Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Benin Annual Grant 2024 - 2025

Proposal Feedback for Submitted GSF Application

Dear Wikimedians of Benin User Group,

Thank you for submitting your application. The regional funding committee and regional program officers and expert staff reviewed your application and have the following questions and feedback for your response;

● We found that the proposal would have benefitted from better preparation - in the review, it felt rushed and not well thought through in terms of answering the question - what is informing the affiliate in identifying the proposed projects for funding?

● We find it important that you establish a theory of change to inform what programs and supporting activities need to be done. In other words - why are you doing all the proposed campaigns and in an year?

● We are keen to know - where the activities will take place.

● We generally find that the proposal to implement the shared activities ambitious - given previous activities done and beyond the limitations of rapid funds.

● We would like to know how the proposal was developed - how was the community involved in the development of this proposal?Please share documentation on the same.

● We see you are interested in ensuring healthy governance and are curious on how you plan to measure progress on the same including on aspects of transparency and accountability.

● We see a lack of efficiency in your approach to resourcing including on items like printing , social media and some of the proposed roles - there is repeated costs and also overlap in mandate.

● We see you have roles included in the proposal and are keen to understand how those were agreed upon and especially for the paid roles. Additionally, who are the volunteers in the core-team that actively inform the decision making process.

● We see you have an RWIC education program and would like to know who are the certified trainers you will be working with?

● Please update the timelines of your proposal to reflect January 2025 - December 31st 2025. The grant term of all requests from this round begin anytime from January 1st 2025.

● On policy work ;

○ One of the concerns’ highlighted by an expert reviewer is that the Grant application has a really strong focus on policy work, but it is not clear that the organization has a strategy for addressing this: events and activities are focused on existing programmatic activities that don't correspond with this policy work, additionally they have checked all of the types of policy work.

● Here is feedback from the Global Advocacy team that we are aligned with;

○ No to funding the proposed advocacy work

○ Rational: The user group’s plans identify core public policy priorities for the Wikimedia movement such as copyright reform and legislation that promotes free speech online. However, at present the advocacy areas that they outlined are too ambitious and therefore not achievable. The application mainly highlights the desire to build a broad program rather than to target a specific legislation. The Benin group has never engaged with Wikimedia advocacy initiatives before and are now proposing to work on multiple ambitious topic areas that range from digital infrastructure to free speech and copyright. These initiatives - particularly those related to education or to expand Internet access in rural and marginalized areas - are outside the scope of the advocacy grant funding criteria. We would like to see the user group identify 1-2 of these areas and provide detailed information about how they plan to advocate for these issues. We would also encourage them to consider first joining existing policy advocacy campaigns so they can learn with and from other Wikimedians who are pursuing similar objectives, such as the Ghana Polls Project (Open Foundation West Africa) to merge media literacy goals with the topic of disinformation which many governments are concerned about, Wiki Loves Broadcast campaign that promotes access to information, or the campaign that Creative Commons is running (with participation from many Wikimedians) to push UNESCO to produce a recommendation on open culture and heritage, which builds on the success of the campaign that led to the recommendation on open educational resources. Details we’re looking for include:

■ Are there any bills that have already been proposed related to copyright and public domain law, or open data policies, or free speech?

■ What government entities and relevant parties in Benin do they plan to engage for copyright reform work, and how?

■ How will they work towards government data openness? What opportunities or existing relationships do they plan to leverage? If none, how do they plan to build these?

● Lastly, please review your metrics and provide more details. For instance what makes up the participant number ? What Wikipedias will you be contributing to? Additional details will be informed by clarity on knowing what you will measure to give an indication of progress on the strategic programs you will work on. The metrics should be clear - measurable and can be tracked to allow for comparison.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you on the comments shared and if you would like to meet with the regional funding committee, please inform the program officer.

On behalf of the regional funding committee and staff Aristidek5maya (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)