Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Art+Feminism 2022/Final Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 06 February 2023
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Final
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General information
editThis form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.
- Name of Organization: Art+Feminism
- Title of Proposal: Art+Feminism 2022
- Amount awarded: 335275 USD, 335275 USD
- Amount spent: 335275 USD
Part 1 Understanding your work
edit1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
As we reflect on 2022, we have a lot to celebrate! We were named Wikimedian of the Year as an affiliate spotlight, we released our Anti-Racism Policy and Equity Statement, and we added 3 new art commissions to Wikimedia Commons just to name a few things.
We hired a new full-time staff position (Administrative Associate) and brought on 2 new lead co-organizers. These are direct actions from our Strategic Roadmap that surfaced the need for more staff support to continue as an organization with compassion and without burnout.
The annual campaign celebrated over 1500 participants at 120 events hosted in 27 different languages. The leadership team urged event organizers to center community care within the context of COVID-19. Encouraging organizers to organize virtually as a way to minimize risks for those who are most vulnerable, resulted in most events happening entirely virtually or with hybrid components.
Campaign highlights include: Events all year round: Since 2019, Art+Feminism’s do-it-yourself spirit has been bolstered by help from our microfunds and support from our regional ambassadors. This has allowed events to be organized any time during the year.
Beyond the edit-a-thon: Our communities included activities, such as talks, workshops, fanzines, and artistic public interventions. The topics included inclusive language, digital activism, the right to access information, and specific artistic production.
Focus beyond the arts: Our campaign now transcends the arts and includes fields such as architecture, engineering, politics, leadership and governance, technology, education and sports. Making Connections: More communities are organizing transregional events at interconnected venues, with presence in virtual components.
Other wikiprojects: We are seeing more organizers exploring projects such as Wikidata and WikiQuote. It’s also very common that Art+Feminism events are starting points for the creation of content in new language versions of Wikipedia.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
In Q1 2022, with the additional support of Ford Foundation funding to WMF funding, we consulted with experienced human resources firms along with our anti-oppression consultant to develop our first anti-racist hiring process. We were able to implement that process with a job announcement in June 2022 and it made it possible to onboard our third full-time staff member, an administrative associate, in September 2022.
And whereas not perfect, we did receive anecdotal feedback through the process that indicates we’re moving in the right direction. Direct feedback from Work For Good, one of the places we posted the position included, “We spend a lot of time helping employers understand the importance in salary/benefit transparency and your posting is just absolutely spot on in the information jobseekers are looking for. Thank you for posting with us!”
Further in first round interviews, a candidate shared with the hiring committee that they felt they could be their true self without code switching.
A hiring committee member noted on the final feedback form: “It was hard to choose among the candidates since most of them have a lot of experience and nice backgrounds but working with A+F leaders has helped me to be more critical, but less judgmental. I was also grateful that those little efforts to help the organization would mean a lot for its development.”
3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?
Anti Racist approach and policy is an innovación inside the Wikimedia movement. This anti-racism policy is an important [first] step in bringing Art+Feminism into compliance with the mission, vision, and values by recognizing that race, gender, and other forms of identity oppression are tied together and cannot be tackled as distinct issues.
The purpose of this policy is to establish standards and procedures to address, repair and prevent racial harm within the Art+Feminism community. We recognize that this is emergent work and we commit to holding ourselves, the Art+Feminism community, accountable to this policy and to set a cultural shift within the organization.
In order to do the work to create this policy, we put an organizational pause on all regularly scheduled programmatic activities to prioritize creating internal anti-oppression policies and mechanisms. This, in a way, became our programming.
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
In 2022 we utilized a variety of methods to inform different communities about our work and to invite them to participate. While our communications strategy has narrowed over the past few years, we have maintained a commitment to highlighting our activities and sharing information on how to participate in Art+Feminism via our mailing lists, our social media pages, and our telegram and slack channels
In addition to these public communications, we have also hosted Community Hours and Community Support Sessions. The former has been an opportunity for us to create space for ongoing and peer learning while the latter has been an opportunity to create space for community members to connect directly with each other.
Beyond the spaces we’ve created, in 2022, we also participated in the Wikimedia Summit, Wikimania, and other Wikimedia events. In March 2022, Kira Wisniewski, Executive Director presented to the WMF Board of Directors in New York City at the New Museum about the work of the organization. At Wikimania, Art+Feminism community members presented three sessions including: “Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub Status and preliminary research results by Sadik Shahadu, West African Indigenous Language Coordinator, “Hatch-A-Wiki Project of the Wiki Advocates Philippines” by Anthony Diaz, Network Organizer, and “Centering Race and Equity at Art+Feminism” by Kira Wisniewski, Executive Director. At The Wikimedia Summit, Art+Feminism’s Executive Director co-facilitated the pre-conference ED Meeting, which brought together Executive Directors of Wikimedia Affiliates from all over the world in the first in-person meeting in over three years.
In addition to these discrete activities, our regional leaders often take the lead in conducting outreach to mission-aligned editors and organizations within their geographic and build relationships, create events, and generally spread awareness of Art+Feminism and Wikimedia.
