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.
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)
In 2013, Wikimedia UK organised two major international conferences: EduWiki and GLAM-Wiki. The first EduWiki was held in 2012 at Leicester, and in 2013 we looked to build on previous work. The 2013 edition attracted more attendees and had a more ambitious programme, with two streams instead of one. Of the 68 delegates, 23 worked in educational institutions and 17 were students, showing the event was successful in reaching out to educational institutions. GLAM-Wiki 2013 was the largest event in Wikimedia UK's calendar, and the most highly attended to date. Over the course of two days at the British Library, 200 delegates gathered – with many travelling internationally – to discuss GLAMs, Wikimedia, and how the two worlds interact. It was a much bigger event than the previous year's GLAMcamp, and had three streams rather than the previous one. Both EduWiki and GLAM-Wiki were well-received by attendees.
Over the course of the year, Wikimedia UK had Wikimedians in Residence at
British Library (May '12–May '13)
Natural History Museum and the Science Museum (Mar '13–Jan '14)
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (Mar–June '13)
National Library of Scotland (Jul '13–present)
Jisc (Jul '13–present)
York Museums Trust (Oct '13–present)
The Royal Society (Jan '14–present)
It is encouraging that several of the residencies were extended at the request of the host organisations. The residencies play an important part in encouraging institutions to work with Wikimedia and general advocacy supporting our charitable goals, as well as training people how to edit and liaising with institutions about content releases.
In 2013–14 Wikimedia UK held its third Train the Trainers session. The aim of the sessions is to give people the skills to train others in how to use and edit Wikimedia projects. The first two sessions, held in 2012–13, were both in London and the third event took place in Manchester. This saw us looking to have a greater impact outside the capital. Having a core of accredited trainers has allowed Wikimedia UK to deliver 44 events in 2013–14 at which people received training in how to edit and similar skills. A review of the process was conducted to assess how best to proceed: whether we need to make better use of our trainers and whether more sessions should be arranged to create more accredited trainers. The conclusion was that the programme is an overall success and will continue in 2014–15 with more sessions, and that trainers would like more opportunities to put their skills into practice. Having a core of not just accredited trainers but enthusiastic volunteers means Wikimedia UK is well set to deliver training events.
SWOT:
Strengths
Weaknesses
WMUK has continued to grow in confidence during the year. There has been a steady increase in active volunteers, a big increase in activities and relationships with outside organisations and we have established organisational and governance systems of the highest quality. There has been a stable staff base that has ensured continuity and volunteer support.
In the light of the Hudson and Chapman reviews we have established policies and procedures that protect our reputation and programmes and created a five year plan that offers clear vision, mission, values and strategic goals. To ensure delivery of our programme we have created sophisticated monitoring and evaluation systems.
We were disappointed that we were unable to deliver on some aspects of our programme. There were areas of significant underspend. We have addressed this by a review of our programme, budgeting that offers more scope for adapting to circumstances and a scheme of delegation that will allow spending to be more flexible. We also have not yet made the impact we would like in diversifying our volunteer base although there has been significant progress in, for instance, our geographical spread. One of the key issues was potential partners lacking the capacity to engage.
We have reformatted our budgeting to avoid any ‘eggs in one basket’ approach.
The decline in the editor base is an area we are addressing urgently. Given we have 15,000 regular contributors in the UK, (which according to Foundation figures would indicate we make up almost 20% of all contributors worldwide), we need to be recruiting at least 300 new ones annually to reverse the decline. We know that few of the 517 people we trained last year went on to become regular contributors. We will be using our new systems to support those we train by offering encouragement and access to learning resources through the Virtual Learning Environment that we have been developing.
Opportunities
Threats
We continue to be approached by many UK institutions but are refining our decision making. We reviewed our Train the Trainers work which offered useful insights into how we can improve its impact and are carrying out a similar exercise with our Wikimedian in Residence Programme. We believe that our Civi CRM system will allow us to build far closer relationships with our volunteer community.
During the year we were able to build some significant relationships which have led to the acquisition of valuable open content and contributed to the reputation of the movement and the Wikimedia projects. We have continued to offer the flexibility for the community to follow its instincts and take chances. As a result we were able to participate very successfully for the first time in Wiki Loves Monuments.
The biggest threats continue to be burn-out of our volunteers, trustees and staff. We have grown dramatically in the last two years and now need to consolidate our programme. Having a clear view of our strategy will assist significantly in this process. We are conscious that we need to concentrate more clearly on what works best and develop it whilst allowing room for experimentation.
There is also a danger that we lose touch with our community as we develop. Growing professionalisation, an emphasis on assessment and measurement etc must not be barriers to participation.
As ever the reputation of the charity, and by extension our movement’s work is always something that needs to be protected and guarded jealously. We had a quiet year in this respect and have travelled a long distance. We have won many public plaudits for our work and hope to continue this with Wikimania being an excellent platform upon which to demonstrate our impact.
WIKI-FOCUS: English Wikipedia (en.wp), English Wikisource, Welsh Wikipedia (cy.wp), Wikimedia Commons (Com)
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)?
Two major international conferences: GLAM-Wiki and EduWiki
88 events (excluding GLAM-Wiki and EduWiki) broken down by:
13 editathons
20 training
24 training/editathon
25 advocacy
5 photography
1 speakerthon
517 people attending events to learn editing skills (ie: training or training/editathon events)[1]
23,132 files uploaded to Commons (134.51GB) of which 12.7% are in use on Wikimedia sites, 6.9% if excluding "list of Grade I listed buildings in xyz" type articles
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.
Table 2Please 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 ($US)*
Explanation of variances from plan
Donations
GBP
240,900.00
67,471.27
67,467.71
65,067.79
79,762.67
279,769.40
385,440.00
447,631.10
Variance no more than 20%.
Grants
GBP
569,014.00
82,941.86
82,941.86
82,942.14
82,942.14
331,768
910,422.40
530,828.80
FDC decision recommended a lower figure than predicted.
Gift Aid contributions were received earlier than expected, and were markedly higher than expected. We predicted £30,100 in gift aid: the actual figure was over £65,000.
Table 3Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ 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
Community
GBP
102,000
14,152.30
20,411.21
32,265.99
16,279.01
83,108.51
163,200.00
132,973.62
81%
Variation no more than 20%.
Promoting free knowledge
GBP
206,000
32,172.41
16,917.15
44,951.62
31,739.05
125,780.23
329,600.00
201,248.37
61%
With a restricted pool of volunteers, and very little uptake (despite advertising heavily amongst the community), the various volunteer grants programmes are underspending quite heavily. The spends we have made have been very useful, but small. In addition, the support that we expected to offer Toolserver was not required by WMDE.
Membership & Public Support
GBP
8,000
8,842.58
6,841.75
3,872.82
3,421.80
22,978.95
12,800.00
36,766.32
287%
More donations received than expected: as a result, associated processing costs went up. Insurance costs also went up as a result of the increase in equipment and events.
External relations
GBP
62,000
9,938.44
1,727.42
7,312.05
1,897.13
20,875.04
99,200.00
33,400.06
34%
Both conferences, EDU-WIKI and GLAM-WIKI, were much cheaper than planned. The various pieces of work with other organisations, such as Mozilla, the Open Knowledge Foundation, etc, were also much cheaper - and in many cases, were free.
Finances
GBP
38,000
2,657.50
16,129.54
(3,625.52)
(9,136.30)
6,025.22
60,800.00
9,640.35
16%
Work which would once have been contracted is now done in-house by our Finance Team. This is much less expensive, and results in more accurate financial accounts.
Governance, Management and Administration
GBP
108,686
12,697.85
10,800.93
14,332.54
18,480.25
56,311.57
173,897.60
90,098.51
52%
Board costs and legal fees were less than expected, especially in the case of legal fees, where the conclusion of the QRpedia work led to us only spending 50% of this budget. We also view the drop in board costs as a success: our governance has vastly improved while at the same time, costs have been reduced due to several reasons: fewer (but more productive) meetings taking place once per quarter rather than once every few weeks, better analysis of board costs (resulting in some costs which were once seen as 'board' as now properly recognised as falling under other budgets), and spends on governance improvement being seen as no longer needed.
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."
There is a general point we would like to present before going into the evaluation of programmes. Referring back to WMUK's 2012-13 round 1 Proposal, our programme areas have been shifted and redefined at the request of the FDC staff from 30+ areas to 7. As we've become clearer on what each programme is aimed to achieve, we were often inclined to move them to different general programme areas. This has helped with organisational clarity when in delivery. At the same time this shifting makes evaluating our progress over past year's goals more challenging, as it doesn't compare 'like with like'. We have aimed to clarify this when describing each of the programme areas below.
We have started with outlining our initiatives in the FDC proposal form.
WMUK Chief Executive Jon Davies gives a presentation about our plans and outlines the programme for the Strategy Day on 23 March 2013.
In Quarter 1 we broke down our programmes in a detailed way, to follow our activity plan (wmuk:2013_Revised_activity_plan) and when reporting we mapped that against our original FDC proposal.
