Grants:APG/Proposals/2018-2019 round 2/Wikimedia Armenia/Proposal form

Overview

1. In order to support community review, please provide a brief description of your organization's work in the upcoming funding period.

Wikimedia Armenia would like to apply for an Annual Plan Grant of 137,915,000 AMD (267,400 USD) from the Wikimedia Foundation for the period July 1, 2019 to June, 31 to cover its following programs: Quality content, Community empowerment, Education, Western Armenian + Organizational Development.

WMAM has developed its programming in a way, that every program direction is deeply tied with other directions. We engage people to contribute to quality content thus enlarging and empowering the Armenian Wikimedia Community. The Education program is aimed at spreading the Wikimedia values through educational institutions, supporting engagement of new volunteers to our community and contributing to quality content. WMAM will continue experimenting and testing new projects and approaches to better work towards our strategy implementation.

Wikimedia Armenia is an active player in Armenian civil society promoting free knowledge and access to innovative education. It is a mature organization in terms of its programs and the staff capacity, but has a long way to go for institutionalization of that experience and the capacity. We will continue working on improvement of our Bylaws and the necessary internal policies in the coming year. Partnership with Armenian General Benevolent Union and Yerevan 2800 Cultural Foundation enabled WMAM to learn new reporting mechanism, which we never used before. AGBU required monthly detailed financial report and quarterly programmatic reports, which WMAM managed to submit in high quality and became the best grantee of the organization among dozens of other organizations. As a result of our good performance on project implementation and reporting, WMAM was invited by the AGBU to participate in International Civil Society Week - 2019 (by CIVICUS) in April 2019 in Belgrade, Serbia and present its work done and the partnership with the AGBU.

In 2017-2018 reporting year, we adopted a strategy to support quality content. We focused on a broad range of activities related to the production, access, and usage of the quality content. We developed new approaches about the ways we engage quality content editors, resources we create to support the editing process, and more. In all projects we implemented - GLAM, Wiki Loves Science, accessibility or digitization project - a great stress was laid to generate quality content. With the same strategy, WMAM will work towards having a more trustful and reliable Armenian Wikipedia, making quality content an integral component of all programs.

The upcoming year, as a part of the quality content program, Wikimedia Armenia will continue building a solid foundation with GLAM and other data donor institutions for effective communication and collaboration with a clear understanding of what needs to be accomplished. Our previous experience, especially with “Wiki Loves Yerevan” project, explored better ways of approaching and collaborating with GLAM institutions. However, as our resources are limited, this year we will establish new separate partnerships with different GLAM institutions of Armenia, such as Komitas Museum, Yervand Kochar Museum, Stepan Shahumyan Museum.

For the first time Wikimedia Armenia began a large scale collaboration with both educational and education supporting institutions. This allowed us to increase the number of student editors which in its turn promoted the quality content creation. In the upcoming funding period Wikimedia Armenia will continue deepening its partnership with those establishments, as well as will seek new ones.

We have revised our approach to working with the community. We emphasize the importance of community members to be active players in decision making in the organization and stress this during all our meetings with the community. WMAM created several opportunities for their participation in the annual plan design and ensure proper reporting of the work done during the year. We will continue and deepen this practice and encourage their participation. The organization will work towards the capacity improvement of the community both related to the organizational structures and also to their role in Armenian Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Armenia was quite successful in terms of diversifying its financial resources during the previous financial year. In addition to Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, we have now the Armenian General Benevolent Union (Bridge for CSOs program funded by the European union) and Yerevan 2800 Cultural Foundation among our donors. We will put more efforts into fundraising from institutional donors. We will actively promote our online fundraising platform http://donate.wikimedia.am to engage individual donors from Armenia and Diaspora. For several years sponsors of WikiClubs were financing the WikiClubs directly. Since 2018 they started to donate to Wikimedia Armenia thus ensuring more financial flow to the organization and enabling us to ensure WikiClubs’ operations more professionally. We will actively work with donors to ensure they get proper reports and information about their sponsored WikiClubs.

2. Name, fiscal year, and funding period.

Legal name of organization: «Վիքիմեդիա Հայաստան» գիտակրթական ՀԿ
Organization's fiscal year: 01/01-12/31
12-month funding period requested: 07/01/2019-06/30/2020
Currency requested: AMD
Name of primary contact: Susanna Mkrtchyan, Gayane Vardanyan

3. Amount requested.

Table 1

	Currency requested	US$
Total expenses for the upcoming year	156,069,000	293,386
APG funding requested for the upcoming year	137,915,000	267,400
Amount of funding received from WMF for the current year	133,727,000	267,454

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?

Prior to development of our current annual plan we have organized several community discussions with active Wikipedians and collected their ideas on further expansion of Wikimedia Movement in Armenia. At the discussions everyone reflected on the work done by WMAM and made suggestions on future initiatives. In March 2018, WMAM hired an independent consultant to carry out a research among our community members and to reveal their view on our projects, their concerns, and suggestions for improvement. This report also became a resource for designing of our activities.

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.

Annual plan summary

Quality Content

Assist development of quality content of Wikimedia Projects in Armenian aimed at making those a powerful learning and information source.

In the proposed APG WMAM will continue concentrating on the quality content. Considering the success of the “I create a vital article” and related campaigns, we will initiate other thematic projects aimed at the development of quality articles on different topics: medicine, economy, law, mathematics, physics, art, etc. We will try to develop and expand already established thematic councils and engage scientists and researchers of the respective fields, experienced wiki editors interested in the topic and thus will ensure the quality of the content.

Lessons learned from previous experience

Concentration on the quantity of articles is double-edged sword also affecting on the decrease of quality of the Armenian Wikipedia and created mistrust towards it.
Initiatives on particular topics, such as Wiki Loves Science on medical topic, increase the effectiveness of engaging more valuable contributors, thus generating more quality articles.
Quality and success of a GLAM partnership increase when having a staff member responsible for GLAM only. GLAM partnership can also diversify WikiClub activities.
Editing the most viewed articles takes time, it should be a long-term project with constant focus on the process.

Theory of change

More quality content of Wikipedia will positively affect the image of Wikimedia Projects in Armenia thus serving our users and open knowledge.

Activities

Working on the improvement of the most viewed and important articles on a specific topic through Wiki Loves Science events and other editathons.
Partnership with GLAM institutions enriching Wikimedia Commons and other sister projects.
Digitization of printed materials and recordings of words and articles, also providing equal access to Wikimedia projects.
International collaborations with Wikimedia affiliates and regions aimed at creating quality and diverse content.
Preservation of national heritage, working with ethnic minorities of Armenia providing knowledge equity to them.
Lexicographical data of Armenian language in Wikidata based on Wiktionary.

Community Empowerment

Grow and empower the community to collaboratively assist the development of quality content and contribute to the expansion of Wikimedia Movement.

We will deepen our work towards empowerment of our wiki community to enable their active participation in the organization's life and also in creating quality content. We will come up with flexible solutions to accommodate their needs and create the necessary conditions for them to initiate and run projects in the framework of our current strategy. WMAM will provide all the required support to the community to encourage constant discussions and improvement of Armenian Wikipedia.

Lessons learned from previous experience

Engaging community members in various WMAM events as mentors increased the productivity of newcomers and made community members feel ownership towards Wikimedia Movement.
Our experience with the Most viewed article project showed that not many editors have the necessary skills to work with different sources, creating articles from scratch. The community sometimes lack experienced editing skills which are useful in editing and discussing the articles.
Community feedback from different meetups states that they need more space to discuss different topics, such as the importance of discussions on articles in Wikipedia, the quality check, improvement of policies, engagement of editors in different roles etc.

Theory of change

Constant engagement with the community and reporting to them will make the community to feel ownership towards the Wikimedia Movement to ensure constant development and sharing of open knowledge.
Supporting community members to grow their capacity helps to create a strong, diverse, and sustainable community. The larger and skilled our community is, the more quality content is produced.

Activities

Community and users assessment to better shape our future programs.
Community edit-a-thons, gatherings, and meetups to improve community members capacity and engage them in decision making process.
Assistance to community projects to insure diversity and proactivity.
Wikipedia Conference to create a platform for community members to collaborate and guarantee a wider outreach for diversifying editors demographics.

Education

Educators and students acknowledge and use Wikimedia projects as a tool to support learning.

Education will remain as one of the major programmatic directions of WMAM in this new APG. The revised program approaches based on the lessons learned from previous years, gave a fruitful results and WMAM will keep the same path. Meetings with WikiClub coordinators each time give us a lot of input on how to improve our work with WikiClubs. One of the challenges of this year will be finding new funding for 5 WikiClubs founded in 2018 by AGBU financial support. This year we will try to engage lecturers from Yerevan and continue the top down strategy in working with higher education institutions.

Lessons learned from previous experience

The primary goal of the Educational program should not be the content development itself, but rather the development of participants’ self learning culture by reading and editing.
Our experience with the mentoring system at Teachers’ training allowed community members to become from a receiver into someone who also gives back, shares, and trains.
Top down approach in the work with the universities result in large scale impact.
Periodic visits to WikiClubs are inspiring and empowering for both WikiClub members and experienced editors, aiming at increasing the students skills. For WMAM staff these visits are good opportunities to be closer and to study the everyday life of the club.

Theory of change

Collaboration with universities and other educational units will help to engage productive quality contributors and fill the content gap.
Engaging school students in Wikimedia projects results in their understanding of the idea of volunteerism and self-learning.

Activities

Professors and teachers trainings to ensure their engagement in the education program.
Collaboration with universities and other education supporting entities aimed at development of quality and diverse content.
WikiCamps
WikiClubs
WikiClassroom

Western Armenian

Western Armenian Wikipedia is in place and has a quality content contributed by community members from different countries.

After getting separate ISO 639-3 language code for Western Armenian Wikimedia Armenia activated its efforts towards creating Western Armenian language Wikipedia. Western Armenian community members will continue their work on translation of the templates, interface and etc necessary for separate language Wikipedia. We will actively promote the Western Armenian Wikipedia by traditional and social media to engage new editors and readers, we will work with various Diaspora communities to bring them on board as contributors.

Lessons learned from previous experience

Having two language content in one Wikipedia is a tough and unproductive experience, as it creates technical, language obstacles, and demotivates Western Armenian contributors and readers to use Wikipedia.
WMAM puts lots of efforts in training people for editing in Western Armenian Wikimedia but the retention is very low due to not having Western Armenian as a separate language on Wikipedia.

Theory of change

Utilizing possible cooperation with other diaspora organizations and events will expand the outreach on the Western Armenian Program and bring new people on board thus enlarging the community and geography of contributors.
Having separate Western Armenian Wikipedia will motivate contributors and make their work more visible and useful.

Activities

Setting up and promoting Western Armenian Wikipedia.
Community Development and Engagement.
Increasing the number of new articles and relevant content.Organizational development.

Organizational Development

Acknowledging the importance of having a strong and sustainable organization to reach our mission, WMAM focused on organizational development. In some aspects, we have managed to reach some progress, but in some areas, we are still in the initial phase.

WMAM will continue working towards organizational strengthening along with 4 programmatic directions, which will be a guarantee for our quality work and sustainability. The objectives of this component will be the following:

To improve the performance of WMAM through capacity enhancement,
To make WMAM and its mission well known and respected in Armenia,
To engage diverse financial resources and ensure financial sustainability of the organization.

Budget

Total expenses by programs and sections.

Section	Total amount (AMD)	Total amount (USD)
Operations	17,980,000	35,960.00
Staff	49,345,000	98,690.00
Quality Content	10,830,000	21,660.00
Community Empowerment	16,730,000	33,460.00
Education	40,690,000	72,950.00
Western Armenian	18,154,000	25,985.85
Organizational development	2,340,000	4,680.00
Total	156,069,000	293,385.85
Requested from WMF	137,915,000	267,400.00

Total expenses overall.

Expense type	Total amount (AMD)	Total amount (USD)
Program expenses	88,744,000	158,735.85
Operations (exluded staff and programs)	17,980,000	35,960.00
Staff	49,345,000	98,690.00
Total	156,069,000	293,385.85

Monitoring and Evaluation

Annually, WMAM sets a series of indicators to understand the progress of the work. While setting this year’s metrics, we have revised some of them based on our last year’s experience.

We have defined five grant metrics, three of them are constant for all the programmatic directions - number of participants, newly registered users, and content pages. Two other grant metrics are activity-specific and unique for each activity direction. These specific metrics are not possible to represent in accumulated way, that’s why only constant metrics are provided below for each programmatic direction.

Program	Participants	Newly registered	Content pages
Quality Content Program	360	71	19541
Community Program	853	45	372
Education Program	740	240	13770
Western Armenian Program	50	5	260
TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS	2003	361	33943

Verification and signature

Please 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 agreement	Yes

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.	WikiTatik (talk) 04:33, 1 April 2019 (UTC)