Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Supporting an Open Climate movement:Increasing the knowledge commons and collaborative communities of practice/Midpoint Report

Midterm Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-01-15T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Alliances Fund

Report type: Midterm

Application Final Learning Report

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General information

This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Alliances Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.

• Name of Organization: Open Environmental Data Inc
• Title of Proposal: Supporting an Open Climate movement: Increasing the knowledge commons and collaborative communities of practice
• Amount awarded: 40000 USD, 40000 USD
• Amount spent: 8179 USD

Part 1 Understanding your work

1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?

We weren’t asked to resubmit a revised proposal based on the amount that was allocated for the Open Climate award, but in brief, it is worth noting that we’ve stripped all components of the proposal and focused our efforts on the Open Climate Fellowship. Initially, we anticipated hosting 20 fellows in this cohort, but are focusing on 7-8, who will be decided upon this upcoming week.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?

We hired an Open Climate Coordinator, Andres Colmenares, in October. Andres has been working alongside the team to 1) design and coordinate outreach for the fellowship, 2) design the fellowship program, 3) support governance strategies for managing the fellowship and other Open Climate work. We’ve spent time being intentional about the process, which was incredibly important as we received an overwhelming response to the call for fellows with 261 people applying from all continents (except Antarctica). While we still are in the process of designing the fellowship, we are intent on building it around concepts that will be broadly beneficial to fellows, such as dissemination and partnership-building strategies. We thought this was an appropriate approach given the diversity of experiences and expertise that the fellows are projected to have.

3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?

The biggest challenge we’ve had is aligning what we’re looking for in fellows as we bring them into the fellowship cohort. We are interested in movement building and ensuring the fellows will continue post-cohort as stewards and leaders in the Open Climate space. The application of the open movement to climate action has vast potential so it was important for us to develop criteria that would help us to work through the candidate pool and come to a consensus on fellows. The process of working through “what is Open Climate” and other questions that helped us develop functional criteria has been more time intensive than originally anticipated, which has led to us going through the review and selection process for fellows in a more compressed period of time.

4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.

It was inspiring to see the types of applications that came in for Fellows and the different organizations that Fellows represent. We have clear coverage of potential fellows across open movement topics, geographics, and organizations (many who are using wiki tools) – from scientists to geospatial experts and science communication specialists. While we can only select a small number of fellows from the applications received, we are currently thinking through strategies for keeping people engaged even if they do not receive the fellowship. This includes activities such as community calls and workshops, an Open Climate virtual unconference, connecting applicants one on one with organizations that can support questions they have about their projects, and a convening where we build an Open Climate declaration and roadmap.

5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.

While we are still in the process of selecting our final cohort of fellows, we anticipate a broad representation of people and projects that, at their core, are focused on the communities that their work will benefit. We asked applicants to reflect on how their project responds to prompts from our recent “Open Climate Then and Now” article. Largely, fellows responded to the prompt about creating for the “smallest possible policymaker” indicating the necessity of creating with and for the communities they are a part of and interact with. This was a key question as we interviewed applicants – ensuring that their work was deeply grounded in relationships with the people who were involved in the proposal or would be on the receiving end of the outcomes of the project.

6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?

Since we haven’t started the fellowship yet, the main reflection on our learning questions is that we are interested in understanding how connections through a community of practice (in our case, the fellowship cohort) lead to long-term and sustained engagement in Open Climate. In our review of candidates, we’re working on mapping based on skills and interests to ensure that fellows are independently contributing an interesting project and focus but that the cohort also has points of connection both amongst the fellows and the Open Climate coordinating team and community.

7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?

We will be seating the fellows this upcoming week, and the fellowship program will begin the week of January 30th. This will be the focus of the second half of the award period. We will also be looking for opportunities to support other applications, build institutional partnerships based on applicant affiliations and begin planning for growing and expanding the Open Climate community, fellowship, and associated opportunities.

Part 2: Metrics

8a. Open and additional metrics data.

Open Metrics

Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
N/A	N/A	N/A	7	Number of fellows in the fellowship cohort. Based on the award amount we decided that 7-8 fellows would be a good target for the first cohort rather than the previously indicated 20.	General tracking of participants.
N/A	N/A	N/A	7	Core team of organizers which includes 6 coordinating team members at the recently hired Open Climate Coordinator.	General tracking of team members.
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Additional Metrics

Additional Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

8b. Additional core metrics data.

• Environmental and climate activists interviewed as part of the needs assessment: 20 new participants
• General audiences engaged in public activities: 250-500

• Speakers: 10
• Community coordinator: 1-2
• Supporting roles by OEDP: Communication and Content Development

Core Metrics Summary

Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants
300	7	From our application, it is unclear if we have additional main metrics besides the core metrics. We are copying them here and will note that while our fellowship cohort is small, there are 261 people who applied for this program that we're working on building a longer-term, sustained relationship with, many who are from the Wikimedia community.	General tracking through use of spreadsheets.
Number of editors
Number of organizers
18	7	Same as above, this is a copy of the above open metrics field on organizers. By the end of the fellowship we expect this number to rise as fellows and other community members launch projects and use wiki methods.	General tracking through use of spreadsheets.

Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project

Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?

No, we are still at the launch stage and haven’t yet reviewed the applicant data in its entirety or run the fellowship program which will provide data against our metrics.

10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Staff from the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedistas de Uruguay are part of the Open Climate group. They have been participating in the ideation process for the fellowship, the selection of fellows, and will engage in mentoring and learning with fellows. We have been able to understand better how the Wikimedia projects connect with the larger “open climate” intersection, and extend our outreach to Wikimedia volunteers thanks to their participation. In turn, they have benefitted from the different learnings that we are experiencing thanks to the fellowship process. This is particularly true for the staff member of Wikimedistas de Uruguay, who has learned a great deal also about selection processes as a result of our work. We expect to do a “Let's Connect” session and we will work with the two fellows from Wikimedia to identify other ways in which we could further share our experience of this grant.

11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.

• Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).

• Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.

Resource document: https://open-climate.org/

Story document: https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-4/open-climate-then-and-now/

Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance

12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

8179

13. Local currency type

USD

14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

• Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
• Provide links to your financial reporting documents.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZSjtKEq80G4HAr0cBKF2VVF7P_eP3L8-9sJrs4NitUo/edit?usp=sharing

15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?

Yes

15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.

We originally requested $100,000 and received $40,000, but have not been asked to provide new award documentation. We anticipate spending on the following activities with the new budget of: $17,500 Fellows, $16,000 Open Climate Coordinator, $1,332 for a fellows event fund, and $5,168 in administrative support.

16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.

The experience has been good. If there are other ways that you’d like us to engage with grantees or the Foundation staff, we are happy to do so, but we haven’t received requests to do this outside of a call shortly after the award period started.