Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Art+Feminism, 2022

Follow-up questions

Question Set 1

@Kiraface, 13ab37, Masssly, Nyeboah, and Yhhue91: Hello! Can you please provide this additional information for the review process?

• Since much of the work in this funding cycle is meant to be internal to your organization, how specifically are you planning to engage with non-US communities during this funding cycle?
• What new communities, if any, are you planning to engage with during this funding cycle?
• What is your plan for increasing non-US board members during this funding cycle?
• While I appreciate that you are focusing on qualitative data moving forward, in lieu of providing qualitative data in this application, please provide some additional quantitative data. Specifically:
  • Please provide a list of the countries with which you engaged in the last grant cycle (define engagement however you'd like, and please include your definition)
  • What were your largest/most significant strategic partnerships during your last funding cycle?
  • Where are your international ambassadors located? Do you anticipate any changes to your existing ambassadorship structure during this upcoming funding cycle?
• Regarding the budget document, what are "Research" and "RA" funds and how are they allocated?

Thanks very much. Emjackson42 (talk) 16:54, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Emjackson42: for your questions. Please see below.

Since much of the work in this funding cycle is meant to be internal to your organization, how specifically are you planning to engage with non-US communities during this funding cycle? Our internal work includes our global communities, which includes our Regional Ambassadors Program. Currently, this program is composed of 19 members based in 13 countries, who each facilitate and grow our diverse global community in their local contexts. Our leadership team is composed of two US-based staff and three international wikimedians based in Peru, Canada and Berlín. During this funding cycle, we will work with communities outside the US through the regular global campaign that will take place in 2022, at the same time we’ll continue to align our internal structures to make sure there are cultural shifts in all our work that strives to be anti-oppressive. In 2021, edit-a-thons were held in 33 countries, 5 continents, and in 25 languages. We anticipate that 2022 and beyond will yield similar results in terms of international engagement. We will also continue programming dedicated to community development and strengthening like our Community Hours, virtual sessions held on a variety of topics ranging from technical (like how to edit) to case studies or talks related to the arts and feminism (like working collectives). These sessions are facilitated by Art+Feminism staff, lead co-organizers, regional ambassadors, network organizers and outstanding event organizers. Two of the sessions were hosted in Spanish this past year and we have plans for future non-English sessions in the next funding cycle. In all, we held 11 Community Hours in the past funding cycle and anticipate a similar output in the future.

What new communities, if any, are you planning to engage with during this funding cycle? It is not our goal to reach new communities in this funding cycle, but rather provide more support to the communities we already have a presence in. We’ve been intentional in having more conversations with event organizers and working to capture narratives of how they’re reinventing and reimagining their work, including what a traditional edit-a-thon can look like in the midst of a pandemic and exploring new ways to better support this work (e.g. translation, interpretation, funding internet connectivity).

What is your plan for increasing non-US board members during this funding cycle? It is a priority of our current board to increase non-US board members (as outlined in our strategic roadmap). This plan is being developed.

While I appreciate that you are focusing on qualitative data moving forward, in lieu of providing qualitative data in this application, please provide some additional quantitative data. Specifically: Please provide a list of the countries with which you engaged in the last grant cycle (define engagement however you'd like, and please include your definition) In the last grant cycle we encouraged our community to organize editathons, panels, and meet ups. This three types of activities happened in 33 countries: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malta, México, New Zealand, Nigeria, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, USA, Uruguay, and Zambia.

What were your largest/most significant strategic partnerships during your last funding cycle? Within the Wikiverse, we collaborated closely with several affiliates and wikimedias to create a Central Notice banner and landing page around International Women’s History Day on March 8, 2021. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap/International_Women%27s_Day We also had a number of strategic partnerships with hired consultants in the last funding cycle including Wayfinding Partners, who we engaged with to facilitate the creation of our Strategic Roadmap. This multi-month process involved an international group that was composed of our staff, leadership team, board, and regional ambassadors. Additionally, since August we’ve been deeply engaged with Joyell Arvella, an anti-oppression expert to help facilitate our internal work. In September 2020, our research project Reading Together: Reliability and Global Communities was selected by the WikiCred Grants Initiative, which supported research, software projects and Wikimedia events that explore information reliability and credibility. WikiCred’s funding is provided by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Facebook, and Microsoft. Finally, we’re honored to be part of the New Media Leadership CoHort with the Ford Foundation. This initiative was developed by Ford “to address gaps outlined in the Art + Technology Landscape Study, the foundation is establishing an initiative to support & build BIPOC leadership in the new media ecosystem.”

