Grants:PEG/Program resources/Edit-a-thons/Sample Proposal

This is a sample proposal. While it is based on real examples, some details have been changed.

statusproposed

Project & Event Grants

Women in Science Edit-a-thon Series

Design a series of edit-a-thons to improve content about women in STEM and to encourage female editors.

targetEnglish Wikipedia

strategic priorityquality

start dateOctober 1, 2014

start yearplease add a start year

end dateDecember 30, 2014

end yearplease add a end year

budget (USD)620 USD

grant typeindividual

creator• AWang (WMF)

contact(s)• example@example.org

organization• not applicable

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created onAugust 25th, 9pm, EST

friendly space expectations

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Tip: Read! Check out the Proposal Guidelines and the edit-a-thon Program Resources before writing your grant proposal.

Tip: Plan ahead! The start date must be in the future. Please note that it can take 6-8 weeks from the date of submitting your proposal to actually receiving your funds. The end date should allow enough time after the completion of the project to conduct any measurement and evaluation activities.

Project goal

The goal of this project is to pilot a series of three edit-a-thons designed to improve content on the English Wikipedia about women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields and to encourage college-aged women to edit those articles through a partnership with the Loyola Women in Science and Math (WISAM) group. It will also train a group of young women to edit and enable them to edit on their own. The ultimate goal is to create a model for similar programs at other institutions. (Note: Men who are interested in writing about women scientists will of course be welcome, but the event will be targeted to women.)

Tip: Be concise! Project goals should be short and framed in relation to our strategic priorities of increasing reach, participation, and quality.

Project plan

Activities

October

Develop and implement outreach plan: social media announcements, email WISAM group, post flyers in STEM buildings.
Create wiki page and curate list of articles to create/improve.
Develop and organize editing training materials.
Work with librarian to prepare reference materials.
Develop measurement and evaluation plan (Wikimetrics to track editor contribution/retention and surveys after each edit-a-thon).
Confirm food/drink details.

November

Host edit-a-thon #1 (November 3).
Review contributions and weekly follow-up with participants on-wiki, offering support.
Begin to track participants in Wikimetrics. Analyze survey responses. Adjust workshop according to survey feedback.
Update list of articles to create/improve, update references.
(repeat above activities for following edit-a-thons)
Host edit-a-thon #2 (November 23).

December

Host edit-a-thon #3 (December 15)
Continue to track participants in Wikimetrics.
Create plan for future edit-a-thons and trainings and how to continue to engage our new editors!

Tip: Details! Activities should include what will be done to achieve the project goal. Helpful details include a timeline of activities, roles and responsibilities for volunteers, draft agenda and participant list for meetings, etc.

Impact

Target audience

English Wikipedia and women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

Fit with strategy

This project addresses two strategic priorities, participation and quality, with its dual focus on creating high-quality content and high-quality contributors. By providing a regular space for people to contribute, along with a clear goal for each session, these workshops will encourage new contributors to return and learn new skills each time. Since the sessions will be advertised to women and focus on writing about women, it is likely that the majority of participants will be female. Using incentives like t-shirts to motivate a college-aged population (attracted by free stuff) to return for more than one session will also help to cultivate regular contributors. The focus of each workshop will be writing at least one new article about a woman scientist, so everyone can experience the effervescent collaboration that makes Wikipedia wonderful and so that content can be checked, ensuring that the articles that get moved to mainspace are of good quality.

Tip: Focus! Projects with a focus on addressing one strategic priority have a higher chance of success. Is your goal to train new editors? Is it to turn new editors into active editors? Is it to create a few high quality articles about a specific topic? Pick one area to focus on and develop your activities and measures of success around that priority.

Measures of success

I will consider the project successful if:

At least 15 people attend each event
At least 12 of the participants are women
At least 10 people attend more than one event at Loyola during second semester
At least 8 editors edit outside of an event throughout the pilot
At least 5 editors are active editors (>5 edits/month) 3 and 6 months after the last edit-a-thon.
At least 8 women are trained to teach Wikipedia skills to others throughout the whole pilot
Between all of the events, 15 articles will be brought to DYK and at least one important article will be brought to GA on the English Wikipedia.

I will use Wikimetrics to track editor activity and retention and Qualtrics to conduct surveys.

Tip: Measure and evaluate! Check out the Program Resources for sample metrics. Let us know if you're not sure what or how to measure and evaluate. We can help.

