Grants talk:PEG/WM BE/Budget 2015 H1/Remaining funds

WMF comments

Hi MADe and DerekvGThank you for creating this page to document how remaining funds from this grant were spent. Normally, reallocation requests should only be used for amounts under US$2,000, but we have made an exception in order to help WM BE meet grant compliance requirements before the WMCON 2016 eligibility deadline of January 1, 2016. In the future, please be sure that all board members are aware that they cannot spend WMF grant funds without a current, approved grant request. You can ask for extensions or changes to your grant requests if there are opportunities that come up after the grant period has begun. For the SOIMA conference, we would have suggested that a volunteer or a group of volunteers apply for funding through the Travel and Participation Support program. You need to follow these procedures so that the WMF can follow the processes and maintain records necessary to comply with laws that govern distribution of funds by nonprofit organizations. Improving your record of compliance should be a priority for WMBE in the future.

• Please add additional information to budget lines 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 to show what expenses are included in each total, i.e. how many people/events are included in the travel costs, what were the expenses included in SOIMA participation, what expenses are included in the Wikimeets and board meetings and how many events are included in this budget?
• It sounds like you were able to hold several Wikimeets, editathons and other events during the semester. We would like to understand how WM BE benefited from these events. Please share some observations about how hosting or attending those events affected participants or your community. For example, did any volunteers begin new activities as a result of the events, did any new editors attend events or continue editing afterwards?
• In the future, individuals or groups of volunteers who would like to participate in a non-Wikimedia conference should apply for funding through the Travel and Participation Support grant program at least 30 days before the event.
• What lessons did members learn when they traveled to events hosted by other chapters? How has this information been used by WMBE?
• This report notes that attending SOIMA was important for GLAM projects and for Wiki Loves Art. In what ways did attending SOIMA effect these projects?
• Have you followed up with the potential partners and other contacts established at SOIMA? Have these relationships led to new projects or resources for WM BE? For example, many affiliates have found that other open-source organizations have helped them grow by offering the affiliates access to event space and by promoting affiliate events to their communities.

It is good to hear about some of the activities your chapter hosted and participated in during the second half of 2015. Please let us know when you have updated the budget and responded to our questions so that we can review and approve this request. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Some remarks on behalf of WMBE:

a- On SOIMA the travel expenses were minimal , our participation was of another nature coorganiser, in function of our WLA project ( as we clearly defined in the Soima report which answers a lot of your questions ) I don think TPS would the adequate route, In general TPS doesn't support chapters in individuals so WMBE is not eligible for TPS The insistance on behalf of WMF to submit funding requests in TPS is very trouble some and amounts imho a case of sending WBME on a wild goose chase by referring us to a place where our requests are not eligible

b- The on behalf of WMF comment avoids to address the fact that useless discussions went on from july until the end of november so that the budget never got to stage of approval. the time spend by myself in this useless palabering has kept us from or made us give up on executing planned events, it has prevented us from addressing and following up important organisational issues in initiatives like our Wikiducatio, Volunteer recuitment and development and GLAM projects (like WLA).

My conclusion is the same a that of my Indonesian collegue at WMCON Berlin : Siska Doviana; WMF is making grant making such a cumbersome and awkward process and it takes so much effort and manpower we need a paid staff member to comply. So I will advise our board to tune down any initiatives having a financial impact and unless WMF agrees to fund a paid staff member WMBE will step out of the grant making process --DerekvG (talk) 11:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)