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FTEs (full-time equivalents)

In my understanding, FTE is a unit of workload, and if an organization has staff members, their FTEs would be more than 0 (although it could be less than 1, if they have only one part-time worker). Why do some grant applications claim 0 FTEs? Does it matter if people work without pay? whym (talk) 08:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, I think they might just be doing it wrong. I don't think you can just say "we only have consultants" - you're meant to estimate the hours and figure out how many full time (40-35hr/week depending on the employer?) employees it's equivalent to. I mean, if they're not getting paid, that's fair enough, but is that actually the case, or is their rate just not specified? If they're working for free they should probably be called "volunteer staff" or the like. GreenReaper (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, in the first link they received 1/6 of the requested funding, and when they revised the grant application to match that, the FTE number was changed from 1 FTE and 2 consultants to 0. --Zache (talk) 07:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point that the funding was reduced, but I'd expect something like 0.1 or 0.2 FTEs instead of 0 in that case.

Some activities, especially volunteer driven ones, might be done on-demand and spontaneously and you might not even know if you are going to spend all of the fund eventually. However, it seems like the general support fund is more for regular, well-planned and predictable things. whym (talk) 08:49, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Is this FTE question not a priority in general? A grantee said that the WMF and/or the committee never brought up the issue when discussing the grant application privately. It's still not clear to me the "0" answer was a mistake, or there was a valid reason. The question is in Grants:MetaSync/Application templates/Wikimedia Community Fund v4: "19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)" whym (talk) 03:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

You could directly ask the reasoning behind the number from the grantee? About that the commitee never brought up the number in mid-term conversation, i dont think that is suprising. The discussions are generally pretty practical orientated (ie. what you have achieved, any highligts/problems, any differences compared to plans etc). So even if there is discussion about amount of employees it is not single number level, but more like if one have capacity and/or skills to targetted things. Btw. If you tried to ask JAUG to update the FTE number in application I don't think that grantee by themselfs can edit the application after it is approved. --Zache (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I asked and it's now confirmed that it was indeed a misunderstanding. I pointed out the possible misunderstanding in early May. If it was too late, when was not? (Or is there a better way to communicate other than a talk page thread?) whym (talk) 06:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Whym Sorry for the late question: I just checked (as person who submitted a grant). Grantee cannot edit the grant application when it is under review. Afaik 19 March 2024 was the date when the review started (diff) -- Zache (talk) 13:10, 28 November 2024 (UTC) (update: --Zache (talk) 13:18, 28 November 2024 (UTC))

Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund says "Applicants have a set time to make necessary adjustments or clarifications" after receiving review. So proposals can be "adjusted" as a result of reviews including community reviews, and it seems like the talk page is the venue for that. I admit that I made the comment late in the review period, but am I understanding it correctly that it would have been okay to talk about revisions in March-April at least. (Again, assuming that a "revision" is done by saying something like "the number X was wrong, Y is the right number", on the talk page.) whym (talk) 10:27, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

About the correct place: the talk page of the grant application is the venue. About the changes after the review. Based on my personal experience: We have only made changes that were requested (by the grant liaison or grant committee). For example, in 2024 WMFI applied for 130,000€ and the decision was 105,000€. Before the decision, there was a question in feedback on how the reduction would affect the project. After our answers, we got an email containing information on the expected approval sum and requests to update the sums and budget to match the lower sum. At this time, there was no need to update the application text itself. However, in some years there have been text change requests, also. In any case, in the 2024 application the reduced funding affected the full-time equivalent (FTE) as it reduced the work time of 2 persons from 12 months to 9 months. However, I didn't update the FTE number or program content as the only thing that was requested was to update the sums.(diff to my changes) --Zache (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

In my understanding, misunderstandings were made, and we can help preventing similar mistakes in future by making the question clearer - adding a few words (something like "In other words, this is asking your total working hours"), having a section in an explanation page, etc. How can we make that happen? Or is there reason not to do that? whym (talk) 10:14, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is current questions and help text: General Support Fund application form (documentation, v3.0) chapter 19. --Zache (talk) 13:16, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. So it seems like I was mistaken, too. I thought FTEs might include unpaid hours, but it sounds like they don't. (But it also sounds like I was right in that applicants failed to paid hours of part-time workers where they should have been.)

