Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 1/Wikimedia Österreich/Impact report form
Purpose of the report
editThis form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.
Overview
editThe strategic direction for the Wikimedia Movement challenges us to rethink the Wikiverse, our place in it and who we are as an organisation. For Wikimedia Österreich this means building on our strenghts and putting them even more in the service of the wider movement. We have always defined ourselves as part of this wider movement and have contributed more than other organisations of our size to international initiatives. But seeing ourselves as part of the ecosystem of free knowledge where equity is key, pushed this even further, and became a mindset which is an integral part of how we plan, deliver and share our work. Some of our 2018 highlights in this regard were the co-creation of regional activities such as #Wikipedia vor Ort", fostering international platforms to exchange expertise around community health and support by hosting the Volunteers Supporters Network meeting in Vienna, and being a partner for marginalized groups in their important work to enhance visibility and agency in the internet by supporting inspiring activities such as Wikipedia for Peace. This mindset is also essential for our netpolitical activities, where - thanks to our national and international networks - we managed to make our voice heard and be part of a European movement for a free and open internet. Our governance reform of 2018 reflects this on an organisational level, where diversity and inclusion became enshrined in our bylaws and a distributed leadership model ensures broader participation.
2018 Highlight: Thank you letter by a Wikipedia for Peace participant who was sponsored by WMAT
I am writing you [...] to express my big gratitude for all the support you have shown to make my participation in the edit-a-thon in Stockholm last week a reality. [...] you gave me the opportunity to live a special human experience that I always wished for for years. As I have told the participants, this was the first gay pride I participate in. As a person who is directly concerned by the cause, this event gave me the space to express my ideas and opinions, be who I really am without any pressure or judgement, and be surrounded by amazing people who respect your personal choices and accept you with your difference. The parade demonstrated for me how many people in this world believe in the cause of LGBT+ rights and proved that what we’re doing in the Wikimedia LGBT+ User group is the right thing to do, and this is our way to contribute.
Thanks to the event and the rest of the participants, I have discovered new concepts while writing about them [...] and knew about amazing female leaders fighting for our cause while translating their articles
This event has inspired me as well to organize one similar in my country [...] and bring people to write about the issue in a place where LGBT community is marginalized and fighting every day.
So at the end, I want to thank you again for your support and for believing in me as an individual, and I wish that we collaborate soon in another project to make the rainbow shine colours even more in Wikipedia and related projects.
Metrics and results overview - all programs
edit- Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
- Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
- Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.
- Quality: The number of community decorations (featured, quality, valued) for media files supported by Wikimedia Österreich on Wikimedia Commons.
- Diversity: The number of unique participants and/or organizers of activities conducted or supported by Wikimedia Österreich who belong to underrepresented groups in the Wikimedia movement in Austria. These groups are defined as women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, persons belonging to ethnic, language or religious minorities in Austria, foreigners and people with disabilities.
Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Quality Diversity Goals for 2017–2018 (total for all programs) 3,500 600 160,000 10,000 1,000 Results until 2017-06-30 (total for all programs) 2,317 189 33,792 606 607 Results until 2017-12-31 (total for all programs) 7,131 347 94,234 891 892 Results until 2018-06-30 (total for all programs) 8,910 415 137,991 1,330 1,106 Results until 2018-12-31 (total for all programs) 12,244 744 267,319 1,728 1,686
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3,500
|
2,560
