Grants:PEG/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2013 coordination/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2013 coordination.

• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Yes

The Wiki Loves Monuments international coordinate team complied with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement.

Is your project completed?

No

Wiki Loves Monuments is finished, but there are some remaining tasks:

• Guinness World Record application (expected)
• Prize distribution
• Statistics (expected)

Did you use any of the grant funds?

Yes

Most of the expenses so far have occurred was from the WMF grant funds. The only funds we received from other sources was from "Guiddoo", which were specifically received to set up Special Awards for East, Southeast and South Asia and for Arabic speaking countries. This was again not part of the grant request. The international team received also an in-kind donation of Moleskine notebooks customized with the WLM logo from (Italian) fondazione lettera27 (Italy).

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

This overview is based on the activities listed on the applications. It is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all activities performed, due to the fluid nature of coordinating an international contest. Activities mentioned below were not necessarily executed exclusively or even primarily by the international team - if it was happening by other volunteers, great!

Basic infrastructure

• Setting out the international rules: The international rules were discussed on the mailing list and have been published on the contest web pages.
• Ensure the creation and maintenance of the technical infrastructure for uploading: This succeeded to some extent, but was also very dependent on the volunteers as the grant was not provided in time to guarantee a satisfying infrastructure professionally as originally proposed. The CentralNotice and upload wizard on Wikimedia Commons was localized for use on the contest by Romaine and others, the other relevant tools are described here.
  • For the combined 52 countries (link) and 43 languages this required 900+ translations, 1200+ templates, 370+ categories, 108 upload campaigns and 65 CentralNotice banners (link).
• Ensure the creation and maintenance of tools necessary for a smooth competition: The tools are described here, the same applies as mentioned above. Also, the mobile WLM app was moved from WMF maintenance to community supported by Yuvi Panda in his volunteer capacity.
• Guide the creation and maintenance of the monitoring tools - We did some of this, but there is no page specifying it.
• Prepare material such as leaflets, posters and press releases that can be used and/or built upon by national organizations - A page with media contacts per country was prepared and a general press release was available there. Also, some countries had their promotional posters uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in svg format, for other countries to adapt and use.
• Set up documentation of best practices - while mostly based on documentation from previous years, this documentation was available through the FAQ on Wikimedia Commons and by providing specific suggestions and advice to local teams when necessary. This page also links to other relevant pages.
• Set up clear timeline - A timeline was provided to the participants to use, updated from last years.
• Monitor statistics - Statistics available through the toolserver tool (note: this tool might be disabled with the toolserver), were monitored for problem solving purposes. No real documentation of that.
• Evaluate the project & competition as a whole - The evaluation of the project was executed by a few different ways. First of all, data was collected from the participants through a participant survey. This data has not been extensively evaluated. A second survey was executed specifically aimed at the organizers of the national contests, to get their view and opinions. Thirdly, a discussion was facilitated about the future of the contest or similar contests. Further evaluation would be desirable, but not guaranteed - the proposed real life evaluation was removed from the project after the WMF demanded a cut in the budget.

Following and helping national organizations

• Track and support national organizers in their national organization, Collect & answer questions - We tracked the national organizations mostly via a google doc, as well as on-wiki (self-filled) through the progress table.
• Give specific suggestions and support to national organizers (mostly online) - We gave input via direct communication, and through the Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list. It was mostly discussion facilitation. No statistics were kept of these discussions and suggestions.
• Set up a financial backup system for national competitions (minor, low weight grant system) -

Providing minigrants was not allowed under the Fiscal Sponsorship structure. We supported national activities where necessary via a system of advance payments and reimbursements. Requests for financial support were assessed by the coordination team. In total two national competitions were supported (El Salvador and Thailand).

• Crisis management for national contests - Mostly through direct communication. Several countries were helped in setting up their systems. For example, Algeria and Egypt were helped in setting up their monument lists, several contests were supported in last minute activities to get the contest going.
• Distribute notebooks for national contests - The international team received an in-kind donation of 850 Moleskine notebooks, customized with the Wiki Loves Monuments logo, from fondazione lettera27 from Italy. With the help of Wikimedia Italia we have distributed them in 26 countries. Some countries used these notebooks as part of the prizes for WLM local winners.

