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Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia CH/Progress report form

< Grants:APG‎ | Proposals‎ | 2014-2015 round1‎ | Wikimedia CH

This form is for Wikimedia CH to report on its progress after completing the first 6 months (1 January - 30 June) of its 2015 grant. This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. APG staff has been notified about internal server issues that may impact the accuracy of some of our revenue and spending statements - as a consequence, some of the numbers may change (within a few percentage points) after the official deadline.

Global metrics overview - all programs edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved ca. 400 90 of these can be considered core community members.
2. # of new editors 170 Note: survival rate is extremely low.
3. # of individuals involved ~800 This includes outreach activities with institutions (education, government, GLAMs).
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 550 This does not include all media uploaded. For instance, the Herbarium project led to 40'000 unique images of plants being uploaded to Commons.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 13439 See below.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects A lot Added value cannot be measured in terms of bytes, as the presence of bot wranglers and photographers immediately skews the results.
  • Some of our top contributors are only active on Commons, yet their contributions should not be counted.
  • As much as we would like to believe it, not all edits counted by the Wikimetrics tool are directly connected to our programs. There simply is not enough granularity.

As a result, counting actual bytes "moved" borders on the tedious and/or meaningless.


Telling your program stories - all programs edit

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

  • We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.
  • Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.
  • We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.
  • We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.
  • You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.

Community support edit

Address the needs of the Community edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Complete community survey for all three languages n/a Done n/a Results of the Survey can be found here
Publish a clear workflow description for the support it offers n/a Done n/a Listed on our Members wiki and circulated on the newsletter
Increase number of grant requests to 20 (up from 10) 5/20
Below target We plan to run a campaign in the Fall. See below for details.
50 Press accreditations for 10 volunteers (up from 24) Around 50 from 6
Above target More accreditations from less contributors than expected.
Lend or sponsor equipment, upload of 5 valued images or 5 featured pictures, and at least 100 quality images n/a program cancelled n/a See below.
Provide a work place in the new office with a workstation dedicated to photo processing and high bandwidth for upload. n/a program cancelled n/a Low demand for a centralized solutions
The good edit

We asked our community, and they said:

  • “Thanks - and keep up your dedicated and committed work”
  • "… in the Community Liaison we found a prudent, fair, competent and flexible contact person, who is always there for us. Thank you for this."

Wikimedia CH has launched its community survey in Q2 in order to better understand the wishes, needs and concerns of our members and of the three main communities we serve and facilitate in Switzerland.
A total of 184 people participated in our survey (more than the 150 we expected). The respondents appear overall satisfied with WMCH's activities. One learning from the responses was the rather higher value attributed to immaterial support, such as networking (meetups), trainings and accreditations, as opposite to the possibility to borrow equipment. Again, when asked what further support they would appreciate from us, technical trainings and thematic meetings came highest.

It therefore comes as little surprise that the demand for microgrants was lower than expected: in fact, 3 of the 5 microgrants went to Kiwix-related projects abroad, for schools in Senegal and Swaziland. For a relatively low cost of USD 1330, we reached out to several hundred kids. We still plan to run an advertisement campaign for our microgrants service, but outside of a few specific projects we do not expect the indigenous user base to be very demanding.

Similarly, the press accreditation system (either through WMCH services or through the granting of @wikimedia.ch email addresses to trusted users) partially confirms the survey results: it works, it works well, and mostly benefits our photographers, which does make sense.

The not so good edit

The lending or support for the purchase of photographic equipement should be, in our opinion, considered a relative failure: while the users that benefited from it did indeed increase the overall quality of their pictures, this did not automatically translate into labels:

  • There is a sizeable backlog of uploads, meaning that several weeks (or even months) can occur between the moment a photo is taken and its upload on Commons ("I can't get around processing the 30 or so games I attended!"; "Our backlog is the size of China") ;
  • Nominations are a tedious process and obtaining labels is sometime seen to be pandering to a self-appointed crowd of experts who do not actually take pictures or understand properly the conditions under which they were taken (e.g. night/indoor events). As a result, some users have given up labels entirely (or do not see it as a priority).

We also noticed that the lending of equipment (as opposite to supporting a direct purchase) does not provide an acceptable cost/benefit ratio: circulation is slow and/or complicated, and most people end up buying their own equipment anyway. The same can be said for our plan to offer a dedicated workspace for photo processing: after discussing with the community, the benefits from such a centralized offer were considered as extremely marginal and we stopped communicating about it (see also below "Association sustainability").