In Quarter 2's report we took in the feedback about reporting against too many programmes, and collated them into 7 bigger activity areas (which reflected various big focuses that we were working on - e.g. nurturing our community, or developing free knowledge). This meant that what resulted was some inconsistency in reporting with Q1, but overall allowed for more clarity in the individual report. We have continued with the system of Q2 into Q3, and would like to continue with it for the impact report.
Throughout the 2013-14 activity year, we have been approaching the targets for various areas in several ways, testing and learning as we progressed. As for reporting on them, we would like to base on our initial proposal, but supplement it with subsequent iterations. Our working document for monitoring progress throughout 2013-14 has been this chart ([1]), which also refers to goals. Taking these two documents together, we are aiming to report on our progress throughout the year in this report.
Another important point to make is that over 2013-14 activity year, especially towards Q4, WMUK has been working extensively on its strategy and five year plan. This meant that we redefined what our overall goals are, and have implemented them into the 2014-15 plan. At the same time, this process was in flux over 2013-14, which is why, when we will be referring to strategic goals throughout this report, they are not the same as the ones we have established since.
It will be clear that many of our targets did not include numbers, e.g. how many events we were aiming to deliver. As we were going through the strategic work, our understanding of what's important to capture has been developing and changing, which made it difficult to have consistent target setting. We will take these learnings into 2014-15.
1. Community
What were the stated objectives of this program?
Volunteer support is the key to growing our capacity and engagement with our community and we are always working towards increasing participation and reach. With the intention of supporting the Wikimedia community in its endeavours, WMUK undertakes several initiatives:
Volunteer equipment – To increase volunteer access to essential and specialist equipment for loan, and in doing so generate more content for Wikimedia projects.
We aimed to grow the Welsh community Wales – To expand the number of editors working in the Welsh language Wikipedia and to increase the number of articles in the Welsh Wikipedia (Wicipedia Cymraeg) we were supporting and delivering the Living Paths Project by creating 2,000 new articles (roughly half on cy.wp and half on en.wp), increase the number of editors on the Welsh-language Wicipedia (cy.wp), train 180 "Community Champions" to edit Wikipedia, and publishing 6,000 bilingual, individually addressed to potential trainees inviting them to a wiki-skills training event.
Project grants (ie: micro and macrogrants) – This was the first year this program area was delivered with a support of a staff member, so we aimed at treating this year as a baseline for future targets. The target for this year was to monitor the number of grants made and their effect. We have since determined that this was a fairly meaningless measure and are now concentrating on the resulting outputs and impact.
Travel grants – To allow Wikimedians to travel to wiki events to share expertise, learn from others and to report back on achievements to share with the community. Our target was, at a minimum, to support four key community events (see here).
WikiConference UK and AGM – Originally we intended to 'combine our Annual General Meeting with a series of presentations about the Wikimedia projects and chapter activities' - our target was to make sure the programme of the event is appealing to our community and give them the opportunity to meet, learn and debate. In the preparation for the event, we have established a firmer target: To run a conference which attracts at least 50 members; for the event to receive high level of feedback (at least 4/5).
Wikimania 2014 – To support the bid committee in their planning for the bid and early delivery (organisation) if successful.
In February 12 volunteers received training on how to deliver sessions on Wikimedia. Training the Trainers and Virtual Learning Environment – This was the second year we have run the Train the Trainer programme. We were clearer as for how to efficiently run the training workshops themselves, but still working out what should be the objectives of this area of our work. For example, our Education Committee made repeated approaches to try and establish metrics in this programme, and via this decide what our goals in the area should be (see e.g. here for one of the approaches). In the beginning of the year, when we created the Proposal report, we stated that our aim with the Train the Trainers was: "To increase editor participation by providing more volunteer trainers (number of new volunteer trainers accredited; number of new editors attracted through courses and workshops); To increase editor retention by improving the quality of training delivered (number of editors who continue editing six months after training); To increase article quality by improving the knowledge and skills of editors (estimate number of articles improved by random sampling of participants)". This was a disparate approach, burdening the Train the Trainers with many very different goals and with that reducing the clarity of what our goal actually was. By Quarter 3 it became clearer to us that what we want to focus on here is the development of volunteers who attend the Train the Trainer course, and our defined target for the year was: To deliver two training sessions with 20–24 volunteers trained, volunteer trainers engaged in at least 9 events in a quarter (36 over the course of a year). For the VLE, we wanted to look at its development by tracking number of enrolments and obtaining feedback from participants.
Development budget including supporting others – This area again has been going through a transformation as we have worked through various approaches during planning for 2013-14, and indeed during the activity year. We have started the planning with aiming to support the technical development of the chapter by employing a full time Developer (you can see that here). Originally, we also aimed at supporting key initiative '2.7 Technical developments' - particularly Toolserver and Europeana Mass Upload. We found it difficult to employ a full time Developer as a member of staff, so, keeping in mind that development work is important to the chapter, we changed the approach and adapted the developer support budget to employ contractors. It was agreed that this area of the programme exists to facilitate the Chapter's formal management of System Administration duties using contractor time and supportive security solutions to develop robust and secure systems for storing and processing data. At the same time, it was also intended to support more broadly creative development work, creating and improving software solutions in response to demand from the wider Wikimedia community, and to further the charity's objects in delivering the Wikimedia mission. Toolserver and Europeana Mass Upload projects have been more clearly separated from this area, and established within Programme 2, to support GLAM work. With more clarity around this programme, we have created structure for managing technical development (see here), with our main target for the developers to respond to technical requirements as they arose. We have built an active Technical Community to support this work, and established a target - To have monthly meetings with community engagement (via Technology Committee).
What is your progress against these objectives?
Files produced using Wikimedia UK's equipment and uploaded to Commons between 1st February 2013 and 31 January 2014.
As of writing, 167 files (6.68%) were in use on Wikimedia projects, excluding uses on meta, the WMUK website, and the WikiProject and user/user talk namespaces on en.wp, cy.wp.
We also purchased an induction loop system for the office and events to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Wales Manager was placed in post in Q2 to run the Living Paths project. 1,157 articles were been created on cy.wikipedia.org as a result of the Living Paths! project between 1 February 2013 and 31 January 2014. An additional 39 articles have been created on en.wikipedia.org in the same period. It is uncertain how many of these articles have been created after 1 February 2014.
In total 902 files (1.51GB) created as a result of the Living Paths! project have were uploaded by 4 people between 1st February 2013 and 31st January 2014 excluding User:BOT-Twm Crys. All files except three were images. As of writing, 59 files (6.54%) are in use on Wikimedia projects, excluding uses on the WMUK website and the WikiProject and user/user talk namespaces on en.wp and cy.wp.
On the ground strong relationship building has taken place with institutions such as Coleg Cymraeg, The Welsh Government, National Library of Wales, National Museum, CADW and the Royal Commission. Together these embrace the heart of the Welsh establishment and reflect the importance of Wicipedia Cymraeg as the biggest on-line repository of Welsh language materials. The relationship with National Library of Wales saw preparations for a bulk upload from the collection in February 2014. By 31 January 2014, 44 images (17.44MB) had been uploaded to Commons with 36 (81.82%) in use on Wikimedia projects.
There were eleven microgrant applications from nine people in the 2013–14 financial year. One application was withdrawn, and one was approved but unsuccessful in its outcomes (see below). The remaining nine applications resulted in 3 FAs, 4 GAs, 694 articles were expanded – nine of which are Core Articles, and 676 as part of the Stub Contest. In addition 825 typos were fixed as part of the Typo Contest. This all took place on the English language Wikipedia. 1,032 photos (5.96GB) were uploaded to Commons (including 1 Featured Picture and 4 Quality Images), 119 (11.53%) of which are currently used in Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia UK provided support in the form of prizes for the 10th anniversary proofreading competition on the English-language Wikisource. 25 people took part in the competition, combining to make 2,895 edits across ten nominated texts.
There were five macrogrant applications in the same time frame. The results of Wiki Loves Monuments are mentioned below in promoting free knowledge. The other grants, relate to activities which fall into the 2014–15 financial year. For an illustration for the types of projects we supported, please look at e.g. our Q1 report.
Wikimedia UK allocated 50 scholarships and 2 half-scholarships to nine Wikimedia and related events (such as Amsterdam hackathon, Program Evaluation and Design workshop in Budapest, WikiSym, Wikimania, OSM State of the Map), and so we feel the target has been met. Scholarship recipients were required to submit reports.
WikiConferenceWikiConference UK and AGM took place on 8 June. The feedback can be found on the WMUK website; overall feedback was positive and gave a rating of 4.37 out of 5 (from 20 completed feedback forms). 45 people registered for the event, falling short of the target of 50, and c. 38 attended. The feedback explores possible reasons why the attendance was lower than we anticipated - we feel overall that Lincoln was too difficult to get to. This was originally chosen to foster the local community around this area, but because our regular community found it difficult to travel to Lincoln, we fell short of this aspiration, and didn't manage to attract enough people. We feel our original target of a good programme of talks has been met - the agenda can be found here.
