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Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand/Application for Chapter Status

< Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand


This is an Application for Chapter or Thematic Organization Recognition (Need to link category once created)

statusNew Application
Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand - Chapter Application
To be incorporated asincorporation-default
summary of missionTo support the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission in New Zealand: To empower and engage people to collect and develop educational content under a free licence, so it can be shared and reused freely for any purpose
home countryNew Zealand
Number of organization membershipplease add the number of your organization's membership
endorse

General Instructions for the process are outlined for Chapters and Thematic Organizations. This is a template outlining each of the criteria for becoming a new chapter or thematic organization as outlined in the Affiliates portal. In the templated sections that follow please replace the italicized instructions with your evidence of meeting each of the criteria. Please remember to include descriptive text along with any links shared.

Applicant Background

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History

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There was an early attempt to create a local chapter around 2006. A new initiative began in 2018, with the intention of working towards establishing a chapter. We recognised that we needed to have run a User Group with a range of well-documented activities including reporting for two years, so establishing this User Group was the first step in our journey towards chapter status.

From June 2018 to June 2019 Mike Dickison ran activities as the New Zealand Wikipedian at Large. Mike was keen to see a user group start, and created a mailing list of potential members.

A Wellington in-person Meet Up was established by Victoria Leachman and Siobhan Leachman, with regular fortnightly meetings starting in June 2019. These Meet Ups went online during the COVID lockdown in New Zealand in 2020. See:Meetup/Aotearoa_New_Zealand_Online Following the lifting of restriction on in-person gatherings, the Wellington Meet Up resumed as monthly in-person meetings. The Online meetups also continued on a monthly basis on alternating fortnights. The Wellington and Online Meet Ups have resulted in more coordinated communication across New Zealand and an increase in participation in User Group activities.

The User Group was formally recognised by the Wikimedia Foundation on 17 December 2019. See: Recognition of Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand

Significant progress was made in 2021 with building the community and the capability of the user group. [1]. Two successful Wikicons were held that year:

In 2022, members of the User Group created a Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Establishment Working Group, wrote a draft constitution, and held a community meeting to approve an application to become a legally incorporated body: Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Incorporated ("WANZ Inc") under New Zealand's Incorporated Societies Act 1908. The founding meeting was held on Thursday 17 March 2022. Founding members agreed to apply for registration of the incorporated society as a charitable entity, and elected a committee. The Incorporated Society was registered on 7 April 2022, and was subsequently also approved as a Registered charity. In April 2022, WANZ sought and was granted rapid grant funding to allow the management committee of the new incorporated society to run an in-person facilitated strategy weekend. The strategy weekend was held on 28-29 May 2022. The output was a strategy to guide the organisation for the period 2022-2025. See: WANZ strategy 2022-2025

WANZ also sought and was granted general support funding for the period July 2022 to June 2023. Work commenced in mid-2022 on preparing policies to guide the operation of the new organisation. In the last quarter of 2022, the committee established a new bank account in the name of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc. Remaining funds from the previous bank account operated by the former user group entity were transferred into the new WANZ bank account, and the old bank account was closed.

A Wellington Wikicon was held on 11-12 March 2023.

The first Annual General Meeting of the new Incorporated Society was held on 17 April 2023. Following that meeting, members of the community, including the founding members, were invited to apply for membership, and to pay a small annual subscription to become financial members. In April 2023, WANZ applied for and was subsequently granted multi-year general support funding for our affiliate for the period July 2023 to June 2026.

Leadership

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WANZ is an Incorporated Society, registered under the New Zealand Incorporated Societies Act 1908 (the Act). WANZ is governed by a committee elected by members of the society. Members of the committee are elected at Annual General Meetings, in accordance with the constitution of the society. Vacancies occurring between General Meetings may be filled by appointment, following a resolution of the committee. The Act stipulates criteria that may disqualify a person from being appointed or holding office as a Committee Member. A candidate for election or appointment must consent in writing to be nominated, and must certify that they are not disqualified from holding office.

As at 21 May 2024, the committee is:

Key Programs and Activities

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Detailed reports on our User Group activity, including all our main activities have been provided for the calendar years 2020 to 2022:

We are now shifting our reporting cycle to a July-to-June year. A report on the first 6 months of 2023 is here.