Support volunteer's initiatives edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Support the Newbies' corner on :fr n/a Done ongoing Most requests addressed within a day. Same for OTRS.
Support the Edelweiss project on :de n/a Done ongoing Research is being reviewed and the author asked us to delay communication about it (but the project is running)
Support the launch of the Wikipedia Observatory in the Italian Community n/a Not started yet On course Projected launch Q3/Q4
Support the organization of at least one photo contest run by volunteers same as last year Done meet See below.
Support the digitization of ancient discs by the Public domain Project run by Wikimedians same as last year Done On course We received a new grant request in July and are awaiting some more detailed numbers.
Support at least three projects in the Italian speaking area aimed to revitalize IT.Wikibooks/Wikisource n/a 2 out of 3
On course Ad hoc support has been added for Wikivoyage.
Support Swiss-German volunteers looking to organize the next WikiCon n/a canceled n/a The community concluded that it was too early/too complicated to plan something
The good edit
  • Wiki Loves...

The Wiki Loves... contest is a time-demanding effort to set up (at least when it comes to listing historical monuments and protected areas), but we found that this draws both a positive feedback from the community, the public, as well as a general improvement in the quality of available illustrations.

  • It appears we have lots of lakes
    It appears we have lots of lakes
  • If you ever wondered what an Edelweiss looks like
    If you ever wondered what an Edelweiss looks like
  • Ceci n'est pas un ours.
    Ceci n'est pas un ours.
  • WMCH offices (allegory)
    WMCH offices (allegory)

The legal system in Switzerland, with covers freedom of panorama, is well adapted to this kind of events - while the idea of open data is also widely applied, making lists of objects fairly easy to access and retrieve (at least in a raw format).

The first contests have been a simple replication of the international ones, but Wikimedia CH has been increasingly giving it a local impact - both to motivate photographers (as a form of recognition, which appears more sought after than prizes), and because Switzerland is a small and fairly dense space: there is also so many times one can ask for a good shot of any given monument. This is why we enthusiastically embraced the Wiki Loves Earth contest who took place this year, which itself came on the heels of our own Wiki loves Alps from last year. In order to further localize the event, we have started to partner with local institutions to present physical reproductions of selected pictures, and communicated a lot more on the contest outside of the project space, sending mailings to our partners and former contributors. These actions have also helped us drive down our costs to bring them more in line with worldwide standards.

As a result, we are starting to notice what could be described as the establishment of a brand - whereby contributors will participate only in the contest, but come back from one edition to the next. These “recurring participants” is a type of user who participates regularly to our photo contests, has a good technical background and a good experience in photography. Without specific direction or prodding ("we need this"), it appears that this type of user will not spontaneously contribute content to the projects.

  • Wikisource / Wikibooks / Wikivoyage in Italian

The Alps cover 50% of the territory of Switzerland and remain an important asset in getting new content and new contributors. After the completion of the recent History of the Alps project last year, we started looking into helping the endagered languages of the alpine regions (the so-called Rhaeto-Romansche languages), where Italic meet Germanic languages. Wikimedia CH has started contacting local associations and libraries to collect all material related to these languages and transfer them onto Wikisource. The first semester of 2015 was particularly dedicated to contacting partners where the Ladin language is spoken. Considering the low number of native speakers (around 100,000), the expectations are not ambitious in terms of increase of contributors. We rather aim to offer a central repository to help researchers better understand the evolution of languages in the Alps. For this reason, Wikimedia CH has also started looking at Wikidata as a possible solution to use the linked data for the study of the evolution of the words.

The not so good edit

It appears that the Italian Wikibooks is dying, and no projects were brought to us to help revive it. On the other hand, the it.Wikivoyage community is still small, but growing. They've reached out for support for a few small initiatives during the summer. Preliminary results seem to be rather positive.

Supporting communities edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Support at least 6 meetups in the German area same as last year 4/6
At least 3 more planned in Q3/Q4 See below
Support the French Festicabales meeting this Summer same as last year n/a On target Q3 (15 August) We expect around 15 to 20 editors from France and Switzerland.
Bring at least 40 attendees to the 2015 Wikimedia CH annual General Assembly, with at least 10 Wikimedia editors attending for the first time n/a 25 out of 40;

