Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Publishing CHwB Albania cultural heritage related archives to the commons 2023. (ID: 22159991)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello irdiism, and thanks for this proposal supporting cultural heritage in Albania in partnership with local archives. I've approved the request with the following comments:

• Thanks for providing good information and detail around the roles and responsibilities in this project. Thanks also for reaching out to the CEE Hub for guidance and support on preparing this proposal.
• I look forward to the work your organization will do with CHwB and the relationships you will build in your community as a result of your collaboration here. It's also great to see that your organization will provide good expertise on using and contributing to Wikimedia Commons.
• I had to adjust the start and end date a bit from the original proposal, and have made it longer than was originally proposed (2 days). This is quite short for a project timeline of this scope, so I've extended it to one week for your activities, but please feel free to reach out if you need to extend your timeline for this project. We usually provide extensions on projects for most reasons without issue.
• Also, while the amount approved is the 5,000 USD that was requested, the exchange rate has unfortuantely changed since the project was proposed such that the local amount is about 475,682.00 ALL. This is a larger change than is usual, and may adversely affect some of your budget items and related outcomes. If you need to adjust some of your original targets from your proposal, please let us know in your final reporting.
• Given that the budget for these activities is relies on staffing work, it will be difficult to grow this work through future Rapid Fund requests. To develop this work further in the future, I recommend reaching out to other partners in the movement who may be able to support or grow this work, such as the Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments @I JethroBT (WMF)!

Regarding the timeline of the project it might have been some kind of confusion with the dates but it is already fixed and the timeline of the project will be 3 months, till September.

Regarding the budget, we will see at the end of the project how it was impacted and we will do as you say and include the changes (if any) in the final report.

Regarding the collaboration with other communities we are open to it and we are also participating on the annual CEE meetup in order to get to know the regional user groups and figure out ways how to collaborate and share our experiences. I want to clarify that even though the application for this grant was as an individual, the project proposal and the project implementation will be handled by the Wikimedia Community User Group Albania. The only reason we decided to apply as individual was the lack of a fiscal sponsor. Irdiism (talk) 17:02, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Irdiism: Thanks for this response. Regarding a fiscal sponsor as a matter of our own policies, affiliates are not required to have fiscal sponsors to receive funding, so we encourage you to apply as an organization in the future if this possible. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Basically we can apply as a user group but still the funds go to an individual account? If that is it we have misunderstood the requirement and we will keep it in mind for the next applications. Thank you very much!

Irdiism (talk) 12:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@Irdiism: That arrangement is fine for this proposal. However, we encourage affiliates, when possible, to work to open bank accounts that:

• are specifically dedicated to the organization for their organization with where possible, and
• have two people in the user group who can access that bank account

Sometimes there are legal and bank-related constraints around doing this, but it's a practice that reduces certain risks around how funds are handled and managed for organizational work. A fiscal sponsor though, is not an expectation or a requirement for Rapid Funds. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 14:31, 14 July 2023 (UTC)