Relationship with Other Groups

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In New Zealand, we have multiple relationships within the GLAM sector, with particularly strong relationships with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Museum, and LIANZA (Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa). We are also developing a relationship with the staff of the Parliamentary Library. We are supporting both Auckland Museum and Te Papa with their GLAM wiki projects.

WANZ also has a close working relationship with Wikimedia Australia. We are in regular contact to share news and updates. We are involved in two specific collaborations - a joint approach to offering Wikidata Fellowships See: Wikidata Fellowships and the May-June #1Lib1Ref campaign. Several prominent Australian editors also participate regularly in the Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand national online meetups, and three have recently applied for membership of WANZ. Various committee members attend ESEAP meetings.

Criteria for Recognition

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Every organization that applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation must meet nine criteria:

  1. Diversity of Activities
  2. Planning and Evaluation
  3. External Partnerships
  4. Aligned Mission
  5. Geographic or Thematic Focus
  6. Legal Structure
  7. Open Governance
  8. Active Contributor Involvement
  9. Capacity

In evaluating an applicant against these criteria, the Affiliations Committee is required to confirm that the applicant organization has demonstrated the two-year record of programmatic activity required of all potential Wikimedia chapters by the Board of Trustees, as well as the capacity to successfully carry out programmatic activities and operate as an independent Wikimedia chapter in the future.

Diversity of Activities

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to plan and conduct a variety of different programs and events; to balance online and offline projects; to strive for continuous activity; and to conduct programs and events at least once every two months.

Regular monthly meetups:

We also hold annual Wikicons. The most recent was the Wellington Wikicon2023, held in March 2023. The Wellington Wikicon was planned and managed by Committee member Pakoire, with support from two other people.

We held an 2022 Women in STEAM Ada Lovelace Editathon, Wellington on 8 October 2022.

We also supported an editathon about New Zealand Women in Architecture. This was organised in conjunction with Women + Architecture New Zealand, and was hosted in three locations - Auckland (in person at Auckland Museum), Dunedin (in person at the Hocken Library) and online - on Saturday 20 May 2023.

For the 2023-24 year, we have several major initiatives planned that will increase the diversity of our activities. The first of these is a Wikipedian-at-large project. We advertised the opportunity and approved a grant for a 6 month Wikipedian-at-large project to be conducted between January and July 2024. We funded a group of Pasifika editors to attend Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, including giving a cultural performance. The grant included travel, accommodation and local expenses. Further initiatives for 2023/24 include:

  • funding a pilot Pasifika outreach initiative
  • funding a Wikiblitz focussed on Otari-Wiltons Bush

Planning and Evaluation

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to set specific goals and targets for programs, projects, and events before executing them; to measure the results of programs, projects, and events against those targets; and to report on those results to the Wikimedia Foundation and the wider Wikimedia movement.

The planning focus of the User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand for the first three years of its existence (2020-2022) was on encouraging editor collaboration and organiser engagement with the provision of events for the editor community. Evaluation was focussed on building the community participation and knowledge sharing during the annual reporting cycle back to Wikimedia Foundation and the wider Wikimedia movement to ensure the capture of activities completed by participants of the User Group. This sharing of the reporting responsibility was useful for analysis purposes as it reflected the Aotearoa New Zealand community to itself and demonstrated the breadth of activities to both the community / affiliate members and Wikimedia Foundation. This type of reflection continued during 2021 as during the first WikiCon (the WestCoast WikiCon) a Lean Coffee format was used to guage attendee interest in particular subject areas and this guided project prioritisation and focus for the remainder of the year. For the second WikiCon of 2021 (the Auckland WikiCon) a survey of those registering gauged interest in topic areas and WMF projects. A follow-up survey of attendees after the event provided information on the success of the event and suggestions for improving the management of similar events. This type of information gathering provided insights to the User Group organisers and ensured that the organisers focussed events on the areas of interest of members.