5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
https://artandfeminism.org/artfeminism-in-the-philippines/ https://artandfeminism.org/what-is-happening-around-artfeminisms-west-african-indigenous-language-community-program/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ArtAndFeminism_2022
6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Strongly agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Strongly agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Agree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Strongly agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. | Agree |
7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?
Whereas Art+Feminism may have started with a focus on gender, particularly women, we believe A+F is an organization that is part of a broader movement focused on underrepresented voices (not only women, but all groups that have been historically and systematically written out of history). This focus has allowed A+F not only to work within the Wikimedia esphera, but also offline, where much of our work happens as well.
Our work consists of a diversified range of activities, all of them related to building a community of volunteers and interested people that want to help re-writing history. All the activities we develop are focused on discussing and learning about diversity, inclusion and equality with and from this global community.
Part 2: Your main learning
edit8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?
Building the infrastructure to sustain and nurture our community in an equitable and ethical way is ongoing work. In 2022, some examples of the infrastructure we created include our anti-racist hiring process and improving our process for staff evaluation and organizational reflection.
Establishing pathways and support for new leadership: Over the years, our regional leaders have progressed through the organization and taken on other leadership roles but we’ve also lost support in some regions due to burnout, etc.. In 2022, as part of our regional ambassador program, we began having more deliberate conversations about other opportunities for regional ambassadors and about mentoring event organizers who may make for effective regional leaders.
Optimizing our regional ambassador program: Creating individual plans at the onset of each campaign year has been a good practice for us to engage regional leaders. These plans have proven to be of mutual benefit by fulfilling organizational needs and keeping these team members engaged.
Increasing our administrative capacity: In September 2022 we began the onboarding process of our new staff member. In reflecting on what we’ve been able to accomplish in the past four months, it’s become more clear how far we were stretching ourselves to maintain administrative responsibilities with only two full-time staff members.
Board Recruitment & Communications Strategy We were only able to begin focusing on these two areas at the end of 2022.
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
We received a tremendous response for the position of Administrative Associate with over 300 candidates. With the procross and rubric we created, this took an enormous amount of staff time to review and organize all 300+ applicants for the hiring committee to consider along with the administrative work to coordinate interviews and communications with all the candidates. For June, July, and August this became the primary focus for staff as other projects had to be deprioritized due to bandwidth.
10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?
In debriefing our hiring process, we documented the following as successes as well as paths forward for us to adapt our experience in future hiring processes:
Successes:
- Having the whole committee participate in the same training together helped have people work from the “same page” (Be aware of bias, etc)
- Sharing the interview question bank in advance
- Creating a rubric and interview protocol, including an opening question
- Having 2-3 people per interview was successful (not overwhelming amount of people)
Considerations/adjustments for future
- Clarifying what the role actually does/what we are looking for (talk through the job description) to make sure there is understanding/alignment of the committee from the beginning (ie we said entry level; but we were skewing to more experience)
- Consider different levels of input from different levels of stakeholders
Consider external administrative support - tools side, ie setting up airtable to be able to use the rubric
- How do we create these strategies internally? 1) Not rely so heavily on our external consultant; 2) Trusting ourselves on what we’ve learned to help move us forward
11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?
An unintended ROI from the hiring process was that we are currently working with all three of our top candidates for the Administrative Associate position. By going through such an intentional hiring process, we were able to get to know all three candidates and not only did we have values alignment, but the two candidates that are not currently on staff, had skill sets, outside of the Administrative Associate role description, that could help augment the work and goals of the organization.
12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- Anti-racism policy, https://artandfeminism.org/about/anti-racism-policy/
Equity statement, https://artandfeminism.org/about/artfeminism-equity-statement/ Community care statement, https://artandfeminism.org/about/communitycare/ Covid 19 precautions, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GnYy3rCF6l_opIZaahMKxLM-7pNo-FvwIZSm-C5Botk/edit Funding guide, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_0A47EiwyYQLlGpBq5OBYbtHsaGKtT1E0rKuMwzs9pE/edit
Part 3: Metrics
edit13a. Open and additional metrics data
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | (continuation of response for 27a.)
In tandem, we’re conscious that we’re still in a global pandemic and do not wish to add additional pressure to our organizers to have a certain number of events, attendees, or articles to help us demonstrate metrics. We’re celebrating the fact that they’re organizing and find any contribution worth celebration and praise. |
N/A | 12 | N/A | worksheets (goals were set at the start of the campaign and notes were taken throughout the campaign year) and meetings. |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 14 | 14 event organizers that have received microfunding have completed the post-event survey. An organizer in Tamale, Ghana noted, “It is a great challenge and a pleasure working to bring ones language on the limelight through wikipedia and its sister projects. Translating technical terms from English to Moore is quite challenging but with determination and dedication to duty, one can make the impossible possible. “ | airtable form, with mostly optional questions |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 1 | We’ve held one community support session so far this year. To encourage participation, we do not record these sessions and delete the automated transcripts produced via Otter.ai (the tool we use for captioning) at the conclusion of these sessions. This session in particular had a range of experienced Art+Feminism organizers from some who’s first time it was organizing, to others who have been organizers for years. All participants were curious and generous, creating a robust conference. We’ve heard that many of them continued their conversations after the session. | anecdotal |
| 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 | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | 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 |
13b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 1600 | This does not include attendees to programming like panels, meetups, or community hours sessions. | Programs & Events Dashboard | ||
| Number of editors | 1600 | Programs & Events Dashboard | |||
| Number of organizers | 202 | Programs & Events Dashboard |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 20822 | references added on Wikipedia | Programs & Events Dashboard |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 27 | languages Wikipedia and wikidata | Programs & Events Dashboard |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 6020 | added to wikimedia commons | Programs & Events Dashboard |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
No
15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.