This is a sum of the older metrics of “active editors” and “new editors”. Whereas “organizers” within these groups need to be excluded, other “participants” from the former metrics group of “individuals” who were non-editors need to be included. In 2014, we counted only new editors, not active editors, so the actual number might be a bit higher than 2,560. |
Results by activity:
6 + 1 + 14 + 34 + 200 + 45 + 25 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 48 + 1 + 1 + 24 + 55 + 9 + 6 + 11 + 27 + 9 + 9 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 50 + 17 + 150 + 22 + 7 + 29 + 7 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 85 + 34 + 25 + 10 + 8 + 9 + 4 + 257 + 45 + 34 + 20 + 5 + 24 + 335 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 6 + 2 + 20 + 7 + 10 + 17 + 50 + 14 + 330 + 14 + 80 + 7 + 6 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 8 + 17 + 10 + 1 + 10 + 4 + 283 + 2 + 4 + 2537 + 7 + 32 + 27 + 8 + 7 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 2 + 113 + 8 + 26 + 60 + 15 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 5 + 9 + 1 + 21 + 20 + 7 + 12 + 60 + 1000 + 30 + 1 + 38 + 25 + 30 + 6 + 5 + 1 + 2 + 220 + 46 + 38 + 2 + 7 + 8 + 3 + 5 + 25 + 12 + 1 + 12 + 30 + 10 + 3 + 3 + 7 + 15 + 9 + 13 + 6 + 7 + 5 + 2 + 1 + 25 + 1 + 33 + 12 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 8 + 6 + 3 + 5 + 50 + 120 + 12 + 11 + 1 + 4 + 4 + 8 + 5 + 4 + 9 + 16 + 5 + 10 + 3 + 40 + 23 + 14 + 7 + 403 + 31 + 39 + 6 + 9 + 4 + 6 + 4 + 77 + 14 + 2 + 22 + 50 + 1 + 8 + 40 + 18 + 15 + 20 + 7 + 5 + 4 + 14 + 50 + 300 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 17 + 9 + 80 + 11 + 30 + 10 + 250 + 194 + 5 + 10 + 7 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 8 + 14 + 1 + 9 + 200 + 180 + 34 + 8 + 864 + 3 + 309 + 70 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 8 + 4 + 23 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 37 + 8 + 10 + 2 + 193 + 21 + 50 + 17 + 6 + 2 + 2 + 9 + 9 + 3 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 6 + 46 + 480 = 12,244 |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 600
|
448
|
Results by activity:
14 + 34 + 32 + 20 + 18 + 45 + 10 + 16 + 12 + 6 + 7 + 30 + 8 + 21 + 6 + 16 + 23 + 27 + 2 + 9 + 2 + 3 + 53 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 5 + 13 + 4 + 63 + 201 + 1 + 3 + 22 + 6 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 744 |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 160,000
Content pages by Wikimedia project (expected): |
144,572
This is a sum of two of our former metrics, concerning new or improved article pages in Wikimedia projects and new media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. |
208,616 new media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons from 2017-01-01 to 2018-12-31 + 24,025 different pages in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects using media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons from 2017-01-01 to 2018-12-31 + other results by activity: 5 + 72 + 48 + 22 + 1258 + 11 + 29 + 1 + 4 + 2216 + 777 + 1 + 25 + 5726 + 1 + 11 + 1 + 120 + 3 + 1 + 804 + 5 + 10 + 60 + 2 + 1008 + 15 + 7 + 1 + 399 + 3 + 1 + 925 + 11 + 3189 + 1 + 17 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 47 + 885 + 1 + 1 + 213 + 8 + 84 + 2 + 1 + 9394 + 721 + 40 + 2 + 2 + 26 + 715 + 604 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 5 + 31 + 23 + 1 + 2 + 7 + 1 + 566 + 14 + 32 + 498 + 9 + 54 + 1 + 3876 = 267,319 |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000
|
8,255
|
Community decorations for media files on Wikimedia Commons uploaded from January 2017 to December 2018:
= 1,728 |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000
|
–
No numbers from previous years as this is a new metric we did not track before. |
Results by activity:
9 + 25 + 100 + 42 + 1 + 13 + 4 + 10 + 17 + 14 + 22 + 3 + 29 + 230 + 11 + 3 + 9 + 26 + 4 + 13 + 21 + 2 + 16 + 2 + 66 + 1 + 6 + 9 + 9 + 6 + 60 + 1 + 15 + 9 + 18 + 1 + 19 + 17 + 25 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 6 + 13 + 14 + 2 + 6 + 5 + 3 + 8 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 16 + 10 + 6 + 36 + 7 + 6 + 15 + 4 + 16 + 20 + 1 + 1 + 11 + 11 + 50 + 2 + 3 + 80 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 5 + 11 + 5 + 1 + 83 + 50 + 1 + 4 + 54 + 4 + 16 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 6 + 1 + 12 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 180 = 1,686 |
Telling your program stories - all programs
editCommunity Support
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- A diverse community of volunteers with a wide range of skills, a desire to continually improve their work together and that offers a constructive working environment to existing and new users.