Edward Saperia talking about Wikimania 2014 at WikiConference UK 2013 The London 2014 Wikimania bid was successful - the positive news was announced on 1 May 2013. With the awareness that this is a community led event, but wanting to be a part of it, the chapter offered its support for the Wikimania team. Preparations for the conference are under way and have been developing throughout 2013-14. The key element here has been hiring an organiser based at the WMUK office - Wikimania Liaison, to add capacity to the organising team.
One Training the Trainers event was held in the 2013–14 financial year (wmuk:Training_the_Trainers/February_2013_event, 12 people were trained), with much of the preparation for the second event taking place within our 2013-14 activity year. We have put the delivery of the events on hold while we were undertaking the review of the programme in Q2 and Q3 (the results were positive, see here). The second event was in fact held on 1–2 February 2014, falling just outside the remit of this report. We do not have firm data on how many events trainers have been involved in since accreditation. In June we surveyed all trainers that attended Train the Trainers to date, and one of the questions was how many events they have delivered training at. The results were anonymous, and as it included all our trainers – not just those accredited in 2013–14 – it is not possible to differentiate between responses. However, of the 27 trainers who replied, only six said they had not been involved in any training events, ten had supported 1, one at 2, one at 3, two at 4, and 7 had delivered 5 or more, giving at least 58 instances of trainers delivering training since the first Training the Trainers event in June 2012. One of the conclusions of the review was that "the WMUK community is approached to find more opportunities to use our trainers". Taking a lesson from this report, we have planned a refresher course for all the Trainers that attended the course to date, with the aim of making them more active.
The VLE was not online before the end of 2013–14.
In Q1 the focus was on delivering the migration or switchover of the charity's systems from a volunteer server to our own server setup. Q2 and Q3 consolidated our CRM database work - moving to a new platform and more up to date version, as well as seeing the migration of our wiki in September. Q4 delivered support to the VLE project as well as the QRpedia project. Key to this progress was input from the volunteer-led Technology Committee, aimed at supporting the community in endeavours such as setting up the UK's Wiki Loves Monuments website. Meetings of the Committee were temporarily put on hold over the summer because capacity of the developers was such that they were unable to attend. Meetings resumed in October, and from then on have been arranged on a monthly basis (skipping December). Developers have been strongly engaged with the chapter and responding to technical needs of the organisation within their capacity - for example, they developed wmuk:IT Development/Service portfolio. Four staff and seven volunteers involved.
This is an area where we have done significant work in redefining and making the priorities more precise.
When we started building the programme - over the process of submitting our proposal - we linked WMF's strategic priorities to each of the small, individual activity areas (e.g. Train the Trainer). To add more complexity we have gone through a major strategic process over 2013-14, aiming to make our priorities clearer (e.g. see here. This was a long process. We started with a key community event on 23 March 2013 which aimed at clarifying our priorities). Hence in effect we have created our annual plan basing it on the broad WMF objectives as we are closely aligned to those, and at the same time work on making it more precise as for what our organisational priorities are. (These now exist here).
You can see from our proposal form that every activity had particular goals assigned to them. The strategic priorities that are repeatedly mentioned are:
‘Increase participation’ - increasing number of active volunteers; providing training for volunteers; delivering project grants bringing new volunteers in; delivering our Volunteer Strategy; supporting Wikimania 2014
‘Improve quality’ - media files donated as a result of activities and volunteer equipment being used;
‘Increase reach’ - making efforts to engage with new audiences of potential editors and contributors to Wikimedia projects - for example Wales;
They are all instrumental and feed into each other to support this program. Various elements within the programme support different priorities. If one goal was to be identified, however, it is the 'Increase participation' [2]. This programme addresses Increasing Participation by running activities that attract new and existing volunteers - events (training, conferences), offering equipment, creating avenues for volunteers to contribute ideas (e.g. Technology Community).
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
1. Early in Q1, the community was consulted on what equipment would be most useful for volunteers in addition to laptops which the charity already possessed. Over the course of the year, the following items were purchased:
Kaavie GC-2 Pocket Size 3-in-1 White Balance and Grey Cards
iGo 90W Universal Laptop Charger
Behringer C-1U Studio Condenser Microphone
August LP205R Wireless Presenter with Red Laser Pointer
Huawei E5756 MiFi
three data storage cards for use in the equipment.
Initial use of the multimedia equipment was light, but increased throughout the year as we bought more equipment and people became more aware of what was available. In light of this, it is expected that the volunteer equipment will receive more use in 2014–15. Events were arranged specifically using the multimedia equipment: Wiki Takes the Tube, and a photography training session where people learned how to take pictures of museum objects. To promote awareness of WMUK's pool of volunteer equipment, we included notices in our newsletters.
In addition to the multimedia equipment, laptops were available for use by volunteers at events. In the second half of the year the laptops were used for an estimated 265 hours. This does not include the usage of the volunteer laptop used in our Wales activities.
2. A Wales Manager was recruited to deliver our programme in Wales. Training events have been delivered. In excess of 1,000 articles have been created. We have published 20+ editing training videos. Welsh-language volunteering leaflets have been developed.
3. In addition to the grant applications, certain activities were undertaken. The project grants support the Core Contest which is intended to drive improvement to Wikipedia's most important articles (twice – the latter edition took place in the 2014–15 financial year and results are pending); the Stub Contest aimed at expanding stub articles; and the Typo Contest which was about fixing typographical errors. Celebrating Wikisource's tenth anniversary, a proofreading contest was held. To promote awareness of the grants process, we included notices in our newsletters. In July, a three-person grants committee was established, consisting of a member of staff, a trustee, and a volunteer. In Q2 we noted 'the macrogrant system is a slow process'. It was therefore reviewed to make the system easier for applicants. We have had more applications since then for instance a big grant to run the Stirling Symposium.
4. WMUK stall at Wikimania - possible thanks to the UK scholarships Of the 52 scholarships (of which two were partial), 34 (65.4%) were for events organised by Wikimedia UK: GLAM-Wiki, EduWiki, and WikiConference UK. The remaining scholarships allowed people to attend: the Amsterdam Hackathon, Program Evaluation & Design workshop, OSM State of the Map, Wikimania 2013, WikiSym+OpenSym (including Wikimania), and the Wikimedia Diversity Conference.
5. WikiConference UK and the AGM took place on 8 June 2013.
6. The volunteer bid team were successful in their proposal to host Wikimania. Late in Q3 a member of staff was recruited specifically to help the Wikimania team arrange the conference.Training events run by Wikimedia UK in 2013–14
7. One Training the Trainers event was held in February 2013. 11 people were accredited as trainers. In June a review of the process was conducted, with all the people who had been through the three TtT events asked for their opinions. The overall conclusion was that "The training has been of a high quality and the benefits are beginning to be felt. As a charity we need to find more opportunities to use our trainers and keep them engaged in the meanwhile." For more detail see the 17 recommendations made as a result of the review. The review gave us insight into how to make the programme deliver even more effectively. We were working to implement the recommendations in Q4 and beyond in 2014-15.
8. The Tech Committee held the planned six meetings in the year, with them falling more regularly in the latter half. Milestones for development work were not developed in the 2013/14 activity plan beyond recruitment, and were therefore scoped out and agreed during the year. Key achievements were the appointment of two contractors, delivery of the charity's systems on a professional footing, and support of two key community software development projects (the VLE and QRpedia).
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?
Project grants supporting competitions maximised impact in terms of number of articles improved, while more focused grants for purchasing books allowed a smaller set of articles to be improved to a higher standard. In September 2013, we received a grant request to fund a volunteer meeting with politician Tony Benn. The grant was approved, but Tony Benn had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances.
WikiConference 2013 and the AGM failed to attract the target of 50 members we had set ourselves. In an effort to avoid being London-centric, it was decided to host the event elsewhere in the UK. Lincoln was settled on, however compared to a major city it is not easy to get to, and this likely contributed to a shortfall of registrations.
Despite not having firm data for the last seven months of the 2013–14 financial year for how many events trained trainers were active at, early indications were that trainers wanted more opportunities to get involved. That said, October was the charity's busiest month for training events. It was originally hoped that the lead trainers could meet to discuss and assess the progress of the accredited trainers, however this idea was abandoned as not all trainers had the opportunity to work with or be observed by a lead trainer. Instead, it is hoped that the planned refresher course in 2014–15 will fulfil a similar role.
A detailed progress report on the VLE can be found on the UK wiki. It experienced delays because it was under-resourced and fell within the remits of two committees – education and tech – meaning at times there were communication problems.
Development budget will see greater spend in 2014–15 as Wikimedia UK are recruiting a project manager to improve the charity's delivery of software development and outreach to the community in this area. This will facilitate a more effective use of contractor time and improve our ability to support potential projects with money or developer time.
We were happy to be able to support the Wales programme more than initially planned when an opportunity to share a project with the Welsh Government and the EU arose. We funded a post seconded to the project which has enabled a great deal of activity to be achieved including thousands of new pages on ENWP and Wicipedia Cymraeg, significant downloads of valuable material, the placing of a Wikimedian in Residence in the federal Welsh language university, and relationships established with the National Library of Wales and Welsh Universities.
