Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki World Heritage User Group Annual Plan 2022

Committee feedback

Hi Wiki World Heritage User Group Annual Plan 2022, @Nassima Chahboun and Yamen:,

Thank you for your grant proposal! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Committee has made an initial review and here is our feedback:

• Overall the proposal scheme looks clear and is built on the global experience the group accumulated since 2020.
• The activities seem to be useful with impact on both topic and movement. It target interesting gaps, such as Wikivoyage and intangible heritage (please make sure you check relevant copyright laws on the latter)
• The goal of engaging the global community to document their local heritage and make this knowledge widely available is relevant and important.
• We find that this proposal shows a good comprehension of the way wiki community relationships work. We appreciate the focus on supporting countries without an affiliate which is brings growth and community-building opportunities, notably we hope your work in Libya will succeed.
• The budget is well detailed and its growth is commensurable with the increase in programmatic activities.

This is only an initial review, and before we make the final decision we would like to get more details on the following points:

1. Is the group an incorporated affiliate with a bank account or is a fiscal sponsor needed (if yes, will you continue with Kiwix)? This is especially relevant for staff: how will this staff be registered and pay taxes? (20 USD/hour might be low or high depending on country and taxes).
2. Given that you grow to four staff members, what is your plan for managing this staff?
   • With the chair of board becoming a paid staff member, she cannot report to herself. What will be the reporting line for each of your staff members?
   • Do you have a managerial capacity to grow from 1 to 4 paid staff? Your roles total less than 2 full-time equivalents (FTE), what is your reasoning for hiring four different people (rather than two which might be an easier transition)?
   • What do you expect the coordinator to do with 0.05 FTE? This is extremely small, what can actually this person do in this time beyond incompressible duties (like checking emails, coordinating with volunteer board and attending staff meetings)?
3. Metrics and impact: compared with 2021, you seem to have higher targets in terms of content but lower targets in terms of participants and activities. Can you please provide more context on how your targets change compared to 2021 and why?
4. How does your proposal connects with Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM)? While many of your chosen sites are not particularly represented in WLM, Saint Petersburg is very well covered by WLM Russia (while there are UNESCO sites in Russia that are not, e.g. Derbent). How do you choose target sites and what are your interactions with WLM organisers for it?
5. Finally, a few points on the budget:
   • How did you come up with the same price for venue and prizes in all countries?
   • What does All prizes will be made available as gifts mean, particularly from tax point of view?
   • Why does your budget mention two types of prizes for edit-a-thons (one in the 1st/2nd prize line, and another in the Venue line)?

We are looking forward to hearing from you, and we will make our final decision in early January upon receiving your feedback.

On behalf of the NWE regional committee — NickK (talk) 22:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Response to Committee feedback

Dear @NickK: and Northern and Western Europe Regional Committee, thank you for you insightful review. You will find below our detailed answers to every question, and we remain at your disposal for any further details. Furthermore, we will be happy to make any improvement following your recommendations.

Is the group an incorporated affiliate with a bank account or is a fiscal sponsor needed (if yes, will you continue with Kiwix)? This is especially relevant for staff: how will this staff be registered and pay taxes? (20 USD/hour might be low or high depending on country and taxes).

1-Fiscal sponsorship:
Given the international aspect of our group, the incorporation process is more challenging, because of the multiplicity of options in terms of the country of location. Our first option is France, as it hosts the key World Heritage organizations (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, ICOM and ICOMOS), and also because the French regulatory framework of non-profits is adapted to our needs. However, we believe that we still need time to make a final decision after comparing this option with other ones.
Therefore, we will continue with Kiwix as a fiscal sponsor in 2022.
2-Paid roles:
Although we set-up paid roles for the most critical projects and tasks, we wanted to maintain the volunteer aspect of the work.Therefore, our approach consists of:

1. Providing only a partial compensation that allows the coordinators to free-up their time in order to meet the deadlines and execute the urgent tasks correctly. For each one of the 4 roles, the compensation corresponds to 50% of the estimated coordination time. (For instance, the coordination of WHindanger and Told Cities will spread out over the whole year. Yet, only 6 months are paid in order to allow the acceleration of the implementation process during this period, and the work will continue on a volunteer basis during the second-half of the year).
2. Setting the lowest hourly rate observed within the movement: Before applying to the SAPG last year, we conducted an in-depth benchmarking through the previous applications from many regions (mainly in the Global South), and we found that the hourly rates for paid roles usually range from 20 USD to 30 USD. Therefore, we chose the lowest one.
   

