Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Israel/Impact report form


Purpose of the report

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FDC funds are allocated to improve the alignment between the Wikimedia movement's strategy and spending; support greater impact and progress towards achieving shared goals; and enable all parts of the movement to learn how to achieve shared goals better and faster.

Funding should lead to increased access to and quality of content on Wikimedia project sites – the two ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement strategic priorities, individually and as a whole. Funded activities must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Each entity that receives FDC funding will need to complete this report, which seeks to determine how the funding received by the entity is leading towards these goals. The information you provide will help us to:

  • Identify lessons learned, in terms of both what the entity learned that could benefit the broader movement, and how the entity used movement-wide best practices to accomplish its stated objectives.
  • Assess the performance of the entity over the course of the funded period against the stated objectives in the entity's annual plan.
  • Ensure accountability over how the money was spent. The FDC distributes "general funds", for both ongoing and programmatic expenses; these funds can be spent as the entity best sees fit to accomplish its stated goals. Therefore, although line-item expenses are not expected to be exactly as outlined in the entity's proposal, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals.

For more information, please review FDC portal/Reporting requirements or reference your entity's grant agreement.

Basic entity information

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Note you can copy this from your recent progress report if the information is the same.

Table 1

Entity information Legal name of entity Wikimedia Israel
Entity's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) 1/1 - 12/31
12 month timeframe of funds awarded (mm/dd/yy-mm/dd/yy) 01/01/13 - 12/31/13
Contact information (primary) Primary contact name Itzik Edri
Primary contact position in entity Chairperson
Primary contact username itzike
Primary contact email itzik@wikimedia.org.il
Contact information (secondary) Secondary contact name Michal Lester
Secondary contact position in entity Executive Director
Secondary contact username Mlesterwml
Secondary contact email mlester@wikimedia.org.il


Overview of the past year

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The purpose of this section is to provide a brief overview of this report. Please use no more than 2–3 paragraphs to address the questions outlined below. You will have an opportunity to address these questions in detail elsewhere in this report. Also, we encourage you to share photographs, videos, and sound files in this report to make it more interactive, and include links to reports, blog posts, plans, etc as these will add context for the readers.

  • HIGHLIGHTS: What were 2–3 important highlights of the past year? (These may include successes, challenges, lessons learned. Please note which you are describing)
2013 was a year of transition for WMIL. Transition years are always full of challenges, risks and reflection. In the past year, we took risks, we went through challenges and we engaged in serious self-reflection.
Two of the highlights of 2013 are:
  • GLAM – The National Library: The collaboration with the National Library deepened in 2013 and opened new possibilities for 2014. The Wikipedian in residence achieved all his goals and impressed the library staff in his own pleasant way. He deepened their understanding of the possibilities that can grow from the relationship between WMIL and the library.
  • Hiring an Executive Director: The prolonged process of recruiting an ED has negatively affected the chapter's ability to fully realize its work plan for 2013. It took six months to locate and train two EDs, and this process certainly hampered day-to-day activities. The ultimate result was that a considerable amount of responsibilities were taken care of by the Board. Eventually, an ED was selected in August 2013, and she and the Board worked to stabilize the chapter and enlarge its capabilities, as well as create a long term plan for the chapter, a process that will continue well into 2014.
2013 in numbers:
Workshops 28
Number of volunteers 30
Volunteers hours 2000 = 50,000 ILS~
No. of participants in the editing workshops More than 297
Lectures about Wikipedia 28
  • SWOT: Reflecting on the context outlined for your entity in the FDC proposal, what were some of the contextual elements that either enabled or inhibited the plan? Feel free to include factors unanticipated in the proposal.
    • Strengths: Organizational strengths that enabled the plan
      • Active Board and dedicated volunteers
      • Acknowledgment to WMIL volunteers among partners and affiliates
      • WMIL has a strong network of connection with others organizations and institutes.
    • Weaknesses: Organizational weaknesses that inhibited the plan
      • Inaccurate planning: Some of budgetary estimates made in 2013 proposal, such as ED salary and office rent, turned out to be unrealistic and costs turned to be much higher.
      • Recruiting an ED also took longer than expected.
      • Lack of fundraising experience
    • Opportunities: External opportunities that enabled the plan
      • The Departments of Science and Technology Administration in the Ministry of Education showed great interest in writing articles by 6th and 7th grade students. We have started a dialogue with the representative of the Ministry of Education to investigate the challenges of writing in Wikipedia for young students. In early 2014 a number of instructors have already learned editing on Wikipedia as a first step in a larger collaboration.
    • Threats: Risks or threats that inhibited the plan
      • It is very hard to recruit new volunteers, and the current volunteer community (rather than editor community) for projects is quite small.
      • WMIL, like other chapters, has only recently started measuring results of projects, and this requires significant investment of resources, and is risking the efficiency and agility of the chapter.
  • WIKI-FOCUS: What Wikimedia projects was your entity focused on (e.g., Wiki Commons, French Wiktionary) this year?
Wikimedia Commons, Hebrew Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia (incubator), MediaWiki
In 2013, WMIL conducted numerous workshops. Prior to writing the impact report we collected all of the information so that we could present a more complete picture of the activity.
Date Who are the participants? Location No. of participants
1 1.15.13 Gifted students The National Library 15
2 1.30.13 High school students The National Library 17
3 2.11.13 General public The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa 31
4 3.5.13 Teachers Tel Aviv University 17
5 3.20.15 The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa No record
6 4.10.14 Librarians The National Library 12
7 4.24.13 Teachers Tel Aviv University 16
8 5.2.13 Staff of the Department of Digital Diplomacy Ministry for Foreign Affairs 5
9 5.28.13 Students Bar Ilan University No record
10 5.29.13 Faculty Bar Ilan University 15
11 6.13.13 Students Bar Ilan University 14
12 6.13.13 General public The National Library 5
13 7.23.13 + 8.1.13 Librarians The National Library 25 (two sessions)
14 8.14.13 Volunteers NGO - Peace Now No record
15 8.24.13 General public The National Library 17
16 8.19.13 Navy veterans The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa 15
17 10.7.13 Teachers Be'er Sheva Educational Initiative 15
18 10.23.13 Senior citizens The National Library 30
19 11.5.13 Gifted students The National Library 20
20 11.5.13 Employees of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites Municipal Museum of the History of Kiryat Ata 4
21 11.21.13 General public interested in fashion Holon Institute of Technology; Europeana-Fashion Challenge 10
22 11.20.13 Gifted students The National Library 20
23 11.25.13 Teacher training program for gifted students The National Library 18
24 12.5.13 Tel Aviv University, Gender Studies Tel Aviv University 14
25 12.18.13 Librarians The National Library 10
26 12.18.13 General Public The Brender-Moss Library for Social Sciences and Management No record
27 12.18.13 Navy Veterans The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa 15
  • GROWTH: How did your entity grow over the past year (e.g., Number of active editors reached/involved/added, number of articles created, number of events held, number of participants reached through workshops)? And what were the long term affects of this growth (e.g. relationships with new editors, more returned editors, higher quality articles, etc)?
WMIL ends 2013 with extensive activities in different areas:
  • 13 editing workshops were held in the 4th quarter, compared to 5 workshops in the 3rd quarter. These were attended by some 150 people, 20 articles have been expanded and 10 participants continued to contribute to Wikipedia a month after the workshop.
  • 22 Wikimedia volunteers participated in WMIL activities in the 4th quarter, compared to 14 in the previous one.
  • 2 new members joined WMIL
  • This quarter saw a beginning of partnership with the Ministry of Senior Citizens, around a pilot workshop intended to teach editing to senior citizens. The workshop took place in the National Library of Israel. We hope that in the near future, the collaboration will continue with a special program for senior citizens.