What did we achieve so far?
Newcomers, diversity and inclusion
As outlined in our last report, our expert group for diversity and newcomers co-created a bunch of actions which are designed for newcomer recruitment and retention: Thanks to these new ideas but also long-standing projects in the context of our educational work at universities, and last but not least the increased focus on newcomers and their needs at large and across our activities, we managed to increase the number of newcomers by 15% compared to 2017. This number is even more impressive if we take into account that many newcomers in 2017 came as a result of the Hackathon and related pre-events, in 2018 we did not have an event of a comparable magnitude. There was also no major increase of the overall number of activities (19 in 2017 compared to 20 in 2018) which implies that the effectiveness of our work has improved in this regard. The best example is WikiDaheim, where the number of newcomers doubled compared to 2017 (see infographic). We also managed to retain our high level of diversity metrics, as diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our newcomer work. Regarding newcomer retention, we believe that this metric fails to measure the full scope of the impact newcomer work has - some aspects (e.g. behavioral changes) are impossible to put into numbers, some others (e.g. volunteer involvement beyond editing) are hard to count or we are missing the tools do so, and some are long-term effects (e.g. students who learn to appreciate an open approach to science and online collaboration) that will only be effective in years from now. Hence, for 2019, we decided to change the definition of the metric, but like other affiliates we will probably drop it completely in the long run, if it won't help us assess our work in a meaningful way.
International cooperation
| “ |
As Sir Isaac Newton once said: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants'. Coming from a developing country and developing user group, the way to learning and success is by standing on the shoulder of giants. For us one of these giants has been WMAT: For a long time they have been supporting us wholeheartedly to let us grow; we have been relying on WMAT for many things. They have been helping us whenever we were alone. WMAT is a giant that you can rely on |
” |
— Mohsen Salek | ||
As mentioned in the report summary above, we believe that by endorsing the strategic direction of the Wikimedia movement we also have a responsibility to facilitate the implementation of the strategy on an international and local level. WMAT assigned staff and volunteer resources to contribute to the strategy working groups and supports international cooperation around those topics. WMAT also hosted two international working meetings: the ED meeting in June and the Volunteer Supporters Network meeting in November.
We increased staff resources for international fiscal sponsorships by supporting support CEE Spring and WLM International. We also provided small scale support for communities without staff and yearly budgets by sponsoring the creation of information material or swag, e.g. for newcomer initiatives of the Farsi community or the anniversary of the Romanian-language Wikipedia. In addition, supported volunteers from countries without support structures to attend the Wikipedia for Peace edit-a-thon at EuroPride Stockholm, particularly from countries where LGTB+ communities face repression and marginalization. As the only local host of the Wikidata Train the Trainers series, we also chose an international approach and held the workshop in English and invested in the translation of resources, in order to invite interested community members from CEE countries.
This is only a fraction of meaningful contributions we could have made in the last year, we went to the limits of what an organization of our size can do, but the need for support and infrastructure certainly goes beyond this. One of our hopes and goals for the strategy process is to create a future Wikiverse, where solidarity and "co-volution" - the peer-assisted development of communities and affiliates - is not the exception but the rule.
What are our biggest challenges?
Community leadership
The introduction of expert groups at WMAT aims at attaining sustainable stability in our human resources and to avoid burning out volunteers and staff. Nevertheless, we believe that in may instances there is still a lot of responsibility on only a few shoulders and that we need to continue to seek additional expertise and support outside of the existing core group - a process that needs more than a couple of months to produce sound results. This pattern has its equivalent in the international movement, as we can witness many similar issues around the strategy working groups. There is also always the eternal question of how much staff and/or financial support a project should have in the long run, before it is expected to be self-sufficient. In the light of equity, we probably need to adjust our approaches and perspectives in this regard, accepting that some initiatives take longer or might never be able to sustain themselves, but the goal they serve might make the continued investment nevertheless worthwile.
What's up next?
EuroPride in Vienna
The next edition of EuroPride will be hosted in Vienna, the perfect occasion for us to invite the community leaders of Wikipedia for Peace to Vienna, to celebrate and edit LGTB+ topics together and to come up with international strategies to support diversity and inclusion in the movement.