Regarding taxes, our paid roles are divided into two categories:

1. Three Roles where the total compensation amount is below the threshold of a rapid fund: in this case, we are planning to allocate the compensation to the coordinators as a grant upon completion of their tasks.
2. One Role that corresponds to 1 FTE: the coordinator, Nassima Chahboun, has an individual company registered in Morocco and she operates by invoicing from this structure. Therefore, the compensation amount will be subject to Moroccan tax regulations .

Given that you grow to four staff members, what is your plan for managing this staff?

With the chair of board becoming a paid staff member, she cannot report to herself. What will be the reporting line for each of your staff members?

Background:
The chair of the board has been occupying the position of WHindanger coordinator since 2021. This selection was the result of a strict hiring process based on clear criteria and respect of the COI during the hiring process and the implementation phase, and it was approved by our previous officer, VThamaini (WMF).
Reporting measures:
The following measures have been taken in order to make the reporting process more efficient, and they will be applied to all the paid roles:

1. Staff members report to all the board members during monthly meetings, and not only to the chair. According to our bylaws, the quorum in board meetings is achieved when 3 out of 5 board members are present. However, in this case, 4 out of 5 board members should be present.
2. In order to increase transparency and ensure that all members have access to information regarding projects’ implementation, monthly reports are drafted by the coordinator and made available on Meta. Example: WHindanger 2021 monthly reports.
3. A detailed time sheet is filled by the coordinator, in order to allow the evaluation of executed tasks and provide good insight into the time that should be allocated to each task when planning future activities.
   

Anticipatory measures for the future:
In order to enhance the leadership skills of our members and prepare other people to manage complex projects successfully, we have launched our capacity building program in 2021 and it is still ongoing. In 2021, we have focused on technical tools, and launched a series of sessions based on a skills assessment conducted earlier. This year, we will focus on management and leadership, by tackling the following: project management, creating partnerships and managing volunteers.
As a result, we expect that:

• By June 2022, at least 2 members will be able to coordinate a project successfully with a soft guidance from experienced board members.
• By the end of 2022, at least 5 members will have all the necessary skills (technical and managerial) to coordinate any of our projects autonomously and successfully.

Do you have a managerial capacity to grow from 1 to 4 paid staff? Your roles total less than 2 full-time equivalents (FTE), what is your reasoning for hiring four different people (rather than two which might be an easier transition)?

• Although we have identified 4 positions, we scheduled our activities in a way that indeed ensures an easier transition: the WHindanger/Told Cities coordinator as a paid position spreads only over the first half of 2022, while WHintangible project, as well as Wiki Heritage Hour**, start in the second half of 2022. (**More precisely, Wiki Heritage Hour starts in April).

Therefore, we are making the following progress: Jul-Dec 2021: 1 paid role ⇒ Jan-June 2022: 2 paid roles ⇒ Jul-Dec 2022: 3 paid roles.

• The 2 positions of “group coordinator” and “Wiki Heritage Hour coordinator” are easy to monitor and evaluate, given that they have simple, clear and limited targets (2 reports per month / 3 publications per social media platform per week / 1 episode per month).

These tasks can indeed be filled by one person as they are both below 0.5 FTE. Yet, the main reason behind splitting them up into two positions is the difference in terms of the needed skills: A person who can amazingly prepare and present video podcasts does not necessarily have reporting and social media skills, and vice-versa.
However, we would be happy to hear from the committee and follow their advice if they find that it is better to merge the two positions into one.

What do you expect the coordinator to do with 0.05 FTE? This is extremely small, what can actually this person do in this time beyond incompressible duties (like checking emails, coordinating with volunteer board and attending staff meetings)?

The main duties of the group coordinator are the following:

1. Ensuring the reporting of the monthly meetings (2 per month: staff meeting and members meeting)
2. Up-to-date communication about the group activities and World Heritage related topics on our social media accounts (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).
   

