Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska/One-Year General Support Grant/2022-2023

Regional Committee feedback and questions

Hello Bojana Wiki PG, and thanks for your proposal supporting the Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska's activities over the next year between 2022-2023. The CEE/Central Asia Regional Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wanted to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review:

• It's great to see your interest in supporting participation from a number of underrepresented communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (e.g. gender, underrepresented language communities, geographic communities). Could you describe more about the specific communities you want to support participation from, and what activities or methods you will use to accomplish this?
• The committee also appreciates understanding your plans to collect community and participant feedback on ways to support their continued engagement in your activities. How will you be collecting and reviewing this feedback? Do you intend to implement any ideas you receive in this next year?
• We noticed that a timeline was not provided with the application to describe how your activities might be generally scheduled throughout the next year. Would it be possible to provide a rough timeline highlighting how programs might be implemented through this year? It is is OK if this needs to change (especially if you plan to move some activities online), but we would like to understand how you are planning your work for the next year.
• Thank you for providing your strategic plan for your organization's plans through 2024. We appreciate that you've done a good job of laying out the organizations' main programs and what general outcomes you expect from them. However, we are concerned with some aspects of the framing of this document. The document resembles more of an annual plan of programs describing some proposed activities, with less focus on the rationale of programs and how they are connected to broader, longer-term goals your organization has over the next two years. We have the following recommendations to revise your strategic plan and to prepare future strategic plans for your organization:
  • We would like you to reframe your strategic goals to be less focused on specific programs (e.g. "improving GLAM", "improving Education", as well as the outcomes such as "increasing the number of activities"), and more on the underlying needs or priorities these programs are addressing for your community's needs or your organizational needs. For example, there are many good reasons to engage in GLAM activities and partnerships: to support an affiliate's capacity to run events, to address gaps in how certain cultural topics are depicted on Wikimedia projects, to help support the participation of cultural and historical experts in the Wikmedia movement, and more. We want to understand better why these programs are important for the Wikimedians of the Republic of Srpska.
  • Related to the above suggestion, consider using the Movement Strategy initiatives as some possible ideas or inspiration to develop your own organizational strategic goals. However, these are just ideas and you are welcome to consider other community/organizational needs or priorities outside of movement strategy-informed ones.
  • We encourage you to find ways to elaborate further on the current strengths and capacities of your organization in your strategic plan. We understand some of these skills from the introduction: As a community that has a number of quality references in the local community and which has to some extent become recognizable as a desirable partner for local institutions and organizations of importance..., and we would like to see how these skills and competencies are informing your programmatic choices. What other expertise and skills does your organization possess, how will you use those skills to support certain needs in your communities and Wikimedia projects?
  • Finally, it is important to make sure the connection between your strategic goals is explicit and clear. In the introduction, there are a number of broader objectives mentioned such as the main objective (promotion of the mission and vision of free knowledge through the collection, preservation and dissemination of scientific, educational, cultural, and historical data which are available under a free license, in Serbian and other languages and a long-term goal to work on a professional level. When revising your strategic goals, it is important to ensure that these goals are clearly connected to any higher-level objectives you plan to pursue.

At this time, the committee is not requesting that you make specific revisions to the strategic plan in the middle of the review process, as there may not be sufficient time to both prepare revisions and conduct further review of the document during the remainder of the funding round, but we encourage you to consider revising your strategic plan in this next year, so there is greater clarity around the broader purpose of your programmatic work.

We would like your feedback on these questions by Monday, 9 May 2022 to support a final decision from the Regional Committee, and please use the talk page here to share your response. On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Hello I JethroBT (WMF),

Thank you for the suggestions and recommendations. We will give all of ourselves to implement them as soon as possible. In the below you can find the answers on your questions about our application.

• It's great to see your interest in supporting participation from a number of underrepresented communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (e.g. gender, underrepresented language communities, geographic communities). Could you describe more about the specific communities you want to support participation from, and what activities or methods you will use to accomplish this?

In addition to activities aimed at increasing the visibility of women and more active involvement in Wikimedia projects that our community has been working on for several years, during the specified period and in the future the community wants to expand its activities to other less represented groups in the Republic of Srpska. This refers to the expansion of activities dedicated to the Roma and Jewish communities in the Republic Of Srpska, as well as the improvement of cooperation with the Bosniak communities in the Republic of Srpska and in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This plan is based on the already started successful collaborations within the WikiGap project, during which for the first time there was cooperation between the representatives of our community and the editor of the Bosnian-language Wikipedia. With a little effort, religious and political barriers have been overcome, which are deeply rooted between all three nations in BiH and due to which there has been no cooperation so far. We want to improve the relationship in the future and increase the number of joint activities. We will do this by entering into partnerships and engaging in cooperation on our planned projects. Another incentive for targeting Roma communities is the positive experience we had during this year's edit dedicated to Roma and Roma culture, which we organized in cooperation with Wikimedia Serbia. We want to include representatives of this minority group in our activities and, through correlation with our projects, increase the visibility of their culture and their heritage.

• The committee also appreciates understanding your plans to collect community and participant feedback on ways to support their continued engagement in your activities. How will you be collecting and reviewing this feedback? Do you intend to implement any ideas you receive in this next year?

In addition to targeted surveys intended for project participants, the community bases its work plan on the processing of data related to project success and participants' interest in them. Based on that, by the joint analyzes at the meetings we plan projects whose implementation makes sense, which can be sustainable, and which will, in accordance with the development strategy, improve the programs that the community is working on. We will certainly, as before, adopt and implement good ideas in the coming period. This has a positive impact on the motivation of participants as well as community members who want to get more involved. The community is there to provide them with the support they need.

