Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Amical Wikimedia/2020

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Feedback on application from WMF[edit]

Hello Amical colleagues (@Xavier Dengra:, @Toniher:, @ESM:, @Tiputini:)! Following our phone call with some of you yesterday, I wanted to write here the feedback we had on this application. Apart from a few minor details which we discussed around clarification of some of the activities within some of the programs, the main remark is around your objectives. In most program,s your objectives are stated in a way that makes it sometimes difficult to understand what they exactly are. Some, such as Keep on with the wikiprojects in university courses. in Education, are difficult to parse if one does not have the background, others, such as Monitor activities on a monthly basis to assess and adjust the way in which we organise what we do and get a better return on the invested effort. Invite members to take part in this appraisal so as to make management as transparent and horizontal as possible. explain a "what", but not exactly the why, or even the how. Some on the contrary are very SMART. You might want to review your objectives and look for the following especially:

  • Are they specific and clear?
  • Does the associated metric/target help assess your objective?

This should help make your objectives clearer and more importantly, support a good evaluation at the end of the grant period to understand if you have attained them. Thank you for a good application! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

additional question[edit]

I also had another question I didn't ask during the meeting: in the Community metrics, you have a target Get at least 3 women members to join Amical Wikimedia.. This is a bit out of context. Why is 3 a good number? Can you give more context on this specific target? How many women do you ahve today? Out of how many? A benchmark would be useful here. Thank you! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 13:46, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dear @Delphine (WMF): Right now, just 14% of our Amical members are women (17 people). However, less than half of them are active or very active. We believe that, following our philosophy of high-touch approach, increasing the number just to show more equality but without involving them in the dynamics of Amical would be pointless. Apart from the difficulties to engage women (it is not casual that we have such a low number), our human resources for a constant follow-up and internal training are limited combining them with the other planned activities. That's why 3 people (at least) seems to us like a feasible target -not just for them to join the organisation and pay a fee, but so that they can get along with our objectives and dynamics in a long-term period. Regarding the rest of the input, we appreciate that and we will make the minor corrections during the following days. Thank you! Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 19:42, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Xavi for this clarification. It probably would be good to add it to the proposal :) Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]


@Delphine (WMF): It seems we're done addressing the comments you pointed us during the meeting. Please excuse us for the delay and let me know if something else needs to be done. Pinging the board to keep them in track too: @Toniher, Xavier Dengra, Unapersona, and Tiputini:. Best regards! --ESM (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Simple APG Committee recommendation[edit]

We recommend that Amical Wikimedia receive a grant of 67.800,00 EUR for one year. Amical presents a solid plan and has a proven track record of good results. While their budget increase is high in comparison to their APG last year, this is due to the fact that they had to recruit a new employee last year and the search took some time, in which they operated only through volunteer engagement. We are looking forward to seeing them continue their good work and build upon successful past activities.

For the committee, Islahaddow (talk) 11:26, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Amical Wikimedia sAPG approved in the amount of 67,800 EUR[edit]

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 67,800 EUR with a grant term starting 1 January 2020 and ending 31 December 2020.

Amical Wikimedia is just coming out of a year of transition, and has hired its new program coordinator in June 2019. This transition, handled exclusively by volunteers, has brought about a lot of thinking around their program and how they could sustain them.

Historically, Amical Wikimedia has succeeded in three areas: Community support, GLAM work and Education programs.

The Community program is a continuation of what has made the strength of Amical: supporting a dedicated community, but also taking care of existing and new contributors and members to ensure continuity. This year they are especially focusing on integrating more women in their contributors and attracting young editors to the community, which works well with the Foundation's MTP focus on Youth. Amical Wikimedia has a very high touch approach to supporting community members, with regular phone calls to involved individuals to make sure that they have all they need, and to get direct feedback on activities and possibilities for involvement. This high touch approach is very contextual, and works because of their close-knit community. It has yielded good results in retaining editors or contributors to offline activities.

Amical Wikimedia's Education program consists mostly of targeted workshops in universities to improve skills of students and teachers in editing Wikipedia. The intended learning outcomes are clear and drive their efforts to get more and more teachers to participate. They have an interesting approach to making formal agreement with universities, which in their cultural context helps support teachers' interest in the Wikipedia offers. Without this official framework, talking to teachers yields poorer results.

Amical Wikimedia's GLAM program has been refined this year with a conscious and intentional focus on sister projects, especially Wikisource and Wikidata. Their stated goal to highlight the Wikimedia projects essential roles in institutions' mission is ambitious, but in line with their past results of bringing for example almost every single library to work with Wikipedia (about 200) notably through the 1lib1ref campaign, and the development of specific and ad hoc cooperations with various GLAM institutions.

Amical Wikimedia's Communication and Outreach program aims at keeping their visibility in research circles or various media up, by participating in conferences, publishing white papers and other opinion pieces on various aspects of Free Knowledge. These efforts are also showing in your way of engaging with the" Movement strategy process, with a thoughtful approach of reviewing outcomes from the Movement Strategy process and analysing what these mean for their context.

Their program structure is clear and has proven that it is solid, especially by how partners with time have managed to become more and more independent from Wikimedia Amical's support and have started routinely organizing Wikipedia activities without the direct help of the organization.

We are looking forward to working further with Amical Wikimedia this year.

Best regards, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Midpoint Report Accepted[edit]

Hello Unapersona, Tiputini, F3RaN, TaronjaSatsuma, MuRe, Marcmiquel, and Amical Wikimedia Colleagues, thanks for submitting your midpoint report. We have reviewed the metrics, budget, and report and marked them as accepted. Thank you for your work for the Wikimedia Movement! Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 08:44, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]