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Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/Wikimedia Italia/Progress report form

< Grants:APG‎ | Proposals‎ | 2014-2015 round2‎ | Wikimedia Italia



Purpose of the report edit

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their progress after completing the first 6 months of their grants. The time period covered in this form will be the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

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 for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  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 – We did not track this metric for any activity this year. The only program for which we had a goal was "Italian Wikipedia", which was postponed. Active editors are counted in other metrics, not for this status but for the kind of engagement they had in the activity.
2. # of newly registered users 2963 We track this metric as part of general data collection but we do not consider it a goal in itself. In fact, in the comparisons within each program, we found the number of newly registered users to be inversely proportional to the actual success of an event, because the more users register the less engagement we can afford for each of them. The largest part of this figure (2k) comes from a CTA via Google Grants which directed Google Search users to an Italian Wikipedia registration form with relevant context. We depend on WMF for exact data; this is the most conservative estimate in a 0–27k range, based on secondary actions.
3. # of individuals involved 40244 This is the main metric for most of our programs. We have an accurate headcount for most in-person events. For an event/activity with open participation, the number of attendees shows the attractiveness and success of the format. For events with mandatory participation, the size of the event shows the degree of involvement of the decision-makers and the likelihood of a continuation. Online events (including communication) fall in the "open participation" spectrum and we measure their success with the industry standard metric "interactions", adapted to each medium, as impressions, followers and similar tend to be misleading. For the communication program, the largest contribution came from a long presentation-interview given by the WMIT president on a cultural TV channel: we considered the official average audience figure for the channel (Auditel) as a conservative estimate of the number of people who managed to receive as much Wikimedia information as they would have with a Wikimedia presentation at a conference.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 733 We did not have a specific goal for this metric. We originally had a goal for the number of uploads by WLM participants but we later refocused. This figure is calculated using glamorous for relevant categories.
5. # of content pages added or improved on Wikimedia projects 7230,2 We track this metric as part of general data collection (see "New editors") but we do not consider it a goal in itself, except for the Wikisource contest. For OSM, we counted how many Italian Wikipedia articles were improved by our largest edit drive: every Wikipedia article on a municipality links or embeds an OSM map, which in some cases may be nearly empty; filling the map for one municipality is therefore a large improvement to the corresponding article. We acted on a region with poor OSM coverage, counted how many km of ways were added and to how many whole-municipality-equivalents this corresponds.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 2280783 We track this metric as part of general data collection (see "New editors") but we do not consider it a goal in itself. A large part of this figure is contributed by the WIR, which shows they focused on text content expansion.
Female individuals involved 39–82 % Wikimedia Italia strives to counter the gender gap in each of its activities. To measure the contribution of each program, we counted the female participants of a sample of events and calculated the proportion: we do not have exact data for all events but we know that there is a consistency within each program. For instance, we can say that activities with libraries typically bring 80–90 % women and activities with school at least 50 %, while an online activity like WLM probably falls under 50 %.
Individuals and partners cooperating 559 We consider the number of volunteers and partners who help us across the country to be the best guarantee of the Wikimedia values' ultimate victory. We therefore count how many members, active editors and other individuals helped organise each WMIT event or activity and how many partners were involved in a program. In particular, we had a goal for the number of institutional employees collaborating with WLM to release monuments and organise events. The largest contribution to this figure is made by the 320 institutions which provided authorisations for WLM; in another context, these are counted as being 392, which is the corresponding number of involved entities (some institutions, especially branches of the ministry, released authorisations for multiple independent entities).
New editors 441 New editors, like some other statistics, is a standard figure calculated using WikiMetrics with cohorts of usernames extracted from the public lists of participants where users signed themselves as attendees of our events. We consider this to be a meaningful indicator for the libraries and education programs: not as a direct measure of their impact, but as a comparison between different events/activities within each program; if a workshop produces more new editors than another of similar size, this usually means that the instructor did a good job or the context was more favourable. For WLM, because by definition each attendee needs to have at least 1 edit (standard threshold), we raised the bar to 5 contributions in order to only count participants with a mid-high level of engagement.
Media accesses 5434170 We consider mediacounts, provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, to be a very useful dataset. We did not have a goal for this figure in our plan because the dataset did not exist yet, but we now track this metric for all media releases, based on the respective categories on Wikimedia Commons. We had no WIR for most of the period, so the main media release was WLM. For WLM, because the impact prolongs itself in time, we measured the usage at the end of the period and projected it over a 6 months period.
Number of events 728 The number of events, while not being necessarily a goal in itself, is an indicator of the success of a format. In particular, the "wikigite" format proved very successful. In the communication program, we consider each media article/publication (as counted by a third party) to be an event in which the population was involved and connected to our activities. Most media coverage was in the period of WLM.
Highly satisfied participants 61–85 % To ensure the long-term sustainability of our programs, we have to make sure that a format works for the participants as well. With surveys on a sample of events, sometimes conducted by our partners, we ascertained that the near totality of attendees is satisfied with our events and that a large majority is fully or highly satisfied. This gives us hope for the future continued expansion of proven formats such as the workshops for librarians.


