Grants:MSIG/Examples/Hubs research

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Current Grants Approach

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Before you apply

Take a bit of time to read the ongoing proposals about hubs that are listed on the Hubs page on Meta. In November 2020, Hubs were selected as a priority for Movement Strategy implementation. Several proposals are in progress. The proposals are at one of the following stages:

1. Research: Collecting data to identify needs the hub could serve, what its role would be, and what structures or networks similar to the hub existed in the past.
2. Planning: Early conversations with the potential communities of the hub to agree upon and define next steps.

It’s currently recommended that any new grant request begin with one of these two steps. The steps both require extensive work.

The grant-funded proposals need to address at least one of the following questions from discussions about hubs:

• What is a “hub”? How is it different from a “non-hub” structure?
• What are the objectives of the “hub”? What "value" will it bring to the community?
• What is the relationship between a “hub” and other structures in the Wikimedia movement? How is overlap with other existing structures prevented? If there is overlap with existing structures, how is it handled?
• Is all funded work in a region or topic required to go through the respective hub? What happens when a project falls under more than one hub (e.g. regional and thematic)?
• Can affiliate board members be decision-makers in their regional hub? If so, how are Conflicts of Interest handled? If no, who would be decision-makers in the regional hub?
• How do hubs start? How do hubs get 'promoted' and how do hubs expand?

Examples

1. Research: Example of a hubs research grant proposal
2. Planning: Example of a hubs planning grant proposal

statusdraft

Movement Strategy

xx.wikipedia.org

This is a made up example of a well-organized grant proposal on hubs research in a certain region.

target10 affiliates of the local region

start date15 November

start year2021

end date15 March

end year2022

budget (local currency)(N/A)

budget (USD)(N/A)

grant typeOrganization

grantee• Antarctica affiliates community

contact(s)• Penguin Featherwing

friendly space expectations

browse all requests

Share your results

Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.

The following is a made-up example of what a well-structured grant request for hubs may look like. There’s no requirement to follow it: it can be a starting point or a reference to help you formulate your own grant request. Your grant request should both meet the grants criteria (which are practically shown in this example), as well as your own unique goals.

Summary

This example is for a research project to surface the needs and priorities of community members in an emerging community. The community members are keen to see if a hub can potentially address some of the challenges faced. These challenges include the fact that this is a language community that is spread across different regions and trying to find the best ways of working together. Following this research, the community intends to decide on a shared plan for future engagements, whether through a hub or not, and share the findings for other communities so that they can learn from it.

Project Goal

What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative?

What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described

25. Regional & Thematic Hubs: Hubs have been prioritized as one of the Movement Strategy initiatives for implementation in November 2021. Hubs, however, are still not well-defined. Our region, with many small affiliates that lack necessary support, needs more coordination and collaboration. It’s important for us to define the scope and role of a hub in our region.

Project Background

When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?

Start date: 15 November 2021

End date: 15 March 2022

Where will your project activities be happening?

The Antarctic region is our main focus. Closely-related communities will also be considered in the research to identify whether they are interested in participating.

Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.

The target communities of the project will include all the dozen on-wiki and affiliate communities of the region.

What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?

The challenges that this project aims to address:

• Growth: The small affiliates in our region lack the capacity to support future growth. Since 2020, for example, the majority of the small affiliates in the region are either idle or declining in their activities.
• Coordination: When participating in processes across the Wikimedia Movement, our region faces issues with making coordinated or representative decisions. We have been facing challenges that prevent all of our affiliates from joining a single conversation.

The opportunities that this project aspires to seize:

• Movement Strategy: The ongoing Movement Strategy process provides an opportunity for change. We see this as a chance to start connecting our region and look for solutions to improve our work in new ways.

Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?

N/A: This, itself, is an example.

Project Activities

What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.

Partially following these two examples of previous grants: CEE Needs Research and Research into Regional Hubs, the research project will be carried out according to the following plan:

1. Mapping out hub-like structures: The researchers will look into at least 2 previous experiments with structures similar to “hubs”, either locally (in the region), globally (in the Wikimedia Movement) or externally (outside the movement). Researchers will study past documentation, if any, and talk to at least one person from each structure, in order to learn from them what they did well and the challenges they have faced in the past.
2. Defining needs: The main step in the research will be about establishing “Why” hubs are needed. Needs will be assessed by surveys, interviews and brainstorming meetings with the various communities of the region, with a specific focus on the marginalized ones. The needs would not only be assessed by directly asking about hubs, but also about local problems and challenges overall.  For each identified need, we shall try to envision whether and how a "hub" may meet that need.
3. Defining relationships: As a part of the research stage, participants and interviewees will be also asked about the relationship they foresee between the future “Hub” and existing structures. Some of the main questions will be about the relationship of the “Hub” to the local affiliates, the AffCom and the Foundation. This will follow the steps to defining hubs that were mentioned in earlier discussions.
4. Sharing recommendations: The collected data will be carefully analyzed to produce a final report with results and recommendations. The recommendations are expected to answer at least one of the questions mentioned above, as well as suggest initial next steps to move forward with the Hub project.

How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community

Grant request:

• We will announce the grant request to our community on-wiki, in its planning stage, as well as if and when it is approved. Call for participation:
• Open call for participation in surveys and interviews. Participants would be informed through the following channels of the region: village pumps, mailing list and Telegram group.
• Target outreach and interviews with affiliate leaders (board members and executive staff). Sharing the results:
• The final report of the research project will be shared through the same channels: village pumps, mailing list and Telegram.
• A meeting will be organized to share and present the final results and recommendations for next steps with the local communities.
• Presentations will be proposed at least one upcoming international event to share the conclusions and learnings with other regions.

Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?

The project will be co-led by three affiliates, with the following roles:

• A: Logistics, including the grant processing, distribution and reporting, as well as the support of meetings and documentation.
• B: Data collection, including the interviews, surveys and discussions during which the research will be conducted.
• C: Data analysis, including review, clean up and sense-making of the results.
• Shared: The design, plan and final report of the research project will be shared responsibility between the three affiliates.

Additional information

If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.

• We plan to hire a facilitator with experience supporting collaborative brainstorming decision-making.
• The Wikimedia Foundation’s friendly space policy will be applied.

If your activities include in-person events or activities, you will need to complete the steps outlined in the Risk Assessment protocol. Please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool.

(N/A)

If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.

We will use the following tools:

• Zoom: We will use a pro version of Zoom to hold multiple small conversations in a single meeting, which will later convene together to discuss the results.
• Quirkos: We will use Quirkos to support the qualitative analysis and visualization of the data from the research.

Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.

We will translate the document into the following languages:

• Antarctican
• Penguinese
• 2 more languages open for requests.

Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.

(N/A)