Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Expanding Wikipedia Editors in Kenya (ID: 22451155)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello RosPost, I'm Chris Schilling, a program officer with the Community Resources team. Thanks for your proposal to support coordination and collaborative work between Women in Religion User Group and the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians in Kenya. Please see my comments and questions below:

• Thanks for providing important context around your organization's past work with the Kenyan Circle WikiProject and its editors. It is clear your organization has had a lot of engagement with the group since 2021, and accomplished some great outcomes, such as supporting the development of secondary sources covering women leaders in indigenous and traditional religions, as well as contributing to broader publications related to knowledge equity issues in this domain.
• Thanks also for providing a longer-term plan around this project to support the subsidiarity of the groups you are working with when it is desired, namely that The members of the U.S. Women in Religion Project will remain involved with the Kenyan Circle WikiProject until they decide to be their own project.
• Because the proposal focuses on Kenyan communities, have either of your groups reached out to Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya for possible support or collaboration? If so, what was the outcome of those discussions?
• Currently, we are supporting Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya in our General Support Fund program (see their funded proposal here), which includes plans for community workshops. Related to the above point, have you been able to coordinate with the User Group to confirm that these proposed activities do not overlap or present any conflicts with their planned work?
• The budget for the proposal is currently 20,580 USD, which significantly exceeds the maximum request for Rapid Funds (5,000 USD). Can you clarify what the requested funding would be used on in the proposed budget? Has funding for other aspects of the proposal already been secured? If it is not secured and the proposal relies solely on funding from this program, what implications does that have for the proposal overall?

When you are able, please respond to my questions above and let me know if you need clarity on any of my questions or comments. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I thank you for your questions and wish to respond.

First, I was thinking and put in the budget 5,000 which translates to 20,580 Kenya shillings or KSh. I have a budget and narrative for this amount. I thought you would be sending the money to Kenya in their currency. I now understand that I need the account with another Women in Religion member. But the translation is 5,0000USD

I do not know the Kenya group and this is exciting. I will write them today to see how they meet. Ours is, however specific to Women in Religion and the Circle of Concerned Women Theologians.

As far as the Wikimedia General Fund, I saw that Africa and Kenya are part of your geographies and thought that it was by invitation. We have not been invited, unless the invitation is the opening of the Fund to these geographies. I will look into this fund, not because I am over the Rapid Fund, but it is a good future fund. Your grant would enable us to experiment with the best methods in our communities in Kenya and would give us some time to coordinate with the Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya. We have been in touch with the South African Group doing Conferences and we are emailing at this time.

I believe in the grant itself the request was for $5000 and I clearly marked the USD versus the Kenyan schillings. If there is a way to make it more clear, I would like the change to clarify in the grant. I also need to give banking information for our Women in Religion User Group. RosPost (talk) 19:32, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@RosPost: Thanks for your response. Just briefly wanting to acknowledge I've moved your response from my user talk page to the proposal page to keep the discussion in one spot. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@RosPost: Thanks for your response above. I have a few initial comments regarding your response:

• Thanks for taking the time to reach out to Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya. This outreach is important, as we want to make sure that groups with a thematic or international focus are coordinating and communicating well with local affiliates already established in those countries. I will also follow up with you regarding an e-mail address to contact them with, as I've noticed you haven't received a response yet on-wiki. Before finalizing a funding decision on this proposal, I would like to understand what feedback you receive from the User Group. However, I am willing to fund the proposal if you do not receive any feedback from the affiliate.
• In terms of the General Support Fund, it does not currently operate as an invitation-only funding program, but there are some important eligibility requirements to review. Furthermore, we generally need to see that your organization has a history of managing funding to support programmatic work related to the Wikimedia movement or its communities. This is typically done through Rapid Funds, but can also be supported through other funding sources.

I will follow up with over e-mail regarding contact information for the User Group. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Response to I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi, I just wrote the Wikimedia User Group Kenya. I forgot to cc you, but will forward you the email right now. I asked for a meeting after the 4th to discuss touch points since it is already the 28th. We had a celebration of my brother's life Sunday the 25th and I am just getting settled back to work on this. You are very gracious to send the emails to me. @RosPost RosPost (talk) 15:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@RosPost: Thanks for your outreach, and you have also confirmed to me other outreach you have done to another affiliates in the region. I am happy to move forward to partially funding the proposal with a budget of 4,000 USD. We are not able to fully fund the proposal for the following reasons:

• Unfortuantely, we're not able to support a compensation rate of $30/hour in the context of Rapid Funds for the Coordinator role as it is described in the budget (i.e. The coordinator will be the liaison between U.S. and Kenyan members. They will organize meetings, develop criteria for participants, recruit participants, organize activities, and writes reports. The specified rate for this role imposes a fairly substantial burden on the overall budget for Rapid Funds, and were we to more generally support project coordination roles in the region at this general rate of compensation, we would only have resources to fund a more limited number of activities in the region.
• Separately, the overall budget for Rapid Fund is more restricted this fiscal year (July 2023-June 2024) compared to previous years due to decreases in revenue to the Wikimedia Foundation, which means we currently have less flexibility in funding new opportunities when we receive them throughout the year.

I understand this funding decision may mean that you will need to make changes to your budget and planned activities, but you are able to make these changes to the project scope of budget items at your discretion. You do not need to submit a separate budget for our review and approval, and will only need to let us know on how the funding was spent in your financial reporting at the end of the project. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and if it is not possible to revise the project with a more limited budget, please let me know. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 18 March 2024 (UTC)