Detailed goals for the period edit

Goals were extracted from the strategic plan goals for 2015.

Program 3. # of individuals involved Female individuals involved Individuals and partners cooperating Satisfaction 1. # of active editors involved 2. # of newly registered users New editors 4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/page Media accesses 5. # of content pages added or improved on Wikimedia projects 6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects
Libraries 225 >20 % 4 (2) >0 – – 8 0 / 1000 – 2000+1000 –
Museums 30 – 10 (2) – 10 – – 0 / 100+100+20 – – –
Education and training 20 – 10 (1) >0 – – – – – – –
WLM 1254 – 328+2+5 (5+3) – – – – – / 21k – – –
OSM 60 – – – – – – – – – –
Italian Wikipedia – 0 – – 10 (OTRS) – 10+3 – – –
Communication 100 – 1 – – – – – – – –

Detailed results for the period edit

We also make available the detailed spreadsheet containing the amount contributed by each event or activity.

Program 3. # of individuals involved Female individuals involved Individuals and partners cooperating 1. # of active editors involved 2. # of newly registered users New editors 4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/page Media accesses 5. # of content pages added or improved on Wikimedia projects 6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects Number of events Highly satisfied participants
Libraries 335 ↑ 82 %[1] ↑ 31 ↑ 128 54 ↑ 7 ↓ 7152 ↑ 1685935 10 62 % →
Communication 37200 26 638 74 %
Education and training 906 ↑ 56 %[1] 45 ↑ 100 11 9 13400 28
Museums 10 ↓ 5 ↓ 127 ↓ 184830 2
OSM 282 ↑ 18 0 27 11,2 7 61 %
Italian Wikipedia 8 88 % 13 ↓ 2002 2 ↓ 58 581448
WLM 1489 → 39 %[2] 421 → 733 347 599 → / 12k ↓ 5249340 41 85 %
WMIT volunteers 14 50 % 1
Total 40244 172 559 2963 441 733 5434170 7230,2 2280783 728 –

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.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Example Example Example Example Example

GLAM - Libraries edit

During these last months, the relationship between libraries and WMIT has become even more fruitful: some significant events in Torino, Firenze, Brescia, Mantova, Trento, Pavia and Bergamo have been arranged.

The most important one was the second annual conference GLAM/Libraries on the 27th of November at the National Central Library in Florence. After the success of the last year edition, the conference has been organized again, allowing the world of librarians and the world of wikipedians to get even closer.

Wikisource has been a very important project for Wikimedia Italia: we have dedicated both a national contest and an international meeting in Wien, to celebrate its 12th anniversary. Wikimedia Italy’s President has given his personal support to Wikimedia Austria in the planning of the event and participated in the event itself together with Eusebia Parrotto, WMI’s member and a librarian in Trento and Cristian Bacchi, Wikipedian-In-Residence at the National Central Library of Florence (BNCF).
Eusebia brought her experience of using Wikisource in library editathons instead of Wikipedia, as a first step for laymans into “editing”.
Cristian explained in detail his work as a WIR, working on a very technical (but hugely promising) project of importing library records into Wikidata.
The conference has allowed us to contribute to strengthen the community and the attention around this particular sister project, and to discover the experience of other chapters and affiliates with Wikisource.

Both the events were not originally included in our program: they have been added and replaced other two events, the Corderdojo events in Bologna and Padova, which has been deleted, due to lack of interested partners.

In the observed period we have had two Wikipedian in Residence projects activated, one with the National Central Library of Florence (BNCF) - mentioned before, still in progress - and another with the Library of Trento. For this second project we can count on the collaboration of Eleonora, a young volunteer of the civil service who is not properly an advanced user of Wikipedia, but who has decided to give herself a challenge and to be part of this project. The WIR project with the Library of Trento replaced the planned project at the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographic Information (ICCU).

Unfortunately we have faced some bureaucratic problem which has undoubtedly slowed down the drafting of some agreements, especially the one with AIB (Italian Association of Librarians), which is still in progress. At the moment, a draft of the agreement is being discussed but both parties. Despite this, in the last months we have deepened relations with “DigitaMi”', a digital library collecting documents about the historical and cultural tradition of Milan and “MAB”', association of museums, archives and libraries who both expressed their interest in collaborating with us and drafting a convention. We are planning to download DigitaMi collection of scanned books in the following weeks.

We can count a number of 7152 content pages vs the 3000 planned in the period. On the other hand have had a number of added of improved content pages of 7 compared to the 1000 planned. This second target, related to the work of the WIR at BNCF, has been postponed to 2016 and connected to a new form of collaboration.
The library program is the first among the others for the number of Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects (1,685,935).

As regards the goal of promoting the work carried out by WMIT with libraries aimed also to increase WMIT brand awareness, we created an internal database to reach the specialised press and started to send messages through some specific list (about fifty emails have been sent during the first part of the funding period). One of those lists is AIB-CUR, a mailing list for librarians counting more than 6000 professionals.