Therefore, the 8 hours/month (equivalent of 0.05 FTE) will be divided as the following:

• 2 hours: Attending the staff monthly meeting and reporting.
• 2 hours: Attending the members monthly meeting and reporting
• 4 hours (1 hour/week): Scheduling weekly publications on Facebook and Twitter.

However, the publications on social media take more time, based on our previous experiences. Therefore, the remaining work will be done on a volunteer basis (as stated in the answer of the 1st question).

Metrics and impact: compared with 2021, you seem to have higher targets in terms of content but lower targets in terms of participants and activities. Can you please provide more context on how your targets change compared to 2021 and why?

This targets change was made in order to achieve our strategic goals in the best possible way, based on 2021 experiments and learnings:
Our strategic goals:

• Ensuring a good coverage of World Heritage worldwide on different Wikimedia projects, with focus on underrepresented regions.
• Catalyzing sustainable partnerships between the Wikimedia movement and Heritage focused NGOs and international organizations.
• Leading to the creation of new Wikimedia communities/user groups in countries without affiliates.
  

2021 experiences:
2021 was a year of experimentation, several types of activities were implemented: local editathons and photography tours organized in collaboration with other Wikimedia affiliates, photography contests, Wikipedia contests, Wikipedia trainings and editathons organized in collaboration with Heritage focused NGOs..
From these different experiences, we learned that optimizing the number of activities and working with a smaller number of participants will allow a stronger capacity building, a more efficient communication with the participants and a better follow-up. Therefore, it will lead to more sustainable results, especially in terms of volunteers’ retention (to create future Wikimedia communities) and fostering the created partnerships with NGOs. Example1: the most successful edition of WHindanger project in 2021 was in Libya, where a training of trainers was delivered to a small group of 5 people, and the editathon was organized to a small group of 9 people. Although the immediate quantitative outcomes were relatively small (the number of articles edited during the editathon for instance), the qualitative outcomes were very high, as the 14 participants had a deep insight into Wikipedia editing, encyclopedic redaction, licensing, etc. and have continued learning after the completion of the ToT and the editathon, in order to become an autonomous Wikimedia community in 2022.
Example2: organizing a wiki contest that involves several Wikimedia affiliates at the same time had greater outcomes than organizing several small editathons in collaboration with one affiliate in each time.
2022 changes:
Based on 2021 learnings, we decided to introduce the following changes in our activities:

• Focusing on organizing content-focused training sessions to a small number of volunteers in countries without affiliates, instead of organizing single editathons that target a large number of participants.
• Optimizing the number of editathons through collaborating with several affiliates at the same time instead of each affiliate separately.

How does your proposal connects with Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM)? While many of your chosen sites are not particularly represented in WLM, Saint Petersburg is very well covered by WLM Russia (while there are UNESCO sites in Russia that are not, e.g. Derbent). How do you choose target sites and what are your interactions with WLM organisers for it?

1. Presence of a local partner: The choice of our target sites is mainly based on the scarcity of content on Wikimedia projects and the current situation of the site (endangered sites are given more priority for instance). However, it is also motivated by the existence of a local partner and their willingness to document a specific site, which was the case of Saint Petersburg. In 2021, we were contacted by North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group for this collaboration.
2. Innovation in terms of the documentation scope: The documentation of Saint Petersburg in “Told Cities” project will focus only on the architectural and structural details of the buildings (such as stained glass windows).
3. Collaboration with the movement contests (WLM/WLE..): In 2021, we collaborated with some affiliates to set special prizes for the target sites of WHindanger project in their local editions of WLE (in Indonesia, Guinea Conakry and Tanzania), and we will follow the same approach for WLM.

Finally, a few points on the budget

How did you come up with the same price for venue and prizes in all countries?

Venue and advertizing:
Our approach consists of collaborating with local partners (that are either the local Wikimedia affiliates or heritage-centered NGOs in countries without affiliates). Therefore, we have fixed a minimum contribution budget that involves several elements (venue, communication and advertising), and the rest of the expenses is covered by the local partner.
Prizes:
Our photography contests are open to participants from all over the world, and not only from the target countries (which is the case of all Wikimedia contests). Therefore, we set the same value for all the prizes, regardless of the country.

What does All prizes will be made available as gifts mean, particularly from tax point of view?