Where are your international ambassadors located? Do you anticipate any changes to your existing ambassadorship structure during this upcoming funding cycle? The 2020-2021 ambassadors were located in: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, India, Philippines, Poland, Taiwan, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay. We do have some people who are stepping down in the next cycle and will adjust accordingly.

Regarding the budget document, what are "Research" and "RA" funds and how are they allocated? Last funding cycle, we were very excited to conduct the research project Unreliable Guidelines: Reliable Sources and Marginalized Communities in French, English and Spanish Wikipedias, funded largely by WikiCred. We are in the beginning stages of our next research project around Gender and cultural diversity on Wikimedia Commons. RA funds is a new program we started this year through our own fundraising efforts. We’ve created a pilot initiative for Regional Ambassadors to use for Art+Feminism inspired work, projects or for training or other professional development. Many ongoing learning opportunities have been funded so far, including: language lessons, GLAM certificate program, a course being conducted by CreativeCommons about licenses & open-access for GLAMs, and courses through the Rare Book School on "African American Print Cultures in the Nineteenth-Century United States" and "Why Black Bibliography Matters."

Responses were written in collaboration with the Art+Feminism leadership team. --Kiraface (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC) (on behalf of A+F leadership team)

Question Set 2

@Kiraface, 13ab37, Masssly, Nyeboah, and Yhhue91: Hello, I would like some clarification about the different positions and roles within Art+Feminism:

• In the proposal it is stated, "Lead Co-Organizer, a contract position that originally shaped the annual campaign." This position is paid...is it full time or part time?
• In the budget there is a line for "Co-Lead Organizers". Is this the same as "Lead Co-Organizer" (above)? How many Co-Leaders are there? How are they different/same to regional ambassadors?

Thank you, Laurie Bridges Bridges2Information (talk) 21:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Bridges2Information: for your questions. Responses were written in collaboration with the Art+Feminism leadership team. Please see below.

In the proposal it is stated, "Lead Co-Organizer, a contract position that originally shaped the annual campaign." This position is paid...is it full time or part time? This is a position with an honorarium. It is not full time.

In the budget there is a line for "Co-Lead Organizers". Is this the same as "Lead Co-Organizer" (above)? How many Co-Leaders are there? How are they different/same to regional ambassadors? Thank you for highlighting! This is one of the same. An edit has been made on meta (unfortunately, it does not appear we can edit the application in Fluxx). In the most recent cycle there were 3 Co-leads. The Co-leads are part of the leadership team that steers the organization, Regional Ambassadors work within their geographic region by establishing and nurturing relationships with new and seasoned Wikipedians, arts organizations, and educational institutions. They sometimes organize individual events, but primarily they connect event organizers to the material and tools they've created for them to succeed.

Responses were written in collaboration with the Art+Feminism leadership team. --Kiraface (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC) (on behalf of A+F leadership team)

Question Set 3

@Kiraface, 13ab37, Masssly, Nyeboah, and Yhhue91: Hi, thanks a lot for this proposal. I also would love to get some additional insights, to do justice to your undoubtedly important work (with some overlap with the above questions). I'm not really looking for super detailed answers, but am hoping that you can provide a narrative that can help paint a picture.

• Could you share a bit about the organizational structure? Who are involved (I was pointed to your website with a great list of people - be proud of them!), are they volunteer or paid, what roles do they fill in getting to your organization's results, what does decision making look like? How does your staff enhance their work?
• In your application you're proudly mentioning not to use SMART metrics. In order to facilitate a better conversation, could you suggest what alternative evaluation criteria you would like to use? How will you evaluate? How will you know that you were successful in achieving your goals, and what exactly are those goals?
• Can you provide a bit insight in the editathons and other events that you organize: how many of those (roughly) were in close collaboration with other affiliates? Were they generally volunteer run, staff run, partner run or something else?
• What do you expect to spend your training and professional development/consulting on? Who is being trained/developed/hired and for what purpose?
• Finally, could you give a big picture reflection of the direction of the organization, and where it's headed? Budget is growing significantly, what does that mean for the organization? What are some risks/challenges/opportunities that you're responding to?