KPI_GLAM Libraries progress report FDC

GLAM - Museums edit

Although we started some important projects and collaboration in the past, until now museums has represented an unexplored ground for our organization.
In the first part of the funding period we have focused on building solid relationships with the most important Italian association of museums, ICOM Italia and Museimpresa. Despite this, most of the activities and targets we have planned for the July-December period have been postponed in 2016.
In the framework of these collaborations, we have published a call for interest open to museums interested in hosting a wikipedian in residence, appeared on our communication channels and on ICOM Italia and Museimpresa channels too. We have carefully selected 4 important national museums among a total number of 12 applicant institutions: the "Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo Da Vinci” (National Museum of Science and Technology) in Milan, "MUSE" (the Science Museum) in Trento, (both in the ICOM network), the "Fondazione Mansutti" in Milan (which is partner of Museimpresa) and the "Museo Galileo" of Florence (out of the call, collaborating with WMIT since 2014). At the same time, we have carried out a selection of the 4 wirs which will start their work next February which will be announced shortly.

Our selection criteria for museums took into account the collections, the material the museum would like to share, the encyclopedic degree of their material and the history of the institution. The museums we have chosen demonstrated to be the most suitable to host expert wikipedians, the most prepared to a cross-cultural contamination: they are willing adhere to Wikimedia values and proved to have perfectly understood that the contribution of the WIRs is not to be seen merely as a "communication" action but is a starting point for a change of perspective, for enabling them to work independently on wikimedia projects. As you can find in the table here below showing the KPIs connected with the GLAM-Museum program, we had a target of 3 museums requesting courses for 2015 and likewise for 2016. Unfortunately, this target has not been achieved: last Autumn we promoted our courses thanks to the channels of the cited Associations but the communication consisted of too isolated, short and weak messages for reaching our goals. We are convinced this action could have been better prepared. Therefore, we have changed our strategic approach and we are contacting one-to-one the museums not selected for hosting the WIRs to start a collaboration for the release of their material in Wikimedia Commons and for the courses (so far, 2 institutions out of 2 have already shown their interest in that).

WMIT presentation for museums

For the moment, we have marked this not achieved target of 3 courses in 2015 as "postponed to 2016", because we are confident that some of the relationships started in 2015 with the cited 12 museums will lead to collaborations in 2016.


We have also signed two significant and unexpected agreements. The first, last summer, with the Historical Archive of the Touring Club Italiano, the most ancient touristic institution in Italy (established about 120 year ago), who shared some historical images of Italian monuments on Commons, thus inaugurating the first project of WMIT with the archive world.
This agreement turned into a very important result: 184.830 uploads from July to December, 2015.
The other agreement was signed last November with the Food Museum of Parma, for the release of about 800 images in Creative Commons License. This collaboration is now going to start.
Additionally, we have started to interact with the new directors of the 20 major museums in Italy. An official letter has been sent to them and some directors have answered enthusiastically. In November and December we met the directors of the "Galleria degli Uffizi" in Florence and of the "Pinacoteca di Brera" in Milan, who are very interested and very well informed about the open source philosophy and the use of creative commons licences.

Another good news comes from the recent appointment of the first thematic coordinator of volunteers in the field of museums in a region - Sardinia - where our presence is not deeply-rooted. Our organization supported the coordinator in order to get her know across the region. We hope to be able to activate at least one project in Sardinia during the 2016.


KPI_GLAM Museums progress report FDC


Educational program edit

The educational program has shown significant results during the first part of the funding period: several Italian schools have contacted WMIT for activating courses and our volunteers moved from their personal contacts to organize initiatives with schools. The “Wikipedia goes to school” project, which aims to bring Wikipedia in the Italian classes, follows exactly the guidelines on the recent educational reform given by the Italian government, in which the information literacy plays a central role.

We have had 28 school-related events involving 45 individuals and partners cooperating compared to the 11 planned, for a total amount of 906 participants.

The standardization of the educational offer, due by May (before the starting of the funding period), was done only last Autumn. This task in fact was originally run only by volunteers as well as other activities which need coordination and obviously take time. We are now transitioning from a model in which few volunteers are overload to a more structured model in which staff can undertake some of the tasks before carried out only with volunteers' forces and obviously with their precious support. For example, we have realized that the educational activities run by volunteers needed some logistic, organizational and communication help; therefore we have decided to hire a project manager for this specific projects, Paolo Brambilla, also in charge to work with the members and the community. This new position was not included in the organizational chart contained in the FDC proposal form, but has been added thanks to the 5 per thousands funds which have been higher than the expected sum. Thanks to this choice we have been able to finalize the standardization of the educational offer and this has given us the chance to approach our target in a more professional way.

WMIT presentation for schools

We have written several informative materials for this purpose, 2 for education (and also 1 for OSM and 1 for museums, respectively), created a rich national database with the contacts of thousands of secondary schools and made a massive sending out of emails at the end of November: of the 12093 emails sent, 1489 contacts opened our message (12,31%) and 131 opened the attached presentation. We hope to harvest the fruits of our efforts during the 2016. Lastly, we have created a page of the state of the projects in wikina and created a questionnaire model to submit to students at the conclusion of every project.

