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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Diversifying Wikimedia’s content & contributors, removing barriers to knowledge & developing new ways of engaging with the public, partners, learners & contributors in the UK 2022/Midpoint Report

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Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2022-08-31T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Midterm

Application Final Learning Report

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General information edit

This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.

  • Name of Organization: Wikimedia UK
  • Title of Proposal: Diversifying Wikimedia’s content & contributors, removing barriers to knowledge & developing new ways of engaging with the public, partners, learners & contributors in the UK 2022
  • Amount awarded: 482054.5 USD, 355000 GBP
  • Amount spent: 421567 GBP

Part 1 Understanding your work edit

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

Within the 2022-25 plan (https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Wikimedia_UK_Strategy_2022-25), we articulated approaches we’ll be implementing towards our vision of a more informed, democratic and equitable society.

(1) Knowledge equity We focused on developing projects around decolonisation and marginalised knowledge. One key example is the (re)launch of the Decolonising Wikipedia Network at University of the Arts London. This project is being led by Lucy Panesar, seconded to Wikimedia UK for one day per week for the 2021/22 academic year in a knowledge exchange programme. Lucy has run training events for UAL staff and students and engaged with external organisations such as the South London Gallery on a strand of work called Decolonising Wikipedia x London’s Colonial Her/Histories. Another collaboration is with the University College London ‘Legacies of British Slavery Project’, with UCL providing data for students on the UAL MSc Data Science course to analyse as part of the project. In any new partnership conversation we have, knowledge equity is one of the first things we discuss and seek strategic synergy on.

(2) Information literacy Following the plan we set out in this area, we continued supporting the university sector on Wikimedia in the Classroom courses, while working to expand our digital literacy work in schools. In terms of institution-wide work with universities, there has been a growing interest in working with interns - several residents have been connecting to their institutions’ internship schemes already, with positive results. More on this in q2 below.

(3) Climate and environment It’s a new programme area for us and we went through a process of articulation for our focus here - on the theory of change, and additional scoping documents. A major project in development is a Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at Global Systems Institute (part of the University of Exeter), focused on climate, which offers great opportunity to work in this area at scale.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

(1) Flexible and skilled staff that are able to respond to funding opportunities

We have several grant-funded staff roles, eg the Connected Heritage team which consists of two new posts, and an existing Programme Coordinator who took on the project lead role part time. The funding for the project was made possible by our new fundraising team. We brought in a new Volunteer Coordinator role (focus on knowledge equity), and expanded another team member’s role to support the grant-funded Celtic Knot conference.

(2) Thought leadership around areas of programmatic interest

  • Through horizon scanning with staff and board, we identify trends and opportunities. E.g. noticing a trend of interest in wiki-focused student internships in higher education, we produced a publication: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Going_further_with_student_engagement.pdf
  • Our research into information skills and Wikipedia editing taps into a sector interest. E.g. we support ‘Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia ‘- Edinburgh University Award where students get accreditation for extra curricular wiki volunteering, to develop information literacy, digital research, communication and collaborative skills ahead of the world of work.

(3) Leveraging external partnerships Our work with external organisations is an effective vehicle in achieving WMUK’s goals. Recently, key aspects contributing to our success have been:

  • Joining a big consortium of partners within the £15mln Arts and Heritage Research Council ‘Towards a National Collection’ project, giving us links to new potential partners and increasing our profile.
  • Running the Connected Heritage programme, a multi partner, structured national engagement scheme. This has gathered a lot of interest, with a number of talks about this project being accepted by key sector conferences.
  • We can connect to external partners to explore the Climate and Environment strategic programme, benefiting from their expertise in this area.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

We are monitoring a trend of moving away from open knowledge in the heritage sector, and a report from Creative Commons released in April speaks to this point, saying “in addition to the laws themselves raising barriers, there’s a widespread risk aversion towards any perceived threat of legal action for infringement which constrains GLAMs in achieving their purpose”. There’s an opportunity for us to think strategically about our sector advocacy work in this area, which we will be exploring over the next few months. We are building our connections with possible allies in this work, such as Museums Galleries Scotland.

Within (1) Knowledge Equity work, a key challenge is how the heritage sector continues to be affected by Covid. We have been experimenting with in-person or hybrid events, and we share lessons learnt as we go along. The trend of reopening isn’t without challenges however - events get cancelled due to sickness, and hybrid events pose logistical challenges that our partners are still not used to. Organising events with marginalised communities often takes more time and engagement from us to build trust and a positive environment, so having events affected by Covid can be quite disruptive. We continue to adapt to this reality.