Thanks for taking the time. I realize these are not always easy questions! Effeietsanders (talk) 05:33, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Effeietsanders: for your questions. Please see responses below.

Could you share a bit about the organizational structure? Who are involved (I was pointed to your website with a great list of people - be proud of them!), are they volunteer or paid, what roles do they fill in getting to your organization's results, what does decision making look like? How does your staff enhance their work? Here is an org chart from the last funding cycle. Staff are the only two full-time positions. Co-leads (aka Lead Co-Organizers), Regional Ambassadors, and Network Organizers are paid an honorarium. Board members are not compensated. The Leadership Team (composed of staff and co-leads) work on a consensus model and the board separately operates on a consensus base (as outlined in our bylaws).

In your application you're proudly mentioning not to use SMART metrics. In order to facilitate a better conversation, could you suggest what alternative evaluation criteria you would like to use? How will you evaluate? How will you know that you were successful in achieving your goals, and what exactly are those goals? As we continue on the trajectory of community care and support, we are developing new ways to capture qualitative data. Some of the methods we plan to apply are surveys, in-depth interviews and providing more opportunities for dialogue among the members of our community. We’ve been intentional in having more conversations with event organizers and working to capture how they’re organizing, but also reinventing and reimagining their work, including what a traditional edit-a-thon can look like in the midst of a pandemic. This method isn’t as cut and dry as traditional methods, but we believe that our intention to capture and share more of these narratives will achieve our goals. Our goals for this cycle are enhancing our capacity to sustain and build the Art+Feminism community.

Can you provide a bit insight in the editathons and other events that you organize: how many of those (roughly) were in close collaboration with other affiliates? Were they generally volunteer run, staff run, partner run or something else? Our annual campaign is promoted as a do-it-with-others opportunity for anyone interested in feminist or art-related topics to join our work. Museum staff, university-level educators, librarians, small businesses, individual people, grassroots collectives, and Wikimedian groups join the campaign and use our resources (event funding, our editing and organizing guides, and support from our regional ambassadors) to plan edit-a-thons and other events. These organizers are sometimes experienced wikimedians and other times they rely on the support of our team to guide their event attendees. On the occasion that our team members (regional ambassadors and co-leads) organize events, they sometimes do so in collaboration with other affiliates. For instance, in 2021, groups like Wikimedia Norge, Wikimedians of Democratic Republic of Congo, Wikimedia Mexico joined our campaign with the support of our regional ambassadors.

What do you expect to spend your training and professional development/consulting on? Who is being trained/developed/hired and for what purpose? This includes a wide variety of work including translation and interpretation, ongoing support around equity, training in areas such as anti-racist hiring practices, as well as modest individual training budgets for each indivdual leadership team member. Examples of things used with those funds include 1:1 leadership coaching, Spanish lessons, books related to race and equity, and anti-oppression workshops.

Finally, could you give a big picture reflection of the direction of the organization, and where it's headed? Budget is growing significantly, what does that mean for the organization? What are some risks/challenges/opportunities that you're responding to? We’ve been intentionally working to shift organizational culture with a lens of equity. For example, in this past funding cycle, Regional Ambassadors held a series of conversations amongst themselves and put together a report about pay equity for their role within the organization. When Art+Feminism first started, this role was given a flat rate no matter where the ambassador was located. In this new breakdown (as illustrated in the scratch pad of the budget), we’re taking a more equitable stance in paying Regional Ambassadors in the Global South more than Regional Ambassadors in the Global North. Further, we’re giving an additional 14% to Regional Ambassadors who are non-native English speakers (the language our materials originate from). We’re also extending this model to our Lead Co-organizers as well. Further, in efforts of being more equitable to our staff, we’ve added retirement contributions to the budget this year for the first time. We’re able to do all of this (and more!) while only growing the budget by about 10%.

Responses were written in collaboration with the Art+Feminism leadership team. --Kiraface (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC) (on behalf of A+F leadership team)

Thank you for your questions

@Emjackson42, Bridges2Information, and Effeietsanders: Thank you for taking the time to review our proposal! We are currently reviewing your questions and collectively drafting responses (as a typical practice for all our work). We will ping you when posting responses to each query. --Kiraface (talk) 21:44, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Emjackson42, Bridges2Information, and Effeietsanders: Responses have been posted above! Thank you, again. --Kiraface (talk) 14:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 305,000 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 305,000 USD, with a grant term starting 1 January 2022 and ending 31 December 2022.