3 out of 10

Miss This year's GA was held in a central but not the most populated area.
Support the participation to wikimedia events like the German WikiCon, Wikimania and the GLAM conference for at least 15, 5 and 5 swiss volunteers respectively. 20 scholarships in total 16 out of 25
Hard to meet Most conferences were in Q1/Q2 and we did not give any funding for Wikimania.
Strengthen the network of female association which was established during an internship in 2014, materialized by an Outreach Event March 8 for the Women Day n/a Done Exceed We actually held three simultaneous events in each of our three communities
Hosting 12 workshops in collaboration with FemWiss and the newborn female Network, e.g. each month, where women can participate and create and share knowledge n/a 2 out of 12
9 more planned in Q3/Q4 Project was expanded to French Switzerland
We will organize at least two workshops to improve the accessibility of DE:WP, in collaboration with the Foundation "Zugang für Alle“ and "Patuluslab" n/a Not yet Planned Q3/Q4
The good edit
  • Meetups

As indicated in our survey, it appears that Wikimedians do, indeed, connect with one another to discuss non Wikimedia-related things. Or at least in theory: we found out that such in-person meetings reinforce group cohesion and help smooth conflicts. Our association supports the reunion of German-speaking Wikipedians (Zurich Stammtisch) by sponsoring a guided tour through the "Blumenstein Museum" for 17 active Wikipedians. The Stammtisch concept has actually migrated out of it Zurich craddle and now takes at least once place in another city.

WMCH provides coffee and snacks as well as support for newbie-editors in the context of the Wikipedia Ateliers, a type of writing get-together organized by members and taking place on a bi-monthly basis in the Swiss National Library. The event is mainly aimed at existing Wikimedians, but is open to new editors as well. Each session draws a dozen persons or so. Besides these Ateliers at the Swiss National Library, the Cantonal Library of Thurgau started to host its own Ateliers in 2015. Whereas the Wikipedia Editing Ateliers in the Swiss National Library are independently organised by a Wikimedian, the ones in Thurgau come with a full range of services: room, the food and drinks are offered, and librarians actively provide support to Wikipedians for their research related to the articles they want to write. From what we could see so far, this service is tremendously benefiting the writing-work of Wikipedians and is considered as a true added value.

  • General assembly

This year's general assembly had a lower turnout than expected, but a better feedback, thanks in no small part to the hiring of a professional moderator to shepherd the discussions. This move was perceived very positively by our audience and we got a lot of endorsement for having hired an independent host. The lower attendance compared to year can partly be attributed to the choice of Bern as meeting place - a proportionnally larger part of our membership lives in the Zurich area. Because we adopted a geographical rotation for our General Assemblies, we expect a similarly low turnout next year when it will be held in the French-speaking part of the country. A highlight of this year's assembly was the election of de:User:Micha L. Rieser to the Board of Wikimedia CH. With a second member of the German-speaking community now sitting at the Board, the chapter and the community it represents have been brought tighter together.

  • Travel grants

Wikimedia CH participates in the international grants program “Travel & Participation Support (TPS)” which is led by the Wikimedia Foundation. One staff member of WMCH participates in weekly conference calls in order to collaboratively take decisions in the TPS grant committee about submitted “Travel and Participation Support (TPS)" of Wikimedia contributors. In Q1 & Q2 in 2015, a total of 11 grants could be awarded to worldwide community members.We also directly supported five applications for the following:

  • for one volunteer to attend the Pissarro Edit-a-thon in Wuppertal in January
  • for two volunteers to attend the Open Cultural Data Hackathon in Bern in February
  • for one volunteer to attend the European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting in Paris in March
  • for one volunteer to attend the Wiki Takes Nordtiroler Oberland 2015 in Austria in June.
The not so good edit

One of the weaknessed of the FDC processes is that objectives are set before we know how much of our grant application will be accepted. In the end, we did receive less than expected and had to make choices: we decided to cut travel funding for Wikimania (including for our staff and Board), as each ticket to Mexico represented a too great a cost.

Like-minded communities edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Distributed our newsletter to the Swiss Open Communities through OpenData.ch and OSMCH mailing lists n/a Not yet Roll-out Q3
nclude a section "News from the Open World", with at least a regular update about Open Data and Open Street Map activities n/a Done Ongoing
Active participation in the Open Knowledge conference in Bern in June 2015, materialized by at least a Conference or a Workshop n/a Postponed to Q3 Done Took place on 2 July
Join at least two Open Hackdays organized by OpenData.ch in 2015, with the participation of at least 5 Wikimedians leading to the creation of content on at least two Wikimedia projects n/a 3/5
On course Following this event we've been invited to participate in another, unplanned hack day to be held Q3 in Lausanne
The good edit
  • Newsletter

We launched a new format early this year and have so far stuck to our schedule. In order to keep information flowing among associations in Switzerland who aim for free knowledge and open data, we have institutionalised a section in our Newsletter where we inform about their events, projects and initiatives in Switzerland. For Q3 & Q4 we plan to start sending the Wikimedia CH Newsletters also to our partner communities, such as Opendata.ch and Open Street Map Switzerland (we've cleared it with them beforehand, we're not spamming people).