New support guidelines
The scope of our community support has changed over the past years, including a broader and more international definition of community support which is also aligned with the new strategic direction. Hence, we started a revision of our support guidelines with the board and our staff and volunteers, to have a discussion around issues such as who should be able to get support, how we document and measure results, as well as aspects of thriftiness and ecology. The results are due in spring 2019.
WikiCon 2019
WMAT supported the application of the Tyrolean community to host the WikiCon 2019 - the biggest community event in the German-speaking Wikiverse. However, two local volunteers had to reduce their commitment due to personal circumstances and together with the reduced staff capacity on our side (see program 3 for more information) this was reason enough for us to withdraw WMAT's application to host the event. However, we will of course promote the 2019 event in Wuppertal with the regular level of financial and staff support.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community leadership: There are 200 volunteer organizers of activities supported by us. | ~ 150
This is the estimated number of volunteer organizers based on a review of our reports in the last two years. The activities were organized by approximately 30 unique organizers. |
Results by activity:
1 + 4 + 1 + 3 + 9 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 8 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 8 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 8 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 8 + 4 + 7 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 14 + 1 + 17 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 5 + 11 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 5 + 12 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 22 + 1 + 3 + 12 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 16 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 14 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 13 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 11 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 7 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 34 + 12 + 1 + 1 + 13 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 18 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 17 + 1 + 3 + 7 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 18 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 13 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 34 + 12 = 580 | |
| Community motivation: At least 80% of the participants of community surveys agree that our activities contribute to motivating them for their online work. | 84%
According to our community survey in Q2/2016. |
86% according to our community survey in June 2017 and 83% according to our community survey in June 2018. | |
| Community retention: 40 new editors edit Wikimedia projects at least 5 times every 4 weeks during a time span of 12 weeks after registering. | Our former metrics concerning user retention included “number of new editors that edit a Wikimedia project after four weeks after their registration” (2016) and similar less ambitious definitions than the new one. | Results by activity: |
Free Content
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- Generating, opening, and distributing multifaceted and valuable content that fascinates and engages Wikimedia volunteers, partners, and readers alike.
What did we achieve so far?
Quantity and quality of media files
2018 was a highly productive year for our photography community: The second half of the year displaced the previous six months as the most productive half-year we had so far. Reasons are the higher number of uploaded files in the context of WikiDaheim as well as some outstandingly productive sport event photography projects in neighbouring countries, which we supported with equipment. However, as described in previous reports, WMAT's main focus concerning content is not the quantity alone, but also to make it as high-quality and valuable as possible. The main criteria being the quality of the content (e.g. decorated images), the added value for Wikimedia projects (e.g. encyclopedic value of rare pictures or documents / usage in Wikimedia projects), and the added value for free knowledge in general, such as new partnerships and contacts or an increased awareness for free licenses in cooperations to liberate content. As outlined in previous reports, the quality metrics remain pretty good in comparison with other affiliates, but problematic in comparison to our goals, due to the changes in our community in the wake of various conflicts.
WikiDaheim
The second year of WikiDaheim showed the true potential of the project: While the first edition was still work in progress in many regards (particularly form a technological perspective, given that a brand new interface had to be created), the 2018 edition was a refined version, that benefited hugely from the iterative project approach. This is also reflected in the results: Apart from the increased number of participants and newcomers (see program 1 above), the number of files also doubled (see infographic in program 1). Despite this considerable increase, the percentage of file usage could be retained at the level of the previous year (around 11% of distinct files) as a result of the focus on content gaps which is part of the WikiDaheim design. We are also happy to see, that WikiDaheim produces higher quality results than the average project: The overall average 2018 is 837 community decorations for 141.081 media files (0,59%), while WikiDaheim produced 298 community decorations for 14.712 media files (2,03%).
Diversification
As a result of our international work (initiatives such as Wikipedia for Peace, joint CEE initiatives etc.) as well as the targeting of new communities in Austria (e.g. Wikidata) we can see a diversification of content contributions in our communities since last year. While in the past we mainly contributed to DE:WP and Commons, more and more content is now added to Wikidata and other Wikipedias as we connect people, ideas, and often also resources across communities and borders (mainly in CEE languages as a result of our intensified cooperation in this region). In addition, we increased efforts to transfer our successful work from the past into the Wikidata era, e.g. by creating extensive data sets for all Austrian monuments based on the work around the monuments lists in the past.
