Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Community Ireland/2017

Eligibility

Hello, Wikimedia Community Ireland colleagues:

Thank you for submitting your eligibility form on 25 October 2017. After reviewing your past grants we've determined that you are eligible to apply for a Simple Process Annual Plan Grant (including funding for staff up to 1.0 FTE). We appreciate your work during the application process, and your willingness to engage with us during the eligibility review process on such short notice.

Here is some of the work we looked at while evaluating your eligibility for a Simple Annual Plan Grant. Wikimedia Community Ireland has been receiving grants from the Wikimedia Foundation since 2014: Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Community_Ireland/WLM_2016 Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Community_Ireland/WLM_Ireland_2015 Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Community_Ireland/2015_Outreach Grants:PEG/Wikimedia_Ireland_Community/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_Ireland_2014

Wikimedia Community Ireland has experience with competitions, and they are building experience and establishing contacts in the field of education. Their 2017 application will focus on these three areas, as well as the critical area of volunteer recruitment, which is especially important given the relatively small size of the communities they partner with.

While Wikimedia Community Ireland is a user group, they are formally registered as an organization in Ireland and have a formal governance structure in place which will enable them to be good stewards of a larger budget, including paid staff. The user group is led by a core of active members, including 6-7 very active volunteers that meet regularly. This will be Wikimedia Community Ireland’s first year making and executing an annual plan.

Wikimedia Community Ireland is requesting paid staff to make their activities more sustainable and less dependent on their core of very active volunteers to continue. The type of consistency that can be provided by paid staff may be required as the user group expands their partnerships work, and may also help the group expand to different areas of Ireland. We are limiting eligibility to 1.0 FTE or less for Wikimedia Community Ireland, since this will be their first time hiring paid staff. We also want to ensure that staff growth continues to match growth in volunteer engagement, since Wikimedia Community Ireland is working with a small community of volunteers.

We look forward to learning more about Wikimedia Community Ireland’s work, and reviewing their 2017 application. Welcome to Simple APG!

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 02:29, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Application postponed

Wikimedia Community Ireland has decided to postpone this grant application until 2017. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:31, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Message of support

Wikimedia UK is very pleased to see this grant application from Wikimedia Community Ireland and would like to offer the proposal our formal support. Our own experience suggests that despite the huge importance of volunteers, moving to a position of having paid staff should enable WMIE to scale up their work and their reach significantly. We would hope to be able to share learning with Ireland, particularly around their work within the higher education sector, and possibly organisational development and governance (if appropriate). LucyCrompton-Reid (WMUK) (talk) 14:28, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Questions from SAPG members

From Anders Wennersten

Thanks for your application, it is interesting to both read of your good work you have done and also of the well balanced plan for future. My question is related to the planned reqruitement of a program coordinator. Have you made plans for this, who in the board will be involved, have you planned for the actual process, have you already a person in mind, and is office etc in place already. Also when exactly will the person be on board (cost money), have you made up your budget taking into consideation it can take some time before the person is actually on board.Anders Wennersten (talk) 10:24, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten, Thank you for your comments and question. Several members of the working group have expressed interest in filling the Programme Coordinator position. Members of the working group have tacit knowledge of our organisation which will make them better suited to the role and will enable us to continue our programmes without interruption. The person will be approved by the board and will report to the Volunteer Chair, which is me. Once the funding is approved we can have the position filled within a couple of weeks. Provided that the funding for the office space is approved, we can have that in place in a matter of days. Sameichel (talk) 15:13, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

From Kirill Lokshin

Thank you for your application, and for all of your work supporting the Wikimedia mission! I have several questions about various parts of your application; some of them are simply to confirm that I fully understand what you're proposing, while others are more open-ended. Please feel free to add your replies inline with my questions if that is easier for you.

Kirill. Thank you very much for your questions. I have answered them inline.

1. Is Wikimedia Community Ireland currently an incorporated legal entity in Ireland? If not, do you have a plan and timeline for incorporation?

WCI is currently registered in Ireland as a Limited Liability Company.

2. The current application does not include an annual plan or strategic plan; are you planning to develop these documents over the coming year?

Yes, it is our intent to continue to progress towards Chapter status. Our goal would be to create an annual plan and strategic plan for 2018. The work of the Programme Coordinator will greatly assist in facilitating these goals.

