Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wiki Advocates Philippines User Group Community Fund 2025
Add topicFollow-up questions on your application
[edit]Hello Wiki Advocates Philippines team,
Thank you for submitting your general support fund application. The ESEAP regional funds committee has completed the preliminary review of your application and here are the consolidated responses, comments and questions.
As a next step, we would like to invite you to respond to the questions (and comments if you feel a response is needed) on the talk page. We require a response by 10 May 2025. We'll also be reaching out to invite you to join a conversation with the ESEAP Funds Committee on 11 May 2025. More details to follow via email.
Thank you.
Regards, Jacqueline on behalf of the ESEAP Funds Committee
--
A) Community engagement and community health
1) Not much information on how the community informs the activities of the organization.
2) The applicant tried to directly mention which universities or institutions have or will be invited to collaborate. As written, applicants get 1000+ books from universities and individuals. Explain what strategies have/will be done to obtain cooperation if they do have programs with large costs.
B) Project deliverables, budget and implementation team
3) It is concerning that so much of the evidence of past activities points to various off-site pages. One is a Commons link, but the rest is not. This is concerning as we are not able to verify if the event took place and the quality of the project. I wonder if the applicant could provide a more specific breakdown of each past activity, perhaps that would provide more transparency and clarity.
4) The duties of the workers in the organization are unclear and not specific. There are workers who work full time and are also paid for volunteer work. Can you explain the difference specifically? The timeline is clear, but the events that will be held in detail are less clear.
5) The project costs as a percentage of the requested budget may appear low (relative to the budgets provided by other Wikimedia entities), which may reflect an underestimation of project costs or an overestimation of personnel and operating costs. I need more details.
C) Overall strengths of the proposal
6) The proposal has some clear subprograms with very positive goals aligned with the movement strategy. I am also grateful for their information about being able to attract few new members but to obtain consistent participation, this is positive and aligns with my experiences elsewhere.
7) At this stage, I don't see any significant improvements or strengths. It seems the proposal is mainly focused on sustaining the organization itself.
8) Having community spaces like libraries or co-working spaces seem to be supportive for the community.
D) Other general questions
9) Thank you for detailing each staff member’s role and responsibilities. Do you have someone on your team with accounting or financial skills? If one of them (in the document you provided) is responsible for that, could you give more details on which role?
10) What activities have been done in your office? Do you also collaborate with other communities?
E) Overall recommendations or opportunities to explore
11) Perhaps they could share more about their governance system, including the roles and responsibilities, the decision-making process, and other relevant details, to ensure everything is clear and transparent.
12) Applicants were able to collaborate more with other institutions in the previous year with the many resources they received last year. They should prioritize broader collaborations outside their city. JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:11, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hi JChen (WMF) (talk)!
- Thank you for your comments. As an organization, we try to ensure that our programs actually create impact both on our Wikimedia projects and on the community we work with, and that it aligns with the Movement advocacies in general. We also provide importance on involving the youth and cultivating volunteer mindset among our potential future leaders.
- a) We believe that it should be any organization’s priority to be sustainable to be able to achieve the organization’s established goals and objectives. We have programs running for 5 years (SheSaid and Art+Feminism Philippines), and we have Wikiprojects that we continuously improve (BCL Wiktionary, BCL Wikiquote, TL Wikiquote. etc.). We believe it is impractical and a waste of resources to test and dive into new projects just because we want to, when we still have more things to improve and goals to achieve.
- b) Also, our organization believes that we cannot quantify growth by merely saying that, “we had grown over the past year” without having the numbers or proof to support that claim. We’re confident that our organization can prove both in numbers and quality of volunteers we have. On what kind of volunteer training and organizing capacity we can deliver. We have youth volunteers representing and presenting in global Wikimedia conferences. A clear indication of an organization’s strength and development.
- c) Organizational strengths are not seen on how well an organization defines their program proposal, but on how well they manage to achieve their program goals and how it actually improves the lives of the community they serve. Right now we have youth leaders leading training, we have Wikiproject administrators, and we recently presented four (4) of our major projects during the ESEAP Conference 2024, and our own volunteers will be working for the ESEAP Summit this year.
- d) Please scroll down to see our yearly achievement in numbers.
- B) Community engagement and community health
- 4. Not much information on how the community informs the activities of the organization.