What are our biggest challenges?
Spending per project / volunteer
Currently, there is no clear alignment of money spend on a project and the output/outcome when it comes to micro grants for photography projects and the existing grants often go to same usual suspects. We have some phenomenal results with minimal support (e.g. accreditation, equipment) and some comparable or less successful projects which come with relatively big budgets. While we still believe that individual volunteers should not be assessed in terms of productivity, we also believe it is not ideal if only a few volunteers use big parts of our budget. Especially, given that growing the number of active volunteers will probably further increase the demand for micro-funding in future. We hope that the introduction of expert groups who also have a say on budgets which relate to their area of expertise (in this case our Commons working group) will help in this regard. So far however, the spending patterns, while being critically discussed in the Commons group, have not been fundamentally challenged.
Social media for photo contests
While we traditionally use facebook and twitter to engage especially new contributors for photo contests and activities, it becomes increasingly clear that photo communities have moved to instagramm, the engagement level on facebook in last year's campaign was at an all time low. Wiki Loves Monuments International shows in an impressing manner how Instagramm can serve as a powerful tool to promote our work in this field and get new people interested. However, we currently lack the experience and bandwidth (both on the side of volunteers and staff) to design and execute a strategy for instagramm and to maintain yet another communication channel. The landscape of social media is ever changing, keeping up with it and building the necessary skills quite a challenge sometimes.
What's up next?
WikiDaheim goes Structured Data
WikiDaheim 2019 will be the first 'Wiki Loves…'-style campaign that will run with Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. For WikiDaheim 2019, the campaign UploadWizard (UW) and campaign organization process are updated to use structured data in such a way that, by the end of 2019, other campaign organizers can learn from this, and start using structured data as well. The goal is that the renewed custom UploadWizard, resulting from this pilot, can be easily set up by other Wikimedians to use in their own projects and campaigns.
DACH portal for Wikimedians in Residence (WiR)
The increased interest by GLAM partners in Wikimedians in Residence have been mentioned in several of our former reports. As this trend goes beyond Austria and also because the pool of potential candidates is not limited by national borders either, we decided to team up with WMDE and WMCH and set up a joint portal for WiRs: to gather important information and resources, to share open positions and to have an overview of former, current and potentially interested WiRs from our communities.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Earlier results for two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Useful content: 14,000 additional distinct media files supported by Wikimedia Österreich used in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects. | 12,210 | 5607 + 304 + 270 + 182 + 318 + 351 + 660 + 1025 + 889 + 888 + 961 + 303 + 226 = 11,984 | |
| Versatile content: Retaining the average usage of the distinct media files mentioned above on at least 2 main namespace pages. | No numbers from previous years as this is a new metric we did not track before. As of 2016-06-30 the number of total file usages was about 2 times higher than the number of distinct file usage. | 24,777 (total usages of files uploaded from 2017-01-01 to 2018-12-31 in main namespace; 12,102 + 648 + 947 + 395 + 554 + 720 + 2310 + 1872 + 1780 + 1767 + 532 + 703 + 447) ÷ 11,984 (distinct files uploaded from 2017-01-01 to 2018-12-31 used in main namespace) = 2.1 |
Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness
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- Creating collective impact on a societal level by working with and through others to achieve a greater impact than we could ever achieve alone.
What did we achieve so far?
| “ |
Wikimedia recognizes the immense importance of distributing free content with digital technology, often by dedicating personal resources to the cause; that deserves our recognition and respect. |
” |
— Maximilian Schubert, Secretary General Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA), President of EuroISPA | ||
#WikipediaVorOrt
Wikimedia Austria, Germany, and Switzerland co-designed a common campaign for all three countries, promoting simultaneous local open house events on the same day in October in many cities across the region, where interested Wikipedia readers could meet our communities, and learn how Wikipedia & Co. work. The campaign was a major success - the events were packed with interested visitors from Hamburg, to Stuttgart, to Zurich. In Austria we hosted two afternoon events in Linz and Vienna with about 100 visitors in total and interested journalists from newspapers and radio. The event was accompanied by a information banner campaign on Wikipedia. The initiative is also a great example for inter-chapter collaboration on a common issue, and how pooling resources can magnify the quality, scale and scope of a project.