Similarly for (2) Information Literacy, the team is noticing several challenges that universities are facing, with students (and staff) returning to in-person teaching experiencing mental health challenges and burnout. Our work has also been disrupted by university staff strikes and digital picket lines. When the sectors we work with are under pressure, our work gets affected as well.

For the (3) Climate and Environment work, the challenge (and an opportunity!) is to create a strong narrative of our work in this area while exploring various approaches with the community and external partners. The projects we are developing with partner organisations will be very helpful here.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

In terms of keeping people INFORMED, we are led by our Communications Strategy for 2022-25 [1]. It outlines stakeholder audiences and communities we communicate with (Staff, trustees, advisory groups, WIRs, lead volunteers, contributors, members, donors, partners), aligned with our 2022-25 strategy:

Knowledge seekers - individual readers and potential readers; researchers Knowledge creators - individual contributors; content-holding organisations Knowledge facilitators - staff; volunteer trainers; Wikimedians in Residence; funders Knowledge holders - rights holders; content-holding organisations; communities Knowledge gatekeepers - publishers; rights holders; legislators

Please see metrics below for our social media reach. We also send a dedicated quarterly newsletter with key chapter updates and calls to action, to keep people informed and guide them to opportunities for engagement. This has over 3600 recipients with an average 40% open rate.

Further, within specific strands of work we maintain dedicated communication and engagement spaces - for example Train the Trainer community for peer learning and advertising training delivery opportunities, Scots Wikipedia editors, University of Arts London Decolonisation network. These spaces maintain the connection of participants to particular areas of work.

In terms of PARTICIPATION, Each of the knowledge communities we identified (e.g. knowledge seekers) have activities designed to engage them with WMUK’s mission and work at a level appropriate to them. The 2022-25 logic model illustrates how various communities are invited to participate in our work. For example, external content holding organisations are offered awareness raising webinars (e.g. through the Connected Heritage programme), while minority community groups work with us on editathons, and be offered additional support for accessibility (e.g. small project grants).

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

Within our 22-25 strategy we are guided by our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion framework in how we engage with underrepresented communities. This work is in an exploratory stage, as per one of our actions to ‘Identify, support and amplify the voices of participants from underrepresented groups’. Examples of these efforts include:
  • Employing a Volunteer Coordinator to work with new communities
  • Planning Train the Trainer activities focused on diversifying community leaders
  • Planning activities for Black and South Asian communities
  • Supporting minority language Wikipedias eg via Celtic Knot 2022 conference

Our strategic focus on ‘knowledge equity’ means we choose partner organisations who work on underrepresented content, and also have a commitment to reaching out to minoritised groups. For example, over the past few months we have been partnering with CARE International and Women in Red on an on-wiki gender gap campaign.

We monitor our activities against their focus on underrepresented communities - e.g. see a metric on % of events focused on knowledge equity. In our application we highlighted a broad range of participants that we want to engage (for example Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Geographic, Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background). We track the diversity of our community via the annual community leaders survey.

We run a number of statistics monitoring underrepresented content - eg ‘Language diversity’. See metrics for more.

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

These broad strategic questions were set with the intention to be explored throughout our 3 year bid matching our strategy. Therefore the reflections below mark initial explorations within these questions.
  • How can WMUK help the global Wikimedia movement to achieve knowledge equity?*

We can engage with the global strategy process to facilitate developments - more to be done. We can continue our Knowledge gaps research (phase 1 delivered in 2021/22) to provide strategic insight on content beyond gender gap.

  • Where can Wikimedia UK have the strongest impact in terms of the climate crisis?*

We started to explore this question within our theory of change and the narratives on climate, as referenced above.

  • In what way can we deliver on building information literacy, and on creating an empowered civil society in the UK?*

Information literacy research, which we finalised at the start of 2022, is providing initial narrative framing for this; plus a set of recommendations we can use to guide programmes and advocacy. [2] In January 2022 our CEO joined the executive board of MILA, the Media and Information Literacy Alliance, which aims to be a key organisation within this space.

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

Key delivery priorities and opportunities include:
  • WMUK’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion action plan
  • Working on volunteer pathways as a part of the Volunteer Coordinator role - sign up forms, communication spaces, induction events
  • Funding opportunities - secondary schools education, climate change, Connected Heritage continuation
  • Setting up the Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at Global Systems Institute, focused on climate
  • Developing the 2023-25 funding bid and delivery plan

Part 2: Metrics edit

8a. Open and additional metrics data.