Apologies for the mistake, we intended “gift cards” (generally, we purchase amazon vouchers).

Why does your budget mention two types of prizes for edit-a-thons (one in the 1st/2nd prize line, and another in the Venue line)?

The first line is about the photography contest, while the second line is about the editathon.

We wish you a wonderful start of this year and thank you again for your invaluable collaboration. Best,

Nassima Chahboun (talk) 08:30, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
Chair of Wiki World Heritage
On behalf of the board members.

Additional clarifications

Dear Northern and Western Europe Regional Committee, thank you very much again for all your support during this application process. Please find below additional clarifications around the following two topics:

Updated staff structure

Considering the committee's remark about reducing the number of positions in order to ensure a better management and comply with the usual workload of paid positions, we would like to merge the following positions: WHintangible coordinator, group coordinator and Wiki Heritage Hour coordinator.

As a result, this coordinator will work for 58h/month.

As to the selection process, this coordinator will be hired from the large Wikimedian community, based on proven oral and written communication, and reporting skills.

(NB) If this proposition is approved, we would like to give an overview about the changes that will result from this merge: The work periods of the 3 positions would be adjusted so they become in accordance with each other, and to remain in line with the requested budget, as the following:

In the current proposal:

WHintangible coordinator [July-December with 40h/month ]

Group coordinator [January - December with 8h/month]

Wiki Heritage Hour [April - December with 10h/month]

(With a total stipend of 8320 USD for the 3 positions).

After the merge:

Coordinator [April - October]

(With a total stipend of 8120 USD for this position with 58h/month i.e. - 200USD from the original budget). In this way, February and March will be dedicated to the call for application and the selection of the candidate, and the position will end in October, because the initially requested budget cannot cover more than 7 months.

Nevertheless, we would be very grateful if there is a possibility to cover also November and December (which will generate a budget increase of 58h x 20 USD x 2 months = 2320 USD - 200 USD = 2120 USD)

Mitigation of CoI

In order to foster the COI mitigation regarding the WHindanger&Told Cities coordinator position, we would like to implement two more measures:

• Having the chair of the board as a non-voting member during this year: In this way, the group will continue benefiting from the chair's work and experience in both the volunteer and paid positions, while avoiding the risk of CoI in the decision-making (example of decision-making: recruitment of the other position).
• Putting in place an external ad-hoc committee to supervise WHindangr&Told Cities monthly progress: This committee can be composed of 3 members from the regional grant committee, the GLAM expert community and the Wikimedia community in the target regions of the project.

Best regards,

Habib Mhenni (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC),
Secretary of Wiki World Heritage UG,
On behalf of the board members.

Funding recommendation

Hi Wiki World Heritage User Group, @Nassima Chahboun and Yamen:,

Thank you again for your proposal, for your answers and for the updated version with clarifications. Congratulations, your grant is approved!

The committee has approved a full funding with recommendations in the amount of 50 328 USD (i.e. the amount 48 208 USD initially requested plus the additional 2 120 USD following staff structure update) for the grant term 1 January to 31 December 2022 to Wiki World Heritage User Group.

We appreciate the global experience of the group and its partnerships both with existing affiliates and outside organisations. We consider the proposed projects are impactful, and we believe the growth plan of the group for 2022 is reasonable and manageable. The committee thinks the proposed action plan and associated metrics would result in a significant positive impact for the movement and we would like to support them.

We believe that the updated staff structure and the transition of the current paid coordinator to a non-voting board role are steps in the right direction and will be more beneficial for the progression of your work. However, the committee still has some concerns on your organisational structure, and we think that further governance improvements this year will be helpful for the user group, especially in the longer term. We thank you for your proposal to join a committee to oversee the activities of your group’s staff, but the NWE committee does not want to be formally involved in the governance of the group, we believe these should be people selected by your group members.