Online volunteering cooperation with other NPOs
One way to raise awareness for online volunteering and to recruit new contributors is to collaborate with other volunteer organisations and convincing them to implement online volunteering in their portfolio. In 2018 - thanks to efforts from our colleagues from WMUK - we collaborated with the Austrian chapter of Amnesty International. We also started a successful initiative with one of the biggest volunteer organisation in the German-speaking world Caritas, the results of which will be available for the next progress report.
Advocacy
The progress towards our shared goals on EU advocacy is outlined on the meta page of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group (FKAGEU). On 1 July, Austria took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, just days before the European Parliament voted on the current draft on the copyright reform, including relevant changes for Wikimedia such as “upload filters” (Art. 13) and the press publishers right (Art. 11). WMAT used the fortunate timing of Katherine Maher's visit end of June in the context of the ED meeting and held a press event and to raise awareness for the issue, together with partners from the Austrian netpolitical scene. We continued our efforts to raise awareness in the general public and to convince MEPs not to support the draft. Events (which we co-hosted with our partner organisations in Austria) and social media became our most powerful tools in this regard, as it became increasingly clear that many newsoutlets which are owned by publishing houses (who advocate for the current draft) were not able to report on the matter in an unbiased an appropriate manner.
What are our biggest challenges?
Staffing strategy - resource sharing
Wikimedia Austria successfully applied for a subsidized staff member, a full time Administrative Assistant. The funding was granted as part of a job program for people over 50 years and the costs for the salary would be completely covered by the Austrian State for a period of 1,5 years. Unfortunately, we needed to end the employment prematurely in October 2018, because of irreconcilable differences. Despite our efforts to embrace the diversity in our workforce regarding age and background, we had to accept for the first time in our history that a new hire is not a good fit for our organisation and had to act accordingly. This was certainly also the result of a somewhat rushed hiring process, as the Austrian government cut the job program over night, which is also the reason why the post could not be replaced within this program for the remaining eight months. Given the commitments WMAT took on to deliver administrative support for international initiatives (WLM International, CEE Spring, Movement Strategy Process), this change was challenging for a lean organisation like ours. Hence, we decided to stock up our work force with a mini job, which helped us to tackle the most important tasks without burning out the remaining staff members and enabling an early soft come-back for our colleague on maternity leave. In addition, we stopped taking on new bigger projects, scrutinzed exisiting activities, and reduced weekend shifts as much as possible by re-designing some of our approaches (e.g. using exisiting platforms such as WikiTuesday evenings more for in-person community consultations instead of making them weekend events).
Diversifying funds
As outlined previously, diversifyig funds is one of our biggest problems, due to donors culture and regulations for tax-deductability in Austria. 2018 was a particularly challenging this regard (as you can see in the numbers for financial donations below), as there was no WMF fundraising campaign in Austria. After not having direct access to banners for fundraising, this indirect way of making potential donors aware of our existence and the work we do, is basically the only viable way for us to generate uncommitted funds. Particularly now, where - as a result of GDPR regulations - we had to delete most of the historic donor data. To find another way to promote it very broad and prominently we looked into in-kind support by a marketing or communication agency to support us with a suitable campaign or a cooperation with the advertising companies for Viennese public transport. One idea was to have a content cooperation, where we deliver fun facts and other Wikipedia content and get a fundraising banner after each contribution. Despite many meetings (some of them quite promising) we could not get a deal with either of the companies. As a result, we consider this a lost case so far as we do not have the necessary man and woman power to further pursue this. The new government of Austria has also been cutting many public funding schemes for social justice initiatives and reshifted science and technology funds (of the latter we had several grants around the Open Data Portal over the past few years) which will probably also make it harder for us in future to diversify on this level too.
What's up next?
Advocacy
Together with partners from the Netpolitical Evenings, we also have some first ideas to advocate for more public open practice in Austria, especially for free licenses for public broadcasting content. Due to our capacity contraints in the second half of 2018, we needed to postpone some of our activities in this regard, but we hope to resume our cooperation in 2019.
