Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Ghana User Group 2024/2025 Annual Plan Grant

An oversight ommission of one staff salary line item in the budget

Hi Grants Admin,

During the preparation of our grants there was one line item which we forgot to add to our budget even though we had made mention of it in the Grant proposal. One of the salary/contractor roles we made mention of in the proposal was Chief Community Officer a role which is coming to help with a lot of the community facing activities of our user group which we have started piloting.

For the 12 months this role will cost 302,412 GHS (24,000 USD) when we add this to the current budget it will move us to 1,732,065 GHS (137,460 USD) as our total grant for the first year. And then we can adjust it 10% upwards for year 2 and 3.

Thank You. –– Owula kpakpo (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Dear Wikimedia Ghana:

Thank you very much for your proposal, describing your activities and projects in support of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement. The Regional Funds Committee has initially reviewed the proposal, and wishes to offer some initial feedback and questions for your review.

The committee appreciates that you are taking time to organize yourselves as a user group, involving the growing number of facilitators from your existing partners, and giving them leadership roles in organizing workshops and edit-a-thons, as well as connecting with other open source and similar movements in Ghana that are linked to our movement, such as the OpenStreetMap and Free Open Source communities and others.

It would be supportive of the Committee’s understanding of your plans if you’d be so kind as to  elaborate on our following specific few questions:

Limited Capacity

Q: One of your stated challenges is limited capacity regarding the leadership body in your user group. May you share more on why this has been a challenge for you as a user group since establishing in 2014?

A: Though we were designated as a user group in 2014, it was in 2020 we registered as a legal entity that has a board. When we said limited capacity, we were referring to one board member resigning earlier. Hence being down to 2 members, going into 2024/25.

Our other perception about being under capacity is more of a representation matter. We want to include a board member elected solely by the community, a female board member and possibly one member from the north of the country, as the current board consists of southerners. (There is a north-south development divide in Ghana which we seek to address as a matter of improving our practices around equity, diversity and inclusion.)

Timeline of Activities

Q: Given your limited capacity, your timeline is full of activities every month and the committee wonders how much of the planned work for leadership could be realistic. Could you share more on how you plan to manage the amount of work and oversight given your capacity?

A: We have maintained our current programmatic work structure since 2020. We acknowledge and are familiar with this workload. We plan to let our requested paid roles continue to execute the programs as we have done since 2020.

What we will do differently this time is to increase the separation of roles and responsibilities. Board members will focus on governance, grants and affiliate and NPO compliance in a volunteer capacity, and then, make room for a paid senior role – the Chief Community Officer (in place of a CEO or Executive Director) who will manage the teams that execute the deliverables of our programs and some exclusive tasks of their own as well.

Community Engagement and Feedback

Q: Could they clarify further about how you included your community of volunteers in the planning of your proposal? And how do you plan on incorporating the community in your work throughout the year?

A: We have had a program known as Community Development since 2020 to help integrate members further in the movement through our work.

Through the program we ran a survey to ask the community what to include in our grant. That is one of the ways we learn about their needs. We also learn about the community through feedback we get during our events. Additionally, there is the Movement Strategy recommedations, which Ghanaian Wikimedians participated in drafting. We also consult that. Lastly, we continue to monitor discussions around open knowledge in Ghana which impact our community. We use learnings from all these angles as input for a grant proposal.

To incorporate the community, we have structures within our Content Creation and Community Development programs as follows:

• Our hiring practices require us sharing job and volunteer opportunities with the members first. We intend to continue.

• We will continue sourcing facilitators for events from the community.

• Our weekly edit-a-thons for members will continue.

• Our media projects that contribute to Wikimedia Commons will continue to be executed mainly by community photographers

• Our monthly newsletter that gives the community visibility into all activities past and upcoming, as well as Whatsapp and Telegram groups where instant updates on ongoing programmatic are shared will be continued and assigned to a paid role to make sure we remain consistent.

Proposed Activities

Q: Thank you for putting together your list of activities. The committee would like further clarification on how you plan on implementing these activities and who will participate in them. For example, you plan to hold edit-a-thons (or editing workshops since they are not aimed at experienced volunteers) in multiple locations, what is your strategy or expected impact from these activities? May you share more on why you plan on implementing activities in different places and how you have resourced your team of facilitators to do so?

A: A bit of our history to help explain our approach: Wikimedia Ghana User Group was founded in 2012 with the aim to be the national affiliate – a precursory group to the chapter Wikimedia Ghana. Unlike the other Ghanaian affiliates who have and should have thematic and specific work, while we are based in Accra, our work is to promote Wikimedia projects throughout multiple locations around the country. And we love this work.

For strategy, we are able to hold 3-4 editing events per week. This is handled by a paid facilitator who is therefore able to dedicate time to this work weekly.

Because contributors to our movement have different needs, we group contributors into newcomers and intermediate and established editors.

In our Increasing Participation program, we add more editors to the community by hosting events for newcomers only. Our events are publicized through social media to reach an audience we deem are not yet within the movement. We focus on helping them understand the basics of Wikipedia/Wikidata editing.

