Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Canada/2018/H2

Questions from SAPG Committee

Questions from Siarus1074/ Kai

• Thank you for submitting a proposal. Your programing is incredible. It is great that you are a growing chapter t hat is thinking about getting charity status to get external funding along with doing fundraisers. Also, great job on the report. I really appreciate the structure of identifying your strengths and weaknesses. This helps me understand you know where you need to improve and that you are working on it. I have a few questions and was hoping you could help me understand a few things.

Activity 1.2 - Conducting outreach, partnerships and education

• I see you mentioned in the last bullet that you will "hold a one week summer school on Wikimedia projects with teachers and students in Haiti." This seems like an incredible opportunity to promote programming in Haiti.
  • Can you expand on this a bit more?
  • Is this the first time you are doing this or is this a regular thing?

  - If it is regular, when did it start?

  • How and/or are are you tracking editing metrics in Haiti?
  • Is editing encouraged to English and French Wikipedia?

This was a planned new activity with university academics that are volunteers for Wikimedia Canada. However, with the reduction in budget for this proposal, you will see that this line is not part of our budget anymore, as we focus our resources on capacity building. As such, this activity will not be supported by Wikimedia Canada and may not happen. We didn't have time to update the proposal form yet, and have been told by WMF staff that we can update it later, as long as our budget is revised. Thank you for your understanding, Amqui (talk) 13:03, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

I have now edited the proposal form to be accurate with the revised budget. Amqui (talk) 17:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Burn out

• I see through out the report and annual and 5 year strategic plans you mention burn out of volunteers. What are is the Board doing to alleviate this?

The main reason why volunteers are getting burnt out is that they are too much involved in the administrative side of projects. To alleviate this, the Board of Wikimedia Canada already recruited professional volunteers through a service called "Bénévoles d'affaires" where professionals offer their services on a pro bono basis to non profit organizations. Through this, we have recruited a professional accountant and are currently in the process of recruiting a governance councilor and a human resources councilor. We are also seeking translators. Our intent in the more sustainable long term, is to hire a "Program Manager" that will oversee the administrative, financial, logistical and communication side of things for our programs. Initially, we wanted to hire the services of this Program Manager in 2018, but we have realized that it would be much more sustainable to conduct capacity building first to bring the chapter to a level where it is more autonomous in its fundraising and communication strategies. Right now, we are asking our volunteers to reduce the level of their activities in the meantime in order to avoid burnout since the chapter is unable to fully support them with what they need. We understand that this will reduce the impact of our programs in the short term, but will be much more sustainable in the long term. I hope this answers your question, Amqui (talk) 13:22, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Indigenous Peoples on Wikimedia Projects

• In your annual plan you you mention "empowering the indigenous communities themselves in producing the free content about them." Can you provide an update about how you are empowering the youth in these communities? Are you providing technical training so that they may edit to Wikipedia themselves?

To empower the youth, we are conducting the indigenous programs directly in schools on indigenous reserves. We train the teachers to become the trainer to edit Wikipedia as part of their classes, and so like that we don't need to go back every year and the goal is for the indigenous community to become autonomous in producing content. Amqui (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• What progress has been made to with the First Peoples' Cultural Council and other Canadian organizations involved with Indigenous communities?

Unfortunately, we made no progress with the First Peoples' Cultural Council as we have different priorities and there are funding issues. That being said, we are making progress with the Innu First Nation in North-Eastern Quebec through the Institut Tshakapesh, the institute responsible for the culture, language and education for 8 communities of this nation. They are especially interested in the Lingua Libre initiative. More to follow on this one. Furthermore, there is a new initiative called "IndiginizeWiki" started in Yukon in Northern Canada in order to develop the Canadian indigenous topics on English Wikipedia. Amqui (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• Do your metric include contributions to the Lingua Libre? Can you share metrics for just the Lingua Libre contributions?

Yes, in our global metrics shared in the spreadsheet from the WMF, we added "sound files" as part of our "grantee metrics". Those sound files are entirely from Lingua Libre. For example, see 2017 Activity Report, we have recorded over 800 words in Atikamekw language. Thanks, Amqui (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• In your report you indicated that one of the weaknesses is that there is "no coordination with other organizations working with indigenous communities with the same goals due to lack of time of volunteers to meet and communicate with those organizations." Would this be a position your chapter might consider funding in the near future?

Yes, after the initial capacity building that we are seeking in the very short term, we would like to hire the services of a "Program Manager" that will oversee the programs and partnerships of Wikimedia Canada and we will ensure that this person has knowledge of indigenous topics since it will be included in his/her tasks. Thanks, Amqui (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• Do you think the chapter would be able to fund this potential position or would you need to apply for funding from the Wikimedia foundation?

We would certainly require funds from the WMF, but we hope to be able to fund part of it once we have a fundraising strategy in place, which is part of the capacity building plan that we are implementing. Thank you, Amqui (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Board

• I have read about your commitment to diversity especially gender diversity. I was wondering if you could share how you are training and recruiting people in the movement from gender and ethnically diverse backgrounds into leadership positions in your chapter?
  • Do you have a program?
  • Have you bee successful in training people from gender and ethnically diverse backgrounds into positions on the Board?
• If you do not have a program, do you plan to develop one?