We are now more aware of the quality of our offer in this field and we have learned to “say no” to some requests that are unseemly to us. This is what happened with a secondary school in Crema (Lombardy), where the offer for about 70 hours of teaching would have led our volunteers to an unfair economic and logistic sacrifice (the school was in a place not easy to reach by none of them).

In these last months we have started some courses in regions such as Liguria, Toscana, Veneto and Lombardia, especially with the help of our regional coordinators of volunteers. These courses have allowed us to respect our goals.
Good news come from Basilicata, a region of the South of Italy where 2 different projects have been activated in secondary schools in 2 different cities. Even though these projects have been realized by a single volunteer (who is also the coordinator of volunteers in that region) we hope that these activities can bring fresh contributors there. We have also started 2 extra-curricular courses in an educational centre in Bologna. We haven’t yet been able to activate training courses for teachers but we have not cancelled this target but we have postponed to 2016 as we think is important to achieve.

As regards the relationships with universities, in September we have hosted 2 interns, Andrea and Manuel, coming from the University of Milan. One of them, Manuel, decided to extend his internship up to January 2016. Other interns are going to join our team at the beginning of 2016. Furthermore, 3 different courses have been held in 2 different universities: Ca’ Foscari in Venice and University of Ferrara. The former is likely to be particularly fruitful, since it could be seen as the starting point for future and wider collaborations with our organization. This collaboration would start in 2016.


KPI_Education progress report FDC



OpenStreetMap edit

The promotion activities included in the OSM program started with some delay. We hired an OSM project manager in July and, due to his sudden unavailability, in September he has been replaced by another person. This explains the reason why most of the planned activities have been reallocated to 2016.

The new OSM project manager has immediately started to arrange some events useful to the promotion of OSM. Target of the actions were several professional fields and wikipedians. The original idea exposed in our strategic plan to contribute as WMIT to the organization of the national conference held every year by the OSM community expired because the community had decided to organize this event autonomously and later deleted the event.
WMIT organized a two-day informal meeting in November in Bologna, which had seen a significant participation of community members and beginners (43 people). A second event, a conference for professionals (from Civil protection, Public Administration, University, Logistic companies, etc.), was held on December, 3rd in Milan, at the Politecnico (42 participants). This conference has been very important, since we got in touch for the first time officially with some potential stakeholders and partners for courses and data extractions. We have prepared a specific brochure for OSM projects and given them during the conference and the following one-to-one meetings.

OSM presentation

In particular, we started to dialogue with GTer - a spin-off of the University of Genoa - to help city councils improve their geospatial data and to promote their territory in a better way: we are now discussing about some courses to be held in 2016. We have also had a meeting with the Surveyor Class in Milan, in which the training manager expressed his interest in collaborating with us.

Unfortunately, some of the targets planned for 2015 such as courses or special consultancies have not been achieved but considering the positive feedbacks and the relationships created we have postponed them to 2016. The achievement of overall target related to these specific activities expected in the funding period will need to be carefully monitored and revised, if necessary. During the first days of November we have also participated in the “Collaborative Week”, an event lasting an entire week dedicated to themes such as sharing economy, co-working, open culture, which took place in the building that will host our new office in Milan. Our vice-president Simone Cortesi took a conference on OSM.
In addition, other mapping parties have been arranged in the South of Italy on the 18th of December: one in Puglia during a hackaton with more that 100 participants and one in Basilicata respectively.
We had a great participation and interest in the cited OSM events: 282 people vs the 60 of our target; we have also observed 27 new contributors and 11,2 content pages added or improved on Wikimedia projects in relation to these events.

Moreover, an agreement has been activated with Region of Molise for the sharing of geospatial data. Last, in December we created a national database of contacts of professional schools, and we have sent them our educational offer.

In the meantime, on January, 28th WMIT was officially recognized as the Italian chapter of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. We are very proud of this outcome achieved thanks to our Vice - President Simone Cortesi, OpenStreetMap volunteer since the beginning. In Italy, the OpenStreetMap community has been talking for years about the creation of a chapter. Most people felt that it was important, but also that founding yet another association was pointless. Associations are not built only on projects, but also, and mainly, on common values and on a common vision: Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap share both, and it's just natural to work together.

Martijn van Exel (OpenStreetMap Foundation) and Simone Cortesi (WikiMedia Italia) signing the agreement between OSMF and WMI for the Italian Chapter


The recognition process has been quite long, but now that we've signed the chapters agreement Italy is the second country (after Iceland) to have an official OpenStreetMap chapter.

KPI_OSM progress report FDC


Wiki Loves Monuments edit

2015 has been the year of the reinforcement and growth of Wiki Loves Monuments. The fourth edition ended with some relevant results, both quantitative and qualitative.

