Dear Yohann,
Thanks for the mail. We created a sub-section in Grant page with Frequently
asked questions (FAQs) which covers responses for your questions. However,
during the last couple of days we improved the section further to make it
more helpful. I am pasting FAQs below in this mail for easy reference.
Also, Here are the links to FAQ section
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020#FAQs>[1]
and WCI 2020 grant proposal
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020>.[2]
You are welcome to make your comments on specific budget line items or/and
plan in the Grant proposal talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020>[3]
and from there it will be easy to take any helpful suggestions/feedback
forward towards improvement of grant proposal.
1. Why is the conference’s total budget significantly high, and also quite
varying the WCI 2016’s budget?
As one can observe form the budget table and specific budget items, there
are a lot of factors that went into calculation of the budget as a whole.
Also, there are several notable differences in the organisations of these
two conferences -- the ones which substantial affect on the budget are
detailed below;
*S.No.*
Category
WCI 2016
WCI 2020
Remarks
1
Total number of people directly supported from the conference budget
100
153
Entire cost of participation for a person from this category will be from
the conference budget. It includes full scholarship recipients, organisers
and additional invitees.
2
Number of days of the event
Three
Four
The proposed conference will have one pre-conference day, which will
include activities such as Learning Days, Hackathon, Thematic edit-a-thons
etc. followed by a 3-day main conference.
3
Accommodation & Venue
Educational institute
Hotel
WCI 2016 was hosted in an educational organization, and several community
members, including the first IRC conducted for WCI 2020, have mentioned
that they had faced difficulties with accommodation and related logistics.
To address this, WCI 2020 will be hosted in a hotel, however, we will have
partners in other areas. Previous organisers have also strictly recommended
against partnering with organisations for venue, as it created a lot strain
on volunteer organising and also for a huge conference such as this, the
on-ground needs are highly dynamic.
4
Event Management
partially paid
Outsource completely
Post-2016's conference, several of the organsers had gone through a
burn-out, which was caused by strain caused due to several aspects of
organising such as huge amount of tedious tasks, low budget, complicated
bureaucracy of the educational institute etc. To avoid such things, as one
of the goals is to make WCI a sustainable practice, a professional event
management personnel will be hired for a period of six months, who will
take of travel and accommodation arrangements on ground, working with
fiscal sponsor to complete necessary payments etc. This will let volunteers
to invest more time in programmatic and planning aspects, and also get off
any potential overload that this entire exercise poses.
5
Total number of participants
~200
~300
This includes all the participants mentioned for Serial 1; in addition to
those, there are components such as subsidised registrations, expenditure
on volunteers etc.
Apart from the above mentioned differences, other quite important points to
note are;
-
₹7,181,212.50 is the budget of the conference that goes into its actual
organising expenditure from this grant. Since it is a huge sum of money, it
can't be taken into individual accounts, and also since it is a foreign
fund, organisations handling the fund should be having FCRA (Foreign
Contribution Regulation Act) license, which is The Centre for Internet and
Society in this case. As an organisation, for their administrative expenses
and related tabs, they charge 10% of the budget, which is ₹718,121.25. It
is referred to as Fiscal sponsorship
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Fiscal_sponsorships> is a
general practice for grants from the Wikimedia Foundation.
-
In the report of WCI 2016, the organisers have explicitly stated that
the budget they had was insufficient and caused strain on the organisers,
leading to burn out of volunteers. So the amount of ₹33 lac may not be
considered as a sufficient budget for the 2016's conference as well.
Finally and most obviously, there is inflation from 2016 to 2020, which
makes certain budget items to have higher costs, irrespective of other
factors.
2. How much of the proposed budget will actually be spent?
-
Wikimedia movement thrives on donations -- keeping in view of that fact,
external sponsorship are being considered minimally spend the movement’s
money. For many of the budget items, the maximum possible costs have been
assumed. This purely to avoid last-minute strains and be on a safer side --
securing funds at a later stage, even if the need be, will only complicate
things for all stakeholders involved, including the organisers, WMF, and
CIS-A2K. However, only modest amounts will be spent, which ensures that
everyone participating in the conference has a smooth experience. The
remainder will either be sent back to WMF or reallocated to other community
activities, post-approval from WMF.