The General Support funding provided by Wikimedia Foundation in 2022/23 required the User Group to establish the first formal quantitative and qualitative results measures. These measures were guided by WMF suggestions and feedback. The establishment of these measures, the data gathering requirements, and the frustrations surrounding the challenge of reporting to these measures was a huge learning experience for those members held responsible for reporting for the affiliate. The desires of the affiliate members to learn from their activities outstripped both the tools available to easily gather the data required and also the constraints of a highly committed but reporting time-poor affiliate membership. The ambitions of the User Group were greater than the resources available. During the 2022/23 year the most interesting and informative feedback was that of the Pasifika group of new editors and their experiences at the 2023 WikiCon. This provided great insight into making events more welcoming to under-represented groups. This feedback came from the event organiser asking the group to provide feedback and the group calling a meeting, recording their responses verbatim and being honest. This low-fi feedback is likely to be repeated in the future as it was so enlightening.

Learning from this experience the 2023/24 measures required to be reported against were chosen carefully by the affiliate to ensure that the measures provided useful learning opportunities and were not gathering data for the sake of funding reporting. More capacity building in evaluation and evaluation training has been identified as an affiliate need.

External Partnerships

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to engage in programmatic partnerships with external groups and organizations (for example, cultural, academic, or government institutions, and so on) to promote the Wikimedia movement and to add and improve content on Wikimedia projects.

We have multiple relationships with the New Zealand GLAM sector, with particularly strong relationships with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Museum, and LIANZA (Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa). One of our most active members, Tamsin Braisher, is presenting a paper at this year's LIANZA Conference, about academic libraries engaging with Wikidata. See: [2].

As part of our relationship with Te Papa, we provided a travel grant for two staff from Te Papa to attend Wikimania 2023 and give a presentation about sharing museum collection material and data across Wiki projects.

We are supporting Auckland Museum by regularly meeting with staff and providing advice and support for their latest project Understanding our past.

Another of our most active WANZ members, Ambrosia10, (Siobhan Leachman) has recently been awarded a travel grant by WANZ to attend the TDWG Biodiversity Information Standards Conference held in Hobart, Australia from 9-13 October 2023. The conference programme is not live at the time of writing. Siobhan is the co-author of a planned conference paper. The submitted abstract for this paper is entitled Modelling Research Expeditions in Wikidata – Best practice for standardisation and contextualisation. See: [3]

We are also developing a relationship with the staff of the New Zealand Parliamentary Library. This is at an early stage, but the library staff have recently been given management approval to engage with us and establish Wikipedia accounts, and are now seeking support with training and mobilisation.

For the general election held in October 2023, we again invited all parties registered with the Electoral Commission to make photos of their candidates available on Wikimedia Commons.

We outlined in our application for a General Support Grant 2023-26, our intentions to develop external partnerships with Māori and Pasifika populations. Our application stated our intention to:

Increase Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand membership diversity (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity etc) The current membership of WANZ broadly represents the demographics of NZ Wikimedia project editors. This does not represent the demographic makeup of NZ. The Māori and Pasifika populations are under-represented. We have set strategic directions that will encourage participation and inclusion, targeting support of activities and projects proposed by members of these under-represented communities. Year 1 we plan increased engagement with Māori, and also propose two Pasifika activities: a pilot Pasifika content project, and support for a contingent of emerging Pasifika editors of Wikipedia to travel to Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Year 2 - 3 will include a focus on Māori knowledge professionals.

Aligned Mission

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to have a mission similar to the mission and vision of the Wikimedia Foundation, and to adhere to the guiding principles of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia movement.

The following content is taken directly from the constitution of WANZ (this link is to a copy of the same version of the constitution that is filed on the Incorporated Societies Register and the Charities Services Register).

4. Purposes

The Society is established and maintained exclusively for charitable purposes (including any purposes ancillary to those charitable purposes), namely to advance education by supporting and encouraging the development of educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and disseminating it effectively and globally, focusing on but not limited to Wikimedia Foundation platforms.

5. Tikanga / Culture

The tikanga or culture of the Society is as follows:

  • respecting and implementing the dual heritage of the partners of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi)
  • actively working to redress recognised imbalances and inequities in knowledge accessibility and participation
  • respecting the cultural diversity of people
  • working cooperatively and collaboratively with others
  • maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and integrity
  • working with a commitment to openness and transparency
  • following the Wikimedia Foundation Code of Conduct

and these Rules shall be interpreted having regard to that tikanga or culture.

Geographic Focus (Chapters) / Thematic Focus (Thematic Organizations)

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter must be based in a single country or region; cannot be based in a country or region where a chapter already exists; and is expected to focus its activities in that region.