  • 947 photographers participated, both amateur and professionals: Italy was placed first for number of participants (goal: 1038)
  • 12.712 pictures have been gathered (goal: 21 000). These picture have been downloaded 5.249.340 times.
  • 5.149 monuments, authorized by 392 institutions that promoted the contest actively (goal: about 350. Please note that the numbers are not comparable due to a different calculation method). Of these, 216 are city councils, 37 are museums, 47 are archeological sites, 92 are institutions of other kind.
  • 46 “wikigite” arranged in 11 regions, often supported by seminars and workshops on free sharing of culture and pictures with CC-BY-SA 4.0 License (goal: 5).
  • About 500 participants at the “wikigite” (goal: about 60)


A strong point comes from the involvement of the volunteers: they gave their support in the preparation of the lists of the authorized monuments that have been photographed and selected by the pre-jury. This has been possible thanks to the training day which took place in June, where the engaged people got in touch with every aspect of Wiki Loves Monuments. Photography enthusiasts, FIAF and WLM members participated.

When the contest ended, in October, a group of volunteers selected some pictures among the thousands of pictures uploaded, in order to be judged by a jury formed by professional photographers and wikipedians. We involved 7 wikipedians and 7 members of the Italian Photography Federation (FIAF) for this hard work also thanks to the cited training day. We have used a special tool which has simplified the work of the jury. We have been able to arrange 46 “wikigite” in 11 Italian regions, with over 500 participants. The great number of visits and their distribution on the whole Italian territory are great achievements, useful to spread the knowledge of Wikimedia Italy and its mission, especially in those areas, like the South of Italy, where the organization has been traditionally less involved.

Wikigita WLM-IT 2015 Castelvetro di Modena 02


Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 has also allowed us to develop our collaboration with the world of photography: thanks to our partnership with the Toscana Foto Festival - one of the most popular events in Italy, entirely dedicated to photography, which takes place every year in July - and the Massa Marittima municipality, we participated in the initiative with a workshop about Wiki Loves Monuments, open data and a wikigita. Our Executive Director gave a speech about Wiki Loves monuments during the Festival final press conference. On that occasion we also involved the famous international photographers Franco Fontana, Uwe Ommer and Settimio Benedusi as members of the Wiki Loves Monuments jury.

Also thanks to the participation of professionals in the jury, an Italian picture ranked remarkably at the 2nd place in the world-wide competition.

La Sacra ammantata dalla neve - This image won the 2nd prize in Wiki Loves Monuments 2015, di Elio Pallard, (Opera propria) [CC BY-SA 4.0], attraverso Wikimedia Commons


The partners in the 2015 edition are: FIAF, the Italian Federation of Photographic Associations; ICOM Italia - International Council of Museums; Toscana Foto Festival; Touring Club Italiano e Bandiere Arancioni - a non-profit association responsible of tourism, culture and environment; Comune di Massa Marittima - the Municipality that hosts the Toscana Foto Festival; APT Emilia Romagna (the regional touristic promotional service) and the Emilia-Romagna local authority of Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. Media partner: Archeomatica. Main sponsor: Euronics Italia and Canon Italia.
Thanks to the close collaboration with our partners, volunteers and local authorities we have been able to activate some special awards:

  • Special Award “La Memoria dei Luoghi”
  • Special Award ICOM:
  • Special Award FIAF
  • Special Award Wiki Loves Via Emilia
  • Special Award Colline Metallifere
  • Award Wiki Loves Piemonte
  • Award Wiki Loves Genova
  • Award Wiki Loves Fiumefreddo
  • Award Wiki Loves Busto Arsizio


This has been a remarkable year even for the communication and the involvement of the national press:

  • a new website for the event promoting Wiki Loves Monuments Italy as “WMIT's project” has been created;
  • the members of our newsletter has increased from 500 in 2014 to 1543. Over 20 newsletter have been sent from June to December;
  • our Facebook page has 4600 subscribers;
  • 4 press releases about Wiki Loves Monuments have been launched, sometimes together with our partners;
  • we have increased and improved our mailing list with contacts of specialised press.

These results have been possible also thanks to the positive dialogue and collaboration started with the WMF communication team, who has helped us with precious suggestions on how to reach as much people as possible and maximize our targets, socializing posts, etc.
The attention of the press has increased, thanks also to the press conferences we arranged: after a first one in Florence, a press conference at the presence of our partners took place on September 7th, to officially present the new edition of the contest: about 30 journalists and some Wikimedia Italia members participated in the event, which took place in the Tiepolo Hall of Dugnani Palace in Milan. Lots of news articles about Wiki Loves Monuments have been published by national and local press: here you can find some examples.

Wiki Loves Monuments Award Ceremony, di Wikimedia Italia (Settimio Martire) (Opera propria) [CC BY-SA 4.0], attraverso Wikimedia Commons


The award ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments took place on December 2015 in Milan, in the prestigious Palazzina Liberty, and it has been followed by a concert. At the ceremony some authorities were present, such as the member of Congress Veronica Tentori and the Council member of Milan Cristina Tajani. Our sponsors, Canon and Euronics, offered the prizes to the winners.
Besides, the award ceremony, the event was the occasion to show a preview of the exhibition of the pictures that won Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy. In 2016 the exhibition will be on tour in various regions, such as Toscana, Emilia Romagna, Trentino Alto Adige, Piemonte, Lombardia, in Esino Lario during Wikimania 2016 and Milan within the International ICOM Conference. The realization of the exhibition has been funded by the Massa Marittima City Council, thanks to their participation in a public announcement.