Financial summary

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The FDC requires information about how your entity received and spent money over the past year. The FDC distributes general funds, so your entity is not required to use funds exactly as outlined in the proposal. While line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC and movement wants to understand why the entity spent money in the way it did. If variance in budgeted vs. actual is greater than 20%, please provide explanation in more detail. This helps the FDC understand the rationale behind any significant changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

If you'd prefer to share a budget created in Google or another tool and import it to wiki, you can do so in the tables below instead of using wiki tables. You can link to an external document, but we ask that you do include a table in this form. We are testing this approach in this form.

Revenues

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Provide exchange rate used:

  • Q1: 1 USD = 3.34 ILS
  • Q2: 1 USD = 3.62 ILS
  • Q3: 1 USD = 3.52 ILS
  • Q4: 1 USD = 3.47 ILS


Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
FDC ILS 544,270 0 320,507 223,763 544,270 141,172 154,359
Donations from individuals ILS 0 1864 1687 2999 8615 15165 521 4370
Membership fees ILS 635 635 100 0 80 815 177 235
Sponsors ILS 24,000 24,000 0 0 35,000 59,000 6709 17,003
Sponsors ILS 24,000 24,000 0 0 35,000 59,000 6709 17,003
In kind donations and volunteers hours ILS 0 0 0 0 0 51,000 0 14,697 This year was the first time WMIL added to the financial report calculations of this kind of revenues.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Spending

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Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
5th Wikiacademy ILS 45,000 3,858 41,485 436 730 46,509 12,580 13,403 103
Wiki Loves Monuments ILS 40,000 0 457 5,969 14,446 20872 11,182 6,015 52 Expenses were lower than expected and we received an in-kind contribution from the Society for the Preservation of Israel’s Heritage Sites.
GLAM Projects ILS 28,000 3,725 214 11,626 11,779 27,344 7,827 7,880 98
Editors' meeting ILS 10,000 1,637.24 16.76 0 0 1,654.00 2795 476 16 Most of the expenses for the annual editor meeting was cover as a donation by Google. This year the community decided now to have more editors meetings due another social meetings in part of the chapter projects.
Hackathon ILS 6,000 0 4,011 0 7040 11,051 1677 3,185 184 Fortunately, the number of participants in the 2nd Hackathon was larger than we estimated.
Writing Competition ILS 3,000 0 0 0 1000 1000 838 288 33 The editors community decided not do arrange this year more than one writing Competition.
Elef-Milim ILS 1,000 0 523 0 0 523 279 151 52 entry fees to sites received as in-kind donation to Wikipedia
Wikimania Scholarships ILS 45,800 0 0 0 5,805 27,794 12,804 8,010 61 The prices of the tickets were significantly lower than the assessment made for the budget
Microgrants ILS 25,000 0 0 0 413 9,863 6989 2,842 39 Requests (and approval) for Microgrants was significantly lower than we excepted. We hope this will change in 2014 due the new approval policy we wrote and the hiring of Community Coordinator.
Office Space ILS 26,400 876 4,209 101,217 9,906 116,208 7380 33,489 440 No analysis was conducted of the renting cost and municipal tax for office when the budget presented
Wikimania Chapters Meeting ILS 27,480 0 0 22,687 0 22,687 7797 6538 82
Volunteers Travel reimbursement ILS 3,000 4235 3292 575 7541 15,643 838 4,508 521 Exceeded due to a change in the travel policy and the decision to return of fuel cost
Participation in international conferences of the movement ILS 12,480 6,993.38 0 111 7207 14,311 3,488 4,124 115
Chapters Conference Milano ILS 12,480 6,946 7034 0 0 13,980 3,488 4,029 112
Marketing and PR ILS 18,000 2,389 3769 12,616 2,056 20,830 5,032 6,003 116
Employees ILS 187,200 35,885 25,472 47,705 92,042 201,104 52,334 57,955 107
Management: Accounting & Consulting ILS 24,600 10,530 13,526 3281 12564 39,901 6,877 11,499 162 Gap due to incorrect calculation of the costs of in the annual work place for auditing and bank costs
Domain &Web hosting ILS 1,000 2100 140 480 0 2,720 279 783 272 unexpected website design cost
Expense for a projects from 2012 ILS 0 21,258 0 0 6909 28,167 0 8,117 -
TOTAL ILS 516,440 100,432.62 104,148.76 238,142 179,438 622,161 144,484 179,297 120

