User:Steven Crossin/WMAU APG

Application or grant stage: grant in progress

Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Australia

Amount requested: $33,750 AUD + 10% contingency ((27,000 USD + 10% contingency))

Amount granted: 37,125 AUD (wth contingency= ((27,000 USD + 10% contingency))

Funding period: 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020

Application created:

Recommended application date: 1 May 2019

Midpoint report due: 15 January 2020

Final report due: 30 July 2020

Application

Background

These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

1. Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.

   Midterm report

2. Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.

   WikiShootMe_Tennant_Creek

Link to these documents, for the upcoming funding period, only if you have them.

1. Link to your organization's staffing plan, for the upcoming funding period. This organization is not requesting staff.
2. Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period.
   The 2018 annual plan is the current plan. The 2019-20 annual plan will be developed from a new strategic plan to be workshopped at our community conference in June 2019.
3. Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period.
   A Strategic Plan is the focus of a workshop planned for June 2019, for 2019-20 this is planned as part of our event in June 2019. Our proposed 2019-2020 budget has recognised that for future strategic activities rather than combining the planning with a collaborative event to gain maximum return for the costs involved we'll need to allow for facilitation of an earlier event.

Please add your grants metrics to this sheet. Note that requirements for shared metrics have changed for grants starting 1 January 2017 or later. Grants with start dates before 1 January 2017 should still use the old Global Metrics.

Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Programs

Please use the templates provided to add information about each program you are planning for the upcoming funding period.

Introduction

Following our first experience of planning, implementing and reporting against an annual grant in 2018-19, Wikimedia Australia is keen to build on this work in our second Simple Annual Plan Grant application. This is a consolidation phase. As well as an allocation to support the costs of managing the chapter, we are seeking funds to maintain the two major program areas of:

1. Community Support
2. Outreach and Engagement.

The application is to cover the period of 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020.

Major achievements in our first year relate to successful outreach and engagement events, many of which involved community members as facilitators. A key priority for the next twelve months is to build strategic partnerships with a number of these organisations, with a view to sustaining the initial interest and activity.

Our other key activity is engaging with, and supporting the editor community. We are planning a community survey and a conference that will provide opportunities to engage in the movement strategy and the development of a local strategic plan.

Our governance processes are well-established. Increasing the diversity of the Wikimedia Australia membership and governing committee is a goal for the next election period.

Community support program

The key goal this year is to engage directly with current and emerging editors in Australia. As well as continuing to support face to face events such as WikiClubs, training events and meetups, we will work on additional ways of providing support, given our geographically dispersed community. This may involve engaging external expertise to create and manage regular newsletters, storytelling for media outlets, and community surveys.

WikiClubs and Noongarpedia

Four WikiClubs will continue to meet regularly in Australia during 2019-20. Regular events at the local level strengthen community connections and collaborations, support editor retention and provide a known group of editors who can be called upon to support Outreach and Engagement events. Most WikiClubs have a focus for each event, with a specific skill or project shaping the work. Each WikiClub has a level of independence from the chapter with WMAU provisioning them to undertake small activities like regular meetups, workshops and edit-a-thons that bring the contributors for the local area into collaborate. Like user groups the WikiClubs are saved the burden of legal and financial administration which are provided under the umbrella of WMAU.

Indigenous content projects, including the Noongarpedia project represent an area of importance for Wikimedia Australia, and the Wikimedia movement. As an Indigenous language project promoting knowledge equity it involves partnerships with both the Noongar and the academic communities and is a tangible model for future Indigenous language partnerships in Australia, and globally.

The significant project goal for the next period is to continue to tell the story of Noongarpedia. This will involve engaging with The Noongar community, Western Australian organisations, such as Museums and universities, in order to further develop Noongarpedia. Also required is recognition from the WMF language committee to understand the local issues of colonial impact, cultural impediments and support for the project team in moving from the incubator space to nys.wikipedia.org is now critical for on going success.

Volunteer Support Program

The Volunteer Support Program (VSP) is a mini-grant initiative that supports Australian contributors to Wikimedia projects to obtain resources or share their knowledge about the projects and/or WMAU activities. Funds involved are generally small amounts and designed for maximum flexibility and responsiveness. Most VSP activities are ad hoc, and may be granted for a range of expenses related to presenting at conferences, or hosting events, to purchasing resources in order to generate content, or developing a new skill. All VSP applicants are required to be in good standing as well as to have a demonstrated contribution history available for, or in use in the projects, and to report on their activity. Grantees will be asked to complete a report on the process related to the VSP grant.

Australian Community Conference

WMAU will initiate and administer a community conference during 2019-20, and apply for funding for this through conference grants. Funds are requested to enable the groundwork to be prepared, and coordination of this proposal including research for the logistics and program, scholarships required.

Support for community member engagement in regional and global events

The Australian community feels its distance and isolation from the wider movement. Enabling wider community involvement in global activities - both on-wiki and in-person is very important to us.

The development of the East, South East, Asia, Pacific (ESEAP) regional network has been important in building understanding and collaboration beyond Australia. WMAU is committed to being part of and contributing to this network and its activities. This includes hosting a regional conference at the next appropriate opportunity.