We do not have a training program per se for leadership positions. However, since 2017, we have started committees under the Board that include people from outside the Board, like the Programs Committee that oversee the actual programmatic activities of the chapter. Our intent with those committees is to develop future potential candidates to the Board. The Board and the committees of Wikimedia Canada are at gender equality already, and we don't foresee that changing in the future. We are also starting to proactively inviting people from different "sexual orientation" and "language" backgrounds to those committees in the hope that they make their way to the Board if they are good candidates. The Board doesn't want to give positions to diversity just because we need diversity, this would be tokenism, we want to encourage a culture of diversity within the chapter that will lead naturally to more diversity in the leadership positions, and this is working so far. We also hope to include indigenous people as part of our leadership positions since we are conducting indigenous programs. Thanks, Amqui (talk) 13:29, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Again great work with your efforts. I look forward to hearing from you. Siarus1074 (talk) 23:41, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

I hope I answered your questions, do not hesitate if you have further questions, thank you very much, Amqui (talk) 13:31, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Application not ready for review

This application is currently not yet ready for review, as it is not yet compliant with the eligibility guidelines expressed by WMF. We will notify the committee once this application is open for review, and open the application then. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 22:35, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the late update here. Obviously, we are reviewing this application now :) Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 16:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Question about the number of hours your contractor would work

Hello, WMCA team! I couldn't find the number of hours per week or month that your contractor would work if funded in your staffing plan, budget, or proposal. Could you please provide that information here or add it to your proposal? Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:43, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

If the revised budget is approved as it is, we expect the contractor to work between 20 and 25 hours/week depending on the level of work required each month and based on an upcoming evaluation with a volunteer professional human resources councilor. I hope this answers your question, thank you very much, Amqui (talk) 15:04, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks,Amqui, that is clear. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 16:10, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Please complete the metrics worksheet for this grant

Hello, WMCA! Please complete the grants metrics worksheet; it is a required part of the application.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_qZxJ7B9U_Eo6pMG55ox-zCHppM9-lubQm0jKI2tn6g/edit#gid=25410460

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:56, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Done, thank you. Amqui (talk) 13:16, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Your timely response is much appreciated, Amqui, and the metrics worksheet is complete. :) Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 16:11, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Simple APG committee recommendation

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: Wikimedia Canada is a returning applicant, and they have requested 47,595 CAD for 6 months, including one 0.5 FTE contractor. We recommend funding Wikimedia Canada in the amount of 47,595 for 6 months + 10% contingency to address unforeseen risks and opportunities, or a total of 52,355 CAD, including funding for their 0.5 FTE contractor. Since WMCA is bringing on their first staff position, they may assign this contingency fee to their reserves at the remainder of this grant, provided it is not used during the grant period. WMCA has presented a detailed and thoughtful plan, and have been improving their planning, organizational capacity and formal accreditation, and budgeting with each grant cycle. They show good capacity for an all-volunteer organization of their size, and have shown stability for several 6-month grant cycles now. In the current plan, WMCA is directing staff resources toward strengthening their administrative capacity and this will be an important long-term investment. We believe this is necessary before WMCA further expands their program work. We appreciate WMCA’s SWOT analysis for each program, which shows that they are thinking their work through. We encourage WMCA to take their own analysis of risks into account, and not to try and grow their program work too quickly, to the point where they overextend themselves. We are interested in supporting WMCA’s flagship initiative with indigenous communities in the coming year, because we agree with the value WMCA places on the commitment they have made in these communities. Nevertheless, we do have some concerns in this area and would not like to see it expand without further reflection. Work in this important and sensitive area requires people with expertise working in indigenous communities, and more transparency is needed around processes for working with indigenous communities. How Wikimedia Affiliates work with indigenous communities is something that will need to be addressed as part of our movement strategy and / or WMF’s funding strategy. We understand WMCA has worked hard to improve gender and sexual orientation diversity within their chapter. However, they have not developed strategies to invite ethnically diverse communities into the chapter nor to take on leadership roles in the chapter. We recommend WMCA develop a time-bound plan to include marginalized and ethnically diverse communities and think about how this can be implemented at the programmatic level as well as the strategic leadership level. People from these communities should also be included in the planning. WMCA has been focused on activating communities through WikiClubs to engage local volunteers across Canada through trainings, outreach and edit-a-thons. While Canada’s wide geographical and political landscape presents a challenge for coordinating nation-wide activities, we are interested to see how these WikiClubs are activated to become supportive regional hubs to their local communities. Their experience with GLAMUs in Quebec has also provided them expertise to expand and adapt their partnerships model with newer Canadian institutions, which could develop opportunities into more sustainable support for volunteers and contributors throughout the country. We note that this increase in funding amounts to an annualized budget equivalent to more than $70,000 USD, which is a significant amount. We encourage WMCA to actively attend to finding other funding sources for their work, in order to make this growth sustainable. This is part of the reason we are agreeing to support their administrative position for this grant period, and we hope this yields commensurate results in terms of stabilizing the organization and increasing fundraising capacity.

Strengths identified by the committee: See recommendations above.

Concerns identified by the committee: See recommendations above.

On behalf of the Committee - - Alleycat80 (talk) 13:29, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

On behalf of Wikimedia Canada's Board of Directors, I would like to thank the Committee for their thorough review and analysis of our grant request and situation. We will certainly take into account the recommendations from the Committee and implement them. Thank you very much again, Amqui (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

WMF decision

Approved. 47,595 CAD for 6 months + 10% contingency to address unforeseen risks and opportunities, or a total of 52,355 CAD. Congratulations! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:42, 25 May 2018 (UTC)