Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia’s 2022 General Support

Questions from ESEAP Funds Committee

Hello Wikimedia Community User group Malaysia, thank you for applying for the Wikimedia Community general support funds. We are in the process of reviewing your application and would like to hear your responses on the following:

Additional Metrics:

• As increasing awareness is a key component of your proposal, what type of social media metrics will you be using to measure your progress? And why do you decide on these metrics? Could you also provide the baseline for these metrics?
• We commend your efforts to narrow content and representation gaps by focusing on gender and indigenous communities. What type of metrics would you be collecting to understand if you have made progress after one year?

Budget and Financial Management

• Could you share more about your plans to manage the funds within the user group, if your grant application is funded?
• We really enjoyed reviewing the detailed budget you put together. We are able to clearly understand the link between your strategy, activities and budget. We appreciate the efforts you have put in. Thank you.
• A few additional questions. For software and digital development platforms (e.g. google office and Zoom pro), have you tried alternatives that are free? And how was the experience? For social media cost, what do you plan to use it for?

COVID-19

In your current proposal, have you adjusted for the possibility of disruption due to COVID-19? If yes, could you say more?

Programme

• We understand that you intend to develop the Tausug Wikipedia which is currently an incubator project. We observed that the project was proposed in 2010  and has 26 editors and most are inactive. Our understanding is that the Language Committee usually requires an active recent activity and a constant number of editors for the incubator project for a couple of months. How  do you intend to invite more editors who are willing to devote time to the project? Do you have a specific timeline to launch the official Wiki site? What activities do you plan to do to increase the target for Tausug Wikipedia Incubator?
• Would you be able to share a schedule of activities for 2022 based on your proposed plan?

It would be really helpful to respond by 7 Jan before our next deliberation round. Thank you. JChen (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Additional Metrics:

• Increase no. of followers (as at 6 Jan 2022: 1,011 on Twitter; 1,229 on Facebook); Average engagement rate (e.g. people reached, impressions etc); Accounts to achieve verified badges. Our focus on Facebook is because we believe it reaches a more diverse community, especially indigenous population in Malaysia. For Twitter, our sense is that most people who use Twitter are quite tech savvy and there is a higher likelihood that they will be attracted to the type of volunteering activities that we are offering.
• Narrow content gap: We can report core metrics breakdown by activities that focus on these two thematic areas. For example: No. of articles created/edited; No. of wiktionary entries; photos uploaded and images used in Wiki. Narrow representation gap: We can also provide overall demographic breakdown of our participants such as gender, age brackets, ethnicity, indigenous background.

Budget and Financial Management

• We will open a common bank account to hold funds from the Wikimedia Foundation. Currently, when managing rapid funds, we have one person that handles the financials. For example the Treasurer will transfer the amount for the competition to the coordinator of the competition. Coordinator will do the spending and reporting (including receipts). Remaining surplus funds, post event, will be transferred back to the main account. At the end of the year, all expenditure will be consolidated and reported as part of grant reporting by the Treasurer.
• We have tried the free version of ZOOM but it's only limited to 45 minutes. It's not sufficient for events/ discussion. We also tried using google meet with the Bajau community, but they found it hard to navigate, so we had to move to ZOOM. We prefer a paid account so that we can share it within the team. The social media cost is for facebook/ twitter ads and we hope to increase engagement and reach more people. With the ads, we are able to reach 6 times (50 vs 300) more target audience. We can use total clicks as a proxy for event/competition/ campaign registration.

COVID-19

Yes. We have taken the possibility of COVID-19 disruption into our planning process. For example when we budgeted for monthly meetup, we assumed 6 times online and 6 times offline. Also, the event budget will provide flexibility in reimbursement for swab/ PCR test (for organiser and participants) if needed.

Programme

• Through Wikilatih, we will be training new editors and follow-up with them every month to ensure the continuity of their contribution (i.e. retention rate of editor). We have established an existing partnership (i.e. Persatuan Kebudayaan, Kesenian dan Warisan Suluk) to recruit editors from the Tausug community. There are already existing active members within this community association. We plan to launch the West Coast Bajau Wikipedia incubator sometime in April 2022. For Tausug Wikipedia Incubator, we plan to start engagement once we receive funding.
• Proposed schedule of activities
  • January 2022: Bank account opening
  • February 2022: Wikilatih Tausug
  • March 2022: Wikigap
  • April 2022: WikiSelera
  • May 2022: Wiki Love Earth, 6th anniversary of Wikimedia Malaysia community
  • June 2022: Online meetup, online Wikipedia editing training
  • July 2022: WikiKata, Creative Commons workshop
  • August 2022: Wikilatih Kadazandusun
  • September 2022: Wiki Love Monument, 5th anniversary of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia
  • October 2022: 20th anniversary of Malay Wikipedia
  • November 2022: Wikipedia Asia Month
  • December 2022: Malay Wikipedia online edit-a-thon.
• Hopefully you can consider this application. Thank you. Tofeiku (talk) 01:28, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of USD 17,550

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of USD 17,550 with a grant term starting 1 February 2022 and ending 31 January 2023.

The ESEAP Funds Committee is pleased to support the work of Wikimedia Community Usergroup Malaysia. The Committee values the efforts in putting together the grant application and budget. Your application provides insights into your lived realities and a deeper appreciation of the Usergroup’s plan for the year.

The Committee and Programme Officer sees a number of strengths in your application. This includes taking into account COVID-19 contingencies, having a clear line of connection across your challenges, strategies, programme and budget. We are appreciative of your approach to contribute to the preservation and transmission of cultural knowledge by working with and for the indigenous communities. It is noteworthy that you have advocates of indigenous descent within your core team and are actively nurturing strategic partnerships over time. Your team’s active outreach and commitment is very evident.

We support  your growth area which is to build up redundancy in the core team to offer more flexibility for volunteers to step in and out as needed. For a start, you have identified the resources needed by putting in budget line items for freelance support for a graphic designer and a social media content creator. And we note you are a) actively looking to welcome new people and b) appealing to the current members to step up to support the core team in taking up or sharing roles (e.g. implementer roles, connector roles and supporter roles) in the lead up to, during and post events.

In your 2022/2023 learning journey, the Committee and Programme Officer envisions you may require support in the following areas during the course of your grant term:

• Event planning (as you look to scale your outreach);
• Working with freelancers (as mentioned above) and
• Grant reporting as you move from rapid fund to general support grant programme.

We also look forward to your participation in the peer learning network where you can  share what you will learn during this grant term about increasing brand awareness to diversify outreach. JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Request for extension

The user group is in the process of creating an account and it might take a while for the account to be created. Hopefully we could have more time in settling this account first before receiving the grant. Thank you. --Tofeiku (talk) 12:03, 19 January 2022 (UTC)