- a) Wiki Advocates Philippines has different channels on how we share our group’s accomplishments and campaigns. We are maintaining a social media account through a Facebook page, a Meta page, Wikidata items of each activity and a unified Commons Category for all media produced by our user group since we started in 2020. The most recent of them are linked to our official website. Also, as part of a requirement of a recognized user group, we are maintaining our yearly report of our activities. You may access our reports here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group/Reports
- 5. The applicant tried to directly mention which universities or institutions have or will be invited to collaborate. As written, applicants get 1000+ books from universities and individuals. Explain what strategies have/will be done to obtain cooperation if they do have programs with large costs.
- a) These books and other library resources were given in the form of donations for the development of WAP Community Learning Hub. It isn’t bound within any memorandum of agreement or any political agenda. Once it is given to us, the sole responsibility lies within the user group. We have also established a policy that when we decide to not continue the Community Learning Hub, all resources will be donated to other public school or barangay reading centers in the area.
- b) As of the moment, our donors remain as donors, and our work partners are the one we collaborate with when we’re running our campaigns or conducting training. Operational costs are divided between the user group and our work partners when we’re doing a collaboration.
- C) Project deliverables, budget and implementation team
- 6. It is concerning that so much of the evidence of past activities points to various off-site pages. One is a Commons link, but the rest is not. This is concerning as we are not able to verify if the event took place and the quality of the project. I wonder if the applicant could provide a more specific breakdown of each past activity, perhaps that would provide more transparency and clarity.
- As mentioned in the first response, the user group maintains different channels on where we share our group’s milestones. We have Facebook page, a Meta page, Wikidata items of each activity and a unified Commons Category for all media produced by our user group since we started in 2020. Our official website also provides a good narrative for our accomplishment as a team. For the least of our activities, you may visit our unified programs under the Programs and Events Dashboard and Wikimedia Commons.
- Important links:
- Programs and Events Dashboard
- WAP UG Programs https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wiki_advocates_philippines_programs/programs
- WikIdata Day Philippines: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikidata_day_philippines/programs
- SheSaid Campaign in the Philippines: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/shesaid_campaign_in_the_philippines/programs
- WPWP Philippines: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wpwp_philippines/programs
- Art+Feminism Philippines: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/artfeminism_philippines/programs
- Central Bikol Wiktionary Development: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/central_bikol_wiktionary_development/programs
- Hatch-A-Wikimedian Project: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wiki_Advocates_Philippines_User_Group/Hatch-A-Wikimedian_Project
- WikIBoses Project: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikiboses
- Programs and Events Dashboard
- Annual Reports:
- Newsletters:
- Important links:
- 7. The duties of the workers in the organization are unclear and not specific. There are workers who work full time and are also paid for volunteer work. Can you explain the difference specifically? The timeline is clear, but the events that will be held in detail are less clear.
- a) Employment. Our organization employs different types of employees all throughout the grant cycle. We have full-time staff (Executive Director, Program Manager, and Lead Designer) and part-time workers, and interns. The full time staff are employed from the beginning of the fiscal year until the end of each grant cycle. The part-time staff are employed based on the current needs of our organization. It includes workers for each campaign, office support and janitorial services. Recently, we also used our budget to provide support for our interns. As for the interns, they offer support on our organizational functions but only receive allowances for food and transportation instead of actual compensation. Our internship program usually lasts from two weeks to 100 days. For specifics, you may refer to the detailed job descriptions of these roles:
- b)Volunteer support. Our volunteer support on the other hand, offers financial support to all active and regular members for any professional development. This includes transportation and accommodation allowance for attending a seminar related to any of our advocacies, support for any licensure examination. We also recently offered minimal financial support for volunteers with deceased family members.
- c)Important Note. No volunteer receives payments for their volunteer work. Our organization only offers volunteer support through allowances for transportation, communication, and professional development. Likewise, some of our paid workers also serve as our active volunteers and regular members, making them also qualified to receive volunteer support if need arises.
- 8. The project costs as a percentage of the requested budget may appear low (relative to the budgets provided by other Wikimedia entities), which may reflect an underestimation of project costs or an overestimation of personnel and operating costs. I need more details.
- a) The identified cost of expenses are based on the current rate and tariff in the Philippines. Some projects may appear to be low, since we have considered that there are things we are not expected to pay, like space rental (the office serves sometimes as venue), equipment rental (we have secured office equipments for the past two years), and for programmatic and facilitation expenses, there are volunteers who are already trained to lead activities.