  • Hackday

A total of 3 Wikimedia contributors attended the Open Research Data Hackdays on June 5 & 6 in Zurich. The event focused on the setting up of processes and structures in order to automatise the usage of taxonomic data for Wikidata. Besides this, in Q2, the focus lied on the preparation of the annual Open Data Conference in Switzerland, where we managed to organise a Wikidata keynote of Pavel Richter, former Executive Director of Wikimedia DE and newly appointed CEO of Open Knowledge, as highlight of the morning program (220+ participants).

The not so good edit

Nope. All good on that front.

Outreach edit

Offline dissemination, a.k.a. Kiwix edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Promote offline solutions by attending two non Wikimedia/non tech events n/a None Unlikely See below
Increase offer by adding at least two collections out of Wikimedia projects n/a 1/2
On course Partnership with Wikimed to offer medical content
Setting-up partnerships with at least two new other Wikimedia Organizations n/a 1/2
On course We provided Wikimedia South Africa with plugs and keys.
Engage in at least one new partnership with an NGO n/a Done tbd See below
Grow volunteer base and support during hackathons n/a Done Exceed One hackathon held + Google serve session at Google's office in Zurich
Set up an R&D department to grow Kiwix n/a cancelled n/a see below
Deploy Kiwix to 4 different operating systems 3 Done Done Soon available on iOS!
Set up a professional offer n/a On course On course Shopify store has been open. Currently negotiating supply chain deal with Bern-based company
Develop a big donors strategy, target 20+ institutions and obtain at least 20kCHF funding n/a n/a Brochure expected Q3 See below
The good edit

Kiwix is growing, Kiwix generates a lot of interest - this is what we believe, more than ever, and this is what we also hear from partner. Version 1.94 was recently released on Android, and soon as iOS version will be released: there soon will be a Kiwix for everyone in the family, from Linux-based systems to Windows to Android and iOS. We're constantly amazed by what it enables: Project E, for instance, uses Kiwix-enabled USB keys to provide North Koreans with information about the outside world (you can catch a glimpse of Wikipedia in Korean at 1:02 of the video). Here's a little overview of what we've been up to:

  • KIWIX Mobile Apps
As we stated in our annual plan, the improvement of the Kiwix Application for Android is a technical priority for 2015:
  • The newest version of the KIWIX App for Android was released (1.93) and is ranking in the Top 10 Google Play Wikipedia Apps. Furthermore the KIWIX Android App has reached nearly 100’000 downloads and 30’000 active installs (status end of June 2015).
  • Furthermore there is now the capacity to generate custom apps (kiwix+content) easily on the Google Play store and already release a few ones, such as Wikimed (with the Wikimed Foundation) and wikivoyage.
  • Also the KWIX app for iOS has been developed in Q1 & Q2 and is now in testing phase with testflight. It will presumably be released in Q3 2015.
  • Last but not lest, team KIWIX is in touch with the Evopedia team to release a KIWIX version for FirefoxOS in autumn 2015 (prototype of FFOS app has been developed in Q1 & Q2).
  • New Content Releases
    • Offline snapshots of nearly all Wikimedia projects have been released in the first half year of 2015. Team KIWIX achieves to do these snapshots almost on a monthly basis.
    • Youtube Content: A Youtube2zim script has been created which allows to quickly create a ZIM file from a youtube channel/user/. This is a huge step in order to easily make content offline available via KIWIX. (status: one (out of two) new "collection" of content added to the KIWIX library)
  • Last but not least, the KIWIX User Interface was translated to Songhay, Somali & Burmese
  • New Deployments & Partnerships
With regards to the deployment of KIWIX, we picked a few cases of Q1 & Q2 2015 which are described in the following:
  • In a partnership with L'agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, a total of 50 KIWIX Plugs could be deployed in their cultural centers in Bamako, Moroni, Antananarivo and Réduit (target reached of "Engage in at least one new partnership with an NGO")
  • The Navy in Senegal is using a KIWIX plug and KIWIX USB sticks to provide access to Wikipedia offline to their crew
  • Children in Mali get access to Wikipedia offline with KIWIX on e-readers. More info on this specific project is available on the Wikimedia Blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/05/14/e-readers-in-mali/
  • Wikimedia South-Africa and Wikimedia Beligium were provided a KIWIX Plug to test & demonstrate Wikipedia offline in their countries and to their communities (target reached of "setting-up partnerships with at least two new other Wikimedia Organizations")
  • Furthermore in Swaziland the deployment of KIWIX was made possible through microgrants of Wikimedia CH, which will allow to grant access to Wikipedia offline for two entire schools and over 300 pupils.
  • On the top, Kiwix is now also being used as based technology by Kwiizi, a Douala based IT Company providing educational solution in Cameroun
  • The Arabic Wikipedia proposes to its reader to "download Wikipedia offline” in their sidebar
  • Last but not least, Team KIWIX is in regular exchange with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Zero Team
  • Events
    • KIWIX Hackathon:
At the beginning of June, the KWIX team of 4 volunteers met in Lyon for the KIWIX Hackathon and focused on the advancement of the KIWIX Android App. To see the list of achievements in detail, please consider the following link: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Hackathon_Mobile_2015#Achievements (Status: 1 out of 2 Hackathons organized for 2015).
  • Google Serve Event in June:
Each year in June, Googlers in the Zurich Office participate in volunteer opportunities as part of their annual „Google Serve“ - "a chance for Googlers to give back to their local communities through service projects.“ For the second time, Wikimedia CH is part of this opportunity and Googlers in the Zurich HQ teamed up and spent one day of their work to „give back“ by fixing bugs for KIWIX - Wikipedia offline. To give you an impression on what has been worked on: Thanks to Googler Mat, the KIWIX Android App now has a new feature where people can just select a specific part of a Wikipedia offline article and ask the app to read this extraction to them outlaid (TTS). Furthermore Arvind hast managed to make sophisticated physics assignments from phets.com offline available via KIWIX (target reached of adding 2 new content collections to the KIWIX library in Q2 2015).
  • Infrastructure
The KIWIX Team succeeded to create their website more customer friendly by featuring the "download-buttons” directly on their landing page.
Furthermore, visitors of the website kiwix.org can now directly donate to project KIWIX on the website (technical infrastructure is provided by WMCH).
Last but not least, Wikimedia CH and team KIWIX worked in Q2 on the set-up of an easy-to-use online store where KIWIX plugs and USB keys can be offered in the future to a worldwide customer base. The store will presumably go live in autumn 2015. We are also currently negotiating with a partner so as to fully outsource the Kiwix supply chain and focus on improving the application. We look forward to a deal somewhere in Q3.
The not so good edit

The downside of last year's FDC round was that we couldn't proceed with our plans to expand as fast as we wanted to. The good side was that it actually forced us to sit down and think hard about how we wanted to proceed and prioritize (and yes, that's where the Wikimania grants went. Sorry, Mexico). We then took a second hit in February when personal reasons forced our CSO to leave earlier than expected. Lacking funds and manpower, new projects had to be delayed, or at least went even slower than we would have liked: with our Community liaisons already committed to existing programs, there wasn't much room for fundraising during Q1 and Q2. But things are still going forward - we've managed to move ahead with our donors' brochure, we've started to prepare a fundraising strategy, and hopefully will go ahead with it around the end of Q3 or early Q4. Stay tuned.

GLAM and education edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
All institutions where WiRs have worked will appoint a Wikipedia-contact person from their permanent staff n/a Done Ongoing Partner institutions now have a sustainable upload policy
Quarterly meetings to promote a WMCH/National Archives/National Library-centered Network n/a Done Ongoing Other GLAMS are starting to reach out
WMCH will be associated with at least three GLAM events n/a 10/3
Exceed See below
Generate revenue from GLAM activities 0 0 On course Negotiations ongoing for Pilot project in Jura
Set up GLAM team n/a On course On course Q3
In 2015 the Neuchatel Herbarium and Amoeba Digitization projects will be 100% fund by non-Wikimedia Funds WMCH supported admin costs Grant expired end Q2 tbd See below
Wikipermanences will continue in at least 4 French speaking libraries and will be expended to at least 4 German speaking libraries n/a 5 out of 4 French-speaking partners

1 German-speaking ones

Maintain 1 German speaking permanence We are planning to phase out the project. See below
Wikivillage will be extended to the whole French-speaking area and a pilot contest will be run in a German Canton by the end of 2015 n/a Initially planned Q3 Postponed Q1/2016 See below
in 2015, one Education program at the University will become an official part of the curriculum of a Swiss University n/a Done Ongoing See below
in 2015, one Education program will be conducted in a professional school, and at least 5 teachers will participate. n/a 73 teachers reached Exceed See below
in 2015, one professor will run a pilot experiment with student doing their Matura work in the French part n/a Done Ongoing See below
in 2015, One French-Speaking Teaching School will include Wikipedia learning in its life training course offer n/a Done Ongoing See below
The good edit
  • GLAM meeting

For each partnership it’s important to meet potential partners and to be ready to offer them the right information. It’s frequent that the chapter spend a lot of time to schedule and to plan visits and meeting directly to the GLAMs.