As a chapter we also request funding to be able to run an open scholarship process for global events or conferences such as Wikimania, WikiEd that enables at least two members of the community to share their knowledge and experiences. It is vital to learn about initiatives elsewhere, that can be disseminated among the Australian community. One of the scholarships will be designated as a diversity scholarship with a focus on new contributors from under represented local communities.

Outreach and engagement

Outreach to the wider Australian population is a priority, in order to increase engagement. Wikimedia Australian continues to increase the number of people who know about Wikipedia and related projects, who understand how the projects work, and who are attracted to contributing. Specific target audiences include educators, the GLAM sector, and rural and Indigenous communities.

The outreach and engagement program for this period includes continuation of successful activities, a more proactive approach to new opportunities, and increased capacity for responding to partnership requests. We will look to be developing templates for media outreach that can be used with partner organisations for increased understanding of what projects can do for partnering bodies.

WikiTowns

WikiTowns are collaborative projects between local councils, historical societies and other interested partners, supported by Wikimedia Australia. They focus on supporting locals to contribute quality content about their town and heritage, and then use QR code technology to promote and educate about their place. It is another example of knowledge as service.

With developments in Wikidata and QR code integration there is exciting work to be done across this project.

• Toodyay - expand the number of articles and increase the number of QR codes within the area
• Fremantle - re-engage community following the loss of a partner organisation, expand content on Fremantle
• create the foundations for a new WikiTown
• establish permanent QR codes using Wikidata, and create a new Wikitown QR reader that expands across more Wikimedia projects

A technical issue must be solved before this work can proceed as current QR codes are not working. Learning experience in the 2018-19 sAPG this item was removed from our budget, the decision later had a negative impact on a collaborative partnership that required attention. WMAU has committed to following this through with the Directors of QRPedia, and request funding for either a technical fix (which will help the other QR projects around the world with typeface issues) or to replace codes locally to restore faith with our partners.

Content competitions

Competitions generate new Australian content on a particular theme from a broad range of contributors, many of whom are new to Wikipedia. The competitions raise awareness about open licences in the broader Australian community and provide Wikimedia Australia with media opportunities. High quality images, datasets, and textual content can be promoted locally and globally, and there is an opportunity for email conversations with winning contributors.

WLE and WLM will continue to be supported by WMAU with 10 cash prizes being awarded and entries submitted to the international judging, our experience is that some contributors choose not to accept the prize and gift it back to WMAU the budget for the two events reflects this. This year its planned to transition these events to new organiser to further develop community leadership capacity. With Wiki Loves Science past experience in Australia has shown that participation rate isnt as significant, we have chosen this year to offer only a single more substantive prize of a weekend in the Nations capital to improve participation. We are also planning to run a WikiSource competition to encourage more proof readers of Australian content, including early Indigenous language records.

Engagement with GLAMs

Wikimedia Australia has a long history of GLAM-Wiki projects its where the Wikimedia and GLAM communities first came together, WMAU continues to look for opportunities to build awareness of the benefits of partnering with Wikimedia. As well as collaboration with larger GLAMs, particularly State libraries, there are opportunities this year, to collaborate with small to medium regional libraries, historical societies, museums and galleries.

• Facilitated online training modules for libraries

Wikimedia Australia has been approached to offer facilitated online training for Australian library staff. Once developed this could enable more effective outreach to libraries, particularly in costly to access regional areas. Content from existing online courses, (eg Education projects, and a WebJunction course in 2018) can be customised for Australian contexts, and facilitated by experienced trainers. This funding is for initial scoping and coordination of online modules, in collaboration with current library partners, and library associations. There is also an expectation we can attract local sponsorship to support content development and instructional design.

Chapter governance

WMAU must continue to fulfil its legal, financial and reporting responsibilities as an incorporated association registered in Victoria, and a charity registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). As well as WMF responsibilities, this includes managing our 2019 Annual General Meeting in October, Consumer Affairs Victoria reporting, and Quarterly Business Activity Statements to the Australian Taxation Office, along with the provision of insurance to enable local outreach.

Committee handover face to face meeting

Wikimedia Australia has been fortunate to have long-term, experienced editors and key community members on the Committee throughout its ten year history. As we move into the next decade, and to align with the movement’s strategic direction, our focus should be on increasing the range of voices in our membership generally. With this the need to develop new people into leadership roles with in the community, previous experience has shown a significant drop out of new committee members during the first term. As community we need to stem that loss by ensuring that these people have a solid foundation of WMAU activities to build on, and to capture institutional knowledge that may be leaving our leadership group. At least 2 new recruits to the committee in 2019 At least 4 states/territories represented on the committee Increase the diversity profile of the committee in terms of language, age, gender, etc

Committee strategy planning summit

During the next twelve month period there is a need for a strategic planning summit to set both the mid term strategic plan, and the next annual plan. The committee is intentionally made up of members from as many different states and territories as possible, so there are inevitable travel and accommodation costs to meeting face to face. As identified above our decision to co-locate 2019-20 planning dependent on a collaborative event has caused an issue with timing and our preparation for sAPG processes and planning, this will utilize our presence in one place to facilitate 2020-21 planning rather than be dependent on external factors.

Staff

Please use the templates below to add information about each staff or contractor position you are planning during the upcoming funding period.

Budget and resource plan

Link to a detailed budget for the upcoming funding period. This budget should include all of your organizations expenses. Please specify which expenses will be covered from your APG. : {{{Budget}}}