Grants:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 1/Wikimedia Österreich/Proposal form
Proposal by Wikimedia Österreich to support its annual plan with 265,000 EUR.
Wikimedia Österreich's annual plan comprises the following three strategic areas: community support, free content, and reach / free knowledge awareness. Centerpiece of WMAT's self-conception and strategy is to sustain motivated and active Wikimedia communities as a reliable service provider. Since we serve a highly networked international (online) community, we consider ourselves a hub in this network - we connect people, ideas, and often also resources across communities and borders. Hence, we also focus on building strong partnerships inside and outside of the movement and engage in activities which co-create sustainable framework conditions (particularly regarding volunteer support and organizational effectiveness) for the wider movement in general and the DACH (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) communities in particular. A major focus in this regard for the upcoming two years will be tech community building around the Hackathon 2017. A strong contentwise focus of our work lies on Austria's cultural and natural heritage and encouraging more multimedia content for Wikimedia projects. We also believe that serving our communities must be accompanied by advocacy and public policy work in order to increase impact in all these areas in the long run. WMAT applies for a two-year funding. This will help us save resources which we plan to invest next fall into aligning our strategy work with the new movement strategy which is currently being developed under the lead of the WMF. It also allows us to focus even more on developing sub-areas of our strategy such as our GLAM work in the coming year.
We ask that you please don't make any changes directly to this page after the proposal submission date, but comment on the discussion page.
If you need to review the edit instructions you will find them in the edit intro.
- Use this form if you are eligible to submit a proposal in the current round, to request funding in the current round.
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- This form complements your organization's annual plan, detailed budget, and strategic plan. It won't be considered complete without a detailed budget and strategic plan.
- Organizations may apply for a funding period that does not exactly match their fiscal years. Follow the instructions carefully to understand what time period each question refers to.
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A few terms used in the form:
FDC proposal form terms Wikimedia terms Learning & Evaluation terms
Overview
edit- 1. In order to support community review, please provide a brief description of your organization's work in the upcoming funding period.
- Wikimedia Österreich's annual plan comprises the following three strategic areas: community support, free content, and reach / free knowledge awareness. Centerpiece of WMAT's self-conception and strategy is to sustain motivated and active Wikimedia communities as a reliable service provider. Since we serve a highly networked international (online) community, we consider ourselves a hub in this network - we connect people, ideas, and often also resources across communities and borders. Hence, we also focus on building strong partnerships inside and outside of the movement and engage in activities which co-create sustainable framework conditions (particularly regarding volunteer support and organizational effectiveness) for the wider movement in general and the DACH (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) communities in particular. A major focus in this regard for the upcoming two years will be tech community building around the Hackathon 2017. A strong contentwise focus of our work lies on Austria's cultural and natural heritage and encouraging more multimedia content for Wikimedia projects. We also believe that serving our communities must be accompanied by advocacy and public policy work in order to increase impact in all these areas in the long run.
- WMAT applies for a two-year funding. This will help us save resources which we plan to invest next fall into aligning our strategy work with the new movement strategy which is currently being developed under the lead of the WMF. It also allows us to focus even more on developing sub-areas of our strategy such as our GLAM work in the coming year.
- New key developments:
- Organizing the Wikimedia Hackathon and tech community building in Austria and CEE partner countries
- Developing and conducting a new integrated project around Austria's heritage (WikiDaham)
- Revising our overall strategy and GLAM strategy
- Pilot projects to test new approaches to volunteer recruitment and increased diversity
- Developing and conducting a campaign for gaining supporting members
- 2. Name, fiscal year, and funding period.
- Legal name of organization: Wikimedia Österreich
- Organization's fiscal year: 01/01-12/31
- 12-month funding period requested: 01/01/17-12/31/18 (2-year funding period.)
- Currency requested: Euro
- Name of primary contact: Claudia Garád, Executive Director
- 3. Amount requested.
Table 1
| Currency requested | US$ | |
| Total expenses for the upcoming year | 309,000 (2017) 317,000 (2018) |
344,427 (2017) 353,344 (2018) |
| APG funding requested for the upcoming year | 265,000 (2017) 265,000 (2018) |
295,382 (2017) 295,382 (2018) |
| Amount of funding received from WMF for the current year | 250,000 | 278,662 |
- 1 EUR = 1.11465 USD
- Notes: Wikimedia Österreich requests an increase in FDC funding of 5,7% over the course of two years, which would be an average of 2,8% per year. Given that the average prognosis for inflation in Austria is currently 1,8% this is an actual increase of our FDC budget by roughly 1% which we think is commensurate for the planned level of our activities, as we intend to serve a broader base of volunteers (e.g. expanded tech community after the hackathon, more female editors due to diversity projects) and corresponding growth rates regarding content and outreach (partnerships, image, and awareness). There is also an increase in our overall budget, which mainly stems from other grants and which is also accompanied by intensified and/or broadened activities mainly revolving around open innovation initiatives involving the Open Data Portal.
- 4. How does your organization know what community members and contributors to online projects need or want? Does your organization conduct needs assessments or consult the contributors and volunteers most involved with its work?
- WMAT is constantly looking into ways to improve its community services. In order to gain an understanding of what our contributors want and need, we apply various methods:
- Face-to-face interaction: WMAT activities and services are discussed between board, staff and community in the context of several regular events. Some of them are focused on needs assessment (e.g. the IdeaLabs), while others mainly serve other purposes but also provide a platform for these discussions (general assembly once a year, WikiTuesdays every week, cracker-barrel meetings a few times a year in different parts of Austria). In addition, our office / staff offers one-to-one consultation for community members who plan projects and activities. The latter is also our usual way to conduct a needs assessment of new ideas and projects. Our annual plan and budget are published for discussion online and we organize a PlanningLab to foster discourse.
- Online discussions: We ask for opinions on specific issues online on our members wiki and mailing list. However, our experience shows that this usually creates less feedback than in-person discussions. Furthermore, we monitor talk pages and discussions on Wikimedia projects which are related to our chapter's activities.
- Survey: As last year, we also conducted a community survey which aimed at understanding the needs of our community and to get a measurable overview of their satisfaction with the general direction of our work and our specific services. Providing a possibility for anonymous feedback is also a good supplement of our other channels for community consultation.
- 5. Please provide a link to your organization's strategic plan, and a link to your separate annual plans for the current and upcoming funding periods if you have them.
- Mission statement (in English)
- Strategy 2017+ (in English)
- Annual plan 2017 (in German)
- Annual plan 2018 (in German)
Financials: current year
editThe purpose of this section is to give the FDC an idea of how your organization is receiving funds and spending funds toward your current plan. Your current funding period is the funding period now in progress (e.g. 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016 for most organizations).
Table 2
Financials for the current funding period Revenues or expenses Planned (budgeted) Actual, until one month before the proposal due date Projected Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars Revenues (from all sources) 271,500 302,627 263,769 294,010 280,000 312,102 Expenses 271,500 302,627 168,772 188,122 275,000 306,529
Table 2 notes:
- As described in detail in our last proposal, getting external funding in Austria is and remains challenging. Nevertheless, we made some considerable progress in this regard (see notes in table 5 below), mainly thanks to our Open Data Portal, which allows more flexibility for projects with external partners and funding. The first payments from these funds will only come into effect in the last quarter of 2016 and hence are not yet reflected in the table above. Currently we are also applying for additional funds around the Wikimedia Hackathon (up to 35,000 EUR from the Viennese Economic Agency) and the further development of our Wikipedia for Peace Camp (approximately 15,000 EUR by Erasmus+ for a train the trainers event for further camps in other countries).
Programs: upcoming year's annual plan
editTable 3
- Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
- Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
- Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.
- Quality: The number of community decorations (featured, quality, valued) for media files supported by Wikimedia Österreich on Wikimedia Commons.
- Diversity: The number of unique participants and/or organizers of activities conducted or supported by Wikimedia Österreich who belong to underrepresented groups in the Wikimedia movement in Austria. These groups are defined as women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, persons belonging to ethnic, language or religious minorities in Austria, foreigners and people with disabilities.
Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Quality Diversity TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS 3,500 600 160,000 10,000 1,000
Table 3 notes:
- It was not entirely clear to us whether the global metrics should also be broken down on a program level or not (currently different people read different things into the description). After checking back with WMF staff, we settled on interpreting the rules in a way that suits our two-year planning cycle and present our goals only across all programs, but with additional details regarding timing and milestones, type of activities contributing across programs, and as far as possible a comparison with the numbers of the past two years (see below). As we always report on our metrics in a very detailed manner, which allows tracing back every number to each activity which contributed to it, we hope this also works for the FDC and FDC staff.
- We also used to opportunity of major changes in the global metrics to revise our program related metrics in order to enhance their value for controlling and to get rid of those with limited or no added value for managing the programs.
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Main activities and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3,500
|
2,560
This is a sum of the older metrics of “active editors” and “new editors”. Whereas “organizers” within these groups need to be excluded, other “participants” from the former metrics group of “individuals” who were non-editors need to be included. In 2014, we counted only new editors, not active editors, so the actual number might be a bit higher than 2,560. |
Continuous growth with peaks during WikiCons (Q3/2017 and Q3/2018). |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Main activities and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 600
|
448
|
Accelerated growth in 2018 due to higher efficiency in tried and tested activities (e.g. WikiDaham). |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Main activities and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 160,000
Content pages by Wikimedia project (expected): |
144,572
This is a sum of two of our former metrics, concerning new or improved article pages in Wikimedia projects and new media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. |
Continuous growth. |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Main activities and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000
|
8,255
|
Sustaining the extremely high growth of 2016 in 2017; slower growth in 2018 as our experience shows that over time the attention of our volunteers partially shifts to other important goals (e.g. community retention in future). |
| Goal for two years 2017/01/01 – 2018/12/31 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Main activities and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000
|
–
No numbers from previous years as this is a new metric we did not track before. |
Continuous growth with peaks during major events. |
Community Support
edit
Existing and new volunteers, in Austria but also the wider Wikimedia movement.
The Austrian community is small but very active and in many regards an above average active and productive community of editors and photographers. As a chapter one focus of ours is to serve this group, but we are also part of a highly networked international community, and consider ourselves a hub in this network - we connect people, ideas, and often also resources across communities and borders.
In addition, we conduct projects which are designed to attract, recruit and activate new contributors (e.g. our photography contests). Our success rate however highly depends on the respective Wikimedia project. While WMAT successfully gains and/or trains people for Commons, smaller language Wikipedias (e.g. from the CEE region), or smaller sister projects (e.g. Wikiversity), it is very hard to integrate newbies into the German-language Wikipedia. This is mainly due to the fact that the German-language Wikipedia is a very mature wiki where on the one hand it is more difficult to find topics to contribute to and on the other hand because of its complexity of rules and procedures in combination with a not always welcoming atmosphere for newbies.
- A diverse community of volunteers with a wide range of skills, a desire to continually improve their work together and that offers a constructive working environment to existing and new users.
Currently, the greatest potential lies in the attraction and retention of new contributors. WMAT possesses effective means to spark the interest of newcomers for Wikimedia projects, but we must find more systematic solutions to motivate these potential volunteers to sustained participation beyond their first steps. Our new integrated approach towards activities around Austria's cultural heritage (“WikiDaham”) provides us with a framework to try new ideas in this regard. It also contributes to our goal of regional growth, and to include communities located outside of Vienna. Another important field of action we identified is the active involvement in shaping a positive atmosphere of constructive debate, particularly in the context of our activities involving non-administrative conflict resolution. 2016 showed us that this easier said than done: All efforts in this regard are highly dependent on sustained interest of a core group of existing volunteers in this topic. As previous attempts (guide camps) never led to concrete results or persistent activity, we will reassess our approach together with interested volunteers in the coming year. Last but not least, we expect the Wikimedia Hackathon in Vienna to have a lasting effect on our local community, but also on partner communities in the CEE region, who will join us in our effort to expand our Wikimedia tech communities.
- New integrated contest (includes photography and editing) to gain new contributors and further involve existing volunteers, broad thematic focus with regional and local emphasis. Working title: WikiDaham (WikiHeimat/WikiHome)
- Hosting the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 in Austria and using the momentum of this event for sustainable tech community building
- Increasing the diversity of our community by organizing special activities for and with minority groups and efforts to integrate them more into our existing projects
- Designing and/or facilitating skill transfer workshops within the community. This comprises the dissemination of learnings our volunteers gained in the context of international projects and conferences within the Austrian community, but also sharing the expertise from within the Austrian community in the German-speaking communities (DACH) and the wider movement (e.g. CEE region)
- Encourage, support and guide local small-scale meetings/workshops in Austria and with partners in the neighboring countries
- Supporting WikiCon for the German-language communities (financially and regarding the overall organization)
- Low-threshold access to resources and assistance; micro and travel grants to support the ideas and work of our volunteers
- Consulting and advice concerning on-wiki work as well as offline project management
- Developing tool sets for low-budget and/or easily replicable projects
- Establishing links and relationships to like-minded communities in the context of projects and events (e.g. hackathon for tech communities)
- Improving the working environment for editors in the German-language Wikipedia by taking a leadership role in the development of conflict resolution tools together with the existing volunteers
- Provide travel grants for international conferences to facilitate volunteer motivation, identification with the wider movement, and online collaboration and exchange on an international level
- Funds especially dedicated to project incubation in order to foster bold and innovative ideas which go beyond our day-to-day business and established projects
- International collaboration for on- and offline volunteer recruitment in the DACH and CEE regions
- Sharing our experiences and know-how concerning (cross-chapter) volunteer support and organizational development with the wider movement on- and offline (especially in the DACH and CEE regions) to foster sustainable structures in our movement
- Logic models
-
Wikipedia for Peace -
WikiDaham -
WikiTuesday -
International volunteer support -
Hackathon
- Understand our users to better serve their needs: We aim at an inclusive approach to project and program planning, taking into account the needs of our main impact groups.
- Increase volunteer retention and engagement: We acquire, activate and retain contributors and help to create a productive and welcoming working environment.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community leadership: There are 200 volunteer organizers of activities supported by us. | ~ 150
This is the estimated number of volunteer organizers based on a review of our reports in the last two years. The activities were organized by approximately 30 unique organizers. |
Note: Individuals at distinct activities might be counted multiple times. We expect at least 50 unique organizers. | |
| Community motivation: At least 80% of the participants of community surveys agree that our activities contribute to motivating them for their online work. | 86%
According to our community survey in Q2/2016. |
Note: data from 2 online community surveys conducted in Q2/2017 and Q2/2018. We set a slightly lower number, as there will be a lot of change in our programs which will probably not make everybody happy. | |
| Community retention: 40 new editors edit Wikimedia projects at least 5 times every 4 weeks during a time span of 12 weeks after registering. | Our former metrics concerning user retention included “number of new editors that edit a Wikimedia project after four weeks after their registration” (2016) and similar less ambitious definitions than the new one. |
Continuous growth. |
This section tries to address the most common critical questions linked to this program.
- This program costs a lot of money - all this for a relatively small community, in a small country, for a Wikipedia which is also served by two other big chapters?
Breaking down the costs of this program only by the number of Austrian volunteers (as in Euros per volunteer) would be shortsighted: Formally we are an Austria-based charity organization, but unlike other classical non profits we don’t follow the classical model where an organization mainly serves a national constituency of predominantly formal members. Our services are not dependent on a formal WMAT membership. Since we serve a highly networked international (online) community, we rather consider ourselves a hub in this network - we connect people, ideas, and often also resources across communities and borders. We support and accelerate cross-pollination of ideas and skills between volunteers living in Austria, volunteers interested in Austrian topics abroad and the wider movement. In most of our big projects we work together with Wikimedians from all three DACH communities (e.g. sharing resources and skills around photography or conducting joint photography projects) and increasingly also with CEE communities (e.g. Austrian volunteers cooperating with Bulgarian, Armenian, and Czech communities to organize their data on Wikidata or using the hackathon in Vienna to support tech community building beyond Austria in CEE countries such as Greece, Romania or the Czech Republic by co-organizing competitions and pre-events). Hence, we suggest measuring our work based on how well we do all this, instead of only counting the number of volunteers who happen to live in Austria. Having said that, this does not mean we are not keen on recruiting new volunteers in our immediate environment.
As for our work that relates to the other chapters in the DACH region: During the last few years, we put a lot of focus into building coherent structures for volunteer support between the three chapters, using synergies and sharing resources (equipment etc.) to avoid building redundant structures. As the three chapters are very different when comparing size, structure, and culture, we also think that we complement each other in many ways: While for example Wikimedia CH as a multi-cultural organization provides links to the French and Italian communities, Wikimedia Deutschland is better equipped to support the organizational backbone of big events such as WikiCon and WMAT’s size and structure makes us more agile and flexible in our response to new ideas and initiatives of volunteers.
- Talking about resources spent on this program - how staff intensive are your activities?
In many ways the answer from the first question also relates to this one - the staff time we invest is not only beneficial to our core community but has to be evaluated with a broader perspective of WMAT’s role in the movement. Admittedly, finding the right balance in this regard is not always easy. Different volunteers have different needs when it comes to supporting them in their activities - and the line between needing a little training and being habitually high maintenance is not always immediately obvious. Generally, we believe in empowering volunteers and investing in improving their skills and expertise, but with the goal that they will be able to run projects with minimal help from WMAT. In the last two years, we could see an increase in highly independent and self-motivated volunteers who developed ideas such as Wikipedia for Peace, adding an innovative twist to the concept of Wikimedian in Residence by organizing a cooperation with the Constitutional Court of Austria, or serve as Wikidata development aid workers and evangelists in the Austrian community and beyond.
We want to build on these role models for future projects and deepen our understanding on how volunteer leadership can be fostered by chapters. That such empowerment can also work beyond the classical volunteering approach can be seen in our explainer video project: The development of the project is mainly driven by a staff member from the simpleshow foundation, whom we initially helped to understand the Wikiverse and volunteering culture behind it. And while we still serve as an information and contact hub to further the project and promote it in the movement, many ideas are now developed by this particular project manager in cooperation with Wikimedia movement leaders and only minimal support by WMAT.
- Is there any innovation or new ideas which could be replicated by others in the movement?
In the last year our incubator project financed two new ideas which became signature projects of WMAT and which also have a significant impact on the wider movement: Wikipedia for Peace and explainer videos for Wikimedia in the context of a cooperation with the simpleshow foundation. The experiences with the latter project show that it mainly contributes to our goals in Program 2 nowadays, so please see below for more information. Wikipedia for Peace, which in its two editions in 2015 and 2016 not only created content in various Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects, was also rated one of the coolest projects at Wikimania 2016, and sparked a tangible interest in other communities: Volunteers from Armenia, Germany, and Italy, among others, expressed an interest in hosting a similar event in their countries, which inspired us to set up a “train the trainers” event for Peace Camp hosts next spring in Vienna. This will ensure that the necessary experiences, knowledge, and skills are transferred to a wider group in a systematic manner. It is also good practice which shows how partnering up with other (international) volunteer networks can attract new (and this case mainly female) volunteers to Wikimedia projects - a model that we would like to explore further with other NGOs in order to recruit more volunteers.
- Looking into the detailed budget and activities, how much of it is travel costs?
Travel costs are indeed a substantial part of our community support, especially in years where Wikimania is not in Europe and air fares are more expensive. For next year we expect travel expenses of roughly 35,000 EUR across all programs, for the current year we project roughly 30,000 EUR until the end of the year. However, our community feedback regularly shows that travel support is one of the most useful services for our volunteers, especially for those with lower income (e.g. students and pensioners), who are often very active as they have more time on their hands. If this is what keeps them rolling, and the results are commensurate, why should we deny them a request just to keep a number down? In addition, it is way easier to find (in-kind) donors for other costs related to volunteer work (e.g. venues or catering), so naturally we rather tap into an unrestricted income source such as the FDC grant for covering travel support. Nevertheless, we also seek to decrease these costs where possible: Wikipedia for Peace volunteers usually pay for their own travel costs (as this is common practice in the SCI workcamp model), for the “train the trainers” event we apply for additional funding via Erasmus+ to cover the travel expenses for the trainers. WMAT volunteers and staff usually ask for travel reimbursement from inviting organizations when giving presentations at events. In order to make the most of the money we spend on traveling, we make sure that important results and experiences are well documented in reports by the community for the community on our members wiki and for the international community in our monthly reports. For international conferences we encourage our volunteers to contribute actively to the conference program (e.g. figures for WikiCon 2015), dispatch not only the usual suspects where possible (e.g. this year we sent over 50% first-time Wikimaniacs to Esino Lario), and organize offline events for knowledge transfer with those who stayed at home.
- WMAT talks a lot about sharing their learnings, but where do you also build on experiences of others in your activities?
We are constantly looking into opportunities to tap into other successful projects or to transfer good practices into our community. Our collaboration with the CEE communities for example provides a wealth of new ideas and initiatives, this year for example we were able to bring CEE Spring to the German-language Wikipedia. When being confronted with the challenge to find a new approach for engaging newbies and the public in a broader fashion for an era after Wiki Loves Monuments, and retaining the passion around cultural heritage in Austria, we were inspired by Wikimedia France’s program “Summer of Regions”, Wikimedia Poland’s “WikiTravel”, and Wikimedia Czech Republic’s Mediagrant projects. Their experiences will be integrated into planning our new “WikiDaham” project. Regarding the challenge of community health and community climate on the Wikimedia projects, we want to intensify our exchange with Wikimedia Nederland and Wikimedia Ukraine, as they have conducted some promising initiatives in this area.
Building on existing knowledge in our opinion also goes beyond our own community: in preparation for the Hackathon next year we are consulting other communities in Austria which have vast experience in organizing hackathons like Open Knowledge and Jugend hackt.
Free Content
edit
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Active and passive (readers) users of Wikimedia projects.
This program is designed to enrich free knowledge by creating, liberating and promoting the use of content. It addresses stakeholders who are able to contribute free content of good quality: Wikimedians (i.e. editors and photographers) as well non-Wikimedians (i.e. GLAM institutions, domain experts), but also readers who use this content. Regarding our communities, we support activities which increase the diversity, quantity and quality of content. WMAT could achieve some very positive results by combining small-scale GLAM projects (small museums or private collections) with international (DACH and other neighboring countries) skill transfer activities. Experienced Austrian volunteers with certain skills passed on their know-how to the other participants of the GLAM project who not only built their own capacities but can also pass on these new skills in their own local communities afterwards. We apply a similar model to projects such as Wiki Loves Parliaments or Photography Project Austrian Film. In addition, these GLAM projects usually generate exceptional numbers of quality content (e.g. in terms of decorated images).
Concerning external partners, Wikimedia Austria has been entertaining long-standing cooperations with the Federal Monuments Office and an expanding number of partners in the context of the Open Data Portal Austria. In addition, we conducted several projects with smaller local GLAM institutions over the past two years. These activities and experiences will be built into WikiDaham (see program 1) and further developed in this context. Based on the results, we plan to revise our GLAM strategy in the second half of 2017, in order to assess and build on our existing strengths and to come to a common understanding on how to deal with the challenges, i.e. that most big Austrian GLAM institutions so far have not been very approachable for cooperation.
- Generating, opening and distributing multifaceted and valuable content that fascinates and engages Wikimedia volunteers, partners, and readers alike.
The greatest potential lies in the development of our partnerships with GLAM institutions - both in terms of liberating content and their potential re-use. One of our strategic goals for the next few years is to enhance our profile as experts and partners around the digitization of Austria's cultural heritage. Beyond these activities the aim is to establish multipliers through partnerships who independently advocate free knowledge in their institutions and industries. Another important challenge is to incorporate reader orientation more strongly into our project selection and planning. With the simpleshow cooperation WMAT developed a new approach to bring more multimedia content to Wikimedia projects, to keep them attractive for younger target groups and make them more accessible for handicapped audiences. We want to pursue this approach together with the simpleshow foundation and other partners in the future.
- Photography and writing contests and projects to generate media files on Austrian cultural and natural heritage on Commons
- Supporting the volunteer photographers / Commons contributors with a high-end tech pool (photography equipment, book scanner, slide scanner), post processing software, accreditations and travel support
- Encouraging activities which respond to a direct need for media files in specific Wikimedia articles and integrating media files into Wikimedia articles (e.g. Wiki Loves Parliaments)
- Encouraging quality content by supporting skill transfer workshops and activities (train the trainers) for the German-speaking communities
- Support of editing contests and/or events focusing on quantity and/or quality in the German-language Wikimedia projects
- Providing access to reliable sources (through literature grants and our own library)
- Projects and partnerships to increase multi-media content on Wikimedia projects
- Establishing and maintaining partnerships with GLAM institutions, like-minded organizations and multipliers in order to liberate data and content
- Logic models
-
Photography project -
Simpleshow cooperation
- Increase and diversify contribution of knowledge: We contribute by offering support and resources to volunteers and partners and developing tools for community sourced curation of content.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Results of the past two years 2014/07/01 – 2016/06/30 |
Milestones | Activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Useful content: 14,000 additional distinct media files supported by Wikimedia Österreich used in the main namespace of Wikimedia projects. | 12,210 |
Continuous growth. | |
| Versatile content: Retaining the average usage of the distinct media files mentioned above on at least 2 main namespace pages. | No numbers from previous years as this is a new metric we did not track before. As of 2016-06-30 the number of total file usages was about 2 times higher than the number of distinct file usage. |
Retaining current level. |
This section tries to address the most common critical questions linked to this program.
- WMAT has been and is still investing a lot into high-end photography equipment - how is this equipment used and how do Wikimedia projects profit from it?
WMAT spends a lot of time assessing (based on community consultation, wish lists, and stats about lending frequency among other things) which equipment would best meet the needs of our community. This and the passion and enthusiasm around peer-to-peer learning and skill building in our photography community led to increasingly good results concerning content, especially media files. Austria’s community is spearheading the creation of high quality media files (with more than 11,000 “quality images” so far), which is made possible by the provision of high-end equipment. But as always, technology alone is not enough, it has to be accompanied by access to the know-how on using it in order to unlock its full potential.
- Is there any innovation or new ideas which could be replicated by others in the movement?
WMAT started a cooperation with the simpleshow foundation, which is beneficial to the wider movement by providing tools to design storyboards and to create explainer videos for various Wikimedia projects under free licenses. While we initially thought this initiative would mainly attract new volunteers (people interested in storytelling and film making), we realized in the past two years that most potential lies in training our existing communities to use these tools to enrich content on the topics they are interested in with multimedia (currently for example WikiProject Medicine or Wiki Nobel project by WMNO). Other movement stakeholders (WMDE, WMF) indicated interest in using the tools for meta communication - e.g. a communication campaign to attract Wikipedia newbies or to explain topics to volunteers in an entertaining way (e.g. around program design and evaluation).
More of a proven concept than a brand new idea - but certainly a good practice of ours (which we developed as a collaboration of Austrian and German volunteers) - are targeted photography projects such as Wiki Loves Parliaments or the Photography Project Austrian Film - activities designed to illustrate articles of regional politicians and Austrian filmmakers respectively - while also improving their articles and expanding our networks with external partners (parliaments, politicians, film industry stakeholders etc.).
- WMAT talks a lot about sharing their learnings, but where do you also build on experiences of others in your activities?
A range of activities for the upcoming year is inspired by other communities, for example the Armenian-Austrian bilateral writing competition, which the Armenian community has formerly successfully organized in a similar fashion together with other countries such as Norway or Spain. For the time after the hackathon, we also aim to learn from other tech communities (e.g. WMSE) about inspiring projects and activities which keep our tech community engaged and motivated. To expand our quality approach to articles, we are also following WMIL's latest ideas in this regard and are planning to evaluate whether and how we could adapt them in our own context.
Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness
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Media and general public, donors, partners, and policy makers.
Our activities in Program 3 aim at shaping a favorable political and societal environment for our other projects. WMAT collaborates with universities in order to reach new, diverse contributors and expert knowledge for Wikimedia projects. Involving multipliers, such as journalists, policy makers or evangelists in partner institutions, helps us to increase the scope of our projects and gain support and resources for our activities. In the last three years we could see that these activities can directly or indirectly influence our other programs in the long run: by gaining new partners for content or in-kind donations and motivating individuals to contribute to our projects on- and offline.
- Creating collective impact on a societal level by working with and through others to achieve a greater impact than we could ever achieve alone.
In the area of public relations, the development of personal contacts to media representatives and more individualized press relations provides significant potential. In the area of the representation of political and social interests, the primary goal is the more specific support of our EU activities on national and regional levels, while maintaining our independence from political parties and other political organizations. We did not include our goals for EU advocacy in our proposal this year, as the European chapters agreed on a uniform presentation of our goals which are outlined here.
In the area of educational activities, plans are to increase results significantly by focusing on scalability and replicability, without depending too much on our own staff resources. Another area concerns cooperation with other organizations of civil society and benefiting from synergies when organizing joint projects, on the one hand, and to achieve a higher public profile through joint representation, thus establishing Wikimedia Österreich as an authority in Austrian civil society, on the other hand.
- Education
- Conducting and supporting educational activities and edit-a-thons at universities which incorporate Wikimedia projects as a field of study and in the content of the curriculum
- Standardizing services for universities to make the activities less dependent on staff or single volunteers
- Public relations
- Maintaining communication platforms about our work for the general public
- Serving as a link between our community and the media
- Campaigning for more passive supporting members of Wikimedia Österreich
- Involving partners from different societal spheres to increase impact and generate additional funding opportunities
- EU advocacy
- Collaborating with European chapters to shape policies in favor of Free Knowledge
- Supporting EU advocacy by establishing contacts to relevant ministries and MPs on a national level
- Logic models
-
Reach and partnerships -
Netpolitical Evening -
Education and diversity
- Increase volunteer retention and engagement: We reach out to new potential contributors and like-minded communities to build alliances and create synergies to further our goals.
| Objective by the end of 2018 |
Baselines / Earlier results |
Milestones | Activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainable outreach network: 3,000 individuals reached with permanent online channels (newsletter and social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). | Baseline as of 2016/06/30: 2,092 |
Continuous growth. | |
| Committed supporters: 170 (passive) supporting association members (without voting rights). | Baseline as of 2016/06/30: 0 |
Accelerated growth. | |
| Sustainable partnerships: Gaining 34,000 EUR in-kind donations from partner organizations. | Definite results for 2015: 16,420 Expected results for 2016: |
Note: Extraordinary peak next spring as the hackathon will probably attract more in-kind donors than usual. |
This section tries to address the most common critical questions linked to this program.
- WMAT as well as other European chapters considerably increased their funding of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU). How do you justify this level of resource investment?
Recent research on high impact NGOs shows that in order to have sustainable impact, non-profit organizations should advocate AND serve. While movement affiliates learned a lot about the latter in the last few years - gaining an improved understanding of what our impact groups are and how we can serve them - the advocating part did not get the same level of attention - despite the fact that policy advocacy is one of the most powerful forces for large-scale change. We believe that the European affiliates generally have a very smart model of advocating: Firstly, putting focus on the European level where the most important decisions concerning the environment of Free Knowledge are made in our region. Secondly, taking advantage of our strengths as a networked movement and building shared, decentralized structures instead of redundant patterns in several countries. Nevertheless, keeping up with huge lobbying organizations needs a certain level of funding in order to make a difference. It’s not enough to pay an employee in Brussels, he also needs resources for his actual work there. Thirdly, on a national and European level we also nurture networks and join forces with like-minded organizations who share similar goals. But there is room for improvement, concerning the organizational set up (job security for the FKAGEU staffers) as well as regarding a more systematic approach to governance in this program, involving all relevant stakeholders in the budget and program planning and the development of shared goals.
Hence the group of European Wikimedia Chapters developed and agreed on a new distribution of resources for this joint endeavor: In 2017, Dimitar Dimitrov will become an employee of WMDE in order to provide him with job security and continuity for his quality work. The partner chapters continue to support the Wikimedia Brussels (WMBXL) activities financially as well, by covering non-personnel costs. In 2017, the Brussels work will include involving additional Wikimedians in advocacy and networking activities, participating in dialogues and consultations, collaborating with other stakeholders such as the tech industry and assuring that copyright reform benefits Wikimedia projects. Jointly developed indicators can be reviewed here.
- Is there any innovation or new ideas which could be replicated by others in the movement?
WMAT gained expertise and put a lot of thought into how affiliates can obtain and use in-kind donations to further their goals (to build and enhance partnerships and networks). We condensed this in a learning pattern. When it comes to enhancing partnerships with increased visibility and appreciation, our interview approach is also something that can be easily replicated by other groups or affiliates.
- WMAT talks a lot about sharing their learnings, but where do you also build on experiences of others in your activities?
When looking into ways to set up a sustainable fundraising model within the limited framework available in Austria (e.g. no local WP banner fundraising, lack of charitable organizations for third party grants) we were inspired by Wikimedia Deutschland’s success in attracting a huge numbers of supporting members, which are basically long-term regular donors. When designing our campaign, we learned a lot from WMDE’s experience and were able to build on their materials (donors letters, leaflets etc.). Although such a membership is less attractive in Austria, as it is not tax-deductible like in Germany, we believe that we will be able to double our membership numbers over the course of the next two years, adding another 170 supporting members to our existing 140 regular members.
Staff and contractors: upcoming year's annual plan
edit- 1. Please describe your organization's staffing plan or strategy here, and provide a link to your organization's staffing plan or organogram if you have one.
- WMAT's staffing plan will by and large remain the same for the two upcoming years. Currently, WMAT employs 2.75 FTEs: an Executive Director (ED), a Community Manager and an Administrative Assistant. The ED is in charge of preparing strategic processes and decision making, managing finances, office and staff, coordinating international relations and partnerships, and reporting directly to the board, i.e. executing the board's decisions in the day-to-day operations. The Community Manager is responsible for community support and communication, strategies for volunteer recruitment, and international coordination and exchange for all matters that concern volunteer support. The Administrative Assistant takes care of the office management and preparation of our accounting, is responsible for event management, and furthermore assists community services such as travel planning and project evaluation.
- For the additional workload around the Wikimedia Hackathon in 2017, we will hire an experienced freelancer (funded by the hackathon budget) who will support us with the general event management, fundraising, and sponsorships, as well as recruiting volunteers from like-minded communities.
- 2. List of staff by department or function.
- You can use this table (or substitute your own list) to show us the number of FTEs (fulltime equivalents) for each department or function, where one person working at 100% time would be counted as 1.0. We need this information about the total number of staff (FTEs) you plan to have by the end of the current funding period, and staff you plan to have by the end of the upcoming funding period.
Table 4
FTEs Department or function End of current funding period End of upcoming funding period Explanation of changes Executive Director 1 1 - Community Manager 1 1 - Administrative Assistant 0,75 0,75 - Total (should equal the sum of the rows): 2,75 2,75 -
Table 4 notes or explanation of significant changes:
- Please note that the numbers will be the same for 2017 and 2018.
- 3. How much does your organization plan to spend on staff by the end of the current funding period, in currency requested and US dollars?
- 130,000 EUR (144,905 USD)
- 4. How much does your organization plan to spend on staff by the end of the upcoming funding period, in currency requested and US dollars?
- 2017: 135,500 EUR (151,035 USD).
- 2018: 140,000 EUR (156,051 USD)
- The rise is limited to the inflationary adjustments stipulated by the national Austrian wage agreements. Although labor in Austria is not exactly cheap, WMAT has one of the lowest percentages of staff costs (roughly 44%), especially in comparison with other Western European Wikimedia affiliates.
- The percentage of central administration costs (as opposed to staff time spent on projects and programs) was approximately 13% for 2015 and we plan to sustain that level or decrease it further: entering the two-year funding model would contribute significantly to decreasing the overhead costs, as proposal writing currently requires considerable staff resources.
Financials: upcoming year
editDetailed budget: upcoming year
edit- Please link to your organization's detailed budget showing planned revenues and expenses for the upcoming funding period (e.g. 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017). This may be a document included on this Wiki (Meta) or a publicly available spreadsheet.
Revenues: upcoming year
editPlease use this table to list your organization's anticipated revenues (income, or the amount your organization is bringing in) by revenue source (where the revenue is coming from) in the upcoming funding period (e.g. 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017).
- Use the status column to show if this funding is already guaranteed, if you are in the process of requesting funding, or if you are planning to request funding at a later time.
- Please include in-kind donations and resources in this table, as applicable, and use the status column to show that they are in-kind resources.
- Do not include money you plan to draw from your reserves during the upcoming funding period.
Table 5
Anticipated revenues for the upcoming funding period Revenue source Currency requested US dollars Status (e.g. guaranteed, application)
FDC grant 265,000 (2017)
265,000 (2018)295,382 (2017)
295,382 (2018)Requested (2017)
Requested (2018)Fundraising 20,000 (2017)
20,000 (2018)22,293 (2017)
22,293 (2018)In process (2017)
In process (2018)Membership fees 4,000 (2017)
6,000 (2018)4,459 (2017)
6,688 (2018)In process (2017)
In process (2018)Open Data Portal grants 20,000 (2017)
20,000 (2018)22,293 (2017)
22,293 (2018)Granted (2017)
Granted (2018)Other grants 0 (2017)
6,000 (2018)0 (2017)
6,688 (2018)n/a (2017)
In process (2018)Total revenues (should equal the sum of the rows): 309,000 (2017)
317,000 (2018)344,427 (2017)
353,344 (2018)- In-kind donations 16,000 (2017)
16,000 (2018)17,834 (2017)
17,834 (2018)In process (2017)
In process (2018)Total revenues (should equal the sum of the rows): 325,000 (2017)
333,000 (2018)362,261 (2017)
371,178 (2018)-
Table 5 notes: If your organization has significant funding other than FDC funds, please note how those funds will be used.
- Explanation of numbers above: In addition to our donations and membership fees we are happy to report that WMAT successfully applied for two grants around the Open Data Portal (ODP) from the Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The first grant is worth approx. 32,000 EUR for an open data hackathon in February 2017, which will serve as promotion for the Open Data Portal and a scouting event and testbed for the Wikimedia Hackathon in 2017, thereby contributing to our goal of tech community building in Austria. The first installment is due in fall 2016. The second grant is an open data research project starting in winter, for which the ODP we will receive approx. 30,000 EUR over the course of three years. The grant will mainly support the community management aspect around our open data activities.
- Hackathon: The table above does not include additional funds for the Wikimedia Hackathon from the WMF which WMAT will handle next year (approximately 67,000 EUR / 75,000 USD) and a possible additional fund by the Vienna Business Agency of up to 35,000 EUR (39,000 USD) to support community building and communication around the Hackathon.
- Wikipedia for Peace: The table does also not reflect a possible Erasmus+ funding of 15,000 EUR (16,719 USD) for the international development of the Wikipedia for Peace camps, i.e. a “train the trainers” event in Austria next spring. We are currently preparing the grant proposal and the funds will most probably be handled by our partner organization Service Civil International (SCI).
Operating reserves: current and upcoming years
editPlease note that there is a policy that places restrictions on how much FDC funding your organization can use to build its operating reserves. If you would like to use FDC funding to for your organization's reserves, you must note that here. You will not be able to decide to allocate FDC funding from this grant to your reserves at a later date.
- 1. What is your plan for maintaining, building, or spending your reserves in the current year and the upcoming funding period? Please use the table below to show the amounts in your reserves at the beginning, year-to-date, and end of your current year, and the amount you plan to have in your reserves by the end of the upcoming funding period.
Table 6
Year Year start Year start (US) Year-to-date Year-to-date (US) Year end Year end (US) Current year (e.g. 2017) 64,380 71,761 60,000 66,879 65,000 72,452 Upcoming year (e.g. 2018) - - - - 65,000 72,452
- Please note that we only now noticed that we unintentionally used a wrong number concerning our reserves in our last proposal. As we usually have to draw from our reserves for a short amount of time before the second installment of our FDC money arrives in August, there was some confusion last year about the amount of reserves. Hence, the delta does not mainly stem from building additional reserves we build between these two years but from this mistake. However, we tend to build in approximately 5,000 EUR as temporary reserves for our Open Data Portal in order to secure basic operations until bigger grants or funds kick in. Most of this money is usually used the subsequent year, therefore it can be considered a “temporary” reserve.
- 2. How much FDC funding is your organization requesting to add to your reserves in the upcoming funding period? If you are not requesting any FDC funding to add to your reserves in the upcoming funding period, you can write zero.
- Zero.
Expenses: upcoming year's annual plan
edit- 1. Expenses by program (excludes staff and operations).
- Program expenses are the costs associated specifically with your organization's programs, and do not include operating expenses or staff salaries, which will be described in separate tables. Program expenses may be the costs of an event, the costs of outreach materials specific to a program, budgets for microgrants and reimbursements, or technical costs associated with specific programs, for example. The programs listed in this table should correspond to the programs you have listed in the programs section of this proposal form.
Table 7
Program Currency requested US dollars Community Support 71,500 (2017)
72,500 (2018)79,698 (2017)
80,812 (2018)Free Content 41,500 (2017)
45,000 (2018)46,258 (2017)
50,160 (2018)Reach / Free Knowledge Awareness 19,000 (2017)
19,000 (2018)21,178 (2017)
21,178 (2018)Total program expenses (should equal the sum of the rows) 132,000 (2017)
136,500 (2018)147,134 (2017)
152,150 (2018)
Table 7 notes: If your organization has significant funding designated for specific programs (e.g. a restricted grant), please make a note of that here.
- 2. Total expenses. Please use this table to summarize your organization's total expenses overall.
- These are divided into three categories: (1) staff expenses from Table 4 (including expenses for staff working on both programs and operations), (2) expenses for programs from Table 7 (does not include staff expenses or operations expenses), and (3) expenses for operations (does not include staff expenses or program expenses). Be sure to check the totals in this table to make sure they are consistent with the totals in the other tables you have submitted with this form. For example, your total program expenses excluding staff will be equal to the total in Table 7, while your total staff expenses will be equal to the total in Table 4 and your total expenses will be equal to the total in Table 1.
Table 8
Expense type Currency requested US dollars Program expenses (total from Table 7, excludes staff) 132,000 (2017)
136,500 (2018)147,134 (2017)
152,150 (2018)Operations (excludes staff and programs) 41,500 (2017)
40,500 (2018)46,258 (2017)
45,143 (2018)Upcoming staff total expenses (from Table 4) 135,500 (2017)
140,000 (2018)151,035 (2017)
156,051 (2018)Total expenses (should equal the sum of the rows) 309,000 (2017)
317,000 (2018)344,427 (2017)
353,344 (2018)
Table 8 notes:
- WMAT will probably move into a new office in the near future, preferably a shared space with like-minded organizations. This would not only help us to nurture our local networks, but also provide more room for community events (shared costs for bigger meeting rooms). Hence our budget for operations is higher in 2017 to cater for the additional costs which come with moving house.
Verification and signature
editPlease enter "yes" or "no" for the verification below.
- The term “political or legislative activities” includes any activities relating to political campaigns or candidates (including the contribution of funds and the publication of position statements relating to political campaigns or candidates); voter registration activities; meetings with or submissions and petitions to government executives, ministers, officers or agencies on political or policy issues; and any other activities seeking government intervention or policy implementation (like “lobbying”), whether directed toward the government or the community or public at large. General operating support through the FDC may not be used to cover political and legislative activities, although you may make a separate grant agreement with the WMF for these purposes.
I verify that no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation will be used
for political or legislative activities except as permitted by a grant agreementYes
Please sign below to complete this proposal form.
- IMPORTANT. Please do not make any changes to this proposal form after the proposal submission deadline for this round. If a change that is essential to an understanding of your organization's proposal is needed, please request the change on the discussion page of this form so it may be reviewed by FDC staff. Once submitted, complete and valid proposal forms submitted on time by eligible organizations will be considered unless an organization withdraws its application in writing or fails to remain eligible for the duration of the FDC process.
Please sign here once this proposal form is complete, using four tildes. CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 23:45, 1 October 2016 (UTC)