11 dicembre - mostra delle foto di WLM 2015, di Wikimedia Italia (Settimio Martire) (Opera propria) [CC BY-SA 4.0], attraverso Wikimedia Commons


Before the concert we had a meeting with the member of Congress Veronica Tentori, during which we suggested a law amendment aimed at introducing the freedom of panorama and the CC BY-SA Licences in the Italian landscape. Some days later he started a petition for introducing freedom of panorama in Italy.

We have made many steps forward in making national governing bodies aware of all the problems contained in the current laws about cultural goods (the so-called Codice Urbani). In addition to our meeting with On. Tentori, we had a meeting with the General Secretary and the deputy manager of the legislative office in MIBACT (the Minister of Culture) in October, where we presented a draft of a particular interpretation of the article dealing with the reproduction of cultural goods .

Wiki Loves Monuments 2015: special projects and other achievements

  • Special project with the Superintendence of Emilia Romagna: thanks to the partnership with the Superintendence of Emilia-Romagna Cultural Heritage and the Regional APT Services (the touristic promotional service), WMIT has associated the ID codes of the monuments participating in the contest with the ID codes referred to the monument available at www.patrimonioculturale-er.it, which is a open OSM based data base of monuments under the protection of the Superintendence. The next step will be to put all this information in Wikidata, to create a centralized free database.
  • Special project with Touring Club Italiano and WW1 - dentro la Grande Guerra. On the occasion of the launch of the current edition of Wiki Loves Monuments, the above cited Historical Archive of the Touring Club Italiano shared some historical images of Italian monuments on Commons.

KPI_WLM progress report FDC


Volunteers edit

The geographic distribution of our volunteers differs from one region to another. There are regions where our presence is strong and deeply-rooted, others where our presence is close to zero. Our need for regional coordinators has become pressing over the time, especially in regions with a strong presence of our members.

For this reason, the selection of regional and thematic coordinators has been a significant achievement for our organization. The coordinators have been officially introduced to our community during the second annual assembly in October 2015, a few months later than the initial plan. We have now 8 regional and 7 thematic coordinators - please note that the target was 5 that is 1 in the 5 most active regions -, whose tasks have been already outlined in a specific document. The group of coordinator has proved to be very active and efficient: we have had an example of this for the celebration of the Wikipedia 15° birthday (we will talk largely about this in the final report).

After the positive response of our members to the training days dedicated to GLAM projects (April, 2015) and WLM (June, 2015), we decided to focus on coordinators: we have arranged a first meeting with them on the 12th of December in Bologna in which they addressed some specific training needs. Following their needs, we have organized another specific training day on team building, which will be held in February 2016. Others are scheduled during the rest of the year.
One of the main goals focused by the group of coordinators is to recruit new members and new wikipedians.


WMIT Volunteers organizational chart
KPI_Volunteers progress report FDC


Wikipedia in Italian edit

Some of the actions included in the Wikipedia in Italian program, especially the ones related to the improvement of user retention and to the increase of the number of users, have been postponed to 2016. As regards the contents and the increase of their quality, the two interns hosted starting from October supported this activity by editing some articles. New internships will be activated across 2016.

Poster con disegno di donna, scritta- Tacete Anche il vostro silenzio affretterà la Vittoria

We have also worked for raising awareness about the gender gap and involving as much women as possible in our GLAM initiatives: we have signed an agreement with the Italian Touring Club to release, among the others, some images of women during the World War One taken from their archive and we have participated in “Cortina tra le righe”, an event dedicated to the figure of some heroic women lived during World War One. Moreover, we would like to highlight that, during the Second GLAM Libraries conference in Florence, of the 90 participants 80 were women.
The absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects related to Wikipedia program is of 581,448 as of December.


KPI_Italian Wikipedia progress report FDC


External Communication edit

The external communication has played a leading role during the second semester of 2015. One of our strategic goals, essential for the growth of our organization, is in fact the strengthening of our brand awareness. We have worked very hard at every level to become even more recognizable for our activities and position WMIT among the Italian cultural non-profit association. In this perspective we have realized a new website of the organization, with a blog in which we now publish our news and with a web page for every project. During the last months we have worked on it in order to improve its functionality, especially for users.

Furthermore, public events have been the most expensive feature (in economic and human resource terms) within the field of the external communication.

In 2015 falls the 10th anniversary of our organization and we arranged a Christmas concert for this occasion. The concert took place on the 11th of December at the Palazzina Liberty in Milan, where we offered a classic music concert. About 100 people participated at the event: there were our members, local authorities and also some music enthusiasts. Thanks to this event we have been able to introduce ourself to the city of Milan, that will host our new offices starting from March 2016. The Ensemble Seicentonovecento, directed by Flavio Colusso, played the concert. Every song played was copyright free and was video-recorded. We are uploading these video on Wikimedia Commons with a free Creative Commons License. The first video uploaded is the “Happy birthday” song that the ensemble played surprisingly for the 15th Wikipedia’s Birthday.

