Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia MKD Annual Grant 2025

Regional Committee feedback and questions

@Violetova, MacedonianBoy, and Kiril Simeonovski: Thanks for your General Support Fund proposal on behalf of Wikimedia MKD. The Regional Fund Committee has completed an initial review of the proposal, and has the following feedback, questions, and comments to help support their review:

• We appreciate your efforts to negotiate with the Skopje City Council for dedicated office space, and we hope these negotiations are successful. If there is anything the Community Resources team can do to support this request, please let us know.
• What is the status of Wikimedia MKD's progress towards recognition as a Wikimedia affiliate?
• Many of the GLAM institutions described in this proposal as "new GLAM institutions" were described in the same way on Wikimedia MKD's application from last year: Macedonian Academy of Science, Museum of Contemporary Arts, National Park Mavrovo, City Libraries, Directorate for protection of cultural heritage, etc. What progress has been made toward developing these partnerships over the past year, and how will your partnership work be different with these institutions this year?
• One new part of this proposal relative to last year is the QRpedia sub-programme, including WikiVillage. Can you elaborate more on what will happen in these programs, and what kind of impact, outcomes, or benefits you hope to see from them?
• We need a new employee for GLAM programme as the volunteers and Wikipedians in residence cannot accomplish growing and increasing number of calls for collaboration with GLAM institutions: In terms of active partnerships with GLAM institutions, how many has Wikimedia MKD been able to support over the last year without a dedicated staff person? If Wikimedia MKD is funded to onboard a new GLAM Manager as proposed, how many more would it be able to maintain? The current evaluation plan for this year notes the number of institutions generally involved with Wikimedia MKD (45), but this is the same number as last year. Do you need to adjust this metric assuming you have staff support?
• An important factor for your request for an increase in your budget is based on inflationary effects. Do these reported statistics from the International Monetary Fund generally reflect the inflation your organization has been experiencing in recent years? If not, would it be possible to provide some sources for these inflationary changes? These sources do not need to be written in English if they are available.
• Wikimedia MKD is currently receives all of its funding from the Wikimedia Foundation. Has your organization considered any efforts at looking at external fundraising opportunities, or connecting with other CEE affiliates on their fundraising work? Depending on the manner in which Wikimedia MKD wants to grow or deepen its programmatic or operational work, the General Support Fund may not have the resourcing available to grow your organization in the long term.

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around the committee's feedback. To support the Regional Committee's review, please respond to committee feedback by Thursday, November 21st. On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Chris and committee members, and thank you for the feedback and questions. Here are the answers:

• Thank you for the support of our efforts to get an office space from the Skopje City Council. I can say that the negotiations are still ongoing, and we are in hope that the Wikimedia MKD will get the office space from the beginning of the next year.
• About the status of Wikimedia MKD's progress towards recognition as a Wikimedia affiliate: we have no answer yet from the AffCom. Apparently in AffCom things are slower than we would like to get an answer. At the moment, the last contact was my email to AffCom from 26 September 2024 with the confirmation to start Derecognition and Chapter Recognition Process. No emails from that point still.
• I made a mistake describing this part for the new, ongoing and past collaboration with the GLAM institutions. I am sorry for that: it happen because some of the programs will be almost the same as last year. Let me explain the real situation: with some of the mentioned institution we had in the past very good collaboration, but at the moment we are at the stand by, if I can say like that. Much more, we are very proud to have those GLAM institutions in the list of collaboration at all, such as: Macedonian Academy of Science, Museum of Contemporary Arts and National Park Mavrovo.

But the collaboration with several City Libraries, with the Directorate for protection of cultural heritage, is ongoing.

The new ones are: Hydrometeorological Service of the Republic of North Macedonia, and several NGOs, such as NGO Vila Zora from Veles, Macedonian Ecological Society (MES), (because yearly topic for GLAM activities in 2024 was 'Climate and Climate Changes'), and also with: Macedonian Young Lawyers Association (MYLA) and Municipality of Demir Hisar.

• About QRpedia sub-programme - WikiVillage: this is not a new project, Shared Knowledge started WikiVillage in 2021. The goal is to promote and highlight the buildings that are the Cultural Heritage of Macedonia located in the Macedonian villages, by placing information plates in their immediate vicinity. For ex., the plates contain the name of the building, universal QR code to Wikipedia article about the building.

Activities include: searching for books and other materials, or available information on the Internet in order to create/improve articles on selected buildings and places; cooperation with municipality, organizations, associations, institutions (national or local), individuals for obtaining information and/or logistical support; field work by finding the best place around the buildings for the information plates; promotion of the project to the local and wider population, as well as to news agencies.

• The number of institutions generally involved with Wikimedia MKD: 45 includes GLAM and Edu institutions. During the year, cooperation with some institutions comes to the end or on stand by till some other time, but always there come new ones, and the number of involved institutions in total is about 45 per year. Maybe with the new GLAM employee the number of institutions will increase to 50, but at the beginning, his/her job will not be to increase the number of institutions, or to add a new institutions to the list, but above all to deep the existing cooperation with the existing involved GLAM institutions. For example, during the year the volunteers and WiRs are not able to finish everything that the institutions offer us: materials, photos, files, and to add them in the appropriate spaces (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, Wikisource, etc). You may notice that the numbers added for the line: Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects, include Wikisource 1100 created pages and 35 edited or improved pages, which will be part of the GLAM employee job description.
• I confirm that the inflation on the IMF site of 3.3% for Macedonia in 2024 is correct.
• What a coincidence on this matter! We held an important Assembly meeting two weeks ago, and between the other topics, we discuss how to find external fundraising opportunities. The discussion ended with the conclusion that at the time being, no one from the Wikimedia MKD (no one from the employees, volunteers, or members of executive board) knows how to implement fundraising apart from applying for WMF grants. We are good for finding in kind donation (free space, for ex.), but this is something different and complicated for us at the moment. In Macedonia, there are monthly courses where one could learn thеse skills, and there are already trained people for these tasks to be hired and payed to do fundraising for the organization, but their salary (or honorarium) is above the average salary. In the course of the next several years, I don't have hope that we will be able to do fundraising ourselves.

If there is a need for further explanation, please let me know. Regards - Виолетова (talk) 09:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Update from 22 November: we finally got the space from the Skopje City Council, in the building named Youth Cultural Center (Mladinski Kulturen Centar, MKC). The space is with the projector, tables and chairs, as well as air conditioning. I am so happy about this. - Виолетова (talk) 18:47, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 95,420 EUR

@Violetova, MacedonianBoy, and Kiril Simeonovski:Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 95,420 EUR with a grant term starting 1 January 2025 and ending 31 December 2025.

The committee supported full funding of the proposal, and is pleased to see that Wikimedia MKD’s transition to a unified organization has been productive despite challenges in the process of effectively merging two movement affiliates together. The committee also appreciates Wikimedia MKD’s efforts to build some of its internal capacities, such as its own governance procedures as well as securing dedicated meeting/office space through its engagement with government entities.

Given Wikimedia MKD’s recent productive work with GLAM institutions, we support its request for a staff member to manage these activities and growth, but also request that Wikimedia MKD take care in how many partnerships and active program the staff member and and the organization is maintaining so that the overall load of work is manageable, as we have observed some affiliates expanding their work beyond their actual capacity.

We look forward to Wikimedia MKD’s work and achievements over the next year. On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 6 December 2024 (UTC)