Thus the committee recommends Wiki World Heritage User Group do the following:

1. Please come up with clear processes, roles and responsibilities around staff: what are their job descriptions, who manages them, how and by whom they are hired and fired. We expect that staff members should not report to themselves (in a double board/staff role) or their family members. While it is a normal practice for staff members to attend board meetings within their staff roles, they should not sit on the board. We think that your group’s advisors Shani Evenstein, Andrew Lih and Nicolas Vigneron are in a good position to help you draft these processes and improve your governance, alternatively, AffCom or WikiFranca can likely support you in this.
2. Please make sure you pay compensation to your staff in a legally appropriate form (per standards of your fiscal sponsor). For instance, invoicing an individual company in Morocco is a good example, so should be paying people as outside freelancers, but transferring as a grant to an individual account might be not.

Kindly let us know if these recommendations seem realistic and make sense for you. We can discuss them in more detail if requested.

Thank you again for your proposal and for your involvement and we wish you a successful and impactful work!

On behalf of the NWE regional committee — NickK (talk) 14:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Extension needed

Hi Jtud (WMF) and @Davit Saroyan (WMAM) - I would like to request an extension of grant reporting due for the project as our sub-project ToldCities segment in Croatia for the city of Trogir was delayed due to external partnerships. I think it is similar situation with at least one more activity. Would you be able to extend it for another month? We could report in early April. Thank you in advance! --Zblace (talk) 09:36, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Zblace, I am adding DSaroyan (WMF)'s Wikimedia Foundation username, Stephane (Kiwix), fiscal sponsor for this grant, and VThamaini (WMF), Program Officer for this grant who will review and reply to your request. Please note that it is already Friday evening for Veronica and might not see your request until Monday. Thank you in advance for your patience. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 15:09, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello, no problem on our side. Best, The other Kiwix guy (talk) 17:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello , Thank you for reaching out to us on the request. We are already in touch with the leads and contacts attached to this grant. I would advice reaching out to Nassima and Yamen, for any needed support or queries related to the grant activities. Thank you. VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Funds not spent and Extension needed

Dear officers and Dear members of the grant committee,

After the closing the financial accounts related to the activities covered by the last grant recieved by our group and the publication of our activity report, we would like to report that the amount of 10.069 USD has not been spent.

As we are not going to ask for a grant during 2023 we would like to ask, if possible, to have an extension to spend the remaining amount based on the below detailsː

Activities plannedː

Told Cities Trogir, Croatia	Initially allocated to this country and still not spent. Z Blace the coordinator from Croatia would like to have access to this budget to organize the originally planned activities.	950
Whintangible writing contest in 4 Languages	Initially planned but we were not able to start these contests (220$ awards for each language)	900
WH2B	3 photo walks for sites on the Unesco Tentative list to be organized in 3 African countries (Niger, Benin, and Burkina Faso)	1200
Wiki Loves Dataviz	Contest was initially planned but we were not able to start it.	1200
Wiki Heritage Hour	We would like to continue the series of videocasts (+8 episodes ) that started last year due to the good visibility that can offer this program to the Wikimedia movement among Heritage professionals (20h per month)	3200
Group Coordinator	We would like to continue the work done on social media to promote the group and the movement and manage the website by adding articles related to Heritage documentation on the Wiki projects (4 hours/week for 8 months). Please note that for the coordinator, the role in terms of responsibilities will remain the same with a special focus on updating the website and writing blog posts about previous and new projects which was not possible to perform it last year correctly with the budgeted number of hours. Last year we planned 2h per week and we noticed it was not enough to perform the different tasks and that's why we believe that we need to increase it to 4h per week.	2560
	Total	10010

Proposed Timeline

Told Cities Trogir, Croatia	From 01/06/2023 to 31/07/2023
Whintangible writing contest in 4 Languages	From 01/06/2023 to 30/06/2023
WH2B	From 01/05/2023 to 31/07/2023
Wiki Loves Dataviz	From 01/10/2023 to 30/11/2023 (to celebrate Wikidata 11th Birthday)
Wiki Heritage Hour	From 01/05/2023 to 31/12/2023
Group Coordinator	From 01/05/2023 to 31/12/2023

We will be grateful if you could take our request into account and will be very happy if you can accpet it so we can resume our activities for this year.

Yamen Bousrih

Treasurer and Co-founder of WWH Yamen (talk) 01:26, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello Yamen,

Thank you for sharing the request and for the information to support the re-allocation of the underspend. The request has been approved and we wish you the very best in the next phase of implementing the projects. VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 08:55, 23 May 2023 (UTC)