Any additional details:
The system for measuring the use of volunteer equipment was inconsistent during the year, making comparisons difficult. While it is easy to measure the outputs of lending a camera, it is more difficult to measure how a laptop has been used and requires a certain amount of self-reporting. The system for 2014–15 will be more consistent by using CiviCRM.
There is a lot of interest to see how the Living Paths project develops. When we started it, we came from the observation that visitors to Wales and local people would benefit not only from better information but also a simple way of finding it. So far, communities in Wales find it difficult to share information about their locality such as historic buildings, circular paths, geographical features and other points of interest. The information is published in local history pamphlets but these are expensive to distribute therefore difficult to source. Publishing online is possible but can be difficult due to the complexities of web-authoring for most people. The project addresses this problem by teaching simple skills – how to edit on Wikipedia. Local people know best about interesting places to visit, sights to see and facilities available such as picnic areas, parking and safety issues. They also have stories to tell that bring places and history to life.
A question of what constitutes an active volunteer (and how to measure their participation) is a complex one. In 2013-14 we have aimed to measure the number of volunteers who, e.g. engage with the chapter every month. Our volunteers engage with us in a wide variety of ways, which makes creating precise definitions more complicated - we want to recognise everyone's contributions. This is something we will be working on in 2014-15.
WMUK undertakes a range of activities to promote free knowledge, with the aim to extend reach to new audiences, and potential contributors. The key here is improving quality of Wikimedia projects and increasing participation. There are particular strands of work being delivered, explained below. Again, it's worth noting that various areas of work have been moved throughout the year to reflect better what we have worked towards. This will be explained as we go through the various sections.
Supporting the Europeana mass upload tool – This project was originally bundled in our key initiative "2.7 Technical developments" as mentioned in the Programme 1 above. This was not a project that was based within WMUK, and our goal has been to simply deliver the grants to Europeana and make sure that we receive progress reports.
Some of the merchandise WMUK uses at its events Producing and distributing merchandise and publications – This project was originally bundled in our aim of "1.8 Volunteer equipment pool", with the goal as stated: To increase volunteer access to materials supporting events (e.g. training brochures). This programme area has been subsequently separated to assert its broader aim of raising awareness of open content, together with supporting our volunteers. 2013-14 was the first year, with the support of the Assistant Office Manager, where we started collecting records of merchandise usage.
Extended reach – To start with, our defined goal was stated as a broad intention: "To work with groups not well represented in the editing community, especially women, ethnic minorities and other excluded groups to tailor events and training to their needs". (3.6 in our Proposal). We have subsequently added a more specific goal: To deliver 5 events per quarter. We wanted to monitor the number of new editors, numbers active after 1 week and 1 month after the event, as an attempt to create baselines and to find out more about the effects our events have.
GLAM-Wiki conferenceGLAM outreach and events – This consists of two key areas - our GLAM Outreach programme in general, and the flagship GLAM Conference. The conference is reported on in Programme 4 below. As for the outreach programme, to start with, our defined goal was stated as a list of broad intentions: To work with a large range of Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and other similar organisations to bring the heritage and knowledge that they hold into the public domain; To involve more of the community in GLAM activities; To raise the profile of Wikimedia projects with the GLAM sector. This was the first year we had a GLAM Organiser staff member dedicated to supporting this area. For that reason we were unable to set fixed numerical targets, so as an attempt to create baselines of our effectiveness, we aimed to monitor several things throughout the year: number of projects completed; number of items released under free licence; number of new institutions involved.
Wikimedians in Residence (including the WWI project) – To start with, our defined goal was stated as a broad intention: To part-fund Wikimedian in Residence positions where partner institutions can demonstrate that a Wikimedian in Residence within their organisation meets our strategic goals. This was the first year we have run the WIR projects with stricter management from the office, so we aimed at capturing the number of WiR established and the assessment of resulting programme of activities (we aimed for each residency to have individual objectives set). We expected to have 2-3 events delivered per residency per quarter, and to monitor the number of new editors introduced to Wikimedia, and number still editing 1 week and 1 month later. Included in here is the WWI WIR project, which original objective was "To involve at least 3 major partner institutions to enhance Wikimedia projects' coverage of these two conflicts, with a particular aim of building engagement about the forthcoming World War I Centenary".
University outreach – To start with, our defined goal was stated as a broad intention: To work to develop links in the UK's university network with its students. We have subsequently added a more specific goal: To deliver 1-2 events per quarter. We wanted to monitor the number of new editors, numbers active after 1 week and 1 month and the contacts established with education institutions. These goals have not been very firm - the community was well aware of it and there has been many attempts over 2013-14 to specify what the strategy behind our education work is (for example, for looking ahead, we had this amongst others).
Supporting Toolserver – This project was originally bundled in our aim of "2.7 Technical developments" as mentioned in the Programme 1 above. This was not a project that was based within WMUK, and our goal has been to simply deliver the grants to the Toolserver and make sure that we receive progress reports.
Supporting digitisation – To support the digitisation and release under an open license of cultural content, particularly where this content will be used in Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons. We have subsequently specified this aim: To have 4,000 culturally significant files uploaded to Commons in 2013-14.
Working with Jisc – After we have submitted our proposal for 2013-14, we've had an opportunity open to work with Jisc - UK’s national expert body on the use of digital technology in education and research. An educational charity, it works closely with the university, college, and cultural sectors. This 'Wikimedia Jisc Ambassador' project, similar to a Wikimedian in Residence, promised an immense potential to build influence for the movement in the UK university sector. We have set broad goals for the project once it was confirmed with Jisc for go ahead. This happened in Q1 of our activity year, and so the project or aims were not included in the original plan. A structured plan with objectives for this project has been created once the Ambassador started in post, and they can be found here. The overall objective as stated by the Ambassador was 'To demonstrate how publicly-funded research and education projects can benefit from crowdsourcing, using Wikimedia as a platform and a model. To capture this knowledge in a way that permanently changes how Jisc and the wider sector work with Wikimedia'. In addition to this, the Jisc partnership has resulted in the upload of 57 images to Commons (0.27GB), of which 17 (29.82%) are in use on Wikimedia projects excluding non-article spaces.
Uploads from Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom day-by-day breakdown.
What is your progress against these objectives?
Every quarter we have monitored that the progress reports are being delivered to us, and we have paid our final grant in Q3. Work on the toolset continued into 2014–2015 when it will be available for widespread use. It's worth noting here that the stated aims of the project are "Creating a GLAM Upload System to Wikimedia Commons" and to "Report on requirements for usage and re-usage statistics for GLAM content". As of 31 January 2014 the tool was in development.
We have a collection of items available for use at WMUK related events to raise awareness of Wikimedia and Wikimedia UK and to aid in training. These are used on a regular basis by the volunteer community. In 2013–14 the following outreach items were distributed through events and other activities (e.g. meetings):
1,500 cheat sheets;
530 Education case studies booklets;
830 Welcome to Wikipedia booklets;
300 annual reports;
650 Illustrating Wikipedia booklets;
1,000 Wikimedia UK volunteering leaflets (English language);
and 250 Wikimedia UK volunteering leaflets (Welsh language).
WLM 2012 was presented at the GLAM-Wiki conference As part of Wiki Loves Monuments, 11,995 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by 573 people. Once miscategorised uploads have been excluded, the figure falls to 11,856 images (35.30GB). As of March 2014, 2,113 of these files (17.96%) are in use on Wikimedia projects. Dozens of list articles were created on en.wp to support the competition and aid navigation. The result was more information available through Wikipedia as a by-product of the competition. If images uses in these list articles are excluded, 760 files (6.46%) from WLM in the UK are in use on Wikimedia projects. On average, all 11,856 files were viewed 80,000 times per day in January 2014. 7 of the pictures from the competition have been assessed as Featured Pictures, and a further 60 are recognised as Quality images.January 2014 views for files uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Monuments in the United Kingdom
Excluding Wiki Loves Monuments, 34 extended reach events were delivered in 2013–14, exceeding with the aim of 20 in a year. These can be divided into seven advocacy events, one speakerthon, four editathons, two photography events, six training events, and 14 events which mixed training new editors with editathons. A total of 282 people attended these events, 252 if those classified as advocacy are excluded. At two non-advocacy events attendee numbers were not recorded, giving an average of 8.1 attendees at each event where this figure was measured. 171 user names out of 252 attendees were recorded. Though user names have been recorded, we do not at present have data for how many of these were still editing after 1 week and 1 month as initially hoped.
Stephen Fry contributed his voice to the Voice Intro project, organised by Andy Mabbett.
The speakerthon resulted in 277 audio files (0.97GB) being uploaded to Commons; 194 (70.04%) of these files are currently in use on Wikimedia projects. It also resulted in a lot of publicity, due in no small part to Stephen Fry's participation.