The committee recognizes the work that A+F has done thus far to ”[build] a community of activists that is committed to closing information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts, beginning with Wikipedia.” We appreciate your willingness to meet with us to discuss your proposal and answer our questions. You have demonstrated the value of your volunteers, how you are supporting them and further your mission, as well as your plan to develop and support a network of regional ambassadors. This year, Art+Feminism will be focusing more intentionally on its organizational capacity and internal operations to support its longer-term sustainability and values, and has appropriately scaled back it programmatic planning to pursue these needs.

The committee understands the challenges around gathering and providing meaningful data related to your work, especially when you are working in a new direction with the regional ambassadors program. We also appreciates that Art+Feminism will continue to report on the same metrics and outcomes from its robust annual campaign, but the lack of an evaluation plan for this or other programs was a significant point of concern, as it is not clear how you or others would be able to ascertain progress made towards programmatic goals. For this reason, the committee was not willing to support multiyear funding at this time. During this grant period, we would therefore like to support you to develop qualitative metrics and targets related to defining and measuring success for your organization, including your regional ambassador program, which was of particular interest to the committee. If needed, the committee is willing to provide some additional funding beyond the approved amount to support this need, which can be discussed this month or in January 2022.

This evaluation plan does not necessarily need to include typical metrics collected in the movement, such as the number of participants, edits, or articles, especially if these metrics are not relevant to the new goals of that program. For example, one goal you described to us for the regional ambassador program was a need to reduce burnout. We recognize this is an important aspect of organizational capacity and appreciate your interest in supporting the wellbeing and sustainability of your team. One approach for evaluating progress towards this goal could look like developing concrete milestones for a larger plan in how you might reduce burnout, or surveying/interviewing regional ambassadors to evaluate factors that may be contributing to burnout, or gauging ideas that may reduce it. We appreciate that you do not want to add undue pressure related to evaluation for your team in a time of substantial uncertainty and when you are shifting in a new direction. We also think evaluation on these or other goals could be done in a way that does not place unreasonable expectations on regional ambassadors to perform or reach arbitrary participation or content-based metrics that don’t make sense to evaluate.

We recognize that you intend for this funding cycle to allow for you to build up your organization, as opposed to focusing primarily on programmatic events and projects for Wikimedians, and we are confident this work will support your future outreach initiatives and your organizational capacity in future funding requests. Thank you for the work you have done, and for the work you will continue to do. It was a pleasure to be able to support you as a part of this process. On behalf of the Regional Committee, Emjackson42 (talk) and I Jethro BT (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Art+Feminism 2022 Evaluation Planning Response

Thanks to the Regional Committee, Emjackson42 (talk) and I Jethro BT (WMF) for this insightful feedback. We certainly see value in being intentional about how we build and create qualitative evaluation and are thankful for the support in this direction.

In December, we had a conversation with User:JStephenson (WMF), Lead Learning and Evaluation Program Officer, who reached out to Art+Feminism around peer learning within the Movement. We were talking more about how hard it is to evaluate qualitatively rather than quantitatively. How there is so much important work happening in the Wikiverse that cannot be measured by how many events take place or a person’s edit count. It’s something we hope to continue to explore, collaborate, and share with our colleagues in the Wikiverse.

Here are some of our evaluation strategies to-date and plans for evaluation during this grant cycle.

Regional Ambassador Program Development and Evaluation

Leading up to our 2020-21 campaign, we began developing our regional ambassador program. Though we’ve employed the use of regional ambassadors during our annual campaign for many years, we are now formulating a program with clear objectives and methods for evaluating this critical component of the Art+Feminism team. The process for developing the program has included the following activities: conversations with our current ambassadors, requests for written feedback from our current ambassadors, and consultations with similarly operated organizations.

During one-on-one conversations with our regional ambassador, our program manager posed the following questions:

• How have you been supported in your work with Art+Feminism?
• What has made your work difficult?
• What Art+Feminism tool or practice has been most valuable to your work? (this was a question in reference to the various technology and practices we use at A+F, i.e., technology such as Telegram, Slack, Streak, etc., and practices like small group meetings amongst regional ambassadors)
• What would be the ideal compensation for the work that you do at Art+Feminism?
• What is your ideal working relationship with Art+Feminism? (while we took steps towards clarifying the regional ambassador role description prior to the start of the 2020-21 campaign, this question helped us understand how they were interpreting the role description and also what they enjoyed most about their responsibilities).

