Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round1/Wikimedia UK/Impact report form

Report received

Thank you, colleagues at WMUK, for submitting this report! We're looking forward to delving into the content (and the dashboard!) and learning more about the impact of your work this past year. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Feedback from FDC staff

The FDC staff (Katy and Winifred) shared their thoughts and feedback and asked questions about both the 2013-14 Impact Report and the 2014-15 Progress Report over a Skype call / Hangout held with each organization receiving an Annual Plan Grant. This is a summary of the conversation covering these two reports. We thank our colleagues at WMUK for the report and for the conversation. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk)

Appreciation and strengths

• We are grateful for the good work done and results achieved, despite the difficulties and changes WMUK experienced over the past 12 months.
• This recent progress report included a lot of helpful context for better understanding some important changes you are making. In particular, we think refining your key performance indicators to focus on the most important information and we liked getting an overview of key changes to your strategy (for example project approach).
• We appreciate that WMUK is providing consistent quarter by quarter metrics for its programs that also include metrics about how images are used or how many times they are viewed. Beyond the metrics, we appreciated the quality learning patterns you linked to in this report and your ability to tell your stories through infographics and visual presentations.
• We appreciate the strong outcomes from your work on Welsh Wikipedia. Living Paths program created good amount of new articles on Welsh Wikipedia (8,218). We realize that this is a significant increase of the number of articles on Welsh Wikipedia overall (80%), and given the importance of Welsh Wikipedia as an online resource in the Welsh language, we see this achievement as significant.
• We also appreciate your continuing work on Wikipedians in Residence, including some meaningful partnerships with the NLW and CRUK, and your growing emphasis on advocacy work.
• We appreciate your thoughtful approach to volunteer support, and look forward to the results of future work now that it has resumed. Given the importance of this challenge to WMUK and the rest of the movement, we are glad to see WMUK showing leadership in this area.

Concerns

• The outcomes achieved are too low with respect to the significant amount of APG funding, especially in the area of content.
  • In particular, while results on Welsh Wikipedia are strong, results on English Wikipedia in terms of articles created or improved are not strong. Counting articles improved may be an important step in showing the value of WMUK’s work.
  • Also, WMUK is struggling to hit its own targets for participation, which seems to be an ongoing challenge.
  • Finally, while WMUK has secured some large content donations, usage rates for most content are very low (e.g. 1% outlined in impact report). Programs resulting in good quality content with high use rates are very small scale.
• Alongside these low outcomes, we are seeing overspending in fundraising and restructuring, which further raises concerns about funds leading to sufficient impact. We realize that challenges with the restructure and CEO transition were a significant factor here.
• We appreciated WMUK’s past work on gender, and were concerned to see it de-prioritized.

Other discussion

• We discussed your change in limiting the metrics/KPIS (key performance indicators) you collect. We also discussed updates on your train the trainer work.