Discussions at the GLAM-Wiki conference GLAM-Wiki conference is reported on in Programme 4 below. Excluding GLAM-Wiki, 21 GLAM events were delivered in 2013–14. These can be divided into three advocacy events, one photography event, eight editathons, four training events, and five events which mixed training new editors with editathons. A total of 232 people attended these events, 142 if those classified as advocacy are excluded. 83 user names out of 142 attendees were recorded. At four non-advocacy events attendee numbers were not recorded, giving an average of 10.1 attendees at each event where this figure was measured. Though user names have been recorded, we do not at present have data for how many of these were still editing after 1 week and 1 month as initially hoped.
A GLAM partnership with Partage Plus resulted in 881 files (1.44GB) related to Art Nouveau being uploaded to Commons; of these, 16 files (1.8%) are in use on Wikimedia projects in article space.
A breakdown of events delivered each month by what area they relate to.
Overall this area of our programme has been very successful throughout the year. We have been able to set up good quality Wikimedian in Residence positions in prestigious organisations. At the same time, the World War I Wikimedian in Residence which we have been planning with a specific partner organisation did not take off. We have considered it to be a separate opportunity though, and don't feel it affects the assessment of the Wikimedians in Residence programme over 2013-14.
EduWiki is reported on in Programme 4 below. Excluding EduWiki, 11 education events were delivered in 2013–14. This is inline with the aim of delivering between one and two events per quarter. These can be divided into six advocacy events, one editathon, two training events, and two events which mixed training new editors with editathons. A total of 155 people attended these events, 78 if those classified as advocacy are excluded. 32 user names out of 78 attendees were recorded. At two non-advocacy events attendee names were not recorded, giving an average of 17.0 attendees at each event where this figure was measured. Though user names have been recorded, we do not at present have data for how many of these were still editing after 1 week and 1 month as initially hoped.
The project closed during the 2013-14 activity year. In that sense there were no progress against stated objectives; however, this was outside WMUK's control.
Sunrise at Mount Baker, a photo from the Picturing Canada project using the collections at the British Library. A total of 5,377 images files (67.23GB) were uploaded to Commons as a result of the Picturing Canada project. Of these images, 197 (3.66%) are being used in Wikimedia projects as of the writing of this report. The Ion Film2SD Pro was used by one person to digitise and upload five files (9.52MB) to Commons, one of which was used in a Wikimedia project – the figures from the slide scanner are also reported under the volunteer equipment line earlier in the report.
The Jisc ambassador has planned a series of six workshops aimed at building understanding between academics and Wikimedia. Four of them took place in the 2013–14 year, and were attended by 66 people. Undertaking various advocacy activities to encourage academics to utilise and improve Wikimedia projects. Overall, he has been monitoring the progress of his objectives in a detailed way and has been on track - see here.
As elsewhere in our programme, we have originally linked several of the WMF's strategic priorities to each of the small, individual activity areas. Grouping these together, we arrive at two key priorities:
'Improve quality’ - Content donations resulting from GLAM/Education partnerships or WIR work; Securing access to source and archive material which allows improvement of Wikipedia articles
‘Increase participation’ - increasing number of active volunteers via the outreach element of the above programmes (GLAM, Education, Extended Reach and similar)
They are all instrumental and feed into each other to support this program. Various elements within the programme support different priorities. If one goal was to be identified, it would be 'Improve quality’ (to understand, both increasing the content of Wikimedia projects, and improving the quality of the available content). This is in particular achieved by supporting content donations.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
Grants made to support the development of the mass upload tool. Reports received.
A survey with the community (with focus on volunteers who regularly deliver Wikimedia training events) was carried out in Q3 to assess what merchandise was effective at events and to explore what else could be developed. The results were taken into consideration in stock reorders in Autumn.
Thanks to the Volunteer Support Organiser who encouraged and supported the community in the organisation of Wiki Loves Monuments, in Q1 we started working on the initiative. A working group was established and met for the first time in April 2013. Volunteers became engaged with the background preparation - around a dozen were involved - and we have also managed to engage many new photographers. Wiki Loves Monuments successfully delivered - for the first time - in the UK. All participants have been thanked and followed up on thanks to us keeping their contact details. The UK winners were invited to our annual community Christmas Party on December 10th. In addition, Wikipedia Takes Chester was arranged during September to complement WLM. This volunteer-led initiative resulted in 469 files (1.89GB) being uploaded to Commons, of which 27 (5.76%) are in use on Wikimedia projects; 29 of these files (0.13GB) fell outside the scope of WLM. Volunteers were an integral part of being able to deliver the event, and contacted 400 societies (local history and photography groups) in the UK, encouraging them to take part in the competition.
British Black Music editathon held in June with four attendees. The organiser of the event, however, continued to be engaged with the chaper and is aiming to gain traction in the Black Culture outreach, an area in which the chapter has been weak.
Our Women in Science events (e.g. at the NIMR gathered significant press coverage. Our gender gap activities culminated in October (Q3) to coincide with the Ada Lovelace Day celebrations. Thanks to the success of the Ada events we have run in 2012-13, there was a big amount of interest of partner organisations to run gender gap events with us - this resulted in 9 Women in Science events in October or in preparation for it (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.). One of these was aimed at trainers delivering events, to support them in running their own initiatives and so growing the scope of impact for us. The representatives of one of the organisations that were involved - British Computer Society, has been involved in further events with us since.
A breakdown of events delivered each month by event type.
Excluding GLAM-Wiki, 21 GLAM events were delivered in 2013–14. These can be divided into three advocacy events, one photography event, eight editathons, four training events, and five events which mixed training new editors with editathons.
Wikimedians in Residence. A total of seven residencies fell within the period of 1 February 2013 to 31 January 2014:
Natural History Museum and the Science Museum (Mar '13–Jan '14). The residency was originally aimed to last 4 months, but it has been judged so successful by the host organisation that they requested to extend it.
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (Mar–June '13). TWAM WIR has also facilitated the upload of 110 images to Commons under a suitable licence [3][4]. The residency concluded on 28 June and the report on his activities can be found here
York Museums Trust (Oct '13–present) The YMT residency has sofar led to the upload of 178 images to Commons (0.41GB) of which 30 (16.85%) are used in Wikimedia article spaces.
the Royal Society (Jan '14–present)
Additionally, we have been building internal infrastructure to support the project more efficiently. Over Q1, use of WIR Contract, together with a suggested suggested job description has progressed in test mode, and we now aim to use it with every Residency.
Excluding EduWiki, 11 education events were delivered in 2013–14. These can be divided into six advocacy events, one editathon, two training events, and two events which mixed training new editors with editathons.
None. Funding allocated elsewhere.
The Picturing Canada project was conducted in partnership with the British Library. Aside from direct GLAM engagement, a slide scanner was purchased as part of the pool of volunteer equipment and made available for volunteers to use. Over the year we have engaged in discussions around cost per upload by partner organisations, and what would be considered value for money if we funded another organisation's digitisation project. It does seem that there are external funding streams that organisations can apply to to support their digitisation. With support from the Fundraising Manager, we are planning to explore these possibilities in 2014-15.
In 2013–14 the Jisc ambassador delivered four workshops at universities to raise awareness amongst academics and encourage them to engage with Wikimedia. Supported two editathons. Delivered talks at EduWiki 2013. Published several blogs advocating the digitisation of content, and showcasing studies of how Wikimedia can be used in educational settings. The details of the deliverables are here. The project has developed an online toolkit showing people how to engage with Wikimedia projects, which delivered much interest in the education circles. Benefitting from the fact that the project is run with a national body, the infoKit is now accessible to any Higher Education institution in the UK, and the institutions that get in touch with Jisc for advice are being informed on the benefits of working with Wikimedia projects.
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?
With regards to toolsever, it was decided that it no longer needed financial support from WMUK. As a result the £5,000 allocated to supporting toolserver was vired to support a governance workshop involving board members from other chapters.
The slide scanner has been infrequently used due to the volunteer community being generally unaware that it was available. In the 2014–15 financial year, there have been discussions on the UK mailing list about using the slide scanner, and it can be expected that it will be used to produce more content for Commons over the coming year.
We held our December 2013 board meeting in Edinburgh in support of the growing Scotland community When we have created our programme for 2013-14, we were very keen to make sure our activities are spread throughout the UK and include events in Wales and Scotland. Since 2011 we have been in talks with Museums & Galleries Scotland and planned for a long term project to be established there in 2013-14 (original goal 2.4 GLAM Scotland - 'To work with the Scottish Museums to develop links with the Wikipedian community and its projects'). This has progressed very slowly though and did not come into fruition in this activity year. We were, however, approached by the National Library of Scotland with an application to host a WIR there, accepted that project, and started delivering it in mid 2013. In many ways that residency focused not only on the Library, but also on building a Scottish Wikimedia community - something we wanted to achieve with the original project with Museums & Galleries Scotland. There is a lesson there that it helps when a chapter can be agile, plan not for specific projects, but the goals, and its work isn't disrupted greatly when a specific project does not take off.
We were disappointed that our Wikimedian in Residence project did not take place. This was owing to lack of personnel capacity with our partner organisation, The Imperial War Museum.
A key initiative that has not been included in the plan was the Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador. It was pursued on the strength of the perceived impact of a project, if successful. There were a series of meetings before the project was initiated to make sure there would be sufficient benefit to Wikimedia UK, and that the partner organisation understood how the project should be run. Although the project was still continuing by the end of 2013-14 year, we were strongly convinced of its benefit.