An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Thematic Organisation must have a clearly defined cultural, linguistic, or thematic focus; and is expected to structure its activities around that focus.

WANZ is an Incorporated Society in New Zealand, registered on 7 April 2022.[4]. The constitution of WANZ is filed with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies. There are no other Chapters established in New Zealand.

The current 2022-2025 WANZ strategy includes the following content that demonstrates a focus on New Zealand:

Our purpose or Kaupapa | Mission

To support the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission in New Zealand:

  • To empower and engage people to collect and develop educational content under a free licence, so it can be shared and reused freely for any purpose
  • To represent the New Zealand contributors to Wikimedia projects
  • To provide support to our members and the public
  • To empower our members and support their activities
  • To develop and maintain long-lasting supportive relationships with New Zealand institutions that share the same or similar goals
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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to be a legally incorporated entity; to be a non-profit organization (or have an equivalent legal status in its home jurisdiction); to be legally independent from the Wikimedia Foundation; and to follow all applicable laws and regulations.

WANZ is an Incorporated Society in New Zealand, registered on 7 April 2022.[5]. The constitution of WANZ is filed with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies. The drafting of the constitution was undertaken using the constitution builder tool published by the New Zealand Companies Office.

WANZ has also been approved as a Registered Charity, in accordance with the New Zealand Charities Act 2005. Our Charities Registration number is CC60357.[6].

Open Governance

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to operate under a set of governing documents (such as bylaws) which have been approved by the Affiliations Committee; to allow new members to join; and to have a governing body that is elected by and responsible to their members.

All Members of WANZ shall promote the interests and purposes of our Society and shall do nothing to bring the Society into disrepute. Individuals whose user account is in good community standing can apply for membership. A subcommittee of our Committee checks whether the applicant's behaviour is in line with our Purpose (item 4), and whether their conduct reflects our Culture / Tikanga (item 5). Membership requests are approved at our monthly Committee meetings. The link points to our constitution as filed with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies.

Active Contributor Involvement

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is expected to involve at least 20 active Wikimedia contributors (individuals with at least 300 contributions to a Wikimedia project under a registered account that has existed for at least 6 months and is in good community standing).

The following users are active users who meet the criteria and were approved as members of WANZ Inc in 2023. (Note: we only began to seek formal applications for membership of the new Incorporated Society after the first Annual General Meeting held in April 2023).

In addition to this list based on membership applications for 2023, there are also many other active users in New Zealand who have participated in one or more events organised by WANZ (eg attending in-person or online meetups or editathons), but have not as yet formally applied for membership of the society. Wikistats data indicates that there are around 60 users in New Zealand who make more than 100 Wikipedia edits per month, and around 420 who make between 5 to 99 edits per month. [7]. We aim to engage with the most active local editors and invite them to become financial members of WANZ.

Note: the numbers of active editors in New Zealand reported by the Wikistats tool (60 / 420) is broadly consistent on a population-adjusted basis with the reported level of activity in Australia (220 / 2000 editors) and Canada (280 / 3000 editors). However, we have aspirations to raise the per-capita participation rate in New Zealand well above both of these international benchmarks.

Capacity

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to demonstrate capacity to meet future responsibilities and expectations (such as organizing programs and activities; recruiting volunteers and obtaining funding; maintaining compliance with legal obligations, chapter and grant agreements, and movement best practices; and so on).

We greatly appreciate the financial support provided to WANZ via grants from the Wikimedia Foundation. We have previously received a Rapid Grant, and a one year General Support Grant (for 2022-23). In June 2023 we received a much larger multi-year General Support Grant (for 2023-2026). At this stage, our financial capacity rests almost entirely on grants from the Foundation. The budget for the 2023-24 Grant year is the basis of our plans for that period. Note that our financial year is currently January to December. Our most recent formal financial statement was the first annual return we provided to our regulator, Charities Services, for the 2022 Financial Year. The return is posted on their website here: [8], and includes the closing total of all bank account balances and cash on hand, as at 31 December 2022. Since that time, we have received the first year of funding via the General Support Grant for 2023-2026, and our bank balances have increased substantially.