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Progress against past year's goals/objectives

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The FDC needs to understand the impact of the initiatives your entity has implemented over the past year. Because the FDC distributes general funds, entities are not required to implement the exact initiatives proposed in the FDC proposal; the FDC expects each entity to spend money in the way it best sees fit to achieve its goals and those of the movement. However, please point out any significant changes from the original proposal, and the reasons for the changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Fifth Wikipedia Academy conference

Board of Trustees member Bishakha Datta speaking at the conference
Participants in the conference
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Creating and expanding public discourse on free knowledge and Wikipedia as a tool to achieve it.
  • Investigating and discussing the reasons for low participation of women in editing Wikipedia.
  • Devising means to increase women's participation in editing Wikipedia.
  • Expand the circles of influence of WMIL by cooperating with other institutions.

The Fifth Wikipedia Academy conference had a very clear goals. The conference team wished to raise awareness to the challenges of low participation of women in editing Wikipedia. The subject was specific. WMIL hopes that exposure of the subject will increase the interests of women to become editors. Moreover, we were fortunate to have Bishakha Datta, a BoT member of WMF, to visit and speak to us during the conference, and present international as well as personal perspectives on the matter. The room was full from wall to wall and we got good press coverage to the conference, as well meetings we arranged for Bishakha like with the Chairperson of the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, Parliament Member Aliza Lavie and community meetings with her as well.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Over 120 non-Wikipedian attendees. Over 30 Wikipedians.
  • 15 mentions in the media.
  • The conference was produced with the help of about 6 volunteers and 2 staff members.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - WMIL hoped that such conferences will encourage more women to learn to edit. Active female wikipedians participated in a women’s panel and were interviewed by the media during the conference, setting a role model for other women and join the community.

Increase reach - through the conference and the media cover, WMIL wishes to increase the reach to women that didn't know about the opportunity to edit.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • A survey conducted by Wikimedia Israel- according to which 23 percent of Israeli Wikipedians are women , 57 percent of Wikipedians are single and have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, 15 percent are under the age of 15 and 5 percent are over 60. Only 29 percent of the editors said they wrote new articles; the others engaged in enriching content to existing articles, correcting mistakes and adding media.

The conference included:

  • A lecture by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees member Bishakha Datta.
  • A women’s panel.
  • A session which dealt with theoretical and practical aspects of women’s participation in Wikipedia.
  • A GLAM session.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • The only component that was missing in this marvelous conference is a special edit-a-thon for women.

Any additional details:

Media Coverage:


Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM)

The Port of Jaffa in Jaffa, Israel – winner: Pini Birman
Bat Galim Casino in Haifa, Israel – finalist
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Increase the amount of free content: the aim of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest was to increase the number of images of Israeli Heritage Sites at Wikimedia Commons. This was accomplished.
  • Improve the ties between the chapter and the professional community in cultural institutions such as the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites: Collaboration with the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites expanded from 2012. The Society gave WMIL access to the Knowledge about the sites and organized free tours for volunteers and the general public.
  • Publish and make accessible the work of Wikipedia to the public, with an emphasis on increasing public awareness of real involvement in writing and uploading content: More than 40 articles in the media allow us to increase the public awareness.
  • Find new areas of collaboration: Two new partners took part in the contest.


What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • WML contest was extremely successful in our opinion.

An amount of 7000 images were uploaded to Wiki Commons; Our volunteers, reinforced by tour guides of the Society for the Preservation of Israel’s Heritage Sites, conducted 30 tours to distant heritage sites spanning the country in an effort to encourage more people to participate in the competition. Roughly 400 people participated in the tours. Two new sponsors took part in this project: HP Indigo that printed the posters and calendars of winning pictures and Neve Schechter that hosted the ceremony awards. Two photography workshops were held by professional photographers from the "Galitz School of Photography" which are one of our sponsors from 2012. Twelve volunteers and one staff member led this program. Shortly after the ceremony awards we held two summary meetings. The first was internal and the second was with our colleagues from the Society for the Preservation of Israel's Heritage Sites. In those meetings we went through the different stages of the contest (preparation, actual contest, tours, advertising and marketing, ceremony) and summarized lessons learnt – what worked, what didn't work and why. This process will help us in the 2014 WML contest enormously.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Increase participation – WLM increased participation of people who could not/would not edit but could contribute in other ways instead, such as donating beautiful photographs to the Commons.
  • Improve Quality – During the WLM contest, over 7000 images were uploaded. Most of the images improved the quality of Wikimedia Commons, especially in the relevant fields.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • 7000 images uploaded.
  • 30 tours
  • Two photography workshops
  • Awards ceremony
  • 40 articles in the media
  • Strengthening collaborations and collaborating with new partners
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Any additional details:

Media Coverage:


GLAM

Examples of images released in the Haifa University Library GLAM partnership
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Increase the amount of free quality content provided in the Hebrew language on Wikipedia and the Commons.
  • Improving the ties between WMIL and the professional knowledge / heritage community in Israel, and with educational Institutions.
  • Expose the GLAM activities and improving the ties between the chapter and the general public.
  • Create new collaborations which benefit WMIL and its community.

GLAM strategy – Since the early beginnings of GLAM in Israel (August 2011, right after Wikimania 2011 in Haifa), we have been very lucky and blessed to be working with top GLAMs in Israel. We usually have GLAMs lined up to partner with us (sometimes too many at once), and look at a few factors deciding who to work with and when. Here are the main ones:

  • Sharing our agenda of making knowledge free and accessible to the public and understanding partnership is not only for the sake of publicity or for the GLAM institution’s goals.
  • Having a knowledge-base, collections or experts that hold a potential to make a noticeable impact on our content.
  • Looking for a long-term, sustainable partnership.
  • Differing in what the partnership has to offer, in relation to existing partnerships.
  • Having a potential to attract new audience from the general public.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Our Wikipedian-in-Residence programs always aim to "jump-start" a partnership that will last more than the period of residency. This precisely describes the relationships we have generated with GLAM organizations this year. Two Wikipedian-in-Residence did a great job in Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa and The National Library of Israel.
  • The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa is Wikipedians’ and Wikimidians’ home in northern Israel. Many editing workshops was hosted there since the collaboration started.

Most of the activities were carried out in the third and fourth quarters of 2012 and enterprise ended in January 2013:

  • 61 images uploaded to Wiki Commons.
  • 6 articles was written or enlarged.
  • One editing workshop library employees, 20 of them attended.
  • An Exposure Event of the special collections of the Library. 10 wikipidians attended and the event attracted 10 guests.
  • One editing workshop was held for the general public.

When seek to understand the success of the collaboration with The National Library of Israel, there are number of factors that are rising:

  1. The National Library's executive team realized the great potential from the connection with Wikipedia.
  2. The Library’s executive team encouraged employees to learn and edit in Wikipedia and to help the Wikipedian-in-Residence.
  3. A few Librarians became active Wikipidians (and a few already were).
  4. The basis for partnership already existed. Wikipidians had created the first contact with the Library before the official collaboration started.
  5. There are more Wikipidains who live or work in Jerusalem, where the National Library is situated. It was easier to bring then to help in editing workshops.

In 2013 WMIL, we achieved all the goals that we set to ourselves (note that these are only ‘direct’ results which we can measure): 2,913 free files uploaded to Wiki Commons:

  • 899 images including 14 antique maps files, and six pages of antique books.
  • 45 audio files.
  • 6 books.

34 new articles were written:

  • 27 in Hebrew.
  • 3 in English.

93 articles were ​​enriched by media files:

  • 27 articles in Hebrew was enriched with images ; 16 articles in Hebrew was enriched with sound files.
  • 8 articles in English was enriched with images ; 7 articles in English was enriched with sound files.
  • 3 articles in Spanish was enriched with images ; 3 articles in Spanish was enriched with sound files.
  • Articles in other language were enriched with images and sound files.

A “Help Desk” was established – an innovative place which wikipidians can ask questions, and the reference staff of the Library answer (this imitates a real-world Library service). Workshops:

  • 175 people attended the workshops events at the National Library.
  • 25 National Library employees attended to two session workshops. Eight of whom became active on Wikipedia since.
  • 4 volunteers participated in each workshop. 1 staff member help with the administration.

The success of the partnership with the National Library is reflected in the number of librarians (25) who participated in editing workshops. Eight of them became wikipidians. Today (2014) they are part of a team that support the editing workshops which take place once a month in the Library – we hope this becomes part of the Library’s day to day reality and offering to the public.

At the end of the year we had another exiting global GLAM event: The "Europeana-Fashion Challenge". We held an edit-a-thon dedicated to fashion. In order to succeed we contacted our partners the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (IMJ), our very first GLAM partner and invited new partners: Shenkar Design College of Engineering and Design, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design . They helped us with mapping articles that need to be created or expanded.

The edit-a-thon took place at the Holon Institute of Technology, Prof. Dana Arieli, Dean of the Design Faculty generously hosted the event. 10 people participated in the event. Beyond the edit-a-thon WMIL board member Shani Evenstein led a panel at the The Jerusalem EVA/Minerva Conference on the Digitization of Cultural Heritage: "GLAM-wiki for Fashion in Israel: What Can Your GLAM do for Fashion? 40 people participated in the panel.