In the Italian Switzerland Wikimedia CH tried a new approach: the organization of a meeting for all GLAMs in the region. The event has been planned with a description of case studies, preparation of material and distribution of information in a single event. The need has been that to use efficiently the limited budget, it means to produce more effect using a low cost rate per contact.

Together with the Laboratory of visual culture of SUPSI (Universitary Technical School of the Italian Switzerland) it has been defined a new strategy of communication to GLAMs and the result is the website: http://glam.wikimedia.ch The website offers a guide and explation of open licenses and of Wikimedia projects and several case studies using the same language and the same dictionary of the GLAMs.

The feedback was good because Wikimedia CH contacted around 200 institutions and received a feedback and the participation to the event from the 20% of them and started a meeting with 10%.

  • Education
    • For the first time, WMCH partnered with an institution from the tertiary education.
The Haute Ecole de Gestion of Geneva and specifically the Bachelor course specialized in Documentary Information agreed to offer to its students the opportunity to deliver coursework related to Wikipedia. This field of study in Switzerland is mandatory for people who wish to work in libraries or in research related to the Science of Information. Those projects are graded and are part of the student’s official curriculum. A team of 5 people, in their final year of Bachelor worked on a coursework entitled a documentary product. The activity consisted of building an inventory of the presence of Swiss women in the field of sports on the French speaking Wikipedia and to create an additional 20 biographies in wp:fr and 5 in wp:de.
The students, all new editors had to build a solid understanding of wikipedia as well as to decipher how to contribute and interact with the respective communities.
The team successfully completed their task at the beginning of this year. The relationship between the association and the students developed positively enough for the school to accept that we provide a new topic for the class of 2015/2016.
  • Wikipedia is part of teacher education in Bern:
On March 30, Wikimedia CH presented Wikipedia as part of the ICT lecture at the Bern University of Education. This is a key opportunity as this ICT course is mandatory for all future gymnasium (high school) teachers in Bern and Wikipedia finally found its way into the curriculum of teacher education in the canton of Bern. The course was attended by 75 people, among them were 73 students, 2 professors and one researcher.
  • University of Applied Science in Winterthur
A professor for applied linguistics at the University of Applied Science in Winterthur is hosting a research-class about “PR in WIkipedia” at Master level, with 25 students participating. The course is dedicated to analyse Swiss Companies and their “handling” of Wikipedia. In order to support this course and their research, one volunteer and one staff member of WMCH were accompanying the research project to provide advice as well as insights into the Wikimedia projects. (Unfortunately the results of this study are not yet published but will be handed in as soon as they’re officially issued.)
The not so good edit
  • Wikipermanences

After a year of testing the format of the Wikipermanences in Romandie, we decided to review them closely and came to the conclusion to opt out from them as part of our strategy for the second half of 2015. Although, they provide a fantastic opportunity to meet potential new editors and get positive press coverage, the costs associated in terms of staff intensity vs. new editors reached tipped the scale in favor of not renewing them for the Autumn 2015. Some sessions were highly intensive with up to 10 participants but several of them were also deserted with no people showing up: we found out that people came "to see" Wikipedia and try to understand it a little better, but more often than not simply had question or were happy to listen but did not go as far as creating a user account (or not one we count subsequently track). It should be put in contrast with edit-a-thons which, with their clear agendas and theme, usually draw a more motivated crowds.

Having tested the Wikipermanences created the opportunity for WMCH to develop strong relationships with schools, museums and libraries : the effort has therefore not gone to waste. Although, we are stopping the Wikipermanences, all of the partners were consulted and agreed with the decision and more importantly accepted to collaborate in the future on new projects and events.

And there definitely is solace to be found in two unexpected developments: one involving an institution, the other a contributor (or rather, two).