Any additional details:
Organising Women in Science events around Ada Lovelace Day has been a tremendously successful idea - there are a lot of organisations who are keen to partner with us as it furthers their institution's diversity agenda. Following from a very successful Ada Lovelace Day event in 2012, we have been approached by the prestigious Medical Research Council to deliver a series of Women in Science events together. Other organisations have picked up the idea and format of these events too (introduction to editing for newcomers, editathon with a prepared target list, and a panel discussion about general issues of gender in the scientific workforce). These events attracted a newcomer audience, predominantly female, particularly interested in editing topics around Women in Science. The reason why these editathons attracted such a type of audience results from the type of promotional messaging used, and the fact that promotion was led by the partner organisations, rather than WMUK focusing on messaging its existing communities.
This is an area that underwent a significant redefinition throughout 2013-14. When planning for the year, we have considered Membership to be a wide area of activity covering a variety of approaches (see [5]), including growing the membership, running the annual conference, creating annual report, building membership satisfaction, improving communication with the members, promoting events to the membership and extending reach to increase diversity of our volunteers.
Once we started delivering the programme, however, we have moved on to group many of these activities in different programmes, where they were better suited, and where they fitted better with other areas (e.g. 'extending reach' was moved to the Programme 2, or the annual conference to Programme 1, an area which in general focuses on nurturing the volunteer base). In doing so, we were limiting the aim of this area to focus on better member communication (e.g. via the newsletter) and growing the membership numbers or at least reversing the decline which though not accomplished in this year though has been subsequently. There was also a procedural element to this area, where we were aiming to make sure various requests (e.g. donations, direct debits) are being dealt with in the right way. It is worth noting that throughout the year, as we were working on our 5 year strategy, as a chapter we engaged in many discussions about the role of the membership. In the process we have moved away from treating it as a focus of growth for the chapter. The changes in this area of activity reflect these changes in thinking about the membership.
‘Increase reach’ was our main intention in this area. We were intending to do this by increasing the number of members. At the same time, by spreading the positive news about the chapter's activities (e.g. via the newsletter) we wanted in the longer term to increase their participation in the activities.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
In order to engage with the charity's members, a monthly newsletter was set up, and led on by chapter's staff and volunteers. Statistics relating to its distribution and reception are shown below.
Policy review around gift acceptance and grants. No change was made to the existing policy.
Community meetups are run by volunteers. However, we are keen to encourage them, so that the community grows and more people have a chance to attend one in their local area. Wikimedia UK has supported new meetups in Belfast, Chester, Newcastle, and others. Q3 saw a pick up of meetup activities in Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh), part of which would be thanks to the great community work of the National Library of Scotland Wikimedian in Residence. Staff have also attended volunteer-led meetups to encourage and support relations between staff and the volunteer community.
Members newsletter
Date sent
Emails sent
Opens
% opens
Click throughs
% unique click throughs
% of opens which resulted in a click
Unsubscribes
18/01/2013
256
88
34.38
60
23.44
68.18
1
28/02/2013
280
95
33.93
73
26.07
76.84
0
03/04/2013
283
101
35.69
46
16.25
45.54
0
28/04/2013
263
98
37.26
68
25.86
69.39
0
31/05/2013
228
74
32.46
52
22.81
70.27
0
28/06/2013
214
72
33.64
36
16.82
50.00
0
27/07/2013
214
72
33.64
31
14.49
43.06
0
31/08/2013
206
40
19.42
12
5.83
30.00
0
07/10/2013
216
85
39.35
32
14.81
37.65
0
08/11/2013
236
89
37.71
40
16.95
44.94
0
29/11/2013
236
86
36.44
42
17.80
48.84
0
07/01/2014
236
86
36.44
21
8.90
24.42
0
Totals/averages
2,868
986
34.38
513
17.89
52.03
1
Donor newsletter
Date sent
Successful deliveried
Opens
% opens
Click throughs
% unique click throughs
% of opens which resulted in a click
Unsubscribes
Unsub as % of emails sent
Unsub as % of opens
Opt outs
28/01/2013
49,607
11,503
23.16
2,852
5.75
24.79
259
0.52
2.25
130
19/03/2013
39,412
10,241
25.98
2,263
5.74
22.10
311
0.79
3.04
106
30/08/2013
65,492
9,807
14.97
2,174
3.32
22.17
236
0.36
2.41
199
Totals/averages
154,511
31,551
20.42
7,289
4.72
23.10
806
0.52
2.55
435
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 newsletter was effective in engaging Wikimedia UK's members. A membership survey conducted in late 2013 presented results that indicated Members were happy with the newsletter though would like to see more community contributions (See point (22) in highlights report)
Originally we were strongly focused on growing the membership and a series of initiatives were implemented but success eluded us through not having a good enough method of reaching potential recruits or an offer that might attract them. It took until March 2014 to overcome these problems and we are confident about the future. The graph on the right shows a sharp drop in membership numbers between 30 April and 31 May 2013 (a decrease of 56, or 19.6%). This was 18 months after the charity's last participation in the annual fundraiser; people signed up as a result of the publicity during the fundraiser found their membership expiring around this time. Aside from this, membership remained mostly stable throughout the year, and increased by 3.9% between 31 May and 31 January.
Any additional details:
In 2014–15 the members newsletter will be retired and replaced with a 'Friends Newsletter' to be sent out on a monthly basis. By the end of the year it is hoped that the audience will be around 420 people, an increase of 76% from the average readership of 2013–14. This is one of the results of our movement's discussion about what is the aim of our membership. By the end of 2013-14, as a part of the strategy discussions, It was decided that instead of aiming to grow the membership, we should focus on growing the community of volunteers. It is hoped that the Friends Newsletter will be one of the avenues for this growth.
GLAM-Wiki 2013 was hosted by the British Library in April.
In 2013-14 we have for the first time separated from our activity plan a distinct area of 'external relations'. Indirectly we have been doing it since the chapter was created, but it hasn't been treated as a separate area of our work. It was felt, however, that we need to make a stronger effort to work together with other organisations on projects that can be made stronger through cooperation, that we need to have more influence on the world of Open Knowledge in general, and that we should work to influence others to be more aware of the benefits of Open Knowledge.
To start with, in the planning process, our objectives were:
Open Knowledge advocacy - To work closely with sympathetic UK organisations (UK open knowledge organisations, such as Creative Commons, Open Rights Group, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Street Map) on areas of common policy to gain more leverage for our aims. This was a new, pilot area, and our goal was to monitor the number of shared working initiatives.
To run a cultural sector conference - originally the aim was "2.6 Hosting our second international GLAM conference to share good practice in the GLAM sector") 100–150 delegates; good variety of speakers and an engaging programme; high feedback; new contacts established. We intended to run an event that will showcase the interactions between the GLAM sector and Wikimedia, the progress so far and the practicalities involved. It's important to note that this constituted an important element of our GLAM programme overall (more in Programme 2).
A video featuring interviews with organisers and delegates at EduWikiConference 2013, in which they talk about the event and their experience of it To run an education conference (following from the successful EduWiki 2012) - To attract 50–100 delegates; good variety of speakers and an engaging programme; high feedback; new contacts established. Originally we intended to run this event as a 'Schools Conference', to aim at a different audience than the 2012 EduWiki conference. There have also been more specific desired long-term outcomes identified by Toni Sant: EduWiki long-term outcomes: 1) stronger engagement in higher education institutions towards more university tutors assigning the editing of Wikipedia articles and/or contributing to other Wikimedia projects for assessment (course credit). 2) broader reach across the education sector (lifelong learning as well as school children, along with higher education) towards better understanding of Wikimedia’s projects and direct engagement with content sharing. 3) better awareness, especially among senior managers in the education sector about the appropriate use of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in education. 4) enabling UK-based academic researchers to develop a UK-based network with others working on Wikimedia-related academic research, as well as ensuring more participation in the existing WikiSym community. It's important to note that this constituted an important element of our Education programme overall (more in Programme 2).
Press and Media - To become a trusted source of comment on issues concerning the community.
To work to develop links in the UK's university network with its students (this was then moved to the Education Outreach sector in Programme 2, where it was much better aligned).
Since this was a new area, we were also intending to see how we could work with any other sympathetic organisations.
What is your progress against these objectives?
We have worked to explore options of how to best work with external Open Knowledge organisations. An employee and a volunteer presented to the Mozilla Festival about this, floating the idea of building an "open coalition" of open knowledge, open access and open education organisations with a view to increasing collaboration and communication (see for example here. A member of staff was also invited to speak on this topic to several other events, including an Open Knowledge Foundation meetup and another for tech and education entrepreneurs.
Additionally, WMUK sent three delegates to the Wikimedia Conference 2013 in Milan (the charity's secretary attended as a representative of the FDC). WMUK's CE and Chair presented on governance and the Hudson review.