The European Parliament will vote on the copyright reform in March 2019 and there will be increased activities on a national and European level in the weeks and months beforehand, which will demand our attention and support.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Baselines / Earlier results |
Proposed milestones _ and results _ until 2017/06/30, 2017/12/31, 2018/06/30 and 2018/12/31 | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainable outreach network: 3,000 individuals reached with permanent online channels (newsletter and social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). | Baseline as of 2016/06/30: 2,092 Results until 2016/12/31: |
3,411 individuals reached:
| |
| Committed supporters: 170 (passive) supporting association members (without voting rights). | Baseline as of 2016/06/30: 0 Results until 2016/12/31: |
A total of 13 supporting association members, 2 of them gained in 2017 and 7 in 2018. | |
| Sustainable partnerships: Gaining 34,000 EUR in-kind donations from partner organizations. | Definite results for 2015: 16,420 Expected results for 2016: Definite results for 2016: |
Gained 35,800 EUR in-kind donations. |
Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)
editPlease use the exchange rate in your APG proposal. Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan FDC grant EUR 265,000 - 147,594 110,197 257,791 295,382 287,347 First installment is lower, as remained funds from last year's CEE spring were deducted. Membership fees EUR 6,000 - 3,021 120 3,141 6,688 3,501 Campaign to attract supporting members not successful. Donations EUR 20,000 - 11,047 6,122 17,169 22,293 19,137 No WMF fundraiser in 2018, this is the most effective way for us to attract direct donations. In-kind donations EUR 16,000 - 7,810 18,000 17,834 20,064 CEE spring grant EUR 9,455 - 4,717 4,717 10,539 5,258 Second installment was not necessary WLM International Grant EUR 15,968 - 15,968 15,968 17,799 17,799 WMAT is fiscal sponsor of WLM International, second installment only due in 2019 FFG Grant Data Market Austria EUR 7,293 - 7,293 7,293 8,129 8,129 Financial support for the Open Data Portal EUR 2,500 - 2,500 2,500 2,787 2,787 Interests EUR - - 27,92 27,92 - 31,12
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)
editPlease use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan Staff expenses EUR 140,000 - 68,510 75,296 143,806 156,051 160,293 103% The subsidized full-time person left earlier than planned, we created a mini-job for administrative tasks instead. Because of the maternity leave of one of our staff members we also had an overlap of 1 month for her and her replacement, which created a double salary for that month. Operations EUR 40,500 - 19,708 19,916 39,624 45,143 44,167 98% Community Support EUR 72,500 - 33,727 34,440 68,167 80,812 75,972 94% Free Content EUR 45,000 - 10,091 28,949 39,040 50,160 43,516 87% Reach /Free Knowledge Awareness EUR 19,000 - 7,834 9,413 17,247 21,178 19,224 91% CEE Spring EUR 9,455 - 790 3,008 3,798 10,539 4,233 40% Only first installment was needed, second installment was not used. WLM International EUR 15,968 - 0 0 17,799 0 0% Project only started end of 2018. TOTAL EUR 326,455 - 140,660 171,022 311,682 363,883 347,416 95%
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Compliance
editIs your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?
editAs required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
- No changes
Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Signature
edit- Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
- --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 20:26, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Resources
editResources to plan for measurement
edit- Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
- Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
- Importantly, both qualitative and quantitative measures are important so consider both as you determine measures for your evaluation and be sure to ask the right questions to be sure to capture your program stories.
Resources for storytelling
edit- WMF storytelling series and toolkit (DRAFT)
- Online workshop on Storytelling. By Frameworks institute
- The origin of storytelling
- Story frames, with a focus on news-worthiness.
- Reading guide: Storytelling and Social change. By Working Narratives
- The uses of the story.
- Case studies.
- Blog: 3 Tips on telling stories that move people to action. By Paul VanDeCarr (Working Narratives), on Philanthropy.com
- Building bridges using narrative techniques. By Sparknow.net
- Differences between a report and a story
- Question guides and exercises.
- Guide: Tools for Knowledge and Learning. By Overseas Development Institute (UK).
- Developing a strategy
- Collaboration mechanisms
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Capturing and storing knowledge.