Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Strengthening our organizational resilience

Feedback and questions

Dearest Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group thank you for submitting another greatly formulated funding proposal that I have read with enthusiasm. I just had few questions in order to gain some clarity going forward

1.in last year's application, you have mentioned you will work with a facilitator to develop a strategic plan, and even though it is one of the required documents of the funding proposal, I could not see a strategic plan. Is there a plan, or an annual work plan to give the necessary guidance for the group as a whole?

2.the second question also focuses as a follow up question from last year, where you mentioned the plans to apply to be a legally registered entity. Is there any development on this issue, I know it takes a long time, but in relation to this question, the external partnerships that you mention, are they more in-kind partnerships rather than financial as well?

3.lastly with regards to the budget, it is very staff cost heavy, of about 73%, does this leave room for enough funding for the actual programmes that are planned

4.what organisational capacities do you think the external partnerships are contributing to please

many thanks and best of luck with the new proposal OkutS (talk) 06:39, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

@OkutS, thank you for your questions and sorry for the late answer:

1. Since last year's proposal, we have been assigned the organization of the CEE Meeting 2026, which meant we had to shift our focus away from the strategic plan towards planning for the conference. At the moment, we do not expect a strategic plan to be ready before 2027.
2. In Romania there are 2 models for incorporation: Foundations and Associations. The former was the model recommended to us by multiple executive-level people from other NGOs in Romania, as it is harder to change the purpose of the organization as we move forward and allows us to give legal rights for representation to an employee (as opposed to the members of the association). The downside is that Foundations have high capital requirements, equivalent to 2.5x our annual budget. We have discussed this with the WMF and in order to even consider getting that amount of money we would need a multi-annual grant, which in turn requires the strategic planning described above. We are not acting on a specific timeline here, as we are limited by the time budget of our members.
   External partnerships are mostly in-kind (staff time & event hosting from the partner organization). Any financial support will be directed directly to participants (for instance the French Institute provided some prizes this year) and is not outlined neither in our budget nor in our fiscal sponsor's financials. The sums we're talking about are below the taxing threshold for prizes in Romania.
3. The staff costs increased only 4% Y/Y in local currency vs 2% for our whole budget and indeed remain over 70%. Our current grant is on budget and we monitor the expenses monthly, so we do not expect any issues in financing the activities mentioned in the grant proposal either.
4. I am not sure I understand this question correctly, so if the answer does not match your expectations, please let me know. In addition to the event hosting described in question 2, all external partnerships we have are designed to enhance our reach by outsourcing to our partners some activities that we used to perform ourselves. For instance, the libraries organize thematic events related to our activities without requiring the presence of a member or employee locally. The teachers we partner with in the universities are either running their own Wikimedia-linked projects or they guide the scientific parts of the internship projects.

Strainu (talk) 20:55, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal funded for 220,000 RON

@Strainu and Gikü: Your General Support Fund is approved for partial funding in the amount of 220,000 RON for the grant term starting 1 July 2026 and ending 30 June 2027. This funding decision represents a reduction in funding to the User Group from previous year (247,990 RON), and we understand that this decision may be surprising and disappointing to receive. Please review the following comments regarding the decision:

• The Regional Fund Committee recognized a number of strengths in the proposal, including the overall plan and expected impact for community-facing technical work and enhancements, and we see this work as an important strength of WMROMD in the region. Furthermore, the committee continues to support your overall Education program strategy, focused on shifting attitudes about Wikipedia in academia and building greater trust between these institutions and our movement. We feel that your efforts to build trust-based partnerships with relevant institutions are an important investment that can improve how Wikimedia projects are used and engaged with by your communities.

• One factor that led to the decision involved very unfavorable exchange rates for USD to most regional affiliates during this fiscal year, which was noted in this proposal. This has meant that in order to continue funding many returning grantees at the same level of funding as last year, it has required an additional 5-10% increase in USD. Therefore, even continuing to fund WMROMD at a similar USD rate would have resulted in an effective decrease in your funding in RON.
• A second factor is that the Regional Fund Committee is concerned with the overall level of funding that WMROMD is investing into staffing-related compensation relative to other expenses without clear justification. First, WMROMD’s proportion of budget for staffing needs is much higher (over 70%) compared to other affiliates in the region. Second, and more importantly, while the Regional Fund Committee and Community Resources team does not have a specific ratio of staffing vs. other expenses that is ideal or correct for all affiliates, we do review staffing-related requests and evaluate in other important ways including:
  • the substance of expected roles and responsibilities,
  • general rationale for what needs that paid staff will address,
  • how those needs are connected to broader organizational strategy priorities, and
  • what impact or benefits (for Wikimedia communities, for Wikimedia projects, for your organizational capacity, etc.) are expected from their work during the funding period.

This proposal does not have clear metrics or other broader outcomes tied to how staff performance will achieve organizational impact in its evaluation plan. While some outcomes for specific technical work are especially clear and robust, impact stemming from the roles of the assistant manager, communications expert, outreach specialist, and to-be-hired programme coordinator are not specified. While there may be substantive needs these roles would address, their expected impact needs to be explicitly defined through your evaluation plan or in the description for those roles. Furthermore, budgetary requests that depend on increasing levels of staffing expenses will be scrutinized more closely, and there are real limits each year in how we can grow affiliates to expand their work in this way. The committee suggests working carefully with your program officer around staffing-related requests, and I am available to provide more specific guidance and support around these needs for your next proposal.

Please let me know if you have any questions or clarifications on the funding decision. We look forward to WMROMD’s efforts to support volunteers and movement priorities in Romania and Moldova over the next year. On behalf of the Regional Fund Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2026 (UTC)