Grants:PEG/WM US-NYC/Wikipedia Takes Manhattan

Funded

This submission to the Wikimedia Foundation Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2009-10. This is a grant to an organization.

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This project has been funded, completed, and a project report has been reviewed and accepted by WMF Staff.
To review a list of other funded submissions by fiscal year, please visit the Requests subpage, and to review the WMF Grants Program criteria for funding please visit the Grants:Index.

Legal name of chapter: Wikimedia New York City
Grant contact name: Richard Knipel
Grant contact user-name or e-mail: User:Pharos
Grant contact title (position): President
Project lead name: Richard Knipel
Project lead user-name or e-mail: User:Pharos
Full project name: Wikipedia Takes Manhattan / Wikis Take Manhattan (3)
Amount requested (in USD): $1000
Provisional target start date: September 1, 2009
Provisional completion date: October 1, 2009

Project scope

Wikimedia NYC would like to repeat its Wikipedia Takes Manhattan project on a larger scale, and to establish it as an annual event, in collaboration again with The Open Planning Project and the Students For Free Culture groups at Columbia University and NYU. Funding for this project will go toward the logistic preparation for the event day, such as advertising, printed materials, food and party expenses, and prizes for the winners.

Project goal

The goal of this project is to expand the archive of images on Wikimedia Commons of photography targets in the New York City region, and to spread the notion of contributing free images in a socially engaging and fun way to the general public.

Non-financial requirements

We would like to get the OK to use the logos for this event, as we did for the previous events.

Assistance with a press release, and getting the word out to media outlets beforehand would also be helpful if possible.

Fit to strategy

The project will reach out to a large number of new people (in our previous experience 90% of participants were non-Wikimedians) who will contribute valuable images to the project, and will be more inclined to contribute images on their own in future.

Other benefits

This model of photo scavenger hunts has been adopted by us and others in several cities and diverse contexts, and this iteration should also bring new improvements that will be useful to others adopting this model.

The project is an exciting and colorful event that has the potential for good media coverage.

Firmly establishing this project as an annual event for us will increase our credibility as an organization, and further our ability for long-term planning with partners.

Measures of success

We will consider this project a success if we significantly improve on the number of participants and quality photographs contributed over the previous events.