3. The staff responsibilities for the Programme Manager are listed as follows:

To plan and deliver a wide range of project and communications activities for WCI User Group. For example: produce engaging content online and keep the WCI User Group community, funders, partners and the wider general public informed about our work and impact.
To provide administrative and financial leadership for WCI User Group activities. A focus on administration of its transparency, programmes, and reporting.

However, the activity breakdown for the position does not seem to reflect these responsibilities. Could you please clarify what the Programme Manager will be doing on a week-to-week basis?

Our SMART goals and 2017 budget request outline an aggressive schedule of meetups, conferences, and contests. The Programme Manager will be expected to take a operational leadership role for these events. She/he will be expected to report, at minimum, to the Chair weekly and attend the Board meetings bi-monthly. We are proud of our volunteer base but Ireland is a small pool of people, and we are in an early growth phase. As our only full-time resource, the position will require a the person to “wear many hats”. We acknowledge that the pace and variety will require frequent alignment and we will adjust the reporting schedule if needed. Further breakdown for each key area can be found below

To plan and deliver a wide range of project and communications activities for WCI User Group. For example: produce engaging content online and keep the WCI User Group community, funders, partners and the wider general public informed about our work and impact.

The Programme Coordinator’s primary job will be planning and running events. These will fall under two broad categories: Educational Outreach and General Outreach. In Education Outreach the Manager will be organising and running at least 6 workshops in Irish Universities in 2017 as well as assisting 4 university Professors with implementing Wikipedia based programmes in their universities. The Manager will also aim for a 10% retention rate by keeping in close contact with participants online. (These are part of our SMART Goals) Also as part of education outreach the Manager will create training materials to be shared with the wider community. For the General Outreach the Manager will run 5 meetups to attempt to recruit new volunteers for the Working Group as well as new editors on Wikipedia. The Manager will also facilitate new editor training.

To provide administrative and financial leadership for WCI User Group activities. A focus on administration of its transparency, programmes, and reporting.

In essence, the Programme Manager will be the face and voice of WCI both through direct outreach to current and potential partners and through Social Media platforms. The Manager will have weekly update meetings with the Volunteer Chair and will report to the entire Working Group at the bi-weekly meetings. The Manager will report on events and outreach which will include metrics for events held. Of course there may be opportunities for funding from partners through the events, which the Manager will report on as needed.

4. Could you please provide a description of your policies, if any, for hiring and managing staff? If you do not have any policies of this type, please provide a description of how you anticipate the hiring process will take place.

As this will be our first time employing staff we do not have a formal hiring policy in place, yet. It was decided by the Board that in order for the aggressive programme we have scheduled to be successful, we needed someone with tacit knowledge of our organisation to be able to hit the ground running. That is why the Board decided not to initially open this position to the wider public.The Contractor positions will be open to the general public. Interviews will be held by the board at least 2 weeks before commencement of the contract and the Board will approve the appointment to these positions. As far as managing the employees/contractors, each will report to the Volunteer Chair on a regular basis (see the Staffing Plan for specific times) and to the Working Group as a whole at the bi-weekly meetings. Most of the members of the Working Group are currently managers or have management experience (we have a Medical Doctor, a Software Developer Manager, an Assistant Director at NUI Galway, and several University Professors). This combined management experience should allow us to address any issues that may arise.

Thanks! Kirill Lokshin (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Cheers Sameichel (talk) 19:07, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

From Chinmayi S K

Thank you for your application, and you work for the community. The application demonstrate a lot of enthusiasm from your group which I am very happy to see.

I have a few questions about your application with respect to the program co-ordinators you have mentioned. please feel free to reply to them inline. The program co-ordinators for the two events you have mentioned are being hired for 8 weeks and 10 weeks respectively.

Hi Chinmayisk. Thank you for your questions. I have answered them in bold below.

1. What will their duties be during this time period ?

The duties for each contractor can be found in the Staffing Plan. The general duties are as follows:
WLM
Meet with relevant government bodies to continue the work of releasing the monument data to an open copyright.
Create unique alphanumeric numbers for all 967 monuments currently on the list.
Pending resolution of the copyright issues the contractor will put the information for all 967 monuments onto Wikipedia for use for the 2017 contest.
Will assist the volunteer contest coordinators to focus the 2017 contest on unphotographed monuments.
Produce reports for the Volunteer Chair.

