Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wiki Education Foundation Annual Plan Grant, 2024–2026
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Applicant information edit
- Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)
- Wiki Education Foundation
- Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)
- Yes, I have already applied and received a General Support Fund
- You are applying as a(n). (required)
- Nonprofit organization with Wikimedia mission
- Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)
- Yes
- Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
- Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Main proposal edit
- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)
- Wiki Education Foundation Annual Plan Grant, 2024–2026
- 2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year funding or renewal process? (required)
- Yes, multi-year funding with similar program, budget, and structure every year (strategic plan can be provided but is not required)
- 2.1. For how many years of multi-year funding are you applying? (required)
- 3 years
- 2.2. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)
We expect to continue running our same programmatic activities in Year 2 and Year 3 of our grant; as we scale up the impact of our programs, we expect to see increases in the metrics of our impact. However, we do not expect to see significant differences in how we run either program. Both the Wikipedia Student Program and the Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program have been running for many years, and we expect to continue them. Our strategic plan calls for the launch of a new program (the Wikidata Student Program), but we expect that to be funded by an external funder, not the Wikimedia Foundation.
We also expect to continue our same advancement work. Our Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program will continue to operate as a fee-for-service model, where we sell courses. We’ll also continue our fundraising work, with a focus on applying for institutional grants in support of our core work, including the Wikipedia Student Program and a new Wikidata Student Program.
In 2025 and 2026, our technology work will focus on stability. The architecture of the Dashboard currently depends on importing all revisions made by program participants, saving them in the Dashboard's database along with extensive metadata such ORES/Lift Wing features. Since the addition of Wikidata-specific statistics in 2022, Programs & Events Dashboard has been used heavily by high-volume Wikidata projects, and the total database size has been growing at an unsustainable rate. (As of September 2023, the database is 314 GB, 97% of which is revision data.) We plan to re-architect the statistics generation process to create and save aggregate statistics for revisions for discrete time periods, so that we can incrementally update the statistics as an event progresses without needing to permanently store records for each revision. With such a change, database storage capacity will no longer be a long-term concern for keeping Programs & Events Dashboard up and running.
- 3. Proposed start date. (required)
- 2024-01-01
- 4. Proposed end date. (required)
- 2026-12-31
- 5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
- Yes
- https://wikiedu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Annual-Plan-2023%E2%80%9324.pdf
- 6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
- Yes
- We have a plan that is scheduled to be approved in our October 2023 board meeting. We’re happy to share a draft via email prior to then, and can add the link after it’s approved and uploaded to our website.
- 7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
- International (more than one country across continents or regions)
- United States & Canada for programs; international for Programs & Events Dashboard
- 8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
Wikipedia Student Program edit
In our flagship program, we empower college and university faculty at diverse institutions in the United States and Canada to assign their students to edit Wikipedia as a class assignment. Through this program, we routinely support more than 700 courses assigning Wikipedia editing each year, and the scale at which we’re doing it means we bring 19% of all the new active editors to the English Wikipedia. Through the Wikipedia Student Program, we achieve key outcomes directly tied to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy initiatives:
- Build capacity to improve high-impact content in underrepresented communities: A key facet of our work in this program area is bringing in student editors from underrepresented communities. We work closely to recruit instructors from diverse institutions in the higher education landscape in the U.S. and Canada, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges & Universities (TCUs), and other institutions with majority non-white student populations. Additionally, we work with instructors who teach in content areas (such as gender studies) that are traditionally underdeveloped on English Wikipedia. Our outreach is already helping address key gaps in the existing editing community, as identified in the Community Insights 2023 Report:
- While only 1.1% of U.S. editors identify as black or African-American, in contrast to 11.6% of the U.S. population, 11.8% of Wiki Education’s student editors identified as such
- While only 3.6% of U.S. editors identify as Hispanic or Latino/a/x, in contrast to 19% of the U.S. population, 15% of Wiki Education’s student editors identified as such
- While the gender estimates of the editing community show 13% female, 4% gender diverse, and 80% male, Wiki Education's student editors are 57% female, 5% gender diverse, and only 38% male.
- In 2024, we will continue focusing our outreach for this initiative on diverse institutions and in diverse content areas.