In our Content Creation program we give intermediate and established editors space to improve content, and here the emphasis is on content creation, not so much as teaching how to edit. This also helps keep editors engaged or retained. The participants are recruited from our existing database of Wikimedians who have already gone through the Increasing participation program.

Overall, we host 15-20 people per event. As we have shared in this early report, for example over a period of about 6 months in 2023:

... We recruited and trained 358 unique new Ghanaian contributors nationally, and channeled 349 of these contributors into content creation where they joined existing editors contributing to Wikipedia. This was done through 36 national online and offline events. And we did this and other activities in about 6 months.

Team of Subcontractors

Q: How do you plan on selecting the subcontractors? What is the process and the criteria to select the contractors and how many contractors will there be and where will they be located in Ghana? And what is their expected time commitment?

'A: ' “How many contractors will there be and where will they be located in Ghana? And what is their expected time commitment?"

“Project Manager compensation. The committee noted that the salary of the project manager is relatively high in comparison to what is typically expected for this role. May you please elaborate on the rationale for this compensation?”

“Administrative and Communications Intern. The compensation for this position was 1,500 USD in the last budget and is 3,000 USD in this budget. May you please explain the difference between both expenses? It would be great to understand the amount of hours committed by this role.”

We would like to address these three questions as a focus area, and hence modify our request to bring more clarity.

Please see this document. We have emphasized community needs as much as the roles.

Nimble Tool

Q: The committee is curious to understand what is the rationale behind using Nimble, and why the user group is not capitalizing on efforts from the Growth team, the campaigns tools, Wiki Education and Wiki Learn?

GLAM and Gender Activities

Q: Your proposal states that you will be conducting GLAM or gender-related activities. May you share more on what these activities will be and how you plan on implementing them?

Budget-related questions

Q: After reviewing the budget, the committee had a couple of questions with regards to your budget for your elaboration:

• Number of participants for each activity. The committee would like further clarification on how many participants are being targeted for each activity in the budget. May you please detail this?
• Virtual meetings. The committee was curious to understand why the virtual meetings expenses are high. May you elaborate here?
• Edit-a-thons. There are 20 edit-a-thons expenses in the budget, but it is unclear for which projects. May you please outline which projects these edit-a-thons will be targeting and who the participants will be?
• Project Manager compensation. The committee noted that the salary of the project manager is relatively high in comparison to what is typically expected for this role. May you please elaborate on the rationale for this compensation?
• Internet stipend. The committee noted that the stipend for internet for board members increased to 1,000 USD since last year despite the board members’ number being the same. May you please share the rationale for this?
  • May you please share a breakdown of expenses for the following budget items?
    • 3,000 USD for 500 Notable Ghanaians Photo Project
    • 650 USD or 800 USD for each Edit-a-thon or workshop
    • 650 USD for one Journalism School Engagement
    • 1,000 USD for virtual meetings and in-person strategy implementation
    • 2,000 USD for virtual meetings and preparations for the annual general meeting
    • 1,200 USD for meeting for training of the trainers (also how many trainers are expected here?)
  • Administrative and Communications Intern. The compensation for this position was 1,500 USD in the last budget and is 3,000 USD in this budget. May you please explain the difference between both expenses? It would be great to understand the amount of hours committed by this role.  

Collaboration with other Wikimedia entities in Ghana and regionally

Q: The committee is curious to learn how you have collaborated with other Wikimedia entities in Ghana over the last couple of years. And how do you plan on collaborating with other user groups, such as OFWA, Global Open Foundation Initiative, and Dagbani User Group? Likewise, how will you work with other African affiliates that are active on the topic of freedom of panorama, such as Wikimedia ZA?

A:

Multi-year grant request

Q: In the last two years, Wikimedia Ghana has consistently extended the project implementation period for various reasons, including not having capacity to implement some planned projects. May you explain the rationale for going for a multi-year grant when you may still need time to figure out consistent programming? Q:

Scaling down

Q: The committee recommends that you significantly scale down the requested grant amount, reduce replicating less impactful work (such as editing workshops) and focus on policy advocacy and upskilling of existing community members to build a strong base for more programmatic work the following year.

A:

Metrics

Q: May you elaborate on why there has been a decrease in the Wikidata metric from the previous year?

A:

Movement Strategy Implementation program

Q: The committee would like to learn how you plan on implementing this program.

Partnerships

Q: May you outline the strategy for developing partnerships - what areas of work are your partnerships contributing to and what does this contribution look like?

Policy Advocacy

Q: The committee appreciates that you are already pursuing significant advocacy opportunities through pre-existing relationships with the Ghanaian parliament. How do you plan to build on advocacy initiatives and lessons from the past year? How do you plan to “engage the public using created materials”? How do you plan to “engage allies to build coalitions and plan campaigns together”? What allies have you identified?

A:

Regarding the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by the 1st of May 2024. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision.

Thanks again for your work on the proposal and for supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, User: FElgueretly-WMF (talk) 10:49, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Additional request for list of trainers

Please find below the list of trainers:

• Justice Okai-Allotey - User:Owula kpakpo – Wikimedia Commons
• Robert Obiri - User:Robertjamal12 – Wikipedia and Incubator
• Mohammed Kamal-Deen Fuseini - User:Dnshitobu – Wikidata