The GLAM-Wiki was successfully delivered in April 2013. It was assessed at 4.54 out of 5 for the event overall by attendees who filled in feedback forms; the range of topics covered was rated at 4.35 out of 5. Please see the full feedback for details. 200 people attended out of 237 who registered. The event was delivered with significant community input - 10 volunteers were involved, together with an additional 40 speakers contributing to the conference's stimulating programme.
EduWiki audience The EduWiki programme was assessed at 4.16 out of 5 by attendees who filled in feedback forms; the speakers were rated at 4.47 out of 5. 68 people attended out of 80 who registered. 23 delegates worked at UK educational institutions. The conference was delivered with a strong lead from the Education Organiser, who supported volunteers in arranging speakers, creating the agenda and venue logistics, and event promotion amongst education contacts.
Our blog, at http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/, reports on many of the achievements we are particularly proud of over the last year. Much of the UK press coverage received is featured in our monthly reports which can be found here. We have developed, and are continuing to develop, close relationships with many of the important media in the UK. We have especially good working relationships with The Times and the Daily Telegraph newspapers and both outlets are keen to cover Wikimedia-related news. We held two events specifically with the media in mind in the reporting year. The first took place in March and details can be seen here. The second took place in July and was intended to promote Wikimania 2014. Jimmy Wales was among the speakers at both events and we are grateful to him for his ongoing support. We are continuing to reposition the default narrative of Wikimedia UK after a tough year in 2012-13. One area of particular interest is that work has begun on a memorandum of understanding between Wikimedia UK and the BBC. This will establish an effective framework for future collaborations and could lead to substantial content releases of enormous historic and cultural value.
When we started building the programme - over the process of submitting our proposal - we have linked several of the WMF's strategic priorities. It was felt that this area is broad and new for us, and we wanted to use it to tackle a variety of priorities, so that we can see which ones are best supported as a result. Overall, however, we were aiming to be working to build close relationships with organisations and institutions that are sympathetic to the aims of the Wikimedia community, and we work with the international Wikimedia community. Encourage Innovation is the leading motivation here.
‘Encourage innovation’ - Provide information about the activities of our chapter to enable everyone to better support it, get inspired and participate via running projects with external organisations, conferences, presence at external events; media work.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
We have delivered a MozFest session bringing many like minded organisations together - details 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?
During the planning process, EduWiki conference was intended as an event for schools. This was before we hired the Education Organiser, whose aim would be to deliver the event. When he started in March 2013, one of his first aims was to specify the plan for the EduWiki event. It was felt that a schools focused conference would not deliver strong results as the chapter itself had too little experience in working with schools, and insufficient number of case studies that it could present. The change to the university focus for the event was judged as a good decision.
This program covers the costs of our annual accounts and audit, quarterly management accounts and additional consultancy work. As a medium-sized charity, and one of the larger Wikimedia chapters, we are required to undergo a full audit every year by an independent auditor. In this programme we were aiming to continue doing so, but also increase the quality of our financial systems by finding a management accountant to help with our finances. Our stated objectives were:
To create a transparent financial system
To ensure that all our internal policies are in line with the Charity Commission guidance
Direct fundraising took a back seat as efforts were devoted to refining our donor stewardship and communications to build support from our donors. The regular donor newsletter played a key role in this, and the use of CiviCRM will enable more targeted approaches in future.
What is your progress against these objectives?
The objectives were met, with good quality financial processes as a result.
A Management accountant in post and helping with accounts and revising internal policies.
2012-13 draft accounts are complete, our yearly audit is in progress, and we do not expect any problems. The financial statements will be available, at latest, by summer 2014.
A proper system of staff budget holders is in place, which is a vast improvement on the previous system (where spending was controlled by trustees and the chief executive). This improves accountability, as the board can properly hold the Chief Executive to account for a poorly spent budget - something that was not possible with a board system. We still need to work on future forecasting of budgets, and WMUK-specific procurement guidance needs to be drafted. We would welcome the WMF's help with this!
'Stabilize infrastructure' - Through good quality financial systems and extra expertise from a qualified accountant making regular visits, and with the support of our honorary treasurer, a world-renowned expert in charity governance, we will ensure that financial controls are in place to offer careful monitoring of programme spends.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
2012-13 Audit completed and accounts filed
Management accountant recruited
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?
This is a largely operational area of our work, and we believe it has been delivered fully to a standard that would not look out of place in larger or more established charities.
Any additional details:
We were fortunate in being able to bring onto our board a treasurer with exemplary understanding of governance and financial systems. As a result of his advice our end of year accounts were completed to the satisfaction of our external auditors within five weeks.
To ensure good governance, management and administration:
To ensure that the board is functioning in line with best UK Charity Commission guidelines and to reflect on the independent review of good practice (commissioned jointly with the Wikimedia Foundation)
Trustee training
This programme also covered costs which are essential to our running, namely: office equipment & supplies; board costs; legal fees; insurance; annual report; other consultancy and professional support; and contingency. These are operational issues connected to good running of the charity, and we are aiming to ensure good value for money in all our administrative activities with strict management and financial controls.
This programme area originally included Wikimania (6.5) and WikiConference (6.6), but as mentioned before they have been delegated to other areas once we started delivering the programme and felt they are better suited within other programme areas.
What is your progress against these objectives?
The Compass Partnership governance review resulted in 50 recommendations which have since been implemented.
The Chapman governance audit produced 15 recommendations, 12 of which have been put in place and a 13th is currently being acted on. The audit noted
“To have adopted so many of the first Governance Review’s recommendations within the relatively short time scale of eight months is very impressive, particularly given the charity’s size and resources. WMUK has clearly spent a great deal of time and effort discussing policies and putting systems and processes in place, and it is admirable that the Trustees have made such good progress in implementing so many of the recommendations. Indeed, for an organisation of its size and relative ‘newness’, WMUK’s general documentation is more robust and effective than we have seen in many similar sized organisations”.
Thanks to having the office, we were able to host and support many volunteers. If they want, they can join our photo wall! Office equipment and supplies, board costs, insurance, and annual report were all within budget.
We have continued to work on our PQASSO review. We have achieved level one and are very well set to achieve level 2 which would indicate a well run mature charity. We have also made significant inroads into level 3 which is more applicable to much larger charities.
wmuk:2013 Annual Review has been created on time, and distributed to our community. Throughout the year it has been used (e.g. during meeting with partner organisations) as a booklet showcasing our key achievements.
'Stabilize infrastructure' - Through the Hudson report and the follow-up Chapman report we are ensuring that lessons have been learnt about governance issues that happened in our first year of operation.
This has an effect on all aspects of our work. Through good high-level governance we are now able to be more strategic.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
Compass Partnership's review of Wikimedia UK's governance was published on 7 February 2013. It has been accepted by the board. Steps have been taken to implement the recommendations, with the foundation of a Governance Committee and an Audit and Governance Committee towards the end of March, and an Extraordinary General Meeting held on 13 April to vote on three of the recommendations. The result was that all three were passed with very large majorities indicating strong support. Further changes are planned for the next quarter.
A tender was put out for a consultant to carry out an audit of the charity's governance to check its progress since the Hudson review. audit of WMUK's governance as a follow up to the Hudson Review was tendered and carried out in Q3. The results have been published.
The board stands at 10 members. Three trustees were co-opted to address areas of expertise and diversity (e.g. see here) which the board lacked, and two trustees were appointed as replacement Elected Directors after two stood down.
New trustees received inductions at their first board meetings and have had meetings with staff. An induction pack has been prepared to facilitate the induction of new trustees.
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?
We feel we have developed significantly in this area, having met our goals, and are planning to continue good procedures in this area.
Originally, the objectives for the staff team sat within the Programme 6 of 'Governance, management and administration'. In Q2, when we have made our report clearer, Staff section has been moved to its own Programme for more clarity of information. We wanted to also make sure that staff travel and staff training is being supported.
Our original objective, which referred mostly to ensuring high quality of management procedures, stated: "To ensure all aspects of staffing are managed to a high and consistent standard in line with NCVO and Charity Commission guidance".
What is your progress against these objectives?
At the close of 2013–14 we had 11 members of staff (10 full time equivalent) to assist in delivering our charitable objectives. This increased from a base of 6 staff as of 1 February 2013.
Support for travel costs has allowed staff to participate in international events. In April the CE attended the annual Chapters meeting in Milan, and two staff travelled to the Wikimedia Foundation offices, one visited Wikimedia Netherlands for sharing learning.
We had a staff learning day in July 2013, which was an avenue for the staff to discuss the way we work, and learn more about supporting volunteers.
All staff procedures were in line with best practice from the National Council for Voluntary Sector Organisations.
Staff activities support objectives of respective programme areas that they support in their roles. If we were to say which strategic priority is addressed by this programme in particular, it would be 'Stabilize infrastructure' - we are ensuring a high quality functioning of the charity by sound recruitment procedures and hiring staff where the organisation needs them most.
What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
In February three additional staff to support Wikimedia UK's activities in the areas of education, GLAM, and supporting volunteers were hired. The role of the Volunteer Support Organiser has been key to building our volunteer base and is beginning to accelerate what has been a steady but slow rate of growth. In July a Wales Manager was hired to support our activities in the country, and at the start of November a Wikimania Coordinator was hired to support the preparations and delivery of Wikimania leading into 2014. As a matter of principle we include volunteers on our interview panels. There were seven staff and six volunteers involved in these interviews in total.