In 2013 additional collaborations started to build up with cultural institutions:

  • Collaboration with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra. This partnership did not proceed because of multiple technical difficulties.
  • Collaboration with the Israeli Cartoon Museum. The partnership started at 2014.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - more than 150 people participated in workshops, some of them wrote articles.
  • Improve quality - Articles in many languages (8) were enriched with images and sound files
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Workshops for the public.
  • Lecture and workshops for librarians.
  • Uploading files and enriching articles in many languages.
  • A Reference Desk of the the National Library was opened in the Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • Building long-term relationships with both two major Libraries in Israel, and preparing other relationships.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • 12 editing workshops were held. We did not fully track the people who participated in seminars, due to the luck of manpower and.

Any additional details:


Editor Meeting

 
Meetup at the 12th birthday of Wikipedia
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Improve and strengthen the relationship and positive cooperation between new and existing editors in the Wikipedia community in Israel.
  • Strengthen the ties between Wikimedia Israel and its volunteers and the Wikimedia editor's community.
  • Encourage a sense of solidarity and pride of a shared vision in the community.
  • Add quality content to the Hebrew Wikipedia.

During the years there were ups and downs in the relationship between the Wikipedian community and WMIL. We used this opportunity of editor meetings to create a dialogue and recruit more volunteers. There were two major events: The 12th Birthday of Wikipedia and the 10th anniversary celebration of a of the Hebrew Wikipedia. Over the year the chapter did its best to be very accessible to the community. In all GLAM collaborations there was an event for the Wikimedia editor’s community. For example, the event of the exposing the special collections of The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library University of Haifa in an excellent example of such effort. The goals which we set for 2013 were too high, however. The board was occupied in recruiting an ED and chose to focus on two major events.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

We had to two large-scale events and one small editors’ meeting with Bishaka Datta:

  • In January an editors' meeting was held on the occasion of 12th birthday of Wikipedia. The gathering was attended by about 130 people, 43 of them women, and lectures were given on specific topics ​​that were under discussion by the community. We celebrated the birthday of Wikipedia in January in the Google campus in Tel Aviv.

The editor meeting was organized with the help of 5 volunteers and 1 staff members.

  • 10th anniversary celebrations of Hebrew Wikipedia: in honor of a decade of existence of the Hebrew Wikipedia, a festive meeting was held which was attended by about 100 editors. The meeting included breakfast and a film screening for the Wikipedians’ enjoyment.

The 10th anniversary was widely described in the media with a total of 22 reports – from magazine cover stories to TV and radio reports. The most important event involved unique collaboration between WMIL and senior news reporters from the national Channel 2, the most widely-viewed commercial TV channel in Israel. In this unique collaboration, five Israeli news reporters wrote Wikipedia articles on a variety of subjects. The project received daily coverage during prime time. 4 articles were rewritten by the reporters. The celebration was composed with the help of 6 volunteers and 1 staff member.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Stabilize infrastructure - The Wikipedians are the infrastructure of all our activities. WMIL has to be attentive to their needs and show gratitude for their amazing volunteer work.

Increase participation - Such meetings strengthened community members sense of belonging.

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • 12th birthday of Wikipedia.
  • 10th anniversary celebrations of Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • GLAM events for the Wikimedia editor’s community.
  • At the end of 2013 an article elaboration competition was held. Over 40 articles were reviewed by the judges. Another sub competitions that were held simultaneously are Best Photograph competition and Best Wikipedia Contributor. The competition organizers approached the chapter and asked us to provide support for the competition awards . The prizes were distributed at the 13th birthday of Wikipedia gathering.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • Unfortunately, during the year there was no regular meetings between the WMIL and the Wikipedian editor's community. The board identified this area as a subject that need fully attention in 2014.

Any additional details: Media Coverage:


Hackathon

 
2013 Hackathon in Tel Aviv, organized by Wikimedia Israel
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Primary goal - Recruit professionals in programming and web design, and encourage them to contribute to free software projects, and by doing so, to expand the circle of active - volunteers programmers in our chapter.
  • mprove ties between the chapter and the Wikipedia community.
  • Improve ties between the editors and the developers themselves.
  • Encourage innovation.
  • Create new additions and improving Wikipedia infrastructure.
  • Solving glitches in MediaWiki.
  • Encourage dialogue on free software inside and outside the community and increase our circles of influence.

There are many ways that volunteers can contribute to Wikipedia. Most of our efforts are directed to editors. The Hackathon is an attempt to recruit other groups of volunteers. Programs like that strengthening the ties between the chapter and the Wikipedia community because there in a need for improving Hebrew Wikipedia infrastructure as well as to recruit technically skilled volunteers.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)

The first Hackathon took place at Google Campus in Tel Aviv. About thirty people showed up for the event. Their skills were varied: There were not just PHP and JavaScript developers but also experts in DevOps, integration testing, Python scripting, data visualizations and design., Throughout the day, fixes for two MediaWiki bugs, both made by new developers; improved automatic tests for JavaScript components; a prototype for a script that enriches Wikipedia with data from Open Knesset, a database of information about the Israeli parliament based on open-source technology; and a new template in Lua, also made by a developer who is completely new to the language. Community blog. 8 volunteers and two staff members were involved in the May Hakathon.

