Grants:PEG/User:Dimi z - WMBE/Start-up Grant - WMBE/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/User:Dimi z - WMBE/Start-up Grant - WMBE.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

YES

Is your project completed?

YES

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Wikimedia Belgium was founded photos (yey!)
The statutes of the organisation are available in EN and NL with professional translation
The statutes of the organisation have been professionally checked by NPO laywers for compliance with the Belgian law
There have been a number of planning and cooperation events preceding the founding to popularise the organisation (incl. Federal Parliament, Monuments Agency and European Commission)
We made it into national media [1][2][3][4] [5]
Opened bank account
Produced flyers and other information material
Managed to attract dozens of members during the first month
The founding process itself set up several cooperation projects (e.g. changing legislation with the Belgian Federal Parliament)
Had a fancy founding event in the Federal Parliament

Lessons learned

What worked well?

The final goal was achieved and we managed to save some of the cost due to cooperations with public institutions and other European Wikimedia chapters (Office for registration paid for by other chapters for the EU Policy project which made renting a PO Box unnecessary. The Belgian Federal Parliament hosted the founding event and sponsored the drinks. WMNL paid part of the printing cost for the information brochures.

What didn't work?

The timeframe and the exactly dedicated amounts of money. The former was mainly due to a change in Wikimedia Foundation policy and the need to appeal to the WMF board and the latter was a case of overplanning. We ended up spending money ourselves for things that could and should be covered by the grant (e.g. banners and information materials for the new chapter). The money was there, as catering and venue were sponsored by the Federal Parliament, but we didn't feel we have the time to request another reallocation due to the unstable timeframe.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

We planned the expenses with too much detail. I would leave the expense categories more open. E.g. Allocate amount to "founding event" and then keep the option to spend money on whatever is need most. This time around we had to pay our own money for producing flyers and banners although the money was there and unspent, as the catering and venue was sponsored.

Learning patterns

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.

The ultimate goal of this project is to successfully found Wikimedia Belgium and affiliate it as a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.

We gathered volunteers and together with them and the WMF AffCom worked out statutes and goals of the organisation. We received the WMF Board endorsement and thereupon registered a Belgian non-for profit membership organisation under the legal name "Wikimedia Belgium vzw/asbl".

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Legal approval of the statutes and bylaws of WMBE	fully achieved	Due to the prolonged timeframe it was necessary to extend the legal services subscription by another year.
Approval of the statutes and bylaws of WMBE by the Affiliations Committee	fullly achieved	Conflicts between the AffCom and the WMF Board were at times challenging and caused delay and frustration.
Translation of the statutes and bylaws in the three official federal languages of Belgium (NL, FR, DE) and English	NL<->en was done professionally during the affiliation process.	DE is a tiny minority language and translation cost is prohibitive. It turned out that the Brussels Capital Region doesn't require all the documents bilingually and that bilingual official documents are a legal risk, which is why we didn't pursue the official FR translation before registration. Having a FR translation is still a target, as it would be important for the linguistic balance of the organisation.
Legal registration of WMBE.	fully achieved
Affiliation of WMBE with the WMF.	WMF board resolution	Waiting for affiliation agreement from WMF legal. Change of rules toward the end of our affiliation process caused great frustration and risked tearing the community apart.
Support of and team-building for the WMBE team and volunteers to achieve the above goals.	We managed to attract and include new volunteers in the founding process.	There were member who became active again or newly attracted to WMBE when news of the WMF Board approval was made public. We received 11 requests for membership or interest in working together after coverage of the founding in national media.

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	ca. 20	Drafting statutes, organising founding event, writing up information materials, related events
2. # of new editors	0	Our aim was not to attract new online volunteers.
3. # of individuals involved	ca. 30	We estimate that around 1/3 of currently involved individuals are "offline contributors", i.e. people who want to help free knowledge, but don't edit Wikimedia projects online.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	0	Probably some, as media from events was uploaded, but this was not a target/goal.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	0	Probably some, as media from events was uploaded, but this was not a target/goal.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	0	Probably some, as media from events was uploaded, but this was not a target/goal.

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

This was a highly focused grant and project targeted at very technical and legal founding procedures. Having a founding event and being reported in the national media resulted in us being contacted by new volunteers and organisations who want to work with us.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

We received a request for cooperation by the European Commission Social Media and PR department. They want to work with us when they receive internal requests/complaints about Wikipedia/Wikimedia content. They'd like to contribute freely licensed content and editing power. We're currenlty looking into the best way to achieve this taking CoI issues into account.

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

We received requests for cooperation by two federal Belgian institutions. The Federal Monuments and Archives Agency wants to make a considerable picture donation and the Federal Parliament wants to modify copyright laws to address Freedom of Panorama issue in Belgium.

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

We made it into national media which reported on Wikimedia activites and its projects.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

NO

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Legal Aid	Belgian NGO Association Membership and Legal Fees	years	2	€100 €108,9 €248,05 €100	€556.95	305	The Belgian Association of NGOs (VSDC) offer heavily discounted legal help to its members. The annual fee is 100 Euro. We used the legal service twice to check the proposed statutes and bylaws against the Belgian law - once before and once after reworking them with the Affiliations Committee.
2	Events	Catering	meeting	3	€83.47 €64.6 €32.8	€180.87	400 (part of "Social")	Twice drinks and once dinner.
3	Travel	Travelling to meeting	train tickets	2	€17.4	€34.8	400 (part of "Social")	Brussels-Ghent and back by train (SNCB) for two people
4	Government Taxes for Funding	State Gazette	announcement	1	€181.38	€181.38	161.66	Fee for publishing the announcement of the foundation of Wikimedia Belgium in the Belgian State Gazette.
5	Translation of Statutes	NL-EN	translation of doucment	1	€574.22	€574.22	1003.07	Professional translation of founding legal document.
6	Bank Costs	Cost for creating "bank attestation" and an extra digipass		1	€30	€30	€0

Total: €1558.22

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)

€2209.73

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source)

€2209.73

Total amount spent on this project

€1558.22

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project

€1558.22 (70% of total budgetted)

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.

Part of the WLM Belux grant was added to this project

Remaining funds

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 1856.90 EUR.

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; yes

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

1856,9 EUR, made up of 651,78 EUR (Startup grant), combined with 1205,12 EUR of the WLM 2013 grant

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

We want to return the unused funds, as mixing two grants and opening a new bank account for WMBE (as a chapter) is getting complicated and confusing.