3. How will the transparency of spending be maintained?
-
As transparency is one of the core values of the Wikimedia movement,
especially when it comes to finances it is the key. In this regard, all
bills worth valuing more than ₹30,000.00 will be publicly published (unless
there is any confidential information) and linked to the final report on
expenditure. In addition, with the help of the Centre for Internet &
Society, the fiscal sponsor for the project, after all the transactions are
over with respective bills/receipts received, an audit will be conducted by
a registered auditor, who will certify the accounts. This report will be
publicly published.
Best Regards,
Pavan Santhosh.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/WikiConference_India…
On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 4:38 PM Yohann Thomas <yohannvt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi krishna
If my memory serves me right, Wikiconference India 2016 had a budget
around 33lakh INR. I haven't read the grant report yet, nor have I done a
comparison with the 2016 event.. But according to your previous email, is
having an event more than twice the budget of 2016 one, to almost 71lakh
Rs.. Is it really justified..
If yes.. What are you planning which is different from last times
conference?
Regards,
Yohann
On Wed, Feb 5, 2020, 2:58 PM Krishna Chaitanya Velaga <kcvelaga(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Bodhi,
Firstly, speaking of "1 crore 60 lakhs rupees" together might not be the
best way to look at it. I am not wrong, I am assuming that you are talking
about WikiWomen Camp, which is also happening in India. But that is
completely unrelated to WikiConference India, I mean in terns of budget,
goals and objectives. You might want to separately comment on each of them,
if you want to. To clarify the confusion for others, WikiConference India's
budget is ₹7,181,212.50 + additional fiscal sponsorship charge of ₹718,121.25
(10% of the budget). The former amount is that which goes into the spending
of the conference.
An amount could be spent on several other smaller projects, but every
type of program has its own importance. In terms of impact, a conference
may not have tangible or numerical metrics to be considered, but it does
have impact on communities and India as a whole. Even for this conference,
we are trying to make the goals as objective as possible. Components of the
conference such as content creation campaign beforehand, and a
Mini-Hackathon, will try to ensure that. Also since Capacity development
emerged out as the most required need of the hour from the Community
Engagement Survey, we have specific evaluation measures to see if it really
helped people.
You are most welcome to take your comments on regarding specific budget
items or the plan on the talk page, and it can be taken forward from there.
Regards,
KC
On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 12:12 PM Bodhisattwa Mandal <
bodhisattwa.rgkmc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Krishna,
Sorry to say, but as a volunteer, I can not find justification of
spending 1 crore 60 lakhs rupees on just two conferences happening one
after another. The amount is huge and beyond my imagination.
As a volunteer coming from West Bengal community which have always
worked on optimal budget and respected donation money, and yet delivered
consistent results through impactful projects each year, I find these
expenditure out of proportion. This money could have been otherwise spent
on several high impact projects for many years.
I cannot say on behalf of my entire community but, personally, from my
part, I cannot endorse this. Also, I guess, endorsement or opposition
doesn't matter nowadays and these proposals will eventually get approved,
in that case, I will not participate in the events in any capacity.
Sorry, if I sound too harsh, but that's only because English is not my
native language. I could have better expressed in my mother tongue.
Regards,
Bodhisattwa
(totally as a Wikimedia volunteer)
On Tue, 4 Feb 2020, 11:14 Dr. Manavpreet Kaur, <
dr.manavpreetkaur(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi
Great initiative. It's been 4 years since we all met and shared
experiences. This conference will also help us plan our future initiatives.
Best wishes!
Manav
On Tue, 4 Feb 2020, 08:41 Krishna Chaitanya Velaga, <kcvelaga(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I am happy to inform you we have submitted the Conference & Event
> Grant proposal for WikiConference India 2020
>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020>[1]
> to the Wikimedia Foundation. I kindly request all the community members to
> go through the proposal -- including the community engagement survey
> report, program plan, venue and logistics, participation and scholarships,
> and the budget + FAQs
>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020#FAQs>[2],
> and provide us with your suggestions/comments on the talk page
>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020>[3]
(also
> do read the FAQs section before making any comments related to the budget).
> You can endorse the proposal at
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020…,
please
> do add a rationale for endorsing this project.
>
> According to the timeline of Conference and Event Grants program,
> community can review from 3 February to 14 February 2020, post that we will
> start integrating all the received feedback to make modifications to the
> proposal. Depending on the response of community members, an IRC may be
> hosted next week, especially if there are many questions/concerns that need
> to be addressed.
>
> Let me know if you any questions.
>
> Regards,
> User:KCVelaga
>
> [1]
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020
> [2]
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020…
> [3]
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/WikiConference_India…
>
> [4]
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020…
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
--
Pavan Santhosh.