Project Management international team

• Build financial structure and control

The project team liaised with the staff at WMNL, the fiscal sponsor of the grant, to set up a system for financial control. This included

• agreement on division of tasks and responsibilities. The main element of this was dividing responsibilities within the chain of approval and payment of invoices and advance payments. Two members of the coordination team would authorise payments, which would then be processed by WMNL staff.
• developing two forms for processing reimbursements and advance payments which were made available via the WMNL wiki to all participants in international activities
• Report on the use of budget at the end of the program -

The two representatives of the coordinating team were in regular contact with the fiscal sponsor to discuss develoments. Midterm during the implementation of activities it became obvious that expenses would fall short of the initial estimates on which the budget was based. The new estimate was communicated via the grant page.

• Maintain communication with relevant staff at Wikimedia Foundation - Little communication with the WMF staff happened. There was some (unsatisfying) communication regarding the mobile app, which had as main conclusion that the WMF no longer considered Wiki Loves Monuments as a priority use case for their mobile infrastructure and that it would get no place at all in its planning timeline for the Wikimedia Commons app. There was good communication with the Communications department regarding press releases etc, after which it was mostly decided not to aim for specific international press outreach. There were some unsatisfying communication again with the Foundation regarding the grant request which delayed the entire timeline causing us a burnout situation during the contest, but in the end we received a deadline extension of a month for the grant report which was really helpful.
• Design and distribution of photo calendar or similar product - A photo calendar was designed by a volunteer on request of the international team, and it was printed in Italy albeit a few months after it was planned; 925 copies were distributed to 22 countries. One calendar has been sent to the winners for the international contest, the Asian and Arabic prizes together with the diplomas: 18 free calendars have been sent in 12 countries.

Set up & run the international contest

• Maintain communication with international partners - International partners this year included Europa Nostra (EN), International National Trusts Organization (INTO), Guiddoo, Europeana and (indirectly) the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty (AT). Communication with EN and INTO focused on the networking function: in some countries they could provide helpful contacts with local organizations for the national organizers. For example, EN provided access for Greek volunteers to their international annual event in Athens - even though this did not result in a national competition - and INTO helped the Thai and Indian volunteers to get in touch with their national member heritage organizations. Europeana and Guiddoo were involved by providing prizes for the competition. Guiddoo made it possible that special awards were available for countries that had relatively little prizes available (in Asia and Middle East).
• Set up wikilovesmonuments.org with the necessary information
• Maintain social media channels - This refers to the Wiki Loves Monuments Facebook page and Twitter account.
• International jury (see the jury report for more detail on some of these points)
  • Set up jury processes
  • Find suitable jury members for the international jury See [1] for the chosen jury
  • Collect results of national competitions Collected and published at Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 winners
  • Support the jury in their process, maintain timeline the timeline was presented and discussed with the jury through a mailing list (closed) set up for this duty.
  • Collect results, prepare jury report see the jury report
  • Dissemination of results - this included a blog post for the WMF blog, WLM blog, contacting the winning countries ahead of time so that they can prepare press releases, but also interviews done by WLM team members like (Italian) this one.
• apply for World Record status - The World Record has again been broken, but the status still has to be confirmed.
• Build/maintain the website infrastructure(s) This includes the international website, setting up of Wikimedia Commons pages, Campaigns and [WLM templates], banners…, MediaWiki bugs affecting WLM, helping local competitions to create their websites, coordination and support for tools (some with actual code support by the core team, others created and ran by volunteers): Statistics, Jury Tool, Monuments map, analytics, Android app, categorizer bot, WLM streaming tool.
• Provide & distribute international prizes, awards and diplomas - Prizes were distributed to all prize winners on an international level; the Wikimania travel prize is being processed. A diploma for winners of the international contest has been designed, printed and shipped: in total 18 diplomas have been sent in 12 countries.
• Connect with international press - this was mostly skipped, in coordination with WMF communications team in favor of fundraising communication.

Other

• Monitor relevant mailing lists
• Diverse communications
• Support the organization of an Antarctic Competition (most of which work was being done by Wikimedia Argentina)

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.