WLE-This one time contract position is designed to bootstrap this contest to be turned over to volunteers in 2018. The duties are as follows:
Collating locations for the contest and creating a website to promote it.
Planning and running Launch and awards events.
Social media promotion.
Overseeing judging process.
Preparing reports for Volunteer Chair.

2. How many hours of work are they expected to do per day ?

The contractors will be expected to work 7.5 hours per day during the contract periods.

I would also like you to introspect if Is there common work between two events , If so can there be a reduction in effort estimate ? Though it would seem at first glance like the contract positions overlap, they do not have much in common. The WLM contractor will be dealing with the issues of copyright and data cleanup. This contractor will NOT be running the 2017 contest. The WLE contractor will be organising and running the 2017 contest. The experience of the group has had with WLM will certainly inform what we will do with WLE but they are 2 distinct positions.

The other thing that i did not see is these events mentioning any volunteer effort could you elaborate on what kind of volunteer support the community will provide ? For WLM, the volunteers will continue to run the contest in 2017. The contractor position is merely there to cleanup the current data and to address the copyright issues with it. For WLE, the reason that we haven’t run this contest in the past is the lack of Volunteer hours to devote to creating the lists and getting the contest up and running. While the contractor will be able to solicit volunteer support, the contractor will be running the contest in 2017 with an aim to turn it over to volunteers for 2018.

Thank you !! --Chinmayisk (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Cheers, Sameichel (talk) 19:21, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Other questions

Hi dear WCI!

Your proposal sounds very interesting and it's exciting to see WLM and WLE taken so seriously! I do have a few questions though:

• WLM
  • It is unclear if the lobbying work done by volunteers so far concerning the public release of the lists was unsuccessful or if this is a new approach that you haven't tried yet. In both cases, what should the contractor do different to get the government to release the lists?
  • What do you base your 10% retention of particpants on? In Austria for example we found it very difficult to get participants to engage in further activity on Wikipedia or Commons. How do you want to achieve the 10%? (also applies to WLE)
  • It is also unclear why the contractor should do all the work of putting the lists on Wikipedia. If this is indeed a long-term solution, wouldn't it be better to have volunteers and the contractor work together on this? In my experience it's very labour-intensive work that drives costs, but leaves a lot of empty space to fill once the contractor's work is done

Best, Braveheart (talk) 18:26, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Braveheart, lobbying work has been successful. We’ve found the Government of Ireland receptive to making this information more available. We have been working with them to understand the benefits of publishing data under a more open license and working with them to facilitate greater understanding of copyright. We, in turn, have been working to clean and standardize the data. A contractor to assist in this effort will help us accelerate an already successful pipeline.

Our 10% retention is based on the success for the previous three years. The number would represent a conservative estimate.

The contractor will be primarily engaged with acceleration of the existing work. A volunteer (Geichel (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)) has lead this effort to this point. The contractor will not be the only person involved. We would expect interaction with the Working Group to map out the best path forward. The contractor will work on the copyright of the existing list of 967. Ireland has 142,000 listed national monuments and places of historical record, we’ve only tackled 0.0068%. Our long term goal is to make all of this information freely available. This is but the first step.

Warm regards,

Geichel (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! :-) Do you have any documentation on your approach to retaining participants after the event? Maybe you've found a way to solve a problem that a lot of other chapters have been struggling with. Best, Braveheart (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Braveheart. We've had fairly good rates of returning users for WLM over the last few years. I think this has to do with the small numbers we are seeing. For example, in 2015 we had 293 participants; 20% were returning users. Our goal is to keep that 20% active throughout the year, not just during the WLM period. To achieve that we are going to trial keeping in close contact via Talk pages, inviting them to join the mailing list, and inviting them to events. This will be somewhat labour intensive at first, but it's an experiment for us. We are also exploring the idea of running photowalks outside of the contest period to engage users. Pending funding we're also going to run WLE this year and give our users another outlet. We'll see how it goes! Sameichel (talk) 14:23, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee Recommendation

