Wikimania/Scholarships/2012/Proposals

Background of Scholarships

Every year, a number of Wikimania Scholarships are distributed to either completely or partially cover the cost of attending the annual Wikimania conference. The number given and amount spent vary year to year, but including both chapter and WMF funded scholarships, in recent years we have been spending ~$250K on these as a movement.
We believe scholarships to attend Wikimania should be a priority for the movement. Wikimania is an incredibly unique and exciting event that both allows long-term participants the chance to share their work via presentations, and also to be inspired/motivated through meeting others. The goals of the scholarship program are the following:

• To make Wikimania a successful and productive international conference
• To support the Wikimedia projects by encouraging participation.
• To enrich the conference with attendance by a diverse group of participants in the Wikimedia movement

Types of scholarships

In general, there are three different types of scholarships that we consider:

1. WMF Full scholarships: Full sponsorship of attendance to Wikimania, including travel, accommodations, and registration.
2. WMF Partial scholarships: Set stipend to subsidize travel costs to Wikimania (the past two years it has been 300 euros)
3. Chapter scholarships: Full or partial scholarships provided by independent chapters. The chapter has final say on the recipients, but the vast majority use the scores as provided by the International Scholarship Committee.

This report covers at some level all three of these.

Complications

Comparative ratings of Scholarship components - 2010-2012

The Scholarships process for Wikimania 2012 proved to be both difficult to execute, and ineffective in bringing about the desired results. In fact, the Scholarship process overall received a lower overall rating by scholarship recipients then it did in the last two years (see graph on the right).

Our movement has grown and changed in recent years, and our scholarship process has not changed along with it. We are investing more money than ever before in scholarships. We are receiving thousands of applications for limited scholarship slots. Our movement is diversifying more and more geographically. We need to come up with a more effective way at distributing funds, and if we choose to continue to feed it into an annual conference, Wikimania Scholarships need to be taken seriously. Last year, the scholarship committee found that it was not able to manage in the best way the number of applications, the urgent and stringent timeline, or the chapters providing scholarships. There is room for tighter coordination and higher performance across all those issues.

Process of review

The following recommendations are an attempt to summarize and pull out the collaborative thinking behind how to make the scholarships a more effective and efficient process. The recommendations were informed by:

• A conversation on process hosted on meta
• A survey sent post-Wikimania to all scholarship applicants who made it to the 2nd round (n=606)
• First-hand experiences and conversations by the Scholarship committee
• Evaluation of the distribution and metrics behind the 2012 scholarships

Results of study

From the conversations and research, four primary issues have emerged meriting resolution:

1. Non-transparent process
2. Difficulty assessing best candidates
3. High decline rates
4. Frustrating communication

While some of these are perceptions rather than necessarily reality, they are worthy of further exploration in order to appropriately inform the valuable members of the movement.

Underlying these four issues are a variety of root causes. Each of these root causes will be addressed more thoroughly in the "Proposal" section.

Non-transparent process	Difficulty selecting right mix of scholars	Frustrating communication	High decline rates of recipients
Selection criteria not clear	Selection Criteria not effective	No coordination with program team	Too short of a timeline
Scores not announced	Low involvement of scholarship review committee	Chapters not coordinating across teams	Visa complications
No communication between application and announcement	Limited resources to send all qualified applicants		Partial Scholars unable to afford remainder

Proposals

Improving Transparency

Selection Criteria

2012 Selection Criteria: Main Criteria

	Activity in Wikimedia movement (on-wiki and off-wiki)
	Activity outside of Wikimedia (in compatible organizations)
	Future goals for participating in the Wikimedia movement

The Selection Criteria are created annually by the scholarship review committee. The complication with the selection criteria is that they are somewhat subjective and some are indeed unmeasurable. The exact components and weightings of the scholarship criteria have changed over the years, but in general attempt to balance the following dynamics:

More Measurable	Less Measurable	Not included
Activity in Wikimedia (0-4)	Residence	Financial need
Relevant activity outside of Wikimedia (0-4)	Language project
Future Potential (0-4)	Past funding

Root causes and proposals

Root Causes	Suggestions
Wikimedia activity biased towards long-term editors	Continue to look at total edit counts, but also create a program to look at the last 6 months of activity of the editor (i.e., since Wikimania of the previous year). This would help ensure the contributor was still highly engaged in the projects.
Inconsistent consideration of past Wikimania recipients.	More explicitly take this into account when reviewing applications. Limit the total number of those who attend on scholarship who received scholarships in past years to <5% of total. Note that this would apply to Full scholarship recipients only.

Intentional exclusions

• Financial need: There is not a way for us to measure financial need beyond self-reporting.

Results announcements

insert quote from survey

— Full Wikimania Scholarship recipient

A lot of people wanted to know the reasons they were not selected for the scholarship.