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Reach of content - image/article views By measuring the number of views of images and articles released/created directly through our programmes, we can have a better understanding of Wikimedia UK's reach. This is an important metric for our partners and external funders, and was introduced in 2019. The target for articles is 123 million. The target for images is 5 billion. The composite target is therefore 5,123,000,000. 2147483647 2147483647 Metric: Reach of content - image/article views

This metric gives us a broad view of Wikimedia UK work and it has been useful for our partners to see how our collaboration has increased exposure to their content to a wider audience.

Articles = 2,234,340 Images = 8,516,323,488

Image views: Accumulative result from Baglama2 tool

Pages: Accumulative results come from Event Metrics.

Images/media added to articles % of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons which have been added to Wikipedia articles or other Wikimedia projects. 20 48 Metric: %Images/media added to articles

On track

Tracking the Wikimedia projects and Wikipedia languages where these images are used gives us a better idea on where we our audience is. It also gives a view of topics the community is interested in for further programming.

All uploads made as part of a collaboration with the chapter are tagged with the ‘Supported by WMUK’ category. On a quarterly basis, we use PetScan to get the results for how many images have been uploaded and how many have been used and where.
Education courses The number of courses organised across the UK. These might have run over several semesters or spread over only one semester at a higher education institution. Please note that this is a cautious target that reflects the impact that the pandemic has had on this work, with our results falling from 20 courses in 2019/20 to 9 in 2020/21. 8 N/A annual metric - result at impact report annual metric - result at impact report
Policy touchpoints WMUK-led responses to public consultations, policy discussions, and interactions with policy/decision makers on issues relating to open knowledge. 15 6 Metric: Policy touchpoints

On track

Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy change entries on a quarterly basis.
Policy change A step further from ‘taking part in consultations’, this metric looks at the instances of when our advocacy work results in policy change on an organisational, sector or UK level. 5 2 Metric: Policy change

On track

Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy change entries on a quarterly basis.
Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability Partnerships with external organisations to deliver on our strategy, active in a given year 40 N/A Result: n/a, this is an annual metric

Comments: N/A Annual metric

Will run activity reports from our contact database.
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees Every year we survey our community leaders about their participation in the Chapter over the previous year. This includes a number of questions on demographics, and we will continue to report on the results of this survey. This information is presented numerically, but since it surveys across various characteristics, it's not possible to propose a single number here. We continue to aim for 50% of our community leaders identifying as women.

As per our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Framework and accompanying Action Plan, we are exploring ways of effectively measuring the diversity of our broader participant community (beyond community leaders) and will share the results of this through our reporting to the Foundation.

N/A N/A Metric: Diversity of participants brought in by grantees

Results: No target - multi-indicator metric

Comments: N/A Annual metric

Run the Community Leaders survey to gather demographics data.
Number of people reached through social media publications This metric measures Wikimedia UK’s media presence by capturing everyone that has engaged with the chapter’s social media platforms (including engagement with the Welsh community). To note, all of our social media activity is very closely related and strategically relevant to promotion of the work within the proposal. We include WMUK Twitter, WMUK Facebook, WM youtube, WMUK instagram, WMUK blog views, WMUK website views within this target figure, for the first year of this proposal. 65000 38336 Comments: There have been several disruptions to the monitoring system for this metric, together with a transition to a new website (visits to which count towards this metric). We are in the process of updating our systems to ensure a consistent and reliable monitoring going forward. Using the analytics application for each social media platform we are active on, generate a report to get the numbers.

WMUK is in the process of reviewing the tools used to obtain this metric and exploring other options more suited to our needs.

Number of activities developed This metric tracks the engagement efforts with volunteers across the UK, widening the charity’s geographic reach. We will desegregate by Location as we track the geographic spread of our activities, especially away from London. This is tracked manually. 150 N/A Comments: Achieved

Even though a lot of these events are still happening online it is interesting to see how some events would have more people coming in as it is easier/cheaper to attend online. Due to ongoing approach to delivery online, we are able to put out more events than predicted.

90 of these events are tagged as outside of London, supporting our geographic diversity efforts.

N/A
Number of volunteer hours Hours spent on activities by people involved in WMUK activities, and by leading volunteers. 25000 11419 Comments: On track.

This metric shows the time our volunteers put into our activities, showing an aggregate of how much work they add to our projects. This helps us run activities catered to our community’s appetite.

Community organisers’ participation is to be recorded in CiviCRM and should include the name of the activity dates, location, start-end-times, volunteer role, and status.

General participants' time is to be recorded via the WMUK activity tracking sheet. When entering events in the WMUK activity tracking sheet the duration of the event must be included.