After these conversations, the regional ambassadors met amongst themselves to further discuss what fair and equitable compensation would look like and submitted a report to Art+Feminism leadership. This report was used in creating a more equitable compensation structure to better reflect Global North/Global South differences in the work our ambassadors do.

In addition to the one-on-one conversations, ambassadors were asked to give feedback on our Expectations and Commitment document. This document lists the fundamental expectations the leadership team has of the regional ambassadors, what ambassadors can expect from the leadership team and other opportunities to be involved with the organization. With their feedback, the leadership team was able to provide more clarity about expectations in the role. From the 2021-22 campaign forward, we will use this document as an evaluation tool to guide the conversations in our one-on-one check-ins with the ambassadors.

Finally, after consultation with similarly operated organizations, we will be instituting a request for annual goals from the regional ambassadors during quarter 1. Whereas our expectation document provides a universal standard for the organization, we want our ambassadors to create goals specific to their regions and their personal interests. Because many ambassadors sought more feedback on whether they were performing to expectations, we’ll use these goals alongside the improved Expectations and Commitment document to provide that feedback during quarters 2 and 3. These goals will help inform the leadership team of what kind of support we need to provide our ambassadors and provide an additional method for evaluating the regional ambassador program.

Evaluation of Funded Event

In 2020, we began requiring that event organizers that received microfunding from Art+Feminism complete a brief form upon completion of their event. To help with form fatigue, we try to exercise three core factors in all our forms: Stating that responses can be in whatever language the person is most comfortable using Making the form/questions all visible on one screen (rather than multiple pages) Making as many fields as possible optional The form fields in 2020-2021 include:

• Name
• Email
• Location (City, Country)
• Language
• Event dashboard
• Art+Feminism Event Calendar Link
• How many people attended your event
• Language of Event
• Attendee Email Addresses
• Upload any photos from your event
• Wiki Commons photo link
• Comments/Feedback for A+F Leadership
• Comments/Testimony to share publicly

Art+Feminism microfunding has always been available to offset costs of child care and food (two important accessibility concerns) but we were happy that the foundation allowed for funding to also include connectivity. An event organizer in Nigeria shared, “The funding supported the event and removed the challenge of internet inadequacies.”

In Q1 of 2022, we intend to do a review of the 2021 form and assess and edit what fields could be modified, deleted, or added to better assess various community needs.

Community Support Sessions

Based on conversations in the 2021 Regional Ambassador one-on-one conversations, a consistent theme was the desire for more opportunities to connect with each other. We organized 7 Community Support Sessions in 2021 (5 in English, 1 in French, 1 in Spanish). These sessions were intended for Regional Ambassadors and event organizers within the Art+Feminism community. We offered the prompt: “This is your space to share how you are doing. These sessions are not required, but initiated to create a space for informal conversation and connection. Are you anxious that not a lot of events are happening in your region? Is there a great art exhibit in your city happening right now? Do you have an idea for an event or initiative? Have you just read a really great book you want to talk about? Do you have questions about how to engage with your attendees after your event? Do you have a recipe you want to share? Either an Art+Feminism staff, Co-Lead Organizer, or Regional Ambassador will be present for each session to help facilitate, but this space is really yours. To encourage full participation and respect privacy, these sessions will not be recorded.”

This is a direct response to community needs and is part of our ongoing work to have more dialogue and conversation. By Q2 2022, we hope to resume having these sessions in 2022 as long as the community sees value in them.

2022 Evaluation + Funding Request

We recognize that folx are feeling form fatigue (a contributor to burn out) and that may not be the best way to engage qualitatively either and what we’ve been doing is being more intentional about having conversations to gain insight and feedback and looking at the existing forms we request (such as the event form for microfunding) to see what other data might be helpful to better serve our community. We hope to be able to gain a clearer understanding of how to more succinctly qualitatively evaluate the work of Art+Feminism (and to put forth a stronger proposal for consideration of multi-year funding in the future).

Art+Feminism sees the benefit (as well as the challenges) of moving towards more qualitative evaluation. It is our hope that in 2022, we will be able to generate a more formal plan that aims to improve organizational capacity to create sustainability across all aspects of the organization with a lens of equity.

To continue this work and further develop this work we are requesting an additional $30,275 USD. --Kiraface (talk) 19:35, 18 January 2022 (UTC)