Happy Birthday Wikipedia 2016 - Flavio Colusso - WM-IT] Happy Birthday to You (Public Domain - see), performed by Kapellmeister Flavio Colusso in Milan, Italy, palazzina Liberty


Before the concert there was the award ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments competition. We spread the invitation to the concert through the following channels:

  • posters in shops in Milan;
  • flyers printed for the occasion;
  • our participation at the “collaborative week” which took place in Milan at BASE (the future WMI offices), with some local authorities and experts of sharing economy;
  • a massive sending out of about 24000 emails to our members, ex-members and stakeholders;
  • social networks and blog.

The news of the event has spread very quickly and we have shortly reached the maximum number of participants. 27 people answered to the questionnaire we prepared for the event: 85% of respondents is now more interested in collaborate with our organization, and 85% of our members has depicted the event as useful. One of our members suggested that we carry on having relationships with institutions. At the concert we have also provided some brochures about our organization, in which we explain our projects and our purposes to a general public.

Other important events for our organization were the inauguration of our new offices in Monza in July - a good number of our members participated - and the second general assembly in Rome in October. The real assembly took place in the afternoon, while in the morning we arranged a seminar - together with the La Sapienza University - called “Far(e) Open”.

We have also signed a one-year-contract with Eco della Stampa, in order to control news articles that talk about Wikimedia and to strengthen our relationship with the press. This has allowed us to know that over 600 news articles have talked about us from July to December 2015.

Our presence on media that are different from print media has changed too. We can count several participations of our Spokesperson and our President in national radio programs; besides our President took part in an important TV program, “Lo stato dell’arte”, aired on the 25th of November on the national broadcasting television. During the TV program Wikipedia was compared with Treccani, the most famous printed encyclopedia in Italy. Thanks to the analysis of Auditel data, we can estimate an audience of 27.135 viewers.

Wikimania

Our external communication program include the promotion of Wikimania Esino Lario 2016. According to an agreement signed with the Wikimania organizing institution, Wikimedia Italy in fact guarantees an in-kind grant, represented by the work of the staff in communication.
Particularly, the overall WMIT communication plan aims to link national or local events to Wikimania so as to spread the word and the value of this initiative in every possible way. We have planned some specific actions which can also help strengthen the communication of the conference. Only to cite a few example: we are considering the to buy a journalist database in order to reach the press for our local events and this could also help communicating Wikimania with our local press release; we plan to put a fix box about Wikimania 2016 in our periodic emails to donors and other stakeholders; we have reserved a fix dedicated post on our website; we will include Wikimania in our press conferences for the inauguration of the new office and for the launch of the new edition of Wiki Loves Monuments, etc.
Apart from the short term target of spread the word and reach as much people as possible, our main medium term target in Wikimania communication is make people stay active even beyond Wikimania on Wikimedia projects: we think the best way to do this is to talk with people in meetings and events before and after the conference. For the in-kind contribution the Cariplo Foundation acknowledges a 20.000 euros grant for WMIT, sum allocated to a project manager for Wikimania (Dario Crespi), hired in October, in charge of reaching some significant targets linking Wikimania to the activities usually carried out by WMIT with the institutions and the community (for example, the organization of courses and events in schools, libraries and public institutions preparing to Wikimania 2016).
The economic contribution of 20,000 euros will be credited during the 2016. In order to give another important tangible signal of WMIT presence, we decided to more than double the sum dedicated to the Wikimania scholarships financing a total of 30 candidates for a total amount of 11,000 euros: 20 scholarships (10 complete up to 500 euros each and 10 partial up to 300 euros) will be decided by WMIT and named after Alessio Guidetti and 10 (partial up to 300 euros each) will be assigned by an international committee.