Resources and Risks

Resources

WikiProject Women scientists is an onwiki community working together on this body of content; the Worklist is a resource for choosing articles to write and a supportive group for people learning to write about women scientists. I founded this project with Sarah Stierch last fall and am very well versed in writing biographies of female scientists, having saved a top-importance article at FA and having written 1 GA and 10 DYKs in the subject area.
I have more than 6 years of experience editing Wikipedia, and have been an administrator on English Wikipedia for 6 years. I have the technical skills and knowledge to successfully guide other college-aged people through the editing & learning process. I also have two semesters of experience as an Online Ambassador for the US Education Program, which has given me tools and methods for teaching college students how to edit.
WISAM, with its wide interest base (Loyola is mostly science majors and 65% female) is fully invested in this project. They are designing and spreading flyers and other informational material, and securing space for these events on campus. The president and math chair of the organization have already committed to learning editing skills ahead of the event to better facilitate it.
Wikiparties (as outlined in this blog post) have been proposed as a method for encouraging greater involvement of women, but it has not been tested on a larger scale. This pilot provides that opportunity.
I have significant experience running editing workshops for professional scientists, which will translate to working with the college population.

Tip: How do we know you or your group is qualified to undertake this project? Provide examples of past projects, links to project pages, a list of volunteers involved in the project and their usernames, etc.

Risks

I am unfamiliar with the Wikimetrics tool for tracking editor activity and retention and have little experience with surveying. I will work with the WMF Learning and Evaluation team the month prior to the first edit-a-thon to learn these evaluation tools and practice using them.
Low participation is a risk I am mitigating by ensuring the timing of the event does not conflict with the academic schedule. I have already received verbal committement from over 15 women who are interested in the event. Providing a relaxed, non-intimidating atmosphere (with food!) will also help encourage participation. I will follow-up with participants in between edit-a-thons to offer on-wiki support and encouragement.

Tip: Think hard about what the main challenges are to achieiving your project goal. How can they be addressed? What support will you need?

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. Please read the Budget Guidelines.

Grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Project budget table

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Cost per unit	Total cost	Currency	Notes
1	Food	Catered food from a local restaurant (probably pizza or pasta)	3 meals	20 people/event (60 total)	$10	$600	USD	I have examined local restaurant options and $10 a person for food and drink is the cheapest available.
2	Printing	Printing flyers for posting in STEM-related campus buildings and printing of how-to-edit Wikipedia cheat sheets.	1 page	80 pages	$0.25	$20.00	USD	Quoted from FedEx Kinkos.

Tip: Research! Find out your cost options and let us know how you calculated your numbers.

Total cost of project: $620

Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program: $620

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded: n/a

Non-financial requirements

See a description of non financial assistance available. Please inform Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requirements for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance: We would like 8 Wikipedia T-shirts to distribute to anyone who comes to all three events, as an additional incentive for people to return. We have already contacted WMF about the shirts.

Tip: Swag should be strategic! Asking for merchandise in the budget or from WMF directly always needs an explanation of why and how you will use it/give it away. Will it be used as a thank you for volunteer project managers? As a reward for editors that come to repeat events? As prizes for quality articles?

Discussion

Community Notification

Tip: Connect! Projects that engage their community from the start are the most successul. We need to see support from your community through online discussion of the project.

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project and Event Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

Jane023 (talk) 07:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC) I totally endorse this idea, and if the program is successful, I would like to try to reuse it myself for local schools.
Girona7 (talk) 01:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC) I absolutely endorse this idea. I have been considering hosting something like it in the Boston area but have not had the time to put a strategic plan together. I would very much like to see how this pilot program fares.
--mikeu ^talk 18:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC) An excellent idea. A more organized long term project is likely to have more of a systemic impact than one day edit-a-thons.
Gobōnobō ⁺ ^c I strongly endorse this project. It aligns with strategic priorities by aiming to increase the number of women editors while producing quality content that will diminish the gender gap. Keilana has demonstrated the skills and experience needed to coordinate on and off Wiki through her efforts at WikiProject Women Scientists on the English Wikipedia. The event kit should ensure that this has impact beyond the duration of the grant.
Yug (talk) : Push up women's visibility on wikipedia is needed. The Women Scientists wikiproject created an approach. gathered a core team, and wrote down a vision which are 3 great assets for the community. Some heavy pushes, however, need more firepower. Support for this project will allow the team and project to make a massive push the experiment.
Community member: add your name and rationale here.