While people are curious to know this, it is a very time consuming thing to do for the over 1000 applications. However, it would be possible to post the average scores from each region at the beginning, in order to demonstrate more clearly the equity of the applicants.

Communication of process

As in past years, there was no announcement to the scholarship recipients following the receipt of their application. This caused confusion in the stages of the process.

Secondly, there was also confusion as to whether or not an application was in a position for consideration for a Chapter scholarship.

Fortunately, these are fairly simply fixes :)

Root causes and proposals

Root Causes	Suggestions
No communication from the Committee between application and announcement	Communicate with the applicant at three places: Upon receipt of their application (confirmation) After Round 1 of the review (notification of status including which scholarships they are being considered for (e.g., "WMF-Partial, WMF-Full" or "Chapter-WMDE")) After Round 2 of the application (notification of status including which scholarships they are being considered for (e.g., "Received WMF-Full"))
Candidates are unclear about their eligibility for chapter scholarships	If a candidate qualifies for a chapter scholarship, do not consider him/her for a WMF scholarship After Round 1, send all individuals an email if they qualify for a chapter scholarship and/or a WMF scholarship After Round 2, send every applicant one of 5 emails: 1. Did not receive any scholarship 2. Received WMF Partial scholarship 3. Received WMF Full scholarship 4. On WMF Full Waitlist 5. In consideration for a Chapter Scholarship
Different Wikimania teams working in isolation - specifically, Programs and Scholarships	Automate a place in the application for acceptance of Program Proposals to be input

Selecting the right candidates

Selection Criteria

See above.

Scholarship Review Committee

Overview

In the past, the committee has consisted of 7-10 members, selected in various ways (e.g., call for applications in 2009, individual nominations, legacy Wikimania team members).

The committee has carried an enormous amount of responsibility, reading through hundreds of applications every year. When able to dedicate large amounts of time, the committee was functioning ok. But in 2012, there were large timeline delays, due in part to the inability of the committee members to keep up with their workloads.

Root causes and proposals

Root Causes	Suggestions
Low activity by reviewers	Rotate the members of the committee (2 years)
Little diversification	Expand representation of the committee to include representatives from different areas of the world, as applicable and possible.
Difficult software for managing applications	Establish functionality criteria for easier navigation of applications
Too much work	Increase number of members on the committee to 3 per region, with each representative in charge of reviewing only 2 pre-established regions

This implies a need to reform how the scholarship review committee is structured. This is what we need to figure out first, in order to meet the desired timelines.

Resources

We have far more qualified applications than we have resources, which is a hard thing to combat. While we won't be able to add to the scholarship budget, we could likely help maximize the efficiency of the dollars spent by improving the structure of the partial scholarships and more closely coordinating with the chapter scholarships.

Root causes and proposals

Root Causes	Suggestions
Chapters heavily sponsor their areas	Countries with chapter scholarships are not considered for WMF scholarships
Partial scholarships take resources	Modify partial scholarships to cover 50% of estimated travel by region.

Improving communication across constituents

Given the brevity of these, I'll combine all the root causes and suggestions into one table:

Root Causes	Suggestions
Wikimania teams working in isolation	More closely sync timelines of work. Ensure there is an input on the scholarship application on whether or not the applicant submitted a program proposal.
Candidates are unclear about their eligibility for Chapter scholarships	After Round 1, send all individuals an email if they qualify for a chapter scholarship and/or a WMF scholarship
Poor communication during process	See above.

Increasing acceptance rates

Timeline

The timeline was delayed several weeks in 2012. This inhibited people from getting visas and also from finding less expensive flight options.

Root causes and suggestions

Root Causes	Suggestions
Application site was delayed in going up	Wikimania team to be more proactive in deciphering the system, e.g., by linking with the past Wikimania teams or other volunteers. There should be a member of the Wikimania team that is capable of doing this programming work required. Scholarship committee be more clear about what functionality is needed. Being up-front and direct about it will help facilitate the process.
Review committee inactive	See above. Essentially, (a) Increase the number of committee members (b) crystalize committee tasks, and (c) create cycle for committee members

Visas

17 full scholars declined their scholarships due to visas and/or passports.

Root causes and suggestions

Root Causes	Suggestions
Not enough time	See "Timeline"
Scholars not proactive in seeking visas	Improve communication with the scholars, including reminders
Countries unclear about requirements	Wikimania team ought to create custom visa letters for the scholars, articulating that these individuals are being funded for travel both TO and FROM the event.
Difficulty of host country in granting visas	Recommend difficulty of this to Wikimania selection jury

Partial Scholarships

Many have said the 300 euro flat rate partial scholarship is not nearly enough to attend Wikimania, and therefore should be eliminated or changed. Given that there were still ~50 people who received partial scholarship funding, there is clearly still a need for these types of awards.

One suggestion (which still needs to be run off the finance department at WMF) would be to have a tiered system of payment, so that from each region there would be a set stipend for that region based on 50% of early estimates of ticket price.