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?
Our original plan outlined 1FTE Education Organiser. However, we reviewed the staffing level dedicated to our GLAM programme, in the light of the FDC's comments that this area appeared under-resourced, and allocated a 0.5FTE staff member specifically to GLAM, reducing our proposed Education post to balance. We reviewed the staffing level dedicated to our Education programme, and reduced the full time post proposed to 0.5FTE staff member. These were useful comments from the FDC, and looking back at the year of the programme helped us deliver our objectives.
Any additional details:
We do not measure staff time by number of events supported or attended as this is too subjective. Instead we cost staff time on a quarterly basis against our project areas. Across the year, Wikimedia UK staff worked for 17,000 recorded hours. Assigning the time a monetary value, the following staff cost was allocated to the charity's activities:
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?
Our major accomplishments were in developing into a mature and robust chapter. This was specifically achieved in the field of governance. We have gone from having governance issues to consider, to being a chapter with robust systems and policies in place to deal with such issues. We have also brought in new talent and energy, with new volunteers from outside and inside the movement, including long-term contributors and the Wikimania 2014 team.
This stability permitted us to develop our programmes while creating measurement and evaluation systems that would record our outputs and impact.
We have at last been able to demonstrate significant involvement in Wales and Scotland encouraging local volunteers and having high quality local activities.
After two years of work and many versions we now have a comprehensive five year plan agreed by the whole community. This offers a stable vision for the future and the ability to set clear metrics against which it can be measured and developed.
Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador was a project that developed from a very long relationship between the two organisations; a lesson that it is worth nurturing the work with partners with an aim to develop it into something substantial in the long run. Before this project, Wikimedia UK's work with Jisc has included the World War I editathon, the Digital Infrastructure team workshop and workshops at the Changing the Learning Landscape Strategy Implementation Programme event. Two of Jisc's programme managers spoke at the EduWiki Conference 2012, as did staff from Jisc TechDis and Jorum. Wikimedia UK had a presence at the Jisc-sponsored Open Educational Resources 2013 conference. Wikimedia UK's Martin Poulter and Jisc CETIS' Phil Barker collaborated on a help sheet for developers about Wikimedia Commons. In March 2013, Wikimedia UK's blog ran an interview with Oxford University's David White about his Jisc-funded research into use of sources by school and university students. A detailed list of these can be seen here. Another important lesson from the Jisc project is the benefit of working with overarching bodies. For example, the project has developed an online toolkit showing people how to engage with Wikimedia projects, which delivered much interest in the education circles. Benefitting from the fact that the project is run with a national body, the infoKit is now accessible to any Higher Education institution in the UK, and the institutions that get in touch with Jisc for advice are being informed on the benefits of working with Wikimedia projects.
2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?
Our proposed programme with the Imperial War Museum to work around issues of the First World War failed to start despite our best attempts. This was owing to a lack of capacity with our chosen partner. This led to significant underspend in our GLAM budget.
Our attempt to work in Northern Ireland led to a wikimeet with only one attendee. We intend to work on strategies to engage with any community members based there and local institutions in the coming year.
3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?
Having key volunteers spread around the country is extremely helpful - they form a network of people around whom events can coalesce. There need only be one every hundred miles or so, but as long as they turn up to events, others will as well. We feel that this is really a key part of a volunteer strategy - expanding the network of 'core' volunteers. Having the programme of microgrants have helped develop a group of 'power users' that we hope to work with into 2014-15.
In addition our cohort of trained trainers has enabled us to offer high quality support to events particularly with partner organisations.
Having a stable office base with committed staff has enabled a rapid growth in activities and the ability to support initiatives that had hitherto been unachievable such as Wiki Loves Monuments. The office has also been successful as a base where community members can work and engage in activities such as workshops and meetings.
4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?
We have a rigorous risk assessment strategy and a risk register which is reviewed regularly by the Audit and Risk Committee. This helps us anticipate challenges and deal with them as they arise.
The main unanticipated challenge this year was related to digitisation. Over the year we have engaged in discussions around cost per upload by partner organisations, and what would be considered value for money if we funded another organisation's digitisation project. It does seem that there are external funding streams that organisations can apply to to support their digitisation. With support from the Fundraising Manager, we are planning to explore these possibilities in 2014-15. We were, however, still able to meet our target for number of files digitised though this was due to a single project: Picturing Canada.
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.
Ensure that systems function to a level beyond just the necessary. Engineer policies and procedures that go beyond the minimum to protect the chapter and make it happy to face the highest level of scrutiny.
That the reputation of the projects must remain paramount in all that the chapter does. There can be no room for compromises around issues that can affect the way they are regarded. For instance our detailed Wikimedian in Residence contracts have protected all parties involved from accusations of breaking community rules.
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?
Developing Train the Trainers scale and geographic coverage
Refining our Wikimedians in Residence programme by learning from our survey and seeking funding from the host institutions to extend our programme.
Building strength in the rest of the UK through events. meetups. WiR etc.
Refining our systems for evaluation and recording to identify strengths and weaknesses in the programme.
Developing our five year plan by focusing on what works, what needs improvement and looking for new opportuntities.
Seeking to diversify our funding streams to reduce dependence on the FDC.
2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?
Develop our evaluation and recording processes as we test them during the year.
Refine our programme to concentrate on the most effective elements.
Build easier gateways for volunteer involvement to extend capacity.
3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.
Wiki Loves Monuments was a good example of a learning pattern. In past years there had been volunteer enthusiasm but no capacity for this project. Given the community wanted to participate in 2013 a small amount of staff time, seed corn almost, was devoted to writing a report detailing the challenges and opportunities in participating and more specifically what would be needed. One leading community member took up this process and another subsequently took over working with the member of staff. As a result a plan was created that blended staff and volunteer input. This made the rather daunting project more accessible and attracted a core group of around seven volunteers who were able to deliver what was still quite a challenging project. Wiki Loves Monuments was a great volunteer led success with 573 people uploading pictures, many for the first time, and was later celebrated with an awards ceremony that validated everyone's input. The lesson - a little staff support at the right time can lead to significant volunteer involvement
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.
Wiki Loves Monuments was a project we were all pleased with. In previous years our community had not felt it had the capacity to participate despite the wealth of material available in the UK. We decided to commission a report on feasibility from a staff member and then found a volunteer to work with him to put it into operation. This was hard work but a team of volunteers emerged and worked closely together with the staff member. As can be seen earlier in this report we attracted a large number of volunteers, produced a significant quantity of relevant material and ended up with some competition winners of high quality.
The lesson we have taken is that some staff support at an early stage can seed a project that will ultimately rely on volunteer effort but could not have happened otherwise. This is a principle of leverage that will allow the chapter to deliver a significant programme using volunteers while staff work on the onerous support infrastructure.
Our plans for the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) have been a challenge. The idea of creating a platform where educational materials could be placed supporting those wishing to learn about how to use our projects or how to teach these methods remains a good one. There were however many delays in bringing together all the parts to make the whole. Much volunteer and staff time was expended working around some of the conundrums and we had long debates about what would or would not work. The content was assembled methodically and the overall look tested in different ways, all of which led to delays but we expect the system to bear fruit in the coming year and is indeed now open for community testing and comment. In retrospect the lesson we take away is that we could have devoted more resource towards it earlier on to ensure timely success but other parts of the programme took priority.
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?
Many of the Wikimeetups in the UK are run independently of the chapter. Others require support but the aim is to create a network of fully independent volunteer led meetups. They have been successful owing to a desire amongst volunteers to meet and discuss what they are doing, sharing information and supporting each other.
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.
Participants at one of the editathons at the Royal Society in 2013
A video prepared for Wikimania 2013 in which staff talk about Wikimedia UK
Caroline Brazier, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library speaking at the GLAM-Wiki 2013
We have professional financial accounts which are currently being audited, but we cannot provide these until our auditors approve them (this will likely take a few months).
Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?edit
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.
Other than the changes described in the text above, there have been no changes to the grant proposal. The final plan for spending the year's funds is at https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2013_Activity_Plan.
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".
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 expect that less than £1,545 will have been unspent from the grant (although this is pending audit), and we request that any funds remaining in the grant be 'rolled forward' into our current year's FDC grant.
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.
We received £5027.68 in interest. The vast majority of this (£4500+) was interest on our own funds (rather than funds from the FDC), but in any case we confirm that interest earned on all of these funds will be used to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement.
↑Of the 44 events at which people were trained we had attendance figures for 32 of them. A total of 376 people attended those events, giving an average of 11.75. Extrapolating from this figure to account for the events at which attendees were not recorded gives a final figure of 517
↑In addition to small amounts of income from other sources, Q4 includes a gift aid reimbursement of £52,242.63, plus an estimated £14,000 accrued for.
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Participants at one of the editathons at the Royal Society in 2013
Caroline Brazier, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library speaking at the GLAM-Wiki 2013
