Grants:Metrics

This page is kept for historical interest. Any policies mentioned may be obsolete. If you want to revive the topic, you can use the talk page or start a discussion on the community forum.

People and organizations receiving Project Grants and Annual Plan Grants awarded by the Wikimedia Foundation are required to define measures of success and program objectives using metrics that capture the outcomes of their grants.

Rapid Grants, Conference & Event Grants, and Travel & Participation Support have their own program-specific requirements. If you have any of these grants, the information on this page does not apply to you; please check with your program officer for more information.

Requirement by grant program

Grant program	Date	Requirement
Project	Grants approved before September 2016	Report on the measures of success included in your proposal, as well as Global Metrics
Project	Grants approved after September 2016	Set and report measures of success as outlined in your proposal. Follow the new grant metrics requirement rather than Global Metrics.
Simple Annual Plan	Grants and applications for grants with start dates before January 1 2017	Report on program objectives as outlined in your application, as well as Global Metrics
Simple Annual Plan	Grants and applications for grants with start dates after January 1 2017	Set and report program objectives as outlined in your proposal. Follow the new grant metrics requirement rather than Global Metrics.
FDC Annual Plan	Grants and applications for grants with start dates before January 1 2017	Report on program objectives as outlined in your application, as well as Global Metrics
FDC Annual Plan	Grants and applications for grants with start dates after January 1 2017	Set and report program objectives as outlined in your proposal. Follow the new grant metrics requirement rather than Global Metrics.
PEG and IEG		Report on the measures of success included in your proposal, as well as Global Metrics

Grant metrics for Project Grants and Annual Plan Grants

Remember: If you should be reporting Global Metrics, this section does not apply to you. Please go to the #Global metrics resources and tools section at the end of the page.

Instructions for Project Grants

Grantees are required to include the following metrics:

3 shared metrics, which are reported across all Project and Annual Plan grants.
- If any of these metrics are not relevant to your grant, they may be removed or labeled "Not Applicable".
- If any of these metrics are relevant to your grant, but you do not have a specific target (perhaps because you have no baseline to set a target), notify your program officer. You may simply measure and report it in your report.
In addition, at least 2 grantee-defined measures that are relevant to the goals of the grant.

Instructions for Annual Plan Grants

Grantees are required to set program objectives for each program, and to include the following metrics aggregated across all programs:

3 shared metrics, which are reported across all Project and Annual Plan grants.
- If any of these metrics are determined not relevant to the grant in consultation with your program officer, they may be removed or labeled "Not Applicable" and substituted with an appropriate additional metric.
In addition, at least 2 grantee-defined measures that are relevant to the goals of the grant; you are free to include more if desired. These grantee-defined measures should be relevant to one or more of your programs.

This is a total of at least 5 metrics.

Three shared metrics

Metric

Definition

Tools & documentation

Total 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.

See the #What is a participant? section for more detail.

This metric may be calculated manually by headcount or a sign-in sheet.

Number of newly registered users

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.

Recommended tool & resource: Magic Button
Other tools & resources:

Number of content pages created or improved,
across all Wikimedia projects

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.

See the #What is a content page? section for more detail.

Recommended tools & resources:

For all projects except Commons: Magic Button
For Commons: GLAMorous 2

Other tools & resources:

Wikimetrics: Content pages created, disaggregated by Wikimedia project

+ Two grantee-defined measures

These measures (whether quantitative or qualitative) may be used to highlight outcomes not captured adequately by the shared metrics. These measures could capture the outcomes of a single program (e.g. one edit-a-thon), or a set of programs (e.g. a series of edit-a-thons); there is no preset list to choose from when selecting these measures.

See the additional resources for grantee-defined measures for help in finding and selecting measures that are relevant to your goals and activities, or consult your program officer.

Resources

Whom can you contact for help?

Please ask your program officer if you need help defining the appropriate metrics for your grant application, or if you need help reporting on your metrics. They may help you directly, or refer you to the Learning & Evaluation team for additional help.

What is a participant?

A "participant" is anyone who attends events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually.

However, for those have previously reported the "Individuals Involved" Global Metric, this definition of "Participant" is less broad than "Individuals Involved". Based on interviews and feedback from grantees, while there are many groups "involved" in an activity, each plays a role that is distinct from "participants". For this reason, we think it is helpful to capture participants as distinct from these other groups. If particularly relevant, other groups may be reported separately, perhaps in the grantee-defined measures.

If you are unsure of how to determine participants under this definition, please consult your program officer for advice specific to your events, programs or activities.

Here are some examples of other groups that may be involved with your work, but should not be included as participants:

Organizers. These are people who plan, coordinate, and execute an event, activity, or program.
- We recognize that it can be hard to make a clear distinction between organizers, volunteers, and participants. If you are struggling with this definition, please consult your program officer.
People who are reached by mass communication, such as:
- Social media (e.g. Facebook follower and likes, Twitter followers and re-tweets, page views of Vine or Youtube videos)
- Mailing list recipients
- Newsletter recipients
- People who received emails as a part of an outreach or advocacy campaign
- The audience of TV or radio shows, interviews, presentations, or advertisements
- The audience at a presentation or lecture given at an external (i.e. non-Wikimedia movement) conference
People who donate money or in-kind resources to support your activities.

What is a content page?

For the purpose of defining this metric, a "content page" is a page in the Main namespace (namespace 0), except on Commons where a "content page" refers only to pages in the File namespace (namespace 6). This metric should be reported as a single total; if desired, this metric can also be reported disaggregated by Wikimedia project. However, this disaggregation is not required.

For example, let's say participants at an edit-a-thon create 4 Wikipedia articles, improve 12 Wikipedia articles, upload 4 images to Commons, and add properties to 18 items on Wikidata.

The grantee should report 38 content pages new or improved across Wikimedia projects.
The grantee can also (but is not required to) report 16 created or improved articles on Wikipedia, 4 media uploaded on Commons, 18 items created or improved on Wikidata.

Additional resources for defining your measures

If you are considering collecting qualitative data through a survey, visit the Survey Support Desk.
To find out which metrics are typically used for common Wikimedia programs (e.g. Education program, GLAM, editathons, competitions), explore the program toolkits, or ask your grant program officer.
To find general information about measures for reach, participation and content, visit measures for evaluation.

Global metrics resources and tools

Global Metrics was a set of six metrics (and one question) that all grantees were required to report as of September 2014. It was reviewed from January to July 2016, and updated based on community feedback in August 2016.

Introduction to Global Metrics

Learn the history behind Global Metrics, and the 6 metrics that comprise Global Metrics.

Learn more

Calculate Global Metrics

First review the learning pattern on how to collect the Global Metrics.

We recommend using the following tools:

Additional resources

Wikimetrics is another tool to collect many of the Global Metrics. Use this Wikimetrics Training Overview if you're unfamiliar with the tool.

Many other tools are available in the Tool Directory and in the evaluation portal.