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: The committee recommends a grant in the amount of 45K EUR, or equal to the full amount requested reduced by one contract position. WCI will need to demonstrate more growth in their volunteer community and achieve sufficient measurable results to justify ongoing staffing costs at this level. This decision to fund staff should be considered an experiment, and not a model that all movement groups should follow. The committee recommends that WCI choose between contract help for WLM and WLE this year, rather than hire two contractors. WCI should run a public and open hiring process for staff and contractors, and carefully address any staff-volunteer transitions if a volunteer is selected to fill a staff position. WCI should take care to ensure that any contractors are able to keep permanent staff and committed volunteers up-to-date with their work and set aside time for documentation, to avoid the loss of knowledge gained if people who are engaged temporarily leave. WCI is advised to consider which of its programs will lead to the most impact when planning how to allocate staff, budget, and volunteer resources across different programs. For example, results from WLM may yield less in the long term than investments in the education program, and investments in each program should be continually monitored to ensure they correspond to impact.

Strengths identified by the committee: WCI has some experience organizing edit-a-thons and photo events/competitions such as the Wiki Loves Monuments. WCI’s enthusiastic leadership team has good diversity in terms of gender and relevant organizational skills. While they are currently a User Group, they have a formal organization and governance structure that can support an ongoing staff commitment. Within the board, they have experience with HR and governance, and they have experience in relevant subject areas such as lobbying and education. We look forward to the board professionalizing in managing staff in the coming year. WCI’s application has received support from WMUK, and there are opportunities for fruitful collaboration between the two organizations. Some benefits, such as the potential for more work in Northern Ireland, may extend beyond Ireland’s borders. WCI’s education programme may be a good engine for generating growth, especially with staff support, which should be a focus of WCI in the coming year. We have seen education programs effectively generate growth in content elsewhere, and draw in new volunteers. WCI is planning to create databases of all monuments in the country and work on convincing the government to publish information about them under a free license, which would bring important benefits to the Movement and contests like WLM or WLE will benefit the people in their geographic region. We recommend early communication with the international team of WLM concerning the creation of the database. WCI’s plans are detailed and articulate, including a clear staffing plan, budget, and SMART objectives.

Concerns identified by the committee: WCI is requesting a large amount of funding relative to the size of their geographic focus, and the size of their volunteer community. There may not be enough volunteers to support WCI’s plan, which is dependent on staff. Some committee members are concerned that WCI does not yet have a strong enough track record in growing or engaging their volunteer community, and funding staff to do this work is a risk. Overstaffing programs that are traditionally volunteer-run, like WLE and WLM, and hiring FTEs to encourage volunteer growth in small communities, may create a bad precedent for other small groups that are eager to grow. Staff costs are high, and staff are doing work that volunteers often do. Many hours are budgeted for the work of contractors and staff, which seems inefficient compared with similar activities happening in other parts of the movement, and it is not clear that these staff expenses will lead to results. Number of staff and activities proposed are too high for a first APG, especially for an organization that does not yet have experience managing any paid staff. Some work is being done by contractors that ideally should be done by a long term staff person (due to FTE limits imposed by WMF and WCI’s decision not to integrate them into a single FTE’s job description), and there is a risk that the organization will lose knowledge when these temporary contractors leave the organization. WCI has not proposed an open and public hiring process, and may intend to hire volunteers who are already active within the organization. Closed hiring practices are not recommended as they may prohibit organizations from securing the best candidates for each position and may encourage other bad hiring practices. Bringing on a long time volunteer as staff, even through a public process, may cause difficulties and conflicts within the group. WCI has not yet demonstrated sufficient experience measuring and evaluating the results of their work, and only has two past grants for WLM with results that were not exceptional. For the Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 03:26, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Decision from WMF

Funding decision: Thank you, Wikimedia Community Ireland, for your application and for your work during the application process. Now that your report and expense documentation for the WLM 2016 grant are complete and have been reviewed by the project grants team, we are able to publish a decision about your Simple APG. In accordance with the committee's recommendation, WMF approves this grant in the amount of up to 45,000 EUR. Thank you for submitting your revised budget plan here. Your revised budget is also approved. The 1844 EUR difference between your revised budget (43,156 EUR) and the approved amount (45,000 EUR) may be kept on hand as contingency funding the grant period, and may be reallocated to mission-related expenses with the permission of WMF as appropriate. We note that you have also made some changes to your plan and your goals, in accordance with the budget reduction. We look forward to working with you over the course of the coming year, in implementing the committee's recommendations and achieving your goals. Congratulations on securing this grant! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:03, 14 March 2017 (UTC)