• We noticed that a timeline was not provided with the application to describe how your activities might be generally scheduled throughout the next year. Would it be possible to provide a rough timeline highlighting how programs might be implemented through this year? It is is OK if this needs to change (especially if you plan to move some activities online), but we would like to understand how you are planning your work for the next year.

At the following link, you can find our work calendar for the specified period, which we have not uploaded yet, because of technical reasons:

• Calendar of annual activities for 2022/2023.

• • Thank you for providing your strategic plan for your organization's plans through 2024. We appreciate that you've done a good job of laying out the organizations' main programs and what general outcomes you expect from them. However, we are concerned with some aspects of the framing of this document. The document resembles more of an annual plan of programs describing some proposed activities, with less focus on the rationale of programs and how they are connected to broader, longer-term goals your organization has over the next two years. We have the following recommendations to revise your strategic plan and to prepare future strategic plans for your organization:
  • We would like you to reframe your strategic goals to be less focused on specific programs (e.g. "improving GLAM", "improving Education", as well as the outcomes such as "increasing the number of activities"), and more on the underlying needs or priorities these programs are addressing for your community's needs or your organizational needs. For example, there are many good reasons to engage in GLAM activities and partnerships: to support an affiliate's capacity to run events, to address gaps in how certain cultural topics are depicted on Wikimedia projects, to help support the participation of cultural and historical experts in the Wikmedia movement, and more. We want to understand better why these programs are important for the Wikimedians of the Republic of Srpska.
  • Related to the above suggestion, consider using the Movement Strategy initiatives as some possible ideas or inspiration to develop your own organizational strategic goals. However, these are just ideas and you are welcome to consider other community/organizational needs or priorities outside of movement strategy-informed ones.
  • We encourage you to find ways to elaborate further on the current strengths and capacities of your organization in your strategic plan. We understand some of these skills from the introduction: As a community that has a number of quality references in the local community and which has to some extent become recognizable as a desirable partner for local institutions and organizations of importance..., and we would like to see how these skills and competencies are informing your programmatic choices. What other expertise and skills does your organization possess, how will you use those skills to support certain needs in your communities and Wikimedia projects?
  • Finally, it is important to make sure the connection between your strategic goals is explicit and clear. In the introduction, there are a number of broader objectives mentioned such as the main objective (promotion of the mission and vision of free knowledge through the collection, preservation and dissemination of scientific, educational, cultural, and historical data which are available under a free license, in Serbian and other languages and a long-term goal to work on a professional level. When revising your strategic goals, it is important to ensure that these goals are clearly connected to any higher-level objectives you plan to pursue.

At this time, the committee is not requesting that you make specific revisions to the strategic plan in the middle of the review process, as there may not be sufficient time to both prepare revisions and conduct further review of the document during the remainder of the funding round, but we encourage you to consider revising your strategic plan in this next year, so there is greater clarity around the broader purpose of your programmatic work.

Thank you for your suggestions. We find them very useful for our work and adapting our documentation to the standards of the Wikimedia movement. We will review the strategy as soon as possible and adjust it to the stated requirements and recommendations. Upon completion, we will inform our officer and send him the corrected version for inspection.

If you have other questions - we are at your disposal. Best, Bojana Wiki PG (talk) 10:04, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Timeline update for funding decision announcements

@Bojana Wiki PG: Hello Bojana, I hope you are doing well. Due to an unexpected medical issue I experienced earlier in April, I unfortunately was not able to interact with the Regional Committee or generally work during much of April last month. Due to this absence, we were unfortunately not able to provide committee feedback in a manner consistent with our original schedule. Consequently, we will be adjusting the date for announcing a funding decision for your proposal by one week from May 18th to May 25th. This change will help support the time needed for you to review and respond to committee feedback, as well as for the Regional Committee to finalize a funding decision. Please let me know if you have any questions or need clarification over this change in the schedule. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 36,343 EUR

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 36,343 EUR (~40,488.10 USD) with a grant term starting 1 July 2022 and ending 30 June 2023.

The Regional Committee is glad to support full funding for the Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska User Group over the next year. We are glad that your organization is requesting some resourcing this year to support staffing in response to the growth of your programs, and that these programs are no longer practical to support on a voluntary basis in order to support your organizational goals. The approach you are taking to staffing this year is well-explained in a supplementary document in your budget, which I will include below:

The price of labor is formed on the basis of state laws and regulations on the average net price of labor for higher education. As a parameter for calculation, the approximate number of working hours on each project was taken individually and multiplied by the hourly labor cost. As the organization is not registered and does not pay taxes to the state, other liabilities except net earnings are not included. The price per hour is taken as the only measurable variable in accordance with the status of the user group and the jobs that the most active members perform. Jobs are related to direct and indirect work. Direct work means work with other persons: volunteers, students, employees of GLAM institutions, holding lectures and trainings, presentations and the like. Indirect work includes all background work, such as: writing press releases, communicating with the media, updating and maintaining sites, blogs, websites and social networks, posting material on Wikimedia projects, statistical data processing, reporting , mentoring, work on event organization, communication with partners, work on web design and creation of accompanying promotional banners, posters, video presentations, logos, etc., work on design and production of promotional materials, writing letters to partners and the like. This plan sought to strike a balance between community status, the effort and work that active members put in, the desire to reward them for that work to increase motivation but also responsibility, state laws, and WMF rules and policies.

This approach represents a low-risk but supportive approach to resourcing important direct and indirect work supporting your programs and routine operations. For your next application, we are open to discussing the possibility of funding more dedicated staff with your organization over the next year. If supportive, we would like to support you to prepare and review a staffing plan over the next year before your next application.

Thank you for your willingness to review your strategic plan as well, and we look forward to reviewing your revisions based on committee feedback.

The committee looks forward to working together with you in your future work in the Wikimedia movement. On behalf of the committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 27 May 2022 (UTC)