Grants talk:Programs/Hub Fund/ESEAP Hub pilot (Year 1)

Feedback on the hub proposal

We wanted to congratulate you on a very detailed hub pilot proposal. As a cross-departmental team at the Foundation supporting hubs, we have thoroughly enjoyed reading through your documents and discussing these amongst us. On behalf of the cross-departmental hubs team I am sharing this feedback for the Preparatory Council. This was also shared via email. As defined in the funding timeline, you have until March 4th to make clarifications and adjustments. After this we will be sending the final funding recommendation.

Strengths of the proposal

The proposal has a clear structure and supporting documentation in the Theory of Change, evaluation plan, and timeline. There is clarity on roles and responsibilities and clear community buy-in. The Theory of Change has a clear vision of the impact the Hub seeks with its initiatives.

As a pilot, it is encouraging to see the emphasis on learning and evaluation and the clarity on how you hope to measure results.

Things to clarify/expand on:

• Clarity on the activities and outcomes: The Hub Fund proposal mentions that out of the 5 areas, the first year will focus on areas 3 and 5: Representation of ESEAP (Advocacy) and Empowering Community Capacity. The activities related to each are clear, however, there are some outcomes that are given different levels of importance when reading across the documentation,for instance:
  • Improving engagement through translation: Whilst not mentioned as a key outcome in the main proposal on Meta,  the other documentation indicates some priority in this area. For instance, the Theory of Change document (page 11), describes focusing on 2 languages and conducting a mid-term review of translation services, the Strategic Plan establishes year 1 outputs for translation, and the budget includes translation services for a total of 15K USD. Please provide clarity on the scope of translation activities in the Hub Fund proposal.
  • Regional advocacy plan: Please elaborate on the proposed activity: “Developing a regional advocacy plan addressing public policy, minority representation, internet access, and data governance, informed by community needs.” While this activity appears in the main proposal, it is not developed in detail in your strategic plan or budget considerations. We notice you are using Advocacy" in two ways: 1) advocacy of ESEAP in the global Wikimedia movement (audience = in movement), and 2) advocacy of ESEAP in public policy (audience = institutions, government). Can you provide further clarity on the scope of this work? Is there a mapping that has been done to understand advocacy needs, concerns and opportunities?
• Scope of support for emerging communities: Could you develop in more detail how you hope to support 2 newcomer communities? You mention mentorship, resources, and “support” to increase their number of activities and new contributors. Could you provide more details on how you hope to work with them and the expected outcomes?
• Connection to other capacity-building resources: It is encouraging to see that you mention this in your plan. Could you elaborate on how you hope to work with Capacity Exchange, Let’s Connect,  WikiLearn and the ongoing ESEAP community meetings in your capacity-building efforts?
• Staffing needs: The Hub project manager has a variety of responsibilities that range from stakeholder engagement, coordination of regional events, facilitating meetings, developing training, etc. Can you elaborate on how the project manager would feasibly carry out a range of responsibilities? As a suggestion, you can consider sharing the roles and responsibilities with the Prep Council members to reduce the project manager's workload and leverage diverse skill sets. Another option could be to reallocate the budget from elsewhere, for example, travel costs, to hire part-time support for specific activities such as facilitation or training. Having 2 staff members working on different services has been important for other hubs such as the CEE hub. Furthermore, it would be good practice to include some key milestones in the job description, for instance after 3 months, 6 months, and towards the end of the first year.
• Budget: The budget is over the $50- 110k range estimated for the first year of piloting. Whilst we can consider extending this to some degree given the scope of the proposal, we encourage the team to review the budget and consider areas of adjustment. It is also important to consider that if the pilot achieves its outcomes, growth for subsequent years would be limited given the availability of the hubs fund. Below are suggestions and questions:
  • Review whether Prep council meetings can take place around existing conferences to reduce costs. You may also consider meeting once instead of twice a year. Note that two budget items include travel costs for committee members, one for $15k (row 17) and one for $24k (row 21).
  • Could you elaborate on the budget item “Programming overhead for affiliate hosting training workshop” (row 23)?
  • Would it be possible to reduce the scholarship budget so that these scholarships are financed by the conference organising team or the affiliates these community members are part of? It is a total of $17k.
  • There appears to be two administrative costs: “Administrative overhead fiscal sponsor fee”for 5% of a $149.6k budget (row 18)  and “Administrative overhead for affiliates or HR Agency (Employer of Record)”” for 10% of staffing costs (row 31). Can you clarify the need for both of these affiliate overhead costs and what they entail?
  • Reduce the contingency to 7%. In any case, there is flexibility in changing investment areas when this is justified during the pilot.

JStephenson (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

ESEAP Hub timeline adjustment request

The recruitment phase for our ESEAP Hub Project Manager is well underway with interviews scheduled during the week commencing 23 June 2025. However we believe it will be a little while before we can onboard a successful candidate. Are we able to extend the completion date of the Grant so that we have the full 12 months to complete the Activity plan and work? Otherwise we are concerned we may end up with 9-10 months to undertake the 12 month project. Many other parts of the Activity Plan can be continued (especially from the Strategy Summit in Manila), but until a Project Manager is in place full-time we just don't have resources to keep it completely on track time-line wise. There will be no impact on budget or additional costs. BindiS (talk) 07:07, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Grant extension request

Dear @JStephenson (WMF),

On behalf of ESEAP Hub, I would like to request an extension of the grant period to 30 June 2026 without additional budget. The reason is that there is a delay in staff recruitment, and we focused on governance during the second semester of the last year. I appreciate your understanding.

Best, Biyanto (ESEAP Hub) (talk) 09:45, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Dear @Biyanto (ESEAP Hub) many thanks for this request. As discussed in our regular check-ins this extension makes sense in terms of the Hub's needs and service delivery timelines. This request is approved and we will proceed to change the grant end date and reporting date on Fluxx. User:MJue (WMF) JStephenson (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your support, @JStephenson (WMF) and also @MJue (WMF)! Biyanto (ESEAP Hub) (talk) 09:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Noting here that we've updated the grant end date to 30 June 2026, and the report submission date is now 30 July 2026. If you need additional time to submit the report, please let us know as soon as you can. Thank you and hope you're well @Biyanto (ESEAP Hub)! Cheers, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @MJue (WMF), I appreciate your assistance. :) Biyanto (ESEAP Hub) (talk) 16:31, 19 February 2026 (UTC)