The City Library of La Chaux de Fonds has dedicated 20% working time to one of their staff to build content on Wikipedia articles since the Wikipermanences kicked off. Indeed, out of the first few events, the employees of the library were the main attendees which gave the opportunity to build a strong relationship with the librarians.
One of the success stories, relates to the User:Nattes a Chat. She first came to a Wikipermanence to discover the online encyclopedia and understand how she could contribute. Having participated to one of them, she was then informed about the art and feminism edit-a-thon before getting in touch about building a gender gap project in Geneva with the University. She partnered with another new contributor to work on a gender gap project. WMCH directed and supported her application “Let’s fill the gender gap” during the Wikimedia Foundation’s Inspire Campaign. They were successfully granted the sum of 6000 USD to carry out a conference and workshop project for 2015/2016. Since then, the association has been supporting them every step of the way.

  • Wikivillages

Wikivillages was a success, both in terms of stakeholder engagement and press coverage. However Wikivillage was significantly more of a challenge when it came to cost, and probably as well as far as its target population (15yr-olds students) was concerned.

Wikivillages is a writing contest initially targeted to the Swiss students at the secondary education level. The contest offers the possibility to teams of students to edit and improve the articles of a village of their choice in the area. The contest kicked off in september last year and covered the whole school year. We had about 30 kids volunteering to participate with their high school teachers, with a jury of volunteers Wikimedians to evaluate the articles. The resources used for this project where essentially staff time and prizes for the contest. Getting the buy-in from school principals for a project they'd never heard of and while the available teaching time is already tight proved to be extremely demanding. We were rather neïvely expecting to be welcome with open arms (after all, which kid does not already plagiarize Wikipedia? It could be payback time!), but fact of the matter is, teachers already have a lot to teach. And if kids copy blindly what they see on the web, it's because they are kids (a fact we did probably overlook as well).

Long story short: it was hard to get in, and once we were in we realized that kids had a lot more to learn than simply editing (dealing with wikitext probably was the easiest part for them): they simply did not know where to start, had a hard time looking for information, and generally speaking had problems hierarchizing information (their articles were not that impressive, and we're being gentle).

This lead us to re-think how we should view the next iteration of Wikivillages - the concept is promising, but we think we probably addressed the wrong side of the spectrum. Several villages actually have started approaching us asking for our next campaign, so we know there is some demand. As for the potential editors, we want to approach senior associations - people who might be slower to take up editing, but might be more motivated to contribute about something they know and understand well. Preliminary discussions also led us to conclude that a shorter, denser contest (1 month) could be more interesting (and, on our side, less staff-intensive). We have therefore decided to limit the planned roll-out to the rest of Western Switzerland and run another pilot project in the Canton of Vaud.


Thematic approach edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Submit a transnational project related to the Alps for EU funding n/a On hold On hold See below

The EU finances projects by geographical area and by thematic program; the Alpine region is one area where European funds are distributed for transnational projects. The EU was suppose to define a new program of financement for 2015-2020 but it apparently has not been published yet.

Movement and Association sustainability edit

International cooperation edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
WMCH will increase its collaboration with the German speaking chapter, WMAT and WMDE, with bi-weekly exchange of the DACH volunteer support teams. n/a Done Ongoing See below
We will cooperate with other WM-affiliates in our thematic area : The Alps n/a On hold On hold See above re:EU-funded transnational projects
Organise and host the Wikimedia Conference 2015 conference in May 2015 Hosted hackathon 2014 Cancelled n/a Our CSO's departure vindicated the early decision to cancel our bid
  • DACH Coordination:

The three Chapters who serve the german-speaking Wikimedia Projects, e.g. WMAT, WMDE and WMCH, have institutionalized regular calls in order coordinate and streamlining our services. Thereby the first priority is to put our customer, e.g. the communities, first and align our services where it’s necessary and keep different offers where it’s creating an added value

  • Volunteer Supporters Network (VSN)

After the launch of the VSN working group in November 2014, the focus in the first half year of 2015 lied on establishing an infrastructure to institutionalise exchange opportunities among volunteer supporters around the world. A Mailinglist, an online Platform on Meta to share resources as well as monthly conference calls were set up. A total of 11 individuals are involved in this initiative, thereof 1 staff member of WMCH.