N/A
16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships
edit17. Organizational Capacity
| A. Financial capacity and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| B. Conflict management or transformation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| D. Partnership building | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| E. Strategic planning | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| F. Program design, implementation, and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| J. Governance | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| K. Communications, marketing, and social media | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| M. On-wiki technical skills | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| N. Accessing and using data | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| O. Evaluating and learning from our work | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| N/A | |
| N/A |
17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Formal training provided from outside the Wikimedia Movement, Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces)
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of training that fits contextual needs and interests
18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?
In alignment with our strategic roadmap, hiring the administrative associate position has had a positive effect on our organization capacity. Our work was not sustainable with only two staff members. This new hire is not intended for us to “do more” but to rather help have a more humane workload. We are already seeing the results of this after just one quarter.
Where we still require support is around communications and marketing. Also outlined in our strategic roadmap, this is the next area for hiring. At the end of this grant period we were able to bring on a communications consultant and a social media consultant, each working a few hours a month. With the size of our organization, this is a growth area for us that could benefit from someone(s) working in a bigger capacity
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
| A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | Agree |
| B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Permanent staff outreach, Volunteers from our communities
19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Lack of staff to conduct outreach to new strategic partners
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
From 2014 through 2019, Art+Feminism experienced exponential growth, with new participants joining through word-of-mouth, press coverage, and our partnerships with large institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The pandemic had a devastating impact on our community. Participation in our campaign decreased but the slowdown also created an opportunity for us to make internal adjustments. We shifted administrative responsibilities away from our co-lead organizers to solely on staff and invested more in supporting our regional leaders. In 2022, the third year of the pandemic, with our anti-racism policy and equity statement in place, we felt more stable and equipped to continue the work of our mission and build new partnerships with aligned organizations.
Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration
edit21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?
An area that Art+Feminism has been more intentional putting resources into is translation and interpretation and would like to see that intention more movement wide. For instance, at the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin this past September from many conversations with various colleagues, it was clear that not having any interpretation on-site or online was a huge oversight of the convening and regrettably inhibited many attendees from fully participating.
Another way that could increase our sense of belonging is to have a better understanding of what is happening in the larger Wikiverse and when. We’ve heard that there has been some discussion at the foundation level to create a general calendar for various WMF initiatives and priorities, and we greatly encourage this effort. A resource like this could help our team better plan our involvement in the movement.
22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Somewhat increased
23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
Being able to attend and participate in the Wikimedia Summit was a great way to feel part of the bigger movement and being recognized at Wikimania was validating for our work.
24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Somewhat increased
25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
N/A
26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.
N/A
Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration
editWe are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.
27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
Yes
27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?
Our Community Hours are public sessions open to anyone, but designed centering the Art+Feminism community as a space for peer learning. Topics include things like event organizing and applying for funding. For all Community Hours presented in English, we do our best to fill interpretation requests received in advance. Community Hours have also been presented in non-English languages as well, to help better accommodate our global community.
28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?
We do this regularly (at least once a month)
29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?
We are co-organizers of a monthly meeting with WhoseKnowledge, Black Lunch Table, and AFROCrowd. These meetings have been an opportunity for us as WMF grantees with similar missions, to share organizational updates, reflect on our participation in various WMF activities, and strategize in collective ways. Our executive director also attends regular Executive Director Group Meetings.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance
edit30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
335275
31. Local currency type
USD
32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.
All funds for 2022 have been allocated for. We submitted a request for funds to rollover in December 2022 for the following: $8,071.82 - pay period ending 12/30/22, to be paid first week of January 2023.
$15,000 - Year End Financials for 2022 with our accounting firm Lutz and Carr, this work will begin once the fiscal/calendar year is over and will be completed in Q1
$5,500 - Research funds for Wikimedia Commons project; this project has started; but has experienced some delays. We are requesting to dispense funds when the project is completed; we hope it will be by Q2
$1,000 - Arabic web translations; this project has also started, but also has experienced unforeseen delays, like the research project, we are requesting to disperse funds when the project is complete, which we hope will be in Q1
34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.
We’ve heard in conversation with various people at WMF that these grant applications and reports are going to be easier moving forward. From a capacity standpoint, this is a move that we fully support.