Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Mt. SAC’s ART + FEMINISM Wikipedia Spring Event Series

Comments from WMF

Hello E.Libertad, Eccaldwell, and Colleagues at Mt. San Antonio College, thanks for submitting this comprehensive Rapid Grant request. We are excited to learn that you are planning to run a series of Wikipedia editathons in terms of the Art + Feminism campaign! I reviewed your application and have the following questions:

• In the proposal you mentioned that you would have four experienced Wikimedians who will support you during the events. Could you please provide their Wikimedia usernames?
• Could you please confirm that you have a nonprofit status in the US?
• How will you let people know about the contest?
• How will you judge the contest and award prizes?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Responses from Mt.SAC Team

Thank you DSaroyan. Please see our answers below your questions here:

• In the proposal you mentioned that you would have four experienced Wikimedians who will support you during the events. Could you please provide their Wikimedia usernames?
  • We realized that we made an error in terms here. We have four Wikipedians/Wiki editors on our team who will provide support, including myself, E.Libertad, EAguilar100, and Woodenteacup. We will correct this in our application as well.

• Could you please confirm that you have a nonprofit status in the US?
  • Do you need us to apply under a 501(c)(3) non-profit status? If so, we can apply as the Mt. San Antonio College Foundation instead of Mt. San Antonio College. This isn’t a problem, but it adds a layer of approvals/transfers internally if we receive the grant. We can provide a 501(c)(3) non-profit designation letter if we go that route.
  • Alternatively, as a public community college, we are also a non-profit institution, just under a different section of IRS code – Section 115. If you award grants directly to public institutions of higher education, then we can provide a letter from our auditing firm indicating as such.
  • Both of these documents are PDFs that I can provide via email to the appropriate contact, once we know which is preferred/acceptable.

• How will you let people know about the contest?
  • We will advertise the contests as part of each of our four larger events, using our LMS Canvas, our faculty who are incorporating the events into their courses via announcements and discussion posts, and through our student clubs and college organizations via their outreach tools and social media. We will also make event flyers advertising the raffles and we will include this information on our Library's Wikipedia Lib Guide.

• How will you judge the contest and award prizes?
  • The prizes will be distributed at random via an anonymous raffle system. Students will be entered in the raffles after successful event registration and after attending events or editing during edit-a-thons. We will use a random raffle generator such as Random Name Picker, Wheel of Names, or Picker Wheel to ensure that the prizes are drawn and awarded at random to our participants.

Thank you for your continued help and questions. Best to you, Ellen 76.86.210.227 21:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)Eccaldwell

@Eccaldwell: Hello Ellen, this is Chris Schlling, a program officer managing the Rapid Grants program. Just as a follow-up on the question around nonprofit status, 501c3 is the most common nonprofit designation that we fund in the US, but we have funded other nonprofits in the United States. Also, you are not required by us to apply as an organization for the event, and you may apply as an individual (so long as it does not conflict with your own institutional policies), which normally means the funds will be held in a personal account rather than an institutional bank account. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@JethroBT: Thank you so much Chris! We also emailed with Morgan J. about this and she said she would make a note about our tax status and verification options. I can also talk to my team about whether applying as an individual makes more sense. Thank you again! Eccaldwell (talk)--76.86.210.227 22:15, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Continued Project Updates

Dashboards

• Mt. SAC Edit-a-thon 1
• Mt. SAC Edit-a-thon 2

Approved

Hello E.Libertad, Eccaldwell, and Colleagues at Mt. San Antonio College, thanks again for your work on this gran proposal. We are happy to approve it! Best wishes, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:17, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Minor Proposal of Budget Changes and Rationale

Summary of Proposed changes:

• Streamline the process of ordering and distributing student raffle incentives so that we can maximize student incentives for event participation. By ordering more items from vendors that send directly to students, we eliminate postal costs (and leg work of individualized shipping) while increasing awards for students.
• We have four events in our series and four correlating raffles. With this updated budget, we plan to distribute roughly $400-500 worth of raffle prizes at each event.
• Rationale for these proposed changes and specific cost adjustments are noted in paragraph and table below.

Rationale for proposed changes

• Ria Brodell's book Butch Heroes is currently deeply discounted, so we can order more copies of the book, at our original estimated cost in order to award more raffle winners.
• We have realized that it will be more cost effective and serve more students if we award e-gift cards as raffle incentives rather than trying to have customized swag made (not easily completed in a timely manner) or ordering physical gift cards that have to be distributed individually via USPS mail. (It is also a harder fiscal process for us to send individual items via USPS rather than ordering directly from local vendors.)

Proposed Budget Changes

Proposed Changes to Budget Table

Item	Quantity	Vendor	Cost
Raffle Item A: Ria Brodell’s "Butch Heroes" book	31	Amazon (includes individualized shipping to students with Amazon)	$400
Raffle Item B: e-Gift cards for event participants	78 (roughly 26 winners at 3 events)	$20-25 e-Gift cards to local restaurants and coffee shops sent directly to winners via email	$1596.40
		Total	$1996.40

Budget Table Note:

• We removed line items: Customized swag, and Postage A and B from original Proposed Budget Table.

Budget change approved

Hi Eccaldwell, thanks for posting this request. I reviewed and approved it formally. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 18 March 2021 (UTC)