The second Hackathon was much bigger with participation of 70 people. Most of them new to us. The event also took place at Google Campus in Tel Aviv. The Programmers who came was with experience in different software fields: performance tweakers, web server and frontend programmers, mobile developers, semantic web gurus and others fields who wanted to learn something new. Possibly the most interesting demo was done by a group of young IDF hackers, who wrote a Python script to create a PowerPoint presentation directly from a Wikipedia article. Community blog. 4 volunteers and one staff members were involved it the May Hakathon.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Stabilize infrastructure - Fixing MediaWiki bugs will help to stabilize infrastructure.
  • Encourage innovation - The Hackathon as platform invites program developers and other volunteers to be innovative and help fix MediaWiki bugs or creating fun gadgets.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • Two successful Hackathon.
  • wo MediaWiki bugs were fixed.
  • We have contacted with 100 programmers who will be the basis for the programmers community WMIL wish to build in 2014.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • WMIL is working on further outreach to grow the local MediaWiki developers' community. One of the goals for 2014 is to establish a permanent Developers group who will meet regularly at the community room in WMIL offices.

Any additional details:

Media Coverage:


Educational Initiatives

 
WikiMarkup cheat sheet in Hebrew made by WMIL (PDF)
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Expanding the Hebrew Wikipedia
  • Expanding the Hebrew Wikipedia community by means of attracting new writers
  • Integrating article writing in the secondary and post-secondary education systems

Over the years, Hebrew Wikipedians functioned independently at schools, colleges and universities. They conducted lectures and editing workshops and were in contact with teachers and lecturers so their students could write articles in Hebrew. A special portal for articles written by students in the framework of academic courses was established on the Hebrew Wikipedia and has been active since 2011. They also began using the education extension in 2013. you can visit the Project Wiki Page here.

Over the course of 2013, Wikipedians conducted activities independently at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Haifa University, the Geography Department of the Ben Gurion University and more. The Wikipedians who led the activities were members of WMIL and during the year the chapter assisted them in the preparation of a Hebrew Wikipedia syntax information sheet and branded pens, stickers, etc., which they distributed among students.

Be'er Sheva Educational Initiative

Goals
  • Expanding public discourse on free content and using Wikipedia as a tool to advance the interest and capabilities of the high school students.
  • Writing or editing 40 articles about the city of Be'er Sheva and the surrounding area.
  • Increasing the quantity of free content available about Be'er Sheva.

This project only started in Q3 2013. It's still in progress. During the second half of 2013 we created an excellent infrastructure for the project. The project leaders set simple targets that can be achieved: The area of improvement is clear – 40 articles about Be’er Sheva should be uploaded to the article namespace at the end of the school year (July 2014).

About a year ago, a Wikipedian who works in the Be'er Sheva municipality proposed an ambitious educational project. The idea was to encourage promising students from the 9th grade to write articles about the city of Be'er Sheva and its surrounding area. The purpose of the project is to strengthen the identity and the students' sense of responsibility in regard to the environment. In order to achieve these goals, the project aims to create a large number of articles about Be'er Sheva. The Education Department of the Municipality of Be'er Sheva adopted the project and several people made major efforts to make it happen: the Municipal Educational Department's director, the Ministry of Education's Supervisor of the Teaching of Hebrew in southern Israel, WMIL's ED and senior teachers from all of the secondary schools in the city. A senior Wikipedian heads the project working with the municipal education department.

Kfar Kama project

In 2012, we introduced Wikipedia and WMIL to District Managers of the Ministry of Education. The lecture topic was "How can Wikipedia be used as a teaching tool?" The North District Manager contacted the school principal Circassian and offered to cooperate with Wikimedia. She turned to us to determine whether it is possible to use Wikipedia as a tool through which middle school students could learn their language. A community of some 5,000 Circassians resides in Israel, about half in the village of Kfar Kama, and half in Rehaniya. Circassians in Israel study in the Israeli education system supervised by the Ministry of Education and their spoken language at home is Western Adyghe ("Circassian" or "Cherkess"), their language of study in Kfar Kama schools is Hebrew and the children are not taught Circassian.

The principal happily embraced the idea. It was decided to conduct a pilot program with 9th grade classes, writing Hebrew Wikipedia entries about Circassian heritage and expanding the Western Adyghe Wikipedia.

Project goals
  • Familiarization with Wikipedia and Wikipedia information search literacy.
  • Writing entries about the Circassian heritage for the Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • Writing entries for the Circassian Wikipedia.

Wiki-Med Course

Last summer, former board member, Shani Evenstein, initiated an innovative idea – to enable medical students, at the Tel-Aviv University, take part in a full elective course on Wikipedia, for which they would receive full academic credit. The goal was that in the framework of the course, the students would enrich existing Hebrew Wikipedia articles and write new articles in the field of medicine. Thus, students (62!) contributed to creation of almost 130 medical-related articles on Hebrew Wikipedia.

Dozens of Wikipedians took part in the course, guest-lecturing or assisting students on and off line. Further details on this course can be found here.

Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Increase participation – hundreds of students wrote articles in Wikipedia and many others exposed to possibilities of editing Wikipedia.
  • Improve quality - there are more articles and better articles in Hebrew Wikipedia.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
Be'er Sheva Educational Initiative
  • We conducted a lecture and a workshop for 22 high school teachers. Four volunteers and the Executive Director participated in the lecture and workshop.
  • Lesson plans were developed.
  • All classes (10) participating in the project heard an introduction the about Wikipedia (some of the talks held in 2014).
Kfar Kama project
  • Lecture and an ongoing editing workshop
  • Six Hebrew articles and 75 Circassian Wikipedia dictionary articles.
Wiki-Med Course
  • A full elective course on Wikipedia at the Tel-Aviv University.
  • 62 students who contributed to the creation of almost 130 medical-related articles on Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • A creation of a full academic syllabus for a 14-weeks course to teach Wikipedia.
  • Acceptance of the course by the Academic Affairs Committee at the Sackler School of Medicine, the Tel-Aviv University, as well as support of academic staff.

