, I find them modest.

There are also some general issues like strategic plan and capacity building. My first impression was that you are focusing on the direct impact and things you seemingly already did well (like photo competitions) - am I right? All three macroprogrammes planned for 2016 (named and ranked in terms of budgetary importance: 1. competitions, 2. Community Support 3. Outreach) aim at some content generation and new user gain / old user keeping (in my experience e.g. photo contests, GLAM partnerships = outreach + content generation while e.g. article contests = user retention + content generation).

Which activities do you consider the most important to make WMUA even more capable in the future? Do you see some realistic opportunities of e.g. new partnerships, volunteers' training or additional funding?

Best Regards! aegis maelstrom δ 03:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Aegis for your additional feedback and it's really great that we are both thinking beyond "X USD".

• Competitions. We tried different formats: from printing many small photos to printing a few of them in big format for "traditional" exhibitions (and Minister of Culture of Ukraine also prefers big format :-) ), but in any case we pay similar costs. Concerning venue, we often do get free or reduced rates, but in most cases we have to pay charges (cleaning, security etc.)
• For contests, an improved article should typically get between 3500 and 5000 bytes added. Our general rule is that in order to be eligible, an article should be either created and have over X bytes, or be improved with at least X bytes added, with X being usually between 3500 and 5000 (note: Cyrillic characters take 2 bytes while Latin take 1, thus equivalent for Polish would be twice smaller). The definition is different for Wikiexpeditions and similar events where any improvement is counted (pictures added, factual improvement etc.)
• I agree that measuring motivation is difficult. Perhaps the only way is splitting editors into two groups with one getting awards / prizes / souvenirs and the other one being deprived of any form of support / motivation. Results might be interesting, but honestly we do not want to try :) And we do send something bigger to wikiheroes who don't show up on meetings, and people indeed love it :)
• It's not exactly true that we focus on things that we are doing already well. We do make focus on things we are doing well, but we also try to improve our activities and organise new ones, for example, we significantly improved Wikiconference format last year, we worked on improving our Wikiworkshops and Education Programme this year, we are currently working on improvements to Wikiexpeditions following our Wikiconference 2015, and we are thinking of some changes to Wiki Loves Monuments format next year. At the same time, we have a lot of opportunities to explore (and things to learn!) about GLAM, community building, trainings for volunteers and microgrants: those programmes are not yey something we "already did well", but we definitely expect to learn to do it well in a year or two. Note: article contests are also a part of outreach as they usually involve new users, but thematic weeks are mostly for user retention
• We do have a lot of opportunities of partnerships (from like-minded NGOs, e.g. we became more active in working with Creative Commons Ukraine and OpenStreetMap Ukraine this year, to governmental organisations, e.g. we have good cooperation with Ministry of Culture of Ukraine this year), the challenge is to find the right way to cooperate and find time to convince people to do it. Our partnerships currently work much better if our partners have a clear idea of what they want to do with us, and we hope we will have enough resources to convince new partners with a full-time project manager. Volunteer trainings are something we want to do, and we do thing it will make WMUA more capable, as we will get more skilled volunteers. Concerning additional funding, that's something hard to get in Ukraine at the moment. There are little opportunities of national funding due to economic situation and the fact that a lot of national funding goes to humanitarian projects for war refugees/IDPs, military personnel who went through the war, civilians and military wounded during the war etc., thus we do not expect to get significant national funding until the war is over and economic situation improves. There are some opportunities of international funding in Ukraine, provided mostly by European and American organisations, but we do not necessarily fit in as in many cases our activities are out of scope of these grants, although we are interested in applying if we find the right opportunities.

Thanks for your questions and for these useful learnings! Best regards — NickK (talk) 21:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)