Grants talk:PEG/WM CA/Programs 2013/Report

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Funds reallocation resquest[edit]

Hello,

  • As per 2013-14 required WMCA to meet some expenses for our annual fillings of 2012-13-14
  • As per these expenses were done in 2015, while managing WMCA up to date with Canada Revenue Agency and WMF
  • As per these expenses were less than expected

We would like to request the reallocation of remaining funds to our 2015 plan.

All the funds will be used for activities of current year, starting January 1st, 2015 to December 31st, 2015.

Please don't hesitate to ask any questions about these activities or use of the remaining funds. The extra amounts will be paid by WMCA's budget.

Best regards,

Benoit Rochon, WMCA Project Manager
Ernest-Mtl, WMCA Treasurer.
Hi Benoit and Ernest. Thank you for this request. As the remaining funds are considerable, the proposed projects constitute and entire set of new activities, and the activities span a year, you will need to submit a new grant request. Please use the content of your 2015 plan to create a new grant request that will be submitted for review by the GAC. You can hold on to the underspent funds until a decision has been made on the new request. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello User:AWang (WMF). The remaining funds are higher than they should have been, that's true, mainly because these are the excess amount that were previoulsy attributed for the accounting and year-end tax filing. Since I've been elected, as an accountant, I don't charge WMCA for the accounting. 519$ of this excess money though is in our 2015 plan are for the past years, as they weren't done for 2012, 13 and 14. Things that have been fixed since I was elected as treasurer. But as the filing was not done at the end of 2014, I put this 519$ in the projected expense for 2015, but in fact were in the previous grant.

Benoit & I are at Wikimania and we'll complete the questions you added for us at the end of the discussion. --Ernest-Mtl (talk) 17:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Grant report comments[edit]

Hi Benoit and Ernest. Thank you for this detailed grant report! Please see our questions/comments below. We look forward to your responses.

  1. It sounds like WLM was a success and the pictures are very impressive! 1.5 years later, 36% of all the images in the category have been used on Wikimedia projects, which is a solid percentage.
  2. Please provide more details regarding the the education activities. For example, was an additional class added and was Wikipédia:Exercices improved? If yes, has it been publicized for use by more teachers? Have other teachers expressed interest in implementing a Wikipedia Education Program?
  3. It's great that WMCA was able to have such a big presence at the CBC tour. The report says you have kept in touch with many of the participants. Can you provide more detail on this? Does this mean that you include them in mailings/updates or have they come to other events or continued editing?
  4. Thank you for providing a summary of all of WMCA's activities and not just those funded under this grant as it gives us a more holistic picture of what the chapter is doing and how the grant activities fit in.
  5. Measures of success: We realize that back in 2013, your grant proposal did not include quantitative measures of success. However, it would be helpful if you could fill out the Global Metrics table and add it to your outcomes section as best you can -- reporting on the number of people at your events (at least that participated in WLM and if possible, the education programs), content created (specifically if you have numbers around the creation of scientific articles since that was a goal), etc.

Thank you again for this report. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Benoit and Ernest. We need you to respond to the questions above and provide some measures of success as requested in order to accept this report, which is necessary for the affiliate to remain in compliance. Please let me know if you need assistance or further explanation of what information is needed. Thanks! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi KHarold, here is some more information on point 2 (I am the professor who taught the class). The mains outcomes of this educational project are the following: 17 articles on municipalities were improved or created by 18 students; 200 public domain images were uploaded to Commons by the Library and Archives of Québec as part of this project (first GLAM/University joint project in Canada), the students contributed to place these images in relevant articles. You will find more information on the results of the project here. Best, Seeris (talk) 15:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello AWang and KHarold, here is a detailed answer to the points you raised above:

  1. Thanks, we were very happy about the results, indeed. 2549 files were uploaded. They represent sites listed in the Canadian Register of Historic Places. We are very proud of this success here in Canada.
  2. (Copied from above) The mains outcomes of this educational project that happened at UQO are the following: 17 articles on municipalities were improved or created by students; 200 public domain images were uploaded to Commons by the Library and Archives of Québec as part of this project (first GLAM/University joint project in Canada), the students contributed to place these images in relevant articles. You will find more detailed information on the results of the project in this blog post and report draft. Another educational project was conducted by MC Pearson, a teacher at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, who developed an English Second Language school project. She taught about 75 students how to contribute to Wikipedia, using Wikipédia:Exercices.
  3. The presentation we did for the Association of Scientist Broadcasters of Quebec conference, located at the CBC tower, allowed us to strengthen our ties with people who became key partners in later projects, especially Ha-Loan Phan who works at ACFAS and Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote who works at Lionel Groulx Foundation. They are now active contributors and trainers in our projects. We also made contacts with several science journalists, but did not follow up with these contacts. When we have more ressources, we will try and be more active in keeping in touch with these people.
  4. You can find a full report of our 2013 WMCA activities.
  5. The two projects that were funded through this grant were WLM and the presentation at the ACS conference. They took place 3 years ago, and we unfortunately did not keep track of all the metrics that became expected in the reports. In our future projects, we will make sure that we plan ahead a way to record and carefully report on these items. The points above provide a good overview of our results. For WLM, 2549 files were uploaded, the file is more than 36%. It is difficult to tell exactly how many people participated, but among them, a Canadian participant won the 10th position. For the presentation at ACS, about 60 people attended the conference, and contacts were developed with 2 key partners. Both projects are completed and were a success in terms of increasing Canadian content (WLM) and in terms of outreach goals (ACS). An obstacle we can identify in WLM is the small number of people who got involved in the organisation of the event. More resources are needed to help out on this front. In the future, we would also like to put an emphasis on Canadian educational projects, and have more ressources to develop shared tools, both in French and English, for instance a WikiMooc that could be used in class. Here is a full financial report. The remaining funds (3179,18 CAD$) were included in a realocation grant request that was presented in 2015, but it was not completed. We are now in the process of setting new strategic goals for the year to come, and we will get back with a new realocation proposition. Seeris (talk) 03:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Seeris. Thank you so much for this detailed response to our questions. If WMCA plans to submit a future grant request, we should talk about how to improve the reporting timeline, as it has taken over a year to complete the report. We understand you are now planning your goals and projects for the rest of the year. You may hold on to the remaining funds for another 60 days. If you have not submitted a new grant request by May 31st we will ask you to return the unspent funds. Note that we would expect a new grant proposal and not just a reallocation request. Thank you again for your thorough responses and please let me know if you have any questions. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]