Grants talk:Start/2025

FTEs (full-time equivalents)

In my understanding, FTE is a unit of workload, and if an organization has staff members, their FTEs would be more than 0 (although it could be less than 1, if they have only one part-time worker). Why do some grant applications claim 0 FTEs? Does it matter if people work without pay? whym (talk) 08:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, I think they might just be doing it wrong. I don't think you can just say "we only have consultants" - you're meant to estimate the hours and figure out how many full time (40-35hr/week depending on the employer?) employees it's equivalent to. I mean, if they're not getting paid, that's fair enough, but is that actually the case, or is their rate just not specified? If they're working for free they should probably be called "volunteer staff" or the like. GreenReaper (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, in the first link they received 1/6 of the requested funding, and when they revised the grant application to match that, the FTE number was changed from 1 FTE and 2 consultants to 0. --Zache (talk) 07:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point that the funding was reduced, but I'd expect something like 0.1 or 0.2 FTEs instead of 0 in that case.

Some activities, especially volunteer driven ones, might be done on-demand and spontaneously and you might not even know if you are going to spend all of the fund eventually. However, it seems like the general support fund is more for regular, well-planned and predictable things. whym (talk) 08:49, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Is this FTE question not a priority in general? A grantee said that the WMF and/or the committee never brought up the issue when discussing the grant application privately. It's still not clear to me the "0" answer was a mistake, or there was a valid reason. The question is in Grants:MetaSync/Application templates/Wikimedia Community Fund v4: "19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)" whym (talk) 03:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

You could directly ask the reasoning behind the number from the grantee? About that the commitee never brought up the number in mid-term conversation, i dont think that is suprising. The discussions are generally pretty practical orientated (ie. what you have achieved, any highligts/problems, any differences compared to plans etc). So even if there is discussion about amount of employees it is not single number level, but more like if one have capacity and/or skills to targetted things. Btw. If you tried to ask JAUG to update the FTE number in application I don't think that grantee by themselfs can edit the application after it is approved. --Zache (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I asked and it's now confirmed that it was indeed a misunderstanding. I pointed out the possible misunderstanding in early May. If it was too late, when was not? (Or is there a better way to communicate other than a talk page thread?) whym (talk) 06:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Whym Sorry for the late question: I just checked (as person who submitted a grant). Grantee cannot edit the grant application when it is under review. Afaik 19 March 2024 was the date when the review started (diff) -- Zache (talk) 13:10, 28 November 2024 (UTC) (update: --Zache (talk) 13:18, 28 November 2024 (UTC))

Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund says "Applicants have a set time to make necessary adjustments or clarifications" after receiving review. So proposals can be "adjusted" as a result of reviews including community reviews, and it seems like the talk page is the venue for that. I admit that I made the comment late in the review period, but am I understanding it correctly that it would have been okay to talk about revisions in March-April at least. (Again, assuming that a "revision" is done by saying something like "the number X was wrong, Y is the right number", on the talk page.) whym (talk) 10:27, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

About the correct place: the talk page of the grant application is the venue. About the changes after the review. Based on my personal experience: We have only made changes that were requested (by the grant liaison or grant committee). For example, in 2024 WMFI applied for 130,000€ and the decision was 105,000€. Before the decision, there was a question in feedback on how the reduction would affect the project. After our answers, we got an email containing information on the expected approval sum and requests to update the sums and budget to match the lower sum. At this time, there was no need to update the application text itself. However, in some years there have been text change requests, also. In any case, in the 2024 application the reduced funding affected the full-time equivalent (FTE) as it reduced the work time of 2 persons from 12 months to 9 months. However, I didn't update the FTE number or program content as the only thing that was requested was to update the sums.(diff to my changes) --Zache (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

In my understanding, misunderstandings were made, and we can help preventing similar mistakes in future by making the question clearer - adding a few words (something like "In other words, this is asking your total working hours"), having a section in an explanation page, etc. How can we make that happen? Or is there reason not to do that? whym (talk) 10:14, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is current questions and help text: General Support Fund application form (documentation, v3.0) chapter 19. --Zache (talk) 13:16, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. So it seems like I was mistaken, too. I thought FTEs might include unpaid hours, but it sounds like they don't. (But it also sounds like I was right in that applicants failed to paid hours of part-time workers where they should have been.)

To make the guidance better, illustrative examples might help. We might want to include something like "For example, if you have 0 full-time employees and 3 part-time workers who only work in January-September, 40 hours per month, then your answer would be ____" The concept of FTE might be commonplace in some countries but not in other countries. I think examples help to have everyone on the same page. It can be especially confusing when many groups are too small to have even one full-time employee. whym (talk) 10:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

It would be a good idea that grant applicants would explain how their FTE figures are calculated.

Ie. something like this:

• 1.5 FTE as as total
  • 1 FTE = coordinator 100% work time for 12 months
  • 0.5 FTE = project employee 100% work time for 6 months

--Zache (talk) 19:18, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Whym and @Zache, thanks for highlighting that the FTE-related questions can be confusing. We did not include the question descriptions into the meta pages but these descriptions are available on Fluxx, where applicants add their proposals. For question 19.1., the description states:

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms (period of work)..

Would it be helpful if for future proposals, we add "Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period with their FTEs" into the question description? This will highlight the need to share FTEs for each staff member and clarify how the total FTE (Q9.2.) is calculated. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 07:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that is a change in the right direction, but I'm not sure if the small change significantly reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding, to be honest.

My concern is that the concept of FTEs can be foreign, regardless of how you call it. I'm not aware of FTEs nor its translation commonly used in human resources context in Japan. I believe they would just say X paid hours per time unit (a month, a year, etc) instead, when they need to quantify.

Could it be more helpful to accept paid hours as an alternative way to answer the question, or at least to suggest estimating paid hours and converting it to FTEs, to answer it? I would expect the conversion to be straightforward: 40 hours per week on average = 1.0 FTEs, 20 hours per week on average = 0.5 FTEs, etc.

Another way to help clarifying it might be including an illustrative example into the document linked above (or another support document, if that is preferable), like Zache suggested above. whym (talk) 13:06, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Timeline for Wikimedia Research Fund

Request: a standard annual timeline for the Wikimedia Research Fund cycle. The last cycle applications closed December 15, 2023, so myself and colleagues thought that this year's cycle would be announced by December 2024, but they haven't. Any details on when applications will open up would be helpful for research planning. Hexatekin (talk) 00:18, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Hexatekin. Apologies I'm only now seeing this comment.

In general, we do strive to have a standard annual timeline as you suggested. However, we are working on some changes around the Research Fund which is why it hasn't been announced or opened yet. Please make sure you are subscribed to the Wikimedia Research public mailing list where we will post an announcement about the next round soon. KGordon (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 22 January 2025 (UTC)