Grants talk:IEG/WOW! Editing Group

Eligibility confirmed, Inspire Campaign

This Inspire Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for the Inspire Campaign review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review begins on 6 April 2015, and grants will be announced at the end of April. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at grants(at)wikimedia.org.

Thanks and initial feedback

Hi Jsm0925 and Ajc831! Thanks so much for your idea to pilot an editing mentorship model pairing college-age and high school-age women. You’ve laid out a promising plan to develop and document best practices for building a community of female editors. I have a few initial questions to help think through some of the project details:

1. Your mentorship model depends on college-age women who are sufficiently trained to be capable of mentoring high school-age women. Are you in contact with experienced Wikipedia editors who can train mentors? No doubt your previous successes with Art + Feminism will give you a leg up here and it would be helpful to see more concrete details in your plan. In addition to training in editing, you may also want to consider training in mentorship skills, including appropriate boundaries when mentoring minors.

These are fantastic points. We guided new editors through the process of editing articles at the Art+Feminism event, but we would like to connect with 1 to 2 more experienced editors who can help us with training. There was a person from the Wikimedia Foundation at our event, and he was very helpful to all of us. We'd like to work with him or others. We were trained on the "traditional" editing platform, but the Beta editor is much more intuitive and easier to use. Regarding training our college-age mentors, jsm0925 also directs a nonprofit that works with minors, and has worked with a professional who trains volunteers. We can use her training material or explore hiring her for a half day training session with our mentors. Jsm0925 (talk) 17:49, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. It would be helpful to have a more detailed explanation of your budget. Since most of your requested funds would pay for an Investigator, your budget appears to place a predominant emphasis on Research. What are your plans and anticipated outcomes for the Research component? How will Research feed into the Act and Document components of your project?

Most of our budget does pay for stipends, as we predict this will be a very labor intensive project (20+ hours/week at times) that will require many hours of community work, interviews, liaising and people organizing. Most of our hours will be devoted primarily to our "Research" and "Act" categories. Although we delineated them in our grant proposal, the two categories inform each other and activities will overlap. The three phases of this project are interconnected and dependent on each other in order to progress with the project. Although our grant largely pays for labor, we truly minimized the stipend amounts because we deeply believe in this work. Jsm0925 (talk) 17:49, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Consider adding quantitative measures of success to your project. For example, you might include “We hope to create or improve X articles by the end of this project” or “We hope that 10% of participants become active editors over the next X months.” Ideally, your goals should be realistic but also a stretch.

This is fantastic! We think a concrete goal will provide motivation to our group (including us) and give us something tangible to work toward. We will add a quantitative goal to the proposal now! Thank you for the wonderful thoughts and suggestions. Jsm0925 (talk) 17:49, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again for this great idea. We look forward to working with you on it! Mjohnson (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikipedia Buddy Group

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.5
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.6
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.5
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.4
Additional comments from the Committee: Definite potential for online impact by developing/nurturing a community of young female editors, and by experimenting with/refining in-person and more personalized Teahouse-like mechanisms and processes. Potential to be sustained/scaled/adapted elsewhere, especially given the focus on documentation of guidelines and partnership development. Fantastic potential for long-term online impact and, perhaps, a cultural shift in Wikipedia communities. How will mentors be trained sufficiently to teach the mentees on how to edit articles?The mentors being newbies themselves might find it hard to pick up writing articles in a short time frame, so will want to be sure you can proactively avoid issues like copyright violations, sharing private information on talk pages and not adhering to Wikipedia's guidelines for writing articles. Mentorship is a wonderful idea. Would like to know more about plans/progress on reaching out to high schools to set up partnerships The plan needs more specifics details about finding people to work with. Would like to see more engagement with existing Wikipedia communities and WikiProjects. Would like more detailed breakdown of budget (especially for salaries), as well as final activities intended by grantees (e.g. why are interviews with long-term leaders and members of community groups necessary to aims?) Success dependent on recruiting people. Their previous experience with edit-a-thons and their contacts give them the experience they need. Potential obstacle in pairing students who are under the age of 18 and protecting their identities. Can be difficult to get access to high school students; can take time and parental consent. Recommend working with existing programs/teachers. Investigation seems to be more than 50% of the budget. If so, the goals should be clearly stated Would like better understanding of "Ethnographic research and interviews with long-term leaders and members of community groups" How many interviews? to whom? members of community groups where? etc? How will the pilot groups will be formed? Would like to see more measures, especially related to content creation. Existing measures of success need streamlining 10 pairs seems a bit low considering the budget. Consider funding in phases

Inspire funding decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project and Event Grant through the Inspire Campaign.

WMF has approved partial funding for this project, in accordance with the committee's recommendation. This project is funded with 8,050 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
Thanks for engaging in the Inspire campaign! We’ll be in touch about setup soon.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. Review the grant implementation information.
3. Make any necessary scope adjustments to your proposal page, as discussed with grantmaking staff.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us at grantswikimedia.org'