What went well?

More countries were involved (51 in total, 16 more than in 2012). Special awards were given to Asian and Arabic speaking countries. More images than in 2013 were uploaded which potentially will translate in a new Guinness Record. The start went rather well, with a helpful kickoff meeting and knowledge transfer.

What did not go well?

The entire management of technical logistics didn't go as well as it should have. The distribution of work and the delegation of tasks was insufficient. This was originally planned to be helped by a professional part time supporter, but this was not possible due to delays in the funding.

Way too much time and effort was spent to get a grant. The overhead involved in receiving the grant is unacceptable considering the other tasks that had to suffer from it.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

We would suggest to try to find another way to get funded. If that would have been clarified right from the beginning, the technical process would have been helped by hiring someone for that task (as planned originally). The only reasonable way to make that work is to become part of a budget of an FDC-chapter or to become fully independent of Wikimedia funds.

This was the first time either the coordination team or WMNL was involved in a Fiscal Sponsorship. Both parties found it initially tricky to find the best way of making this work. In the end, it all worked out but it would be beneficial for future fiscal sponsorships if there was more guidance on how to make this work. We are thinking about standard forms for reimbursements, guidelines for division of financial responsibilities etc. Some of the materials developed during this fiscal sponsorship could provide a basis for a Fiscal Sponsorship toolkit.

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2013 coordination to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.

The aim of Wiki Loves Monuments international, to be referred to in this proposal as WLM-i, was to provide support for national organizers and organize the international layer of WLM.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.

Since the inception of Wiki Loves Monuments, first in the Netherlands [2010] and then the international contest from 2011, the international coordination team has worked towards the community goal and and has worked with them through the contest period. With only 16 countries participating in 2011, this year the contest saw 51 countries participating including the nowhere.

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

1. First, there are the general measures that define whether Wiki Loves Monuments as a whole was successful.
2. Second, there are measures that define whether the international project team was successful as such in their job.
3. Third, there is a list of success factors which might be discussed in the evaluation, but cannot necessarily be put a number on.

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.

1. We expected more than 385,000 media files uploaded to the contest, and at the end of the contest 371,319 media files received. Although there were more countries participating, overall less images were received in some countries that were participating for the second, third or fourth time. This situation also lessened the number of uploaders. We expected more than 15,000 uploaders and had a bit less than 12,000. In terms of number of countries, there was an increase of 16 countries, many from Asia and Arabic speaking countries. Finally, we still need time to measure the last metric which was to have at least 100 new users as active contributors 9 months after the contest ended.
2. In terms of the measures of success of the international team a grant request was submitted to the Project and Event Grants Program and were funded. A survey was conducted among participants on December 2013 and received 1687 responses: more than 90% of respondents would like to receive future announcements about Wiki Loves Monuments and 24% respondents are interested in learning how to edit Wikipedia or to contribute to Wikimedia Commons. The international finale was successfully completed, and the prizes are being handed out as of March 2014. Also, all participating countries submitted nominees to the finale and the winners of the international finale were successfully processed. Finally, the Commons site of Wiki Loves Monuments contains documentation available for the all important parts of organizing Wiki Loves Monuments.
3. For the intangible/non-measurable success factors, volunteers successfully organized and led the contest in their countries. Also, the new countries participating developed new monuments lists, thus increasing the availability information about them on Wikipedia.
4. Organizers survey on how to evaluate different aspects of the contest was initiated and results were collected (16 submissions were received), but the international team could not analyse the data due to time constraints: the relevant raw data will be made available on request to the future organisers of similar contests.

If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.

1. Since there are new tools under development by the Wikimedia Foundation, we could adopt new metrics and adapt the existing ones to the tools that become available.

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.

Stabilize infrastructure

Increase participation

While last year the Wiki Loves Monuments contest received a gross total of 365,394 entries [photos/images], this year the amount scaled upto 369,589. In terms of country-wise participation number, this year 53 countries participated in the contest including the Antarctica, as compared to only 36 countries participating last year. Among those 36, most of countries participated for the second/third/fourth[in case of the Netherlands] time. Poland, Ukraine and Germany alone contributed 120,000+ images.