- b)Our current programmatic costs are based on our previous working budget for the last two years, with a slight increase to accommodate inflation. Prices are still true at present, and some expense items may not be necessary as we have already invested in them for the last two years. The reason for the increase in our budget for this year is to accommodate the fiscal sponsorship fee, additional full time staff, and a working budget to support volunteers to attend important global Wikimedia conferences.
- c)Budget requests from other Wikimedia entities may differ based on their priorities and purpose. As an organization that consistently works on programs and campaigns for the past 5 years, we have already established a baseline of our expenses for our programs. In our experience, we only experience budget constraints when unexpected expenses (like fiscal sponsorship fee, participation on global Wikimedia conferences) are taken directly from our working budget.
- D) Other general questions
- 9. Thank you for detailing each staff member’s role and responsibilities. Do you have someone on your team with accounting or financial skills? If one of them (in the document you provided) is responsible for that, could you give more details on which role?
- a)Our current Program Manager currently manages our financial records and monthly reporting. He is a graduate of Financial Management and has received a national certification in bookkeeping.
- b)Kiwix, our fiscal sponsor, handles the rest of our accounting needs and verification of our expenses.
- 10. What activities have been done in your office? Do you also collaborate with other communities?
- a)Most of the activities done in our office are related to editing content and training on basic WikiProject editing. We maximize the space and resources available, internet connection and laptops, to provide an avenue for interested people to learn more about wikiprojects.
- b) Yes. We work with other partners in realizing our advocacies. We continuously partner with the local government unit for our Human Rights Day celebration and environmental awareness programs. We also have our partner schools for our eduwiki initiative, and we are reaching remote communities to provide gender awareness training for women in marginalized sectors.
- E) Overall recommendations or opportunities to explore
- 11. Perhaps they could share more about their governance system, including the roles and responsibilities, the decision-making process, and other relevant details, to ensure everything is clear and transparent.
- a) Meetings and Reporting. We conduct monthly meetings with our board members and volunteers to ensure transparency within our organization.
- b)Check-ins. Full time employees also have regular check-ins and stand ups for updating status of their work.
- c)As to the process, we used the following guidelines on making decisions within the organization:
- Planned programs are managed directly by the Executive Director.
- Unexpected programs and activities are requested by the Program Manager, Volunteer Interns, to the Executive Director for approval.
- If budget realignment is needed, it needs to be discussed during monthly members' meetings.
- 12. Applicants were able to collaborate more with other institutions in the previous year with the many resources they received last year. They should prioritize broader collaborations outside their city.
- a) To visualize the scope of our activities, please refer to this page and access the Map View. https://wikiadvocatesph.org/activities-and-campaigns/
- b) We are confident that our reach is wide enough as to our current organizational capabilities and financial capacities. Aiming to reach communities beyond what we can afford right now might entail sacrificing big chunks of our budget for transportation, accommodation expenses, and volunteer support.
- c) Guided by our 5-year strategic plan, we know that our organizational focus is on our growth, leadership and financial independence. We are trying to establish partnerships with institutions that can help us improve our organizational capacity through training and help us develop the tools that we will need for making remote collaborations effective and efficient, making broader collaborations possible for all parties involved.
- Best,
- Imelda (Talk) 15:21, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Your application has been approved
[edit]Hello Wiki Advocates Philippines team,
Thank you for your responses to the follow-ups questions and for joining the call with the ESEAP Regional Funds Committee.
Congratulations! Your grant application has been approved in the amount of PHP 3,528,997 (includes 10% fiscal sponsor fees) from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. Could you also revise your budget, timeline based on the awarded amount of the grant? You can add new tabs and label them revised budget and revised timeline accordingly and notify your programme officer when it's completed.
Here are some comments from the review team that were captured from the final deliberation round
- a) There seems to be a lack of clarity regarding the existence and function of the office. Based on past records, there were no significant activities or measurable impacts from the previous year, which raises questions about the effectiveness and sustainability of the program.
- b) Strengths: The team has a strong focus on diversity and inclusion, including female-related projects and the in-depth development of underrepresented community languages.
- c) We deeply value the trust placed in us by our donors, and making the best use of the Wikimedia donation fund is a responsibility we take very seriously within our movement. Each portion of the fund has been carefully allocated to specific projects with clearly defined goals. Therefore, any reallocation of these funds to other activities must receive prior approval.
- ci) It is important to emphasize that accountability extends beyond the grant recipient. Overspending or diverting funds without proper authorization can compromise the integrity of the movement as a whole. Transparency in financial management is one of the most important ways we demonstrate our responsibility to donors, and timely communication can prevent small issues from escalating into larger problems.
- cii) A request for around 30% top-up midway through the grant cycle is significant and not something we can approve without thorough justification. We do appreciate your proactive effort to recover the reallocated funds through independent fundraising. At the same time, it may also be prudent to consider adjusting the scope of the program to align with the available budget.
- d) Metrics for editors: All editors = 50, new editors = 100, and retained editors = 50 (looks like it does not add up to the total of all editors).
Recommendations
- We would recommend reviewing the questions and comments from the review process with your Programme Officer.
- We would also suggest working closely with your programme officer to set up a plan to review the staffing, governance and decision making processes within the organisation. Where possible, do provide regular updates on this talkpage when you have made progress in these areas with links to other relevant pages for further details.
- Please know that your programme officer is also available to support you in reviewing and prioritising the funding outcomes into your revised workplan as well as for regular touchpoints throughout the lifecycle of your grant term.
Change in implementation plan
We know even the best thought through plans may change.
In the event that there are changes to your implementation schedule, you can reach out to request for a grant extension (i.e. extend end date). Similarly, if there is a surplus budget or changes to your planned budget, you can reach out to me about reallocation (via email and on this talkpage). There is also the option to have the unspent funds deducted against a future grant. More details here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Return_unused_funds_to_WMF
Additional resources which may be useful
- The reporting requirements and templates for the grant can be found here. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.
- Timelines for reporting can be found in your grant agreement or on Fluxx.
- Instructions for post award: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Processing/Grantee_Portal/Post_award
- Documenting project expenses: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Documenting_project_expenses
We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on this project. Good luck!
Regards, Jacqueline on behalf of the ESEAP Regional Funds Committee JChen (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 21 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hi Jacqueline,
- Thank you for this information. We reivsed our annual budget plan as advised.
- Best,
- Imelda (Talk) 05:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
Super Typhoon Fung-wong in the Philippines
[edit]Hello Wiki Advocates Philippines team,
Putting a note here that we are in communication about emergency response and potential support needed.
Thank you.
Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 05:12, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
Request for top-up to meet operational needs until June 2026
[edit]Hello Wiki Advocates Philippines,
Thank you for being on the call with Kiwix and me yesterday. Last month, we understand that there will be a shortfall in your operating budget. The implication was that there was only sufficient budget to cover basic operational expenses until end May 2026 (instead of June 2026).
Based on our conversation, we understand that the shortfall was contributed based on
a) interbank fee and exchange rate fluctuations when receiving funds from Kiwix (PHP 173,990)
b) actual expenses exceeded projected expenses for line items such as travel and operation cost
To mitigate the shortfall, Wiki Advocates Philippines has proactively taken the following steps
c) Reduced the number of headcount from 5 to 2 for the months of April, May and June 2026
d) No community activities is expected to take place between April and June 2026
e) No additional funding should be directed to/ for travel and convening
We worked out together that the amount that is needed would be:
i) Project budget (excluding fiscal sponsor fees) = PHP 3,113,700
ii) Actual expenses (July 2025 to March 2026) = PHP 2,866,933.18
iii) Remaining budget available = PHP 246,776.82
iv) Available project budget held by Kiwix = PHP 60,000
v) Projected budget required for April, May and June 2026 = PHP 184,750 x 3 = 554,250 PHP
vi) Shortfall (i.e top-up request) = PHP 247,473.18 (from a and b)
Next steps
- Last year, we also had a similar conversation with the team about projected expenses and cashflows. To mitigate the shortfall last year, Kiwix put in place projected cashflow spreadsheet for your use this year.
- After our conversation yesterday, Kiwix will be sending through a revised spreadsheet which requires reporting of monthly actuals breakdown by line items. We will require your commitment to report on this.
- For heads-up, we may require an audit of your project expenses at the end of the financial year. We will be in touch with you on the next steps if needed.
- Kiwix has also set up a wire to your affiliate account yesterday.
Thank you.
Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:45, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Extension for final report submission - approved
[edit]Hello Wiki Advocates Philippines team,
Thank you for reaching out.
Your final report timeline has been extended. Please submit your final report on Fluxx by 30 August 2026.
Thank you.
Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2026 (UTC)