When submitting, add a current financial statement link here: 2022 Financial Statement

Our challenge now is to deliver on the plans we set out in our application for the General Support Grant 2023-26. A key part of the application was our proposal to engage a person as an administrator. As outlined in our proposal, we have reached the limits of what is achievable with our current group of volunteers who are the leaders and organisers. We have recruited an Executive Advisor, and expect that this will greatly increase our capacity, and enable us to plan and deliver programmes with less risk of burning out volunteers or failing to deliver.

Other steps we have taken or are taking to improve our capacity include:

  • We now use Xero as an online accounting system, to improve robustness, resilience and efficiency of accounting, to reduce volunteer time required to maintain the accounts (despite a forecast increase in transactions), and eliminate reliance on offline spreadsheets
  • We are establishing a website for WANZ, to improve transparency and communication
  • We are also steadily recruiting members to join the Incorporated Society, so that they can participate in electing committee members and contribute to the future strategy and plans of the organisation

Rationale for Recognition

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An organization which applies for recognition as a Wikimedia Chapter or Thematic Organisation is required to clearly articulate how recognition will enhance its ability to further the charitable mission of the Wikimedia Foundation and the global Wikimedia movement.

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand seeks recognition as a Wikimedia chapter primarily as a means of increasing our credibility and leverage with institutions, organisations and individuals in Aotearoa New Zealand. Chapter status is a quality mark, demonstrating that our organisation is aligned with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. It also demonstrates to external parties that our organisation has the maturity and capacity to deliver activities and programmes that will help achieve the mission. Compared with remaining as a "user group", achieving chapter status will give us more influence in Aotearoa New Zealand, and enable greater engagement and support, particularly from larger institutions, local and central and government agencies.

Application Progress

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Stage Status
In Planning - New Application  Y
In Progress - Bylaws Submitted  Y
In Progress - Bylaw Revisions & Application Completion
In Progress - Committee Review
In Progress - Recommendation Drafting
In Progress - Recommendation Submitted
Complete - Application process complete


Endorsements

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  • The organisation is now at a stage where it can present itself to institutions. Becoming a formally recognised chapter will help in getting engagement and opening doors. Marshelec (talk) 00:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wiki folk in New Zealand have been putting a lot of effort getting our affiliate to this point. I therefore support and endorse this application for Chapter status. Ambrosia10 (talk) 00:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm part of the committee, know what is going on, and can therefore whole-heartedly endorse this. Schwede66 (talk) 07:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • We are a united committee and looking forward to chapter to be more imbedded into the wider community with chapter status Pakoire (talk) 07:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a committee member, I endorse this application to progress to chapter status. It will give us more credibility when approaching national and international organisations for collaboration requests. MurielMary (talk) 08:30, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I devote a lot of time to this committee and the user group generally. The people I contribute with are an amazing bunch of people and we have made great progress in what feels like a relatively short period of time. We work really well together and we're always looking to improve, build capacity and capability, and have fun. This is a great next step that will help us activate more. Einebillion (talk) 18:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I whole-hearted support the organisation and it's purposes. I haven't been involved formally, since I am currently in bad odor on my primary wiki. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:58, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I want to thank and congratulate the committee and other members who have worked so hard to get us to this stage. There's been a lot of planning and SO much progress over the last couple of years! Chapter status will help us go from strength to strength. DrThneed (talk) 02:28, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a supporter from 'across the ditch' in Australia, I have seen the hard work and inclusive efforts of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand. I fully endorse their application to become an official chapter which aligns with Wikimedia's mission to empower communities and enhance free knowledge sharing across borders. BindiS (talk) 04:49, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • An absolute +1 from me. It's about time the Kiwis got their own chapter! It's very exciting to see this happening. Sam Wilson 06:07, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand meets the requirements for Wikimedia chapters. As an incorporated Society they have strong governance in place, and are undertaking significant work locally as well as supporting regional activities and contributing to the wider movement. Pru.mitchell (talk) 08:09, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong support from the other side of the globe. There are Wikimedians from New Zealand involved in all kinds of aspects in our movement - GLAM, nature, articles, images, data - and they work HARD for us to archive our mission! But there is still a lot of ground that can be uncovered and these volunteers deserve the support of a strong chapter behind them. Ciell (talk) 17:52, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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