15,012 participants contributed to the contest this year as compared to 11,943 last year. The major of the participants came from India, US and France.

As per the data related to the contest's contribution entire site, you will find further statistics here: [2]. You can also see the month-wise contributions chart here: [3]

The participant survey received 1689 answers from people of 56 countries for more than one month (37 days). 66% were participating for the first time (or decided not to disclose their participation on previous years). For a more detailed analysis of the survey results, see [4]

377702 files (which came from 12360 authors) were uploaded to take part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2013, of which 373252 (98.8%) are still published at Wikimedia Commons (as of March 2014), totalling more than 1.25 TB (1280 GB, 1374665538764 bytes).

Improve quality

Increase reach

Encourage innovation

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

Yes

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

Overview of spending versus budget

Direct costs	Original budget for 2013	Budget for 2013 (scaled down)	Spending for 2013	Remarks
Prizes	€4‚000	€4,000	€4,150
Calendars	€4,000	€4,000	€2,355
Shipping & boxes calendars	€5,000	€5,000	€1,120
Thankyou & goodies	€1,000	€1,000	€959
Grant system	€4,500	€1,500	€497	Grants were provided for national activities in El Salvador and Thailand
Meeting & Meeting travel	€7,000	€1,000	€0	Evaluation meeting cancelled, therefore only incidental travel
Workshops	€750.00	–	€0	Workshops cancelled
Professional support	€15,000	€10,000	€0	A decision was made not to hire technical support
Unforeseen	€4,125	€2,650	€126	10% for unforeseen expenses.
TOTAL expenses	€45,375	€29,150	€9,205

	Costs in Euro	Paid to	Description
Prizes
doc nr
1	150	Allan Jay A. Quesada	Prize for Allan Jay A. Quesada
2	150	Mohammad Bassam Suleiman AlFraheed	Prize for Mohammad Bassam Suleiman AlFraheed
11	1820	Globus travel	Travel costs winner first prize
6	1850	Lodewijk Gelauff	Amazon Vouchers winners
-	180	Chen Yichieh	Wikimania registration and per diem first prize	note 1
	€4,150	'total prizes
Calendars
doc nr
4	2354.67	Wikimedia Italia	printing 850 calendars
	€2,355	total calendars
Shipping & boxes calendars
doc nr
4	866.1	Wikimedia Italia	Shipping calendars
5	253.43	Wikimedia Italia	Shipping diploma's
	€1,120	total shipping
Thankyou & goodies
doc nr
3	959.13	Wikimedia Italia	Shipping moleskins
	€959	Total thankyou & goodies
Grant system
doc nr
9	178.7	Taweetham Limpanubarb	Costs WLM Thailand
8	318	Mario Melara	Costs WLM El Salvador	note 2
	€497	Total grant system
Meeting & Meeting travel			€0
Workshops		–	€0
Professional support			€0
Unforeseen
doc nr
7	126.07	Bastien Guerry	Costs hosting data base
	€126	total unforeseen
Grand total			€ 9,206

Note 1: The first prize was travel to and participation in Wikimania London to a total of €2,000. After travel costs (see above) €180 remain. Transferring them to the winner in Taiwan is not realistic. The remaining funds will be held by WMNL and used to cover costs of registration of the winner.

Note 2: An advance was paid of which on submission of invoices by the recipient $30 remains. Having these retransferred would be costly so we propose to waive them.

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)

€29,150

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

€29,150

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above)

€ 9,206

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

€ 8,306

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

"Guiddoo" entirely sponsored the WLM Asia as well as the WLM Arab contest. With a contribution of €900.

Remaining funds

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 20,844 EUR.

Are there any grant funds remaining?

Yes

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

€ 20,844

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

We intend to return the unused funds to WMF.

Acknowledgements

The international Wiki Loves Monuments team would like to thank Wikimedia Nederlands, and in particular staff members Sandra Rjenties, Tom Kisters and Denise Janses, for their continued support; Wikimedia Italia's secretaries Francesca Lissoni and Alessandra Gasparini for their help with shipping and printing calendars and the notebooks and to Alex Wang and Winifred Olliff for providing an extension to the deadline for the final report.