8b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants Metric Description: # of people participating in WMUK activities either in person or virtually. With a variety of programmes we deliver, this is a very wide and diverse set - including attendees, trainees, volunteers, etc. The threshold of involvement is attending a talk by a WMUK representative, or higher. This definition does not include people organising activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly (i.e. people who donate money or in-kind resources to support the chapter’s activities). On the whole it is not relevant to our work to disaggregate between new and returning participants, although we do so for specific programmes where we want to show a total of unique participants (e.g. Connected Heritage programme). 8000 3909 We are on track in the overall participation in the programmes. Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for this spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates.
Number of editors Metric Description: # of NEWLY registered editors contributing to Wikimedia projects through WMUK activities - at events, project grants, through partnerships, course extensions and/or contests. Please note that because of the focus on outreach and community building within our work, we focus on capturing new editors only. 1000 476 On track.

The majority of our new editors come from education courses that run for semesters, the rest come from training workshops, and editathons.

Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The usernames are recorded and each event is entered in Event Metric where a report provides how many people are participating each event as a new user.
Number of organizers Metric Description: we’ve been tracking this metric for the past 3+ years and have a clear understanding of who counts as a movement organiser in our context (‘lead volunteers/community leaders’). We also survey them annually to check on community health.

A lead volunteer is a person who is involved with Wikimedia UK as an event organiser, trainer, facilitator, project coordinator or conference speaker. These are trusted volunteers and community leaders who are in charge of projects by coordinating and taking accountability for their successful delivery, dissemination, completion and reporting; serving as a resource and support for other volunteers. The metric is for active leaders in a given year.

300 253 On track.

The most active members of the WMUK community come from Wikimedians in Residence. They deliver a wide range of activities from training, presentations and/or advocacy meetings with GLAM and/or education organisations each month. Other steady contributors throughout the year are the academics leading Wikipedia in classroom courses.

Community organisers’ activities and partnership interactions must be recorded in CiviCRM by the WMUK Programmes team, each entry must include: name of the activity, volunteer role, date, time spent, and status of the activity. A report is generated using CiviCRM on a quarterly basis.
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Wikipedia Metric Description; Number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects as a result of Wikimedia UK partnerships, residencies, project grants, classroom courses, editing events, etc. The main projects that we will work on through the funding are:

Wikipedia (we work across a number of language versions) Wikimedia Commons Wikidata Wikisource

As per our other metrics, the target below is for the first year of this grant, 2022/23.

750000 11685 WP

Stats for this metric come from a volunteer-led online core contest, Education courses, and various editing events led by the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for this spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates. The results from Event Metrics provide the articles by project.
N/A N/A N/A 124023 WD

The majority of our Wikidata stats come from our partnership with the Science Museum, the Wikidata Visiting Scholar at the National Library of Wales, and a volunteer running a project grant running a Pi Bot.

As above
N/A N/A N/A 24493 Commons

Most of the stats come from contributions from the National Library of Wales, videos from the Welsh Government, ​a​nd uploads from our work with the Wellcome Collection Medicine Galleries.

As above
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

In some instances, tools have been down with little technical support on how to get around them. It would be useful for more support from the Community Resources team with not only providing tools defined by WMF but also details of the process. More support when there are technical problems would be good too and how to work around the tools. Often our reports are time sensitive to get the most accurate data, and when the tools are not performing there is limited time to find solutions.

We would also welcome opportunities to hear from other chapters on what they measure and how they do and which tools they use, a channel to exchange ideas/tips.

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

We aim to share our learning (across programmes, and governance) whenever possible with other WIkimedia affiliates and groups.
  • We participate in expert networks such as GLAM group, Volunteer Support Network (regularly deliver presentations there), Executive Director group, and Affiliates Fundraising group
  • We join conferences such as CEE, Wikimedia Poland conference, Wikimedia Summit, Wikimania, and use them as opportunities to share (e.g. a digital literacy presentation at Wikimania 2022)
  • We participate in emerging Hubs such as Wikimedia Europe and present our work there
  • We draw on informal networks and connections made by various staff - movement members regularly get in touch with us to get advice on e.g. Wikimedians in Residence, or invite us to deliver training events

We would welcome suggestions on how and with whom to share:

  • Interns booklet
  • Information literacy research
  • EDI work, action plan

We are keen to hear suggestions from our Grant Officer - Where can we share? What do others need that we could provide? How to engage with the Let’s Connect on the above?

11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.

  • Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
  • Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.
The links below are curated within this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r6R_XCHyxXiFR-KFEuN0oOkl3jGK-U1IMP_uOyS99Kk/edit?usp=sharing

It may be easier to access them from that single document.