Any additional details: Media Coverage:


Thousand Words

What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Increase the amount of free content provided in Hebrew.
  • Increase Participation – encourage group dynamics and internal cooperation within the community.
  • Improve the quality of articles in Wikipedia.

The Thousand Words program, more than anything else, is wonderful opportunity to Wikipedia's editors to meet face to face, enjoy a tour and an opportunity to raise the quality of articles in Wikipedia.

What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • In 2013 were held 9 tours, attended by 180 participants. During the tours 1838 Photos were taken.
  • The Thousand Words tours were led by one volunteer.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Increase participation - Meetings between members of the editors' community are increasing the sense of communality and build up the volunteers. This positive effect strengthens Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • Improve quality - The images that were taken during the tours extend WikiCommons images of sites in Israel. A few images enriched articles:

בית יוסף באו, יוסף באו,הדת השומרונית, אתר הפרדסנות ע"ש מינקוב

What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • 9 tours.
  • 1838 images uploaded to WikiCommons.
  • Collaboration with Museums and Heritage sites that hosted the tours.
If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?

Any additional details:

  • The team work with the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites at WML resulted to that in 2014 some of "Thousand Words" tour we will in their sites.


Wiki Air

The city of Rishon LeZion from the air
The Large Makhtesh from the air
Examples of pictures taken by WikiAir participants
What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
  • Produce free, high-quality images for use in Wikimedia projects.
  • Encourage the public (e.g., civic pilots) to take an active role in contributing to Wikipedia projects.
  • Encourage successful collaborations with other institutions in Israel.
  • Produce Landscapes photos of important and Noteworthy places in Israel.
What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
  • Wiki-Air is a joint venture between Wikimedia Israel and the Israeli Association of General Aviation. The idea is to create a pool of aerial photographs of the State of Israel, distributed under a free license, to be used in Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia projects, as well as for free use by the general public. As part of the project, Wikipedia volunteers are flown (for free) over parts of Israel to take photographs. These photos were be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons.
  • 9 WMIL volunteers joined 10 flights. 1441 images taken.
Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
  • Improve Quality - Wiki Air project produced Landscapes photos that are unique and rare to find with open license (cc-by-sa).
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
  • 10 flights.

At 2013, 1441 free images were taken and uploaded to WikiCommons, and some of them have been embedded on various Wikipedia articles. To be precise, since the launch of Wiki-Air project, 208 images (9.1% of all files) were been used. One of the images as been even used by the President Of israel greeting card for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) on his Facebook page. You can see the exact statistics here.

If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
  • The program was an initiative of Volunteer of WMIL supported it. The support was expressed by legal counsel and printing materials.

Any additional details:


Lessons learned

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Lessons from the past

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A key objective of the funding is to enable the movement as a whole to understand how to achieve shared goals better and faster. An important way of doing this is to identify lessons learned and insights from entities who receive funds, and to share these lessons across the movement. Please answer the following questions in 1–2 paragraphs each.

1. What were your major accomplishments in the past year, and how did you help to achieve movement goals?
  • WMIL major accomplishment is the spirit of voluntarism of the Wikimdians who did 2000 hours of volunteering consisting of lectures, editing workshops, and leading projects. The volunteers are committed to the chapter activities and Wikipedia. At the lectures and editing workshops, they did their best to recruit more people. Their enthusiasm infects others help to increase participation.
2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?
  • The challenges that we faced this year were due to organizational instability due to ED’s recruitment and exchange: there was no record of activities or lists of edit workshop participants and assessment and evaluation were not conducted.
3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?
  • Factors that contribute to the success:
  1. WMIL has a good reputation in Israel.
  2. Active community of able and motivated volunteers.
  3. Professional volunteers led successful projects like WMIL and 10th anniversary celebrations.
4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?
  • WMIL encounter with two unexpected challenges: a longer than expected process to select an ED (already been explained) and the low allocation of budget for 2014 by the FDC which took a lot of resources from the board and the staff to prepare responses, appeal, and changes needed after that in the current budget and work plan for 2014 - which was revised a lot the way and the directions the chapter will focus this year (about 60% more fundraising time than planned).
5. What are the 2–3 most important lessons that other entities can learn from your experience? Consider learning from both the programmatic and institutional (what you have learned about professionalizing your entity, if you have done so) points of view.
  • Regular contact with WMF staff.
  • Building a clear roles' definition for staff, board members and volunteers.
  • Importance of media relations to a chapters’ visibility.

Lessons for the future

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The Wikimedia movement grows as each entity in the movement reflects and adapts its approaches to changing needs and contexts. The questions below encourage you to apply your thinking in the sections above of "how well have we done" and "what have we learned" to the development and execution of future organisational and program strategies. The questions below can be informed both by your own entities' learnings, as well as the learnings of other movement entities (e.g., adding a new program that appears to have caused significant impact in several other countries or communities).

1. What organisational or program strategies would you continue?

We will continue to run WML with new partners,

  • Wikipedia Academy conference (Jan-Bart de Vreede is going to be our guest of honor in coming conference).
  • WMIL will continue to do editing workshops but the structure of the seminar part will based on a new and professional set of materials and learning methods we are developing this days. Moreover, staff will follow up on participants and will encourage them to continue editing.
  • Hackathons - The Hackathons will continue in order to establish a permanent developers' group that will meet regularly.
2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?
  • This year we will focus on building organizational infrastructure: recruiting new volunteers, writing procedures and start to measure success of activities, writing tutorials for editing workshops, offers WMIL volunteers training tools,. In addition, we will begin to fundraise in order to allow the chapter to have enough resources for 2015.
3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.