To make the guidance better, illustrative examples might help. We might want to include something like "For example, if you have 0 full-time employees and 3 part-time workers who only work in January-September, 40 hours per month, then your answer would be ____" The concept of FTE might be commonplace in some countries but not in other countries. I think examples help to have everyone on the same page. It can be especially confusing when many groups are too small to have even one full-time employee. whym (talk) 10:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

It would be a good idea that grant applicants would explain how their FTE figures are calculated.

Ie. something like this:

• 1.5 FTE as as total
  • 1 FTE = coordinator 100% work time for 12 months
  • 0.5 FTE = project employee 100% work time for 6 months

--Zache (talk) 19:18, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Whym and @Zache, thanks for highlighting that the FTE-related questions can be confusing. We did not include the question descriptions into the meta pages but these descriptions are available on Fluxx, where applicants add their proposals. For question 19.1., the description states:

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms (period of work)..

Would it be helpful if for future proposals, we add "Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period with their FTEs" into the question description? This will highlight the need to share FTEs for each staff member and clarify how the total FTE (Q9.2.) is calculated. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that is a change in the right direction, but I'm not sure if the small change significantly reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding, to be honest.

My concern is that the concept of FTEs can be foreign, regardless of how you call it. I'm not aware of FTEs nor its translation commonly used in human resources context in Japan. I believe they would just say X paid hours per time unit (a month, a year, etc) instead, when they need to quantify.

Could it be more helpful to accept paid hours as an alternative way to answer the question, or at least to suggest estimating paid hours and converting it to FTEs, to answer it? I would expect the conversion to be straightforward: 40 hours per week on average = 1.0 FTEs, 20 hours per week on average = 0.5 FTEs, etc.

Another way to help clarifying it might be including an illustrative example into the document linked above (or another support document, if that is preferable), like Zache suggested above. whym (talk) 13:06, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Grants table or dataset?

Can someone point me to a table or other dataset of historical WMF grants?

I'm summarizing NARWHAL programs and their status, and the historical and current grant-funded programs and associated reports are the best available starting point, but I haven't fond them all in one place. It would also be helpful to do some analysis across different subsets of the historical data. If that's not already gathered, it would be enormously useful... do we have internal research on grantmaking? cc @DSaroyan (WMF) as I believe you've been involved with most parts of the ecosystem lately :) –SJ talk  23:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Sj, there is no public dataset available but I might be able to create one for your analysis. I just need to specify your request because we do not collect NARWHAL programs separately.

• Would the list of grants in USA, Canada, and Mexico work? Note, that in WMF's regional categorization Mexico is in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
• Do you only need grants by groups and organizations, or also by individuals? We fund individuals, unincorporated groups, and nonprofits. Wikimedia affiliates can be both unincorporated groups and nonprofits.
• Grants from which fiscal years do you want? WMF's fiscal year is from 1 July to 30 June, but I can also include grant dates for your reference.

DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:44, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello DSaroyan (WMF), thanks so much! For my current analysis, US/Canada/Mexico would work; I can also start with just US/Canada if that is easier. We're interested in groups, organizations, and individuals -- sometimes the question of what sort of org applies is secondary to the project and depends on what seems like the most expedient way to get support, and that's one of the facets we're interested in. (only grants that had public applications or reports)

I'd appreciate all dates that are convenient, since 2016 if possible, when this reports format started to be used. Including whatever programs were available each year (rapid / conference / research / tech / alliances / hub / general support / APGs &c.) –SJ talk  21:29, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Sj, I'll send the datasheet tomorrow. I'll include all years and programs for US, Canada and Mexico. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Sj, here's the list.

• I have cleaned the list and removed some unrelated and cancelled grants.
• Individual grantee names are removed due to our privacy policy. You may find some of them on the grant application pages, but most of the usernames should be listed on the proposal pages.
• Midterm report link is also included if the grant program had such a requirement.
• Some reports are missing because their are either pending submission, or the grants are incomplete.

DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:47, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

This is absolutely fantastic. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving! Two additional questions:

- Do you also have grant amounts handy?

- Do you have similar data for grant requests that were not funded? –SJ talk 

Hi @Sj, happy Thanksgiving to you too!

• Added grant amounts to the same table. For simplicity, I just included approved amount in USD.
• We don't have complete historical data on declined grants.

DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

FLUXX request: autosave

Please add autosave 😅. I lost 3 applications in process at this point for a small rapid grant, and there are so many steps... especially problematic when applying on the go / via mobile. The 100&Change tool is a nice counterpoint, for usability. –SJ talk  16:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC) (It autosaves in the form, shows you what % of the way through you are, and highlights required but empty fields. It also cleanly separates a one-minute "name, abstract, and team" for each application from the full details, and the former is used to generate initial visualizations of the field of applicants each round. –SJ talk  15:28, 2 December 2024 (UTC))

Hi @Sj, sorry for it. We know it is annoying and inconvenient and we raised this several times with Fluxx. For now, I can confirm that they are aware and working on the autosave feature, but I'm not aware of more details regarding the expected dates. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the reply. I also just realized that every time one 'saves' it creates a new page on Meta at the end of that day if the title has changed, so a) for clarity the autosave I'd like is within the form itself, not on meta, partly for the title reason & for clarity about whether what one is writing is on a wiki or not, and b) it would be nice to have some indication when 'save to meta' is happening and what the target page will be.

I created a manual redirect on Meta for one such instance I generated (22894757 --> 22894808), couldn't find another way to indicate that the original name should no longer be associated with a draft proposal. –SJ talk  15:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Timeline for Wikimedia Research Fund

Request: a standard annual timeline for the Wikimedia Research Fund cycle. The last cycle applications closed December 15, 2023, so myself and colleagues thought that this year's cycle would be announced by December 2024, but they haven't. Any details on when applications will open up would be helpful for research planning. Hexatekin (talk) 00:18, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Hexatekin. Apologies I'm only now seeing this comment.

In general, we do strive to have a standard annual timeline as you suggested. However, we are working on some changes around the Research Fund which is why it hasn't been announced or opened yet. Please make sure you are subscribed to the Wikimedia Research public mailing list where we will post an announcement about the next round soon. KGordon (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Alternative overview of the research fund proposals under further consideration

A version of the list at Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Research_&_Technology_Fund/Wikimedia_Research_Fund#Review_submissions enriched with some information from the linked proposal pages (in case it is useful for some people following this invitation to review them):

Proposal title	Applicants	Start – end dates	Budget (USD)
Extended: Opportunities for Supporting Community‑Scale Communication	Cristian Danescu‑Niculescu‑Mizil	August 2025 – August 2027	$105,000
The Anatomy of Coordination among Wikipedia Users	Marco Minici; Giuseppe Manco; Cristian Consonni	1 September 2025 – 1 September 2026	$41,294
WikipedAI: Investigating AI Collaboration and Conflict in Open Knowledge Systems	Patrick Gildersleve	1 October 2025 – 30 September 2026	$46,840
Informing Memory Institutions and Humanities Researchers of the Broader Impact of Open Data Sharing via Wikidata	Hanlin Li; Nicholas Vincent	15 July 2025 – 14 July 2026	$49,450
Exploring How AI Can Interpret Discussions Through an Insider Lens to Support Future Mediation	Soobin Cho; David W. McDonald; Mark Zachry	1 October 2025 – 1 October 2026	$47,598
Lexeme‑based approach for the development of technical vocabulary for underserved languages: A case study on Moroccan Darija	Anass Sedrati; Reda Benkhadra; Mounir Afifi; Jan Hoogland	1 July 2025 – 30 June 2026	$25,722
Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the focus of scientific research – a research community‑building event in Ukraine	Anton Protsiuk; Mariana Senkiv; Natalia Lastovets	1 July 2025 – 31 March 2026	$12,115
Extended: Making Community with Wikimedia	Steve Jankowski; Richard Rogers	1 July 2025 – 30 June 2027	$149,976
Between Prompt and Publish: Community Perceptions and Practices Related to AI‑Generated Wikipedia Content	Anwesha Chakraborty; Netha Hussain	1 October 2025 – 31 August 2026	$8,571
Establishing a Critical Digital Commons Research Network	Zachary McDowell	October 2025 – March 2026	$14,300
The state of science and Wikimedia: Who is doing what, and who is funding it?	Brett Buttliere; Matthew A. Vetter; Lane Rasberry; Iolanda Pensa; Susanna Mkrtchyan; Daniel Mietchen	1 August 2025 – 30 July 2026	$49,450
Developing a wiki‑integrated workflow to build a living review on just sustainability transitions	Adélie Ranville; Romain Mekarni; Rémy Gerbet; Arthur Perret; Finn Årup Nielsen; Dariusz Jemielniak	1 September 2025 – 31 August 2026	$49,622
Navigating Today, Shaping Tomorrow: Studying the Role of LLMs on Wikipedia	Manoel Horta Ribeiro; Andrés Monroy‑Hernández	1 September 2025 – 31 August 2027	$143,202

Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Newer general support fund reports

I'm failing to find reports of some general support fund projects for the last couple of years. Should they be found somewhere under Category:Wikimedia Community Fund - General Support Fund or am I looking at the wrong place? It seem like there is Category:General Support Fund reports in FY 2022-23 but no newer ones. whym (talk) 05:12, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Why ?

@DSaroyan (WMF) hello. That /Tech is an official WMF funds for tech project, newly set up, and shared around at the Wikimania. Why hide a pointer to it ? Yug (talk) 10:38, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Yug, I left a note on your talk page after rolling back. Thanks --DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Project start date

I've got a question about the reasoning behind the project start dates. I understand that the grant payment ending at a specific time means that the paid portion of the project has to be after it. But if projects are designed such that they start after the "decisions announced" period, and only the paid portion starts after the grant payment, what is the issue there? Egezort (talk) 01:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Question about funding equipment

Hi there. I e-mailed this to the Latin America program officer, but there's no name listed for that so I'm guessing no one is following that mailbox.

I am interested in applying for a Rapid Grant to acquire a drone for the purpose of mapping a UNESCO World Heritage site Brazil. The outcome of this project would include approximately 14,000 high-resolution aerial images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, accompanied by documentation of the workflow for integrating aerial imagery, orthomosaics, SDC tagging, and OpenStreetMap.

The project would be conducted in collaboration with a local university.

In accordance with the Rapid Grants guidelines, I would donate the drone to Wikimedia Brasil (WMB), of which I am a member, upon completion of the project. WMB would then coordinate its use with other members of the community.

My main question concerns the requirement that “equipment purchase is allowed for groups, organizations, and affiliates.” In this case, the applicant would be myself as an individual, not WMB. Although I would be collaborating with the university, that is not a recognized Wikimedia user group.

Given this context, would it still be possible to apply for a Rapid Grant under these terms?

Thanks,

Rkieferbaum (talk) 11:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

My thought is that you consult and coordinate with WMB to budget the equipment, and then lend it from them for your project. It would be less tedious and more sustainable. They might probably have resources available to purchase the equipment. Why chose a long route? _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 10:05, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

@Aafi: the drone I need would consume a huge portion of WMB’s annual budget for projects, and in any case it would have to be included in next year’s budget. That would not fit my project’s timeline. I wouldn’t rule it out but at this point it’s really not an option… Rkieferbaum (talk) 11:38, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Archiving

Can we set up automatic archive of old sections here? I would suggest copying that of Grants talk:Start, replacing the talk page name.

(unless perhaps we want to merge the page to Grants talk:Start to centralize) whym (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Whym, thanks for your suggestion. I'll move the page content to Grants_talk:Start to centralize everything, create a redirect, and it will follow the same archiving schedule. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)