Context https://drive.google.com/file/d/147c06V-J0C7ObTzEZ9KGvvhHjvHUBtYb/view

Reporting

  • Q1 full report

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IhrTIlJH_ll7a1nXOaM_2v2LSdGUxcfNhUVXPHcXaq4/edit

Connected Heritage news

Blogs and case studies

​​- https://wikimedia.org.uk/2022/06/wales-and-international-photography-competition-wikilovesearth/

https://volunteer.nationalgalleries.org/opportunities/33505-wikipedia-editing-volunteer-female-artists-2022-06-13

Materials


Recordings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hope_Miyoba_-_Science_Museum_Group%2C_on_Wikipedia_and_the_SMG.webm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruth_Bretherick_-_Fruitmarket_Gallery%2C_Virtual_Volunteering.webm Video: NLW on Creative Commons blog https://creativecommons.org/2022/04/07/episode-19-open-culture-voices-dafydd-tudur/


Content uploaded - images (examples) [Photos] Featured images on Arabic Wikipedia: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/June_2022/Contents/UK_report#/media/File:Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_av_1073.jpg https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/June_2022/Contents/UK_report#/media/File:Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_cal_0463.jpg https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/June_2022/Contents/UK_report#/media/File:Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_jly_1720.12.jpg https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/June_2022/Contents/UK_report#/media/File:Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_cal_0165.jpg https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/July_2022/Contents/UK_report#/media/File:Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_mss_1095_fol_2a.jpg

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance edit

12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

421567

13. Local currency type

GBP

14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Eadf73FLP1Bl7lrER1txsT8U9Hq1ZG0IpJkqfzNADPI/edit?usp=sharing

The three year budget to accompany our multi-year proposal was prepared in autumn 2021. The draft budget subsequently underwent some changes following review at our finance committee and full board meetings in December, prior to being finalised at our Spring 2022 meetings. We are reporting against this revised final budget, rather than the draft budget submitted as part of our funding proposal, as otherwise we are essentially preparing figures and explanatory notes for two different reports (one for the Wikimedia Foundation and one for our own Board of Trustees).

At the end of the second quarter we have no plans to adjust the agreed budget for 2022/23. As is our usual practice, we will reforecast our income and expenditure at the end of Q3 to understand our likely year end position, and make any adjustments necessary at that point.

The following points may help to understand the figures, however we welcome any additional clarification questions:

  • The total expenditure provided in question 12 above represents the total of both unrestricted and restricted expenditure.
  • Our grant of £355,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation was received in its entirety in February but is deferred and released to income quarterly, hence the report shows £177,500 received and the remainder due in the second half of the year.
  • The project income budget in the unrestricted section of the report represents the full cost recovery on our NLHF grant which is yet to be received. The restricted element is also still to come but is expected well before the end of the financial year.
  • There is a variance on earned income which mainly relates to timing differences, however we will reforecast this budget line in Q3 (as mentioned above).
  • In Unrestricted Expenditure, Staff costs were less than budget due to a full time position not being filled until June, then part time until September. It’s unlikely that this underspend will exist by the end of the financial year as we have several major upcoming staff related expenses. One is the recruitment costs for our new senior manager in finance (as the current postholder is retiring in December). The other relates to a proposed cost of living supplement for junior staff, in the context of very high inflation.
  • We received a grant of just over £27k from the Wikimedia Foundation for our Celtic Knot conference. This was not included in the budget and was spent on direct project costs including staff time. Detailed reporting on this grant will happen separately as per our agreement with the Foundation.
  • We also received a grant of around £4k to support the delivery of the UK Community Festival during Wikimania.
  • Aside from this, there has not been any new project funding received in the first half of the year, but we are anticipating a grant of £62k, which has been approved in principle. This relates to the Wikimedia Visiting Fellow and most of the grant will be spent on direct project costs.
  • Budgeted project income was spread evenly across the financial year, hence the significant variance in this budget line.
  • Most of the variances in expenditure relate to timing differences - in other words, either the activity is happening later in the year than planned or the costs relating to activities will fall later in the year (this can happen due to delays in invoicing, for example).
  • Admin costs were broadly as expected.
  • Our unrestricted outcome at this point in the year is £12k better than the budget.
  • As indicated above, we do not generally rebudget at this stage of the year. As part of our usual annual cycle we will reforecast at the point that we are preparing our Q3 management accounts, to give a projected outturn for the year.

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

No

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

N/A

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

Wikimedia UK appreciates having a supportive grants officer who is working hard to understand our context and programmes.

As the grants programme develops it would be great to have an increased understanding of our regional grants committee and what would help them understand our work better.

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