Financial sustainability edit

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
1 Governance meeting held with consultants n/a Q3 On course Training planned for September 2015
25% of the activity budget financed by non-donor funds <5% in-kind >12% On course See below
Stabilization of direct donations to Wikimedia CH ca. +15% Currently around +30% Exceed As a payment processor we understand that our 2015 objective should be around 20%. There is a non-linear but solid relationship between Foundation's fundraising performance and ours.
The good edit

We've substantially raised our in-kind revenue over Q1/Q2, for instance by pursuing our extremely fruitful relationship with Young & Rubicam's multimedia arm, who most generously offered to fully revamp our website and host it for free (it probably helped that our partner there is a Wikimedian and that he got to know our most efficient German Community liaison Muriel). We exepct this to favourably influence our revenues when it goes online at the end of the Summer. We've also engaged in a program systematically monitoring our internal costs, so as to decide which programs where worth it and which were not. A side effect of this is that we're also much better at tracking our non-monetary revenues (e.g. in-kind donations). We've also drastically reduced our spending, which mechanically increases the relative part of in-kind donations in our total budget. Last, and at this stage probably least, we've signed an licensing agreement for Wikipedia clothing with a local company (heidi.com), for branded apparel: we do not expect the whole Swiss population to rush and wear WMCH.branded t-shirts and hoodies, but since we get all the benefits and bear none of the costs (the company runs the programs for free as part of its CSR activities; it only covers its costs), any money generated this way will be our money.

Another good news on the money front: the Foundation has announced its intention to pursue the payment processing agreement that bound WMCH to it. This is important because eventhough all funds processed through the banners we manage on the projects go to the Foundation (minus a small processing fee), channeling potential donors through our website allows us to showcase our projects and promote our WMCH brand. This makes subsequent contacts much easier and, as it happens, a lot of people decide that they should become WMCH supporting members on top of supporting the Wikimedia Foundation (also: they get a tax rebate).

The not so good edit

On 20 January 2015 the Bank of Switzerland decided to abandon its peg to the Euro: the Swiss franc shot up almost 20% versus our neighbours' currency in a matter of minutes (from 1.2 CHF/Euro to 0.98 CHF/Euro; it now stands at around 1.06 CHF/Euro). While the change against the US dollar wasn't as dramatic, this adverse exchange rate event will negatively impact our apparent costs vis-à-vis the movement (to be clear: if we get the same amount of funding as last year it means that we'll have to cut our costs by 10%).

Revenues received during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Please note that because of an server problem these numbers are our best estimates (FDC staff has been notified). Exchange rate in 2014-15 proposal : 1 CHF / 1.089 USD

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

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
FDC CHF 350'000 350'000 350'000 380'000 380'000
Internal fundraising CHF 75'000 60'000 25'000 85'000 81'675 92'565
In-kind donations CHF 0 11'300 12'000 23'400 0 25'374 We started our internal metrics program after the year started. Monetary equivalents were defined during Q1
Kiwix CHF 40'000 17'837 17'837 43'560 19'424 Exceptional sale of Kiwix plugs to the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie
Opendata.ch CHF 22'000 5'500 5'500 23'958 5'990 OpenData pays 20% of our German liaison's salary, on a quarterly basis. Numbers were extracted mid-june 2015
Membership fees CHF 15'000 3'480 3'480 16'335 3'789 Members were not asked to pay their due back in January as they normally should have. We're currently sending reminders
Merchandising CHF 2'500 0 2'722 0 heidi.com will make a one-off payment after the campaign is over.
WMF payment processing CHF 25'000 25'000 0 27'225 27'225
Trainings CHF 6'000 0 6'534 0 In the absence of our CSO no trainings were conducted.
Services CHF 21'000 0 22'869 0 In the absence of our CSO no service offers were made
External fundraising CHF 50'000 0 54'450 0 No fundraising activities were led in the absence of our CSO

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Spending during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

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

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Staff expense CHF 586'024 118'927 118'927 237'854 638'180 259'023 40.6% Our CAO left and works for us as a consultant from abroad, We however had to increase some of our staff' paid hours.
Community support CHF 75'500 1'300 1'360 2'660 82'219 2'900 3.5% Most programs related to the purchase of heavy equipment were canceled or not pursued after the last FDC round's results.
Outreach CHF 44'900 1060 1050 2'110 48'900 2'298 4.7% Most programs related to the purchase of heavy equipment or investment in personnel were canceled or not pursued after the last FDC round results.
Outreach CHF 44'900 3'540 3'530 7'070 48'900 7'700 15.7% Most programs related to the purchase of heavy equipment or investments in personnel were canceled or not pursued after the last FDC round results.
Sustainability CHF 10'500 489 500 989 11'434 1'077 9.4% Our budget for internal training hasn't been used yet
TOTAL CHF 794'424 125'316 125'367 250'683 865'127 272'994 31.55% N/A

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Compliance edit

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement? edit

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.

  • As indicated, at the end of the last FDC round WMCH was only granted 70% of what it requested. We canceled a number of programs and operated a significant reorganization of our spending and costs which, for all intent and purpose, made the propose budget fairly irrelevant.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes.

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes.

Signature edit

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit


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