- Resources for newcomers: We have created extensive training modules, handouts, and other support materials to help onboard our 12,000+ new editors every year. But these resources need constant maintenance (every time the interface on Wikipedia changes, we need to re-record videos, for example), so part of our ongoing work is to keep these updated. We also request and monitor feedback from program participants as they use these resources, making sure we’re addressing peoples’ needs. We’ve also made these available for the global community to use on the Programs & Events Dashboard and on Commons. In 2024, we will continue to create and adapt resources to support our new student editors.
- Global approach for local skill development: We have prioritized participating in peer mentorship circles, including serving on the Wiki Movimento Brasil Steering Committee for their educational MOOC, serving as a mentor to a program leader in Nigeria through the Wikipedia & Education User Group’s Mentorship Program, and providing mentorship conversations about how to scale programs to Wikimedia Morocco upon their request. In 2024, we will continue engaging with the global community of program leaders to encourage scaling of education program work.
Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program edit
We run courses teaching subject matter experts how to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikidata. Many of these courses are focused on equity issues, such as biographies of historically marginalized populations. As a fee-for-service model, this program also diversifies our revenue streams. Through the Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program, we achieve key outcomes directly tied to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy initiatives:
- Bridge gaps in high-impact content: As a focus area of this program, we target bringing in subject matter experts (including many at GLAM institutions) and train them on how to improve Wikipedia and Wikidata content. In 2024, we expect to spend significant effort working on English Wikipedia content related to democracy, in advance of the United States presidential election in 2024 (this work has been funded through an existing grant). We also have grants to work on topics related to health care, disability, and biographies of underrepresented scientists through this program, all of which are high impact content areas.
- Identifying policies that hinder knowledge equity: Wiki Education’s Ian Ramjohn recently published a book chapter, Decolonizing Wikipedia, that addresses the structural challenges that hinder knowledge equity on Wikipedia. In 2024, we plan to continue working with historically marginalized communities to empower them, to the fullest extent possible, to contribute content to Wikipedia by working through these policies. This 1:1 support work between Wiki Education staff — who have deep expertise in Wikipedia policies — and diverse new editors has been critical to our success in the past.
- Revenue generation for the movement: We sell many of these courses in a fee-for-service model, generating earned income for our organization, which is directly in line with this initiative. We expect to continue to do so in 2024.
Technology edit
We support the most widely-used tool for program leaders in the Wikimedia movement (including many in emerging communities) to track and report on the impacts of their work, the Programs & Events Dashboard. In 2024, the focus of our technical work will be launching a new Visualizing Impact tool. Through our technical work, we achieve key outcomes directly tied to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy initiatives:
- Identify the impact of Wikimedia projects & content: In 2024, we will launch a new visualizing impact tool, which will enable us to define and quantify coverage for an arbitrary topic area, and create visualizations to show how much of that coverage came from specific content campaigns (including, but not limited to, Wiki Education’s own programs). We will be able to use these visualizations to tell the story of how much difference it makes to fund and execute a Wikipedia content campaign in a particular topic area. (Note: This project has been separately funded through a restricted grant.)
- Communication and collaboration with partners: Our robust program to work with various technical interns has enabled us to develop key new features for the Programs & Events Dashboard, all while enabling new technical contributors to learn from our mentorship. In 2024, we will continue supporting technical interns who will work to improve the Programs & Events Dashboard.
- Create a culture of documentation: Wiki Education has been a leader in documentation, publishing monthly reports on Meta outlining our activities, writing regular blog posts, and writing detailed evaluation reports that we publish on Meta. We also regularly participate in Wikimedia events like Wikimania, WikiConference North America, Wikidata Con, and the EduWiki Conference to share our learnings. In 2024, we seek to increase the amount of documentation available about how to use the Programs & Events Dashboard, a key request from community members who use the tool.
Others edit
As we enact these programmatic initiatives, we take the theme of the recommendation “evaluate, iterate, adapt” to heart, making sure we are constantly evaluating our work, iterating on what we’re doing, and adapting our strategy to be certain we’re accomplishing our goals. While our work has remained fairly consistent throughout the last several years — and we anticipate it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future — there are always opportunities to learn and grow, and we remain organizationally committed to evaluating our own work and iterating as needed.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge for the sake of transparency that we are also in conversations with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Education Team and the Wikipedia & Education User Group around the potential of an Education Thematic Hub. Wiki Education has led a research project to identify the needs of the global education community (funded through a Movement Strategy Implementation Grant), and we are evaluating the possibility of serving as a Hub Host for the Education Hub. If we do pursue this direction, however, we expