Grants:PEG/WM US-DC/Summer of Monuments 2014

Funded

This submission to the Project and Event Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2013-14. This is a grant to an organization.

IMPORTANT: Please do not make changes to this page without the explicit approval of Project and Event Grants Program staff. They will be reverted.

This project has already been funded, but you may still add or review comments on the discussion page.
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Report: Please visit Grants:PEG/WM US-DC/Summer of Monuments 2014/Report to read this report, comment on this report, or review its status.

Basic information

Grant request details

Are you an organization, a group, or an individual?: Organization
Please provide your name, or the name of the group or organization requesting this grant.: Wikimedia District of Columbia
Please provide the name (or username) of the main contact for this grant request. You do not need to disclose your legal name publicly.: Peter Meyer
For groups and organizations only: Please provide the name (or username) of a second contact for this grant request.: James Hare
Please link to any relevant documents, including your website if you have one.: Official website; Annual plan for 2013–14

Project details

Official project name: Wikipedia Summer of Monuments 2014
Project start date: This is the date you begin work on your project. Please include a month, day, and year. You must include a project start date.; 15 May 2014
Project completion date: This is the date you finish work on your project. Please include a month, day, and year. You must include a project completion date.; 15 November 2014
Please describe the project in a few sentences: Building off of our success with Wiki Loves Monuments USA in 2012 and 2013, for 2014 we are interested in conducting targeted outreach in the Southern United States to improve coverage of nationally-recognized monuments on Wikipedia.

Financial details

Please request your grant in your local currency. WMF is able to grant funds in many currencies.

Amount and currency requested: US$27,225.00
Please provide an equivalent amount in US dollars using the exchange rate provided by Oanda on the date you open this request: US$27,225.00

For organizations only

This section only needs to be completed by organizations requesting grants. Individuals and groups that are not incorporated do not need to complete this section.

Are you an incorporated organization able to provide local proof of nonprofit status within your country? For-profit organizations are not eligible to receive grants through the PEG program.: Answer YES or NO.; Yes
Does your organization currently employ or engage any fulltime or part-time staff or contractors? If yes, please tell us how many staff or contractors you employ or engage, along with their functions or a link to your staff page. For example, "2 full time program managers and 1 part-time contractor accountant at 50% FTE each.": No staff or contractors.

Goals and measures of success

Project goal

Please briefly describe what will be accomplished if the project is successful.

Project goal: We have identified ten "target" states in the southern United States where fewer than half of the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) sites have photographic coverage on Wikipedia. The goal of the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments project is to increase photographic coverage of NRHP sites in five of these states to 50% during the period of the campaign from June 1 to September 30, 2014. This project is a variant of the "Wiki Loves Monuments USA" program carried out by Wikimedia DC in 2012 and 2013.

Measures of success

Please provide a list of measurable criteria that will be used determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed.

Measures of success: The success of this project is measured principally by how many additional NRHP sites are illustrated. Associated measures include the number of pictures uploaded (with the understanding that pictures of sites already covered may be uploaded) and the number of collaborations with photographers and cultural institutions. Specific goals are listed in our proposal below.

Project scope and activities

This section describes what will happen if this project is funded. Who will do what, and when?

List of activities

Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photography contest organized by the Wikimedia community with the goal to increase Wikipedia's photographic coverage of recognized historic sites. Wikimedia DC has conducted the contest in the United States since 2012, with the goal to illustrate every site in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Wiki Loves Monuments USA has yielded over 30,000 photographs uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, many of which are currently illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Despite two years of these contests, there are still parts of the country where less than half of the historic sites have pictures on Wikimedia Commons. As historic sites in the United States are subject to all manner of hazards, including natural disaster and potential redevelopment, it is necessary to photograph these sites sooner rather than later. In addition, we feel that outreach to rural areas is an important mechanism to improve the diversity of the encyclopedia.

Considering the expansive nature of our outreach, we have rebranded the contest "Wikipedia Summer of Monuments." This highlights the shift from a one-month photography contest to a multi-month outreach campaign and reinforces the strength of Wikipedia's brand by moving away from the use of the generic term "wiki" as a synonym for Wikipedia.

Target regions and goals

Wikimedia DC has identified fifteen states and seven territories where less than 50% of the listed NRHP sites have corresponding pictures on Wikipedia. As ten of these states are located in the Southern United States, we have elected this year on focusing on this region of the country. The ten target states and their respective "illustration rates" on Wikipedia are as follows:

Arkansas: 20.4% (743 more sites to get to 50%)
Oklahoma: 26.2% (293 more sites to get to 50%)
Kansas: 28.3% (247 more sites to get to 50%)
North Carolina: 30.2% (547 more sites to get to 50%)
Mississippi: 32.9% (231 more sites to get to 50%)
Missouri: 33.3% (356 more sites to get to 50%)
Kentucky: 33.4% (546 more sites to get to 50%)
Georgia: 39.5% (217 more sites to get to 50%)
Tennessee: 42.9% (134 more sites to get to 50%)
Louisiana: 43.9% (83 more sites to get to 50%)

The goal of this project is to, at minimum, bring five of these ten states to over 50% coverage during the period of the campaign from June 1 to September 30, 2014. This flexibility gives us discretion to focus our efforts on a more specific region within these ten states, preventing our efforts from being spread too thin. We will accomplish this through developing relationships with local historical societies with the aid of a project manager. Though the cost-per-photograph will be higher relative to past contests, it is worth noting that these photographs have been more difficult to obtain, not having been secured despite two years of contests. These photographs thus have a higher value to the Wikimedia projects.

Project manager position and tasks

The issue with past Wiki Loves Monuments USA contests lay in the contest's broad scope. While Wikimedia DC is a regional organization with regional reach, it has borne responsibility for administering a contest at national scale. Volunteers have succeeded at running the contest, but any additional effort toward the broader goal of improving Wikipedia's coverage of historic sites requires the efforts of dedicated, full-time help. We are proposing to hire a project manager responsible for conducting this broader outreach.

The day-to-day work of the project manager will consist of developing a database of contacts with local historical societies in the ten target states and individual photographers who may be of assistance. The project manager will develop a working relationship with these stakeholders on behalf of Wikimedia DC, representing Wikimedia DC's interest in public history. In working with local institutions, the project manager will encourage them to work toward Wikimedia DC's goals, including organizing photo-walks and digitizing and uploading their historic photographs to Wikimedia Commons (including the licensing of photographs under Creative Commons where applicable), providing assistance where necessary. Outreach toward individual photographers, including those recruited through Flickr and the like, will be oriented toward recruitment to take photographs of historic sites for Wikipedia and to relicense existing photographs. The overall goal is to obtain photographs of sites not yet illustrated in the target states, though all relevant site photographs will be accepted. The project manager's work will also focus on outreach on Wikipedia, including coordinating with WikiProject NRHP to maintain statistics, to assist them in their work, and to recruit them to help review submitted photographs for quality. The project manager is additionally responsible for evaluating progress toward the goal in the middle of the project (see the timeline below).

In deciding to create this position, Wikimedia DC is very conscientious of the budget consequence for such a decision. We have twice succeeded in running Wiki Loves Monuments on budgets lower than $3,000, yielding over 30,000 photographs total. We justify the decision to dramatically increase the size of the budget by pursuing a program of targeted outreach. Past contests indeed ran on shoestring budgets, but they were not designed toward the pursuit of specific photographs. This method was appropriate at first but would not serve us well for a third time, seeing as there are still significant regions of the United States where the contest alone has done little to improve coverage. Direct outreach efforts are necessary, and we expect the outcome to justify the expense. Further, research by the Wikimedia Foundation has found that the most costly Wiki Loves Monuments project to date is $29,000; we intend on carrying out this project on a smaller budget than that.

Since Wikimedia DC has no full-time office, the project manager is expected to work independently, meeting with Wikimedia DC officers (usually the president) and reporting on progress on a weekly basis. The project manager may use the resources of the office as needed, with coordination of the Secretary of Wikimedia DC.

Job description

Wikimedia DC is looking for a project manager to run its Wikipedia Summer of Monuments campaign in 2014. This will be a paid contract position that will begin in May and end in mid-October. This position is based in Washington, DC, but some travel (with expenses paid) will be required as part of the job.

Duties:

Outreach to county historical societies and individual volunteers to contribute photographers
Coordination with WikiProject NRHP

Requirements:

1–2 years project management or field organizing experience
Excellent interpersonal and collaboration skills, a demonstrated aptitude for building professional relationships, including through online communications
Strong organizing skills, capable of operating with little direct supervision
Must provide own laptop computer

Preferred, but not required:

Strong preference for candidates with experience on Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia
Regardless of Wikimedia experience, an ability to categorize photographs according to a set of standard criteria
Photography experience, owning a professional-grade camera
A strong sense of logistics and the ability to interpret visual data (namely maps) would be helpful
Demonstrated interest in history and historic places
Existing relationships with historical societies, particularly in the Southern United States

An expanded upload campaign

The efforts of the project managers and of volunteers (including volunteers from Wikimedia DC and WikiProject NRHP) are to culminate in an upload campaign organized on Wikimedia Commons. As Wiki Loves Monuments focused on uploads during the month of September, Wikipedia Summer of Monuments will accept contributions from June 1 through September 30—an additional three months. This represents a significant departure from the classic Wiki Loves Monuments model. This is a necessary course of action, seeing as we are looking more to emphasize building relationships with likeminded institutions, which necessarily takes longer than one month.

A "campaign" in Wikimedia Commons parlance refers to a specialized upload page catered toward a specific project. As we secure photographs as part of this project, we will direct them to this specialized upload page so that we can keep track of uploads. Though the campaign will technically be in operation for four months, that does not necessarily mean we will advertise it for all four months. For the first three months, the campaign will serve as a tracking tool for uploads obtained as a result of the project manager's efforts. In the final month, September, we will begin advertising the upload campaign on Wikipedia, as in Wiki Loves Monuments contests of past years. It is likely that this will take the form of a nationwide geonotice. There is also potential in a regional geonotice campaign, however, where geonotices targeting specific geographies (including parts of states) encourage users to take pictures in fulfillment of a specifically identified site or series of sites. Our ability to carry out such targeting will depend on whatever technical expertise is available to us.

The uploads will be judged by a contest jury as in past years, but more effort should be made to process uploads as they come in. The upside of an extended upload campaign is that we have more time to process these photographs. In essence, the jury should not have to judge more than around 1,000 pictures; the efforts of volunteers will help narrow down the field of potentially tens of thousands of photographs. The project manager should work with WikiProject NRHP and other volunteers to help carry out this review.

The top three photographs will win prizes of $500, $300, and $150, as with Wiki Loves Monuments 2013. However, photographs contributed from the archives of institutions will not be eligible for these prizes, as they are targeted toward individual photographers. Rather, the institution that contributes the most valuable collection will be awarded a $1,000 donation. The standards of judgment used for Wiki Loves Monuments will be used for the Wikipedia Summer of Monuments contest.

Timeline

- By May 15: Project manager hired. Job position begins on May 15 and lasts until October 15.
- By May 31:
June
- June 1: Project manager hired. Job positions begins on June 1 and lasts until October 31.
- Throughout June: Contact database of local institutions and individual photographers is developed. Project manager develops working relationship with organizations and groups. As files are contributed, have volunteers begin conducting quality review. Project manager shall file weekly reports on activities.
- By June 30: Project manager orientation with Board of Directors, GLAM-Wiki US Consortium, relevant WikiProjects and volunteers, and relevant WMF staff. Project manager attends at least one Wikimedia DC event. The Wikimedia Commons upload campaign is prepared and the press release/blog post announcing the contest is written, prepared to go online. Outreach strategy is prepared, including priority states and methods of conducting outreach.
July
- July 1: Wikipedia Summer of Monuments 2014 launches.
- Throughout July: Continuing June activities. Reach out to judges for Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 contest and ask if they would be interested in serving on the jury for Wikipedia Summer of Monuments 2014. Interview potential candidates for judges if new ones are needed. Project manager shall file weekly reports on activities.
- By July 31: End-of-month report assessing progress toward the goals, to be also made into a blog post. Adjustments to the outreach strategy are made if necessary.
August
- Throughout August: Continuing July activities. Project manager shall file weekly reports on activities.
- By August 15: A pilot program for a regional watchlist notice campaign shall be developed to recruit people in specific geographic locations to upload pictures of needed sites.
- By August 31: National sitenotice-based upload campaign (cf. Wiki Loves Monuments) must be ready to launch for September. The usual end-of-month report should also be written. A decision should be made as to whether to expand the regional geonotice campaign.
September
- September 1: The national online campaign for Wikipedia Summer of Monuments launches.
- Throughout September: Monitoring of online uploads toward progress goal and quality-review efforts by volunteers will take place. Project manager should recruit volunteers for the quality review tool as needed to ensure that the backlog of pictures does not get too big. Project manager may continue outreach with institutions and individual photographers as needed. Project manager shall file weekly reports on activities and on number of uploads.
- By September 30: Wikipedia Summer of Monuments campaign ends. A survey is prepared to be sent to uploaders and participating institutions.
October
- October 1: Project manager shall submit an end-of-campaign report, summarizing the effectiveness of the strategies used in implementing the project goals.
- From October 1–31: Project manager makes sure the photograph quality review is managed. Survey is circulated among aforementioned stakeholders.
- By October 31: With the campaign over, the project manager should be focused on preparing learning patterns for the various activities conducted during the project, including: developing a strategy for finding photographs according to a historic site index, developing a contact database, organizing photo-walks, photo digitization projects, coordinating a chapter’s activities with corresponding online projects, Wikimedia Commons upload campaign, and regional/national banner campaigns. Finally, a final report should be submitted, evaluating the nature of the project manager position itself.
November
- By November 15: The jury meeting should be organized and the three individual winners should be announced, as well as the winner of the Institutional Prize.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here.

Grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Project budget table

Item	Unit	Unit cost	No. of units	Total cost	Notes
Project Manager Compensation	1 month	$4,000.00	5	$20,000.00	Pay is calculated based on the standard pay for a field organizer in Washington, DC. Based on a 40-hour work week it works out to about $25 per hour.
Travel	1 trip	$975.00	5	$4,875.00	The cost per trip is a mean estimate, including flying through a city's airport, four nights' stay at a hotel, four days M&IE at 75% GSA rates, and $140 to cover car rental and gas. The cost of an individual trip can vary significantly based on the plan developed by the project manager. An average cost was calculated based on 36 cities/locales in the target region. The actual cost of the trip (and technically, the number of trips) will depend on the specific plans developed by the Project Manager. Given the large number of counties in our target region, it proved arduous to calculate a more surgical estimate ahead of the development of the actual plan. It is the policy of Wikimedia DC to use the least expensive travel possible; see our Travel Policy.
Institutional Prize	1 prize	$1,000.00	1	$1,000.00	The Institutional Prize is a separate prize from the individual prizes, awarded to the institution with the best contributions to Summer of Monuments.
Individual Prize – First Place	1 prize	$500.00	1	$500.00
Entertainment costs	1 meal	$40.00	10	$400.00	For business meetings with institutional partners to facilitate outreach efforts, whether in DC or in the target region. Entertainment expenses are subject to prior approval by the president of Wikimedia DC, per the travel policy.
Individual Prize – Second Place	1 prize	$300.00	1	$300.00
Individual Prize – Third Place	1 prize	$150.00	1	$150.00
Total				$27,225.00

Total cost of project: $27,225.00

Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program: $27,225.00

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded: We have not secured additional sources of revenue at this time. One potential revenue stream includes sponsorship; we received $500 in sponsorship last year for Wiki Loves Monuments. If we receive substantial amounts of additional revenue, we will determine how best to allocate such funds and we will alert the WMF to any changes in the budget.

Non-financial requirements

See a description of non financial assistance available. Please inform Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requirements for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance: We would like for the project manager to have at least one meeting with Program Evaluation and Design, to gain a sense of how program evaluation works in the Wikimedia community. This would help the project manager develop learning patterns and other such documents that would be useful to the rest of the movement. We would also like to post one blog post on the Wikimedia Foundation's blog at the conclusion of the project.

Resources and Risks

Resources

This section is used to highlight your potential for successfully executing this project.

Consider including the following information:

List of team members (names or usernames):
Onwiki evidence of community support (such as a project about this discussion):
Endorsements from community members or movement groups:
Special skills or qualifications this potential grantee or project lead brings to this project:
Evidence of past success in executing similar projects:

Wikimedia DC successfully carried out the Wiki Loves Monuments in 2012 and 2013 with the help of a group of volunteers, including the highly active WikiProject NRHP on the English Wikipedia. The Board of Directors of Wikimedia DC crafted this proposal with the input of the WikiProject. We also look forward to engaging the GLAM-Wiki community, namely the GLAM-Wiki US Consortium, with this project. As part of our evaluation process, we determined that more work was needed to actively reach out to potential contributors. The role of the paid project manager is thus to supplement the efforts of volunteers and allow for more productivity than volunteers alone.

Risks

This section is used to identify key risks or threats that would prevent you from achieving your project goals and how you would mitigate those risks and threats.

We have identified the following risks:

Lack of digital photographs at partner institution. In the course of working with local historical societies, it is possible that many photographs will need to be digitized. The project manager should work with these institutions to facilitate the digitization of these photographs, whether remote or in person. Wikimedia DC has been working with its Cultural Partnerships Coordinator to develop best practices for digitizing records for upload to Commons, and we can help implement these practices.
Lack of interest from organizations. If very few cultural institutions are interested in working with Wikimedia DC, we can shift our strategy to target more individual photographers, whether through online image sharing websites or directly through Wikipedia. Our current strategy includes both elements, but if one approach is proven more successful than another, then we will do more of that.
Shortage of volunteers. There is a risk that, despite a longer upload period, there will not be enough volunteers to sort through the uploads. Wikimedia DC could then work to recruit additional volunteers through outreach on Wikipedia and in our local community. As a last resort, the project manager can be directly involved in supplementing volunteer efforts.
Scope of work. We have recognized that there is a lot of work to be done. This is why despite defining ten target states, we are allowing the project manager to select as few as five which will be the focus of his or her efforts. Prioritization will be encouraged so that we are not overextended.

Impact

In the sections below, please describe how the project is related to the Wikimedia mission and Wikimedia's strategic priorities.

Fit to strategy

How will this project support the key organizational objectives of

increasing reach (more people will access or contribute to Wikipedia or our other projects), participation (more people actually contributing), quality (more content, more useful content, or higher-quality content), credibility (more trust in our projects), organizational maturity and effectiveness (how it will move you or the Wikimedia community forward), or financial sustainability (how it will help you achieve more in the long run)?

This statement should address at least one of the strategic priorities listed here specifically. See Project and Event Grants program criteria for decision making.: This project fulfills the objective to provide more quality content by providing encyclopedic content on rural and under-represented regions of the United States, and by acquiring photographic content that is not available through current means. It expands the credibility of the Wikimedia projects by giving cultural institutions and individual volunteers an opportunity to network directly with Wikimedia whereas they would be unable to otherwise. It is our hope that this outreach helps to put a human face to our online community, engendering trust in the Wikimedia projects. This project will facilitate additional contributions to Wikimedia projects in the short term, though we currently do not have a strategy for doing so in the long term.

Benefits

If the project will benefit a specific online community, please tell us.: This project primarily benefits Wikimedia Commons. Although photographs contributed to Commons will be usable everywhere, they will most likely be used primarily on the English Wikipedia.

Please provide a brief statement about how the project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement. For example, does the project fit into a work area such as GLAM, education, organizational development, editor retention, or outreach?: This project invites cultural institutions to participate in the GLAM-Wiki community despite the lack of a Wikimedia chapter. Our ambition is to engage these organizations as long-term partners in the GLAM-Wiki movement, putting them in touch with appropriate contacts even after the project manager has departed.

If successful, will the project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations? Please explain how in 1–2 sentences.: Everything we will be doing can be replicated by other organizations. This project builds off of tried and tested initiatives, namely GLAM outreach and Wiki Loves Monuments, and the lessons learned from this project can provide insight for GLAM-Wiki development and other photograph upload drives.

Please list other benefits to the movement here.: Our experience as an all-volunteer organization hiring a contractor could help inform other small chapters interested in doing the same. We will also be documenting our experience with micro-targeted geonotices.

For grantees

If you are the grantee or representative that wrote this grant submission, you may request changes by using these links:

Create a request for an extension of the approved project completion date.
Create a request for changes to the approved project budget.