KPI_External communication progress report FDC


Revenues received during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

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
Membership fees EUR 7,629.00 D 1,981.10 F G 1,981.10 8,537.08 2,216.90 Usually, most of the membership fees is paid in the first months of the year, close to the first annual members assembly.
Donations EUR 40,044.14 D 17,203.57 F G 17,203.57 44,810.59 19,251.30 K
Grants and Wikimedia contributions EUR 148,950.54 D 86,887.80 F G 86,887.80 166,680.12 97,230.05 K
5x1000 (tax donations) EUR 142,000.00 D 247,265.17 F G 247,265.17 158,902.26 276,697.14 5x1000 revenue is unpredictable. The estimation of € 142,000 was based on 2014's amount. In 2015 it grew of around € 100,000.
Funding and compensations for institutional activities EUR 63,901.04 D 30,180.00 F G 30,180.00 71,507.18 33,772.32 The two most significant contributions for institutional activities are represented by the payment for Wikipedian in Residence BEIC (European Library of Information and Culture in Milan) (€10,000) and the final slot of payment for the project Archeowiki from Fondazione Cariplo (a bank foundation) (€ 17,800). Both these payments had been postponed from the first semester of 2015. Other revenues comes from courses in libraries and schools. As explained in the storytelling, other courses and activities have been postponed to 2016 so they haven't generated an income yet.
Occasional funding EUR 680.00 D 385.00 F G 385.00 760.94 430.83 Donations collected cash during events
Roundings and extraordinary income EUR 10.00 D 3,771.56 F G 3,771.56 11.19 4,220.49 The municipality of Massa Marittima gave a donation of € 1,999 to realize an itinerant exhibition of WLM's photos. The donation is part of a public tender. Moreover, the tenant of WMIT's previous offices gave a deposit for the use of the space.
Intrabank transfer EUR C D 14,000.00 F G 14,000.00 I 15,666.42 Bank transfer between WMIT different bank accounts
[IN-KIND] Office rent EUR 7,590 D 4,140.00 F G 4,140.00 8,493.44 4,632.78 The owner of the current offices let WMIT use the space for free untill March 2016.
[IN-KIND] Google AdGrant EUR C D 35,379.46 F G 35,379.46 I 39,590.68 WMIT's request to be part of Google AdGrants, Google's non-profit program, was accepted. The Google Ad Grants program gives the beneficiaries $10,000 per month in in-kind AdWords advertising. From July till December we used the sum reported.
Total revenues EUR 410,804.72 D 441,193.66 F G 441,193.66 459,702.80 493,708.91 K

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


(Exchange rate in Wikimedia Italia APG proposal: 1.119029979)

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
Program (excludes staff) EUR 184,657.00 D 28,327.64 F G 28,327.64 206,636.72 31,699.48 15.34% Please find the explanation of variances in the paragraph below
Operations (excludes staff and programs) EUR 56,834.23 D 42,160.61 F G 42,160.61 63,599.21 47,178.99 74.18% K
Staff EUR 161,723.49 D 87,682.62 F G 87,682.62 180,973.44 98,119.48 54.22% Please find the explanation of variances in the paragraph below
TOTAL EUR 403,214.72 D 158,170.87 F G 158,170.87 451,209.37 176,997.94 39.23% N/A

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


  • Program expenses

Please consider that some of the programs' expenses scheduled by 2015 were paid on January 2016 (about 30,000 euros). Moreover, WMIT did some payments with a credit card (€ 2270.61), that was charged before July and some cash (€ 1105.94). These expenditures are not included in the total amount reported in the table, but please consider that their sum makes the real cost of the programs raise to € 31,704.19.

Libraries. WMIT spent less than expected for this program due to some schedule changes. We replaced the CoderDojo events in Bologna and Padova with other event without costs. One of the two Wikipedians in Residence included in the program has been working for the Library of Trento thanks to a public tender, so she does not represent a cost for WMIT.
Museums. The main activities concerning museums have been postponed to 2016: the Wikipedians in Residence. However, on November 2015 WMIT launched a competition for Italian museums to give scholarships to host a Wikipedian in Residence. The winners are about to be announced and the WiRs to start working soon.
Italian WIkipedia. Most of the activities have been postponed to 2016. (Training sessions for OTRS users in Italian; print leaflets with an invitation to participate in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikidata, to be distributed through the interlibrary service in libraries in Lombardy; creation of 30,000 bookmarks).
OpenStreetMap. Most of the activities planned are delayed due to the change of the OSM project manager who has started to work on September.
Education Program. The agreement with the agency who's supporting WMIT realizing the SMS solidarity campaign was signed in 2015. The TV spot was shooted on January 2016 and the payment to the agency hasn't been done yet.
Wiki Loves Monuments. The only variation from the budgeted amount can be explained by the fact that the prizes were offered by the sponsors, Euronics and Canon. This made WMIT save € 5,000 for this program.
Volunteers. We spent more than expected (even though it's a small expenditure) because in December WMIT organized a meeting with the regional and thematic coordinators in Bologna.
Communication Plan. As predicted the main activities were the ones related to the celebration of WMIT's first decennial: concert, printing materials, etc. In addition, there were other unexpected expenses. Some of them are payments postponed related to activities that took place during the first semester of the year (Festambiente; creation of the new website), some are unscheduled events, like the conference that preceded WMIT's annual assembly in Rome. Also, given the significant number of press clippings, especially about WLM, we decided to extend the contract with L'Eco della Stampa (press monitoring service).

  • Staff

WMIT's staff has grown more than predicted. Besides the original staff (that consists of 1 Executive Director (full time), 1 Administration - Business Management (full time) and 1 Communication Press/External Relations (part-time)), new staff members have been introduced:

  • 1 Education Project Manager and Community Manager (full time)
  • 1 GLAM specialist and evaluation manager (part-time)
  • 1 Project Manager for Wikimania 2016 (part-time)
  • 1 Project Manager for OpenStreetMap (full-time)
  • 1 intern for Wiki Loves Monuments during the months of the contest.

As reported in the proposal, in the staff cost is included the lobbyst for WLM also.

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.

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

  1. ↑ a b Ratio between total women counted at events and total participants counted at the same events.
  2. ↑ Estimate from WLM 2013 survey + correction per Gender gap revisited.
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