Stories of success and challenge

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Of all the accomplishments highlighted through this report, please share two detailed stories: one story of a success and one story of a challenge that your entity experienced over the past year in a few paragraphs each. Provide any details that might be helpful to others in the movement on the context, strategy, and impact of this initiative. We suggest you write this as you would tell a story to a friend or colleague. Please refrain from using bullet points or making a list, and rather focus on telling us about your organization's experience.

Case study: success

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This year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia. The celebration was an opportunity to gather our dedicated and active community to celebrate the growth and prosperity of Hebrew Wikipedia. 100 Wikipedians arrived for enjoyable event which included breakfast and movie. The decade event allowed us the opportunity to show our appreciation for the Wikipedians and Wikimedians.

We took advantage of the celebration to raise public awareness to the importance of free knowledge and encourage more people to become editors at Wikipedia and other projects of Wikimedia Israel. The media coverage of the 10th anniversary was very significant (22 Press coverage) and many members of the community were interviewed in the media. The media coverage was helpful to provide a platform to the Wikipedia Mission and strengthen the position of the Hebrew Wikipedia.

The most significant exposure Hebrew Wikipedia received during the 10th anniversary events was a collaboration with senior reporters from TV Channel 2. The reporters expanded Wikipedia articles and after that explained their personal experiences on TV. Due the success of the project, channel 2 decided to rebroadcast it again a week after. The message that came across to the public was that writing Wikipedia is a significant contribution to Israel.

We are aiming to nominate the project (Media coverage on Channel 2) to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Case study: challenge

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  • At the strategic seminar conducted in 2012, the members of the association discussed the challenges faced by the chapter that year: the increasing scope of administrative work, the growing mass of projects conducted by the volunteers and the WMF reporting requirements. All these challenges placed a growing burden on board members, who felt they were not fulfilling their leadership roles: defining the organization's strategy, building new partnerships and more. It was decided at the seminar to change the organizational structure and employ personnel to support the volunteers.

Two models for the employment of these personnel were raised for discussion at the seminar: hiring a director or a project coordinator. The decision was made to hire a director. The budget request from the Fund included the employment of a director, but the cost of employing the director of an organization in Israel's third sector was not examined. The job description advertised emphasized managerial aspects of the director position and its subordination to the Board. After advertising the position, a few hundred resumes were received. The board members ranked the candidates and conducted telephone interviews and eight candidates were finally interviewed. "X" was selected for the position of Executive Director and three months later the board understood that "X" was unsuitable to the organization's needs.

Two models for the employment of these personnel were raised for discussion at the seminar: hiring a director or a project coordinator. The decision was made to hire a director. The budget request from the Fund included the employment of a director, but the cost of employing the director of an organization in Israel's third sector was not examined. The job description advertised emphasized managerial aspects of the director position and its subordination to the Board. After advertising the position, a few hundred resumes were received.

The board members ranked the candidates and conducted telephone interviews and eight candidates were finally interviewed. "X" was selected for the position of Executive Director and three months later the board understood that "X" was unsuitable to the organization's needs.

  • The salary offered was not commensurate to a management position.
  • The salary level lead to candidates with little management experience.
  • Despite the desire to hire a director to lead the organization, it seems that the organization was not ready to employ a director, rather a project coordinator.

After dissolving the position of Executive Director, the board revisited the subject of selecting a director. The board members consulted with directors of other chapters, the Foundation's leaders and colleagues in Israel. From these discussions, it became clear that the salary offered was low and there was a need for a person with proven management experience.

In order to carry out the selection process, it was decided to turn to a manpower agency that specializes in Israel's third sector, which would assist in redefining the position and determining the salary level. Hundreds of resumes were received in this round as well. The manpower agency chose candidates who reached the final stage and the board made the final selection among them.

In summary, selecting the first director of an organization of volunteers requires the leaders in the organization to take the community through a process leading up to the organizational change. It is important to define which management and leadership roles transfer from the volunteers to the salaried director. In addition, the optimal relationship between the board and the director and between the director and the community should be defined in advance. Likewise, it is important to remember that these changes are always difficult and they must be carried out with the utmost sensitivity, but there will always be those who will be hurt and the role of the Board is to navigate the changes with sensitivity and efficiency.

Additional learning

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1. What are some of the activities that are happening in your community that are not chapter-led? What are the most successful among these, and why?
  • Most of the activities done by the community this days involve the chapter, expect some small internal wiki-projects
2. Provide any links to any media coverage, blog posts, more detailed reports, more detailed financial information that you haven't already, as well as at least one photograph or video that captures the impact your entity had this past year.

Compliance

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Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?

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1. As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
  • Yes
3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
  • Yes

Financial information

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1. Report any Grant funds that are unexpended fifteen (15) months after the Effective Date of the Grant Agreement. These funds must be returned to WMF or otherwise transferred or deployed as directed by WMF.
  • We don't have any unexpended grant funds.
2. Any interest earned on the Grant funds by Grantee will be used by Grantee to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement. Please report any interest earned during the reporting period and cumulatively over the duration of the Grant and Grant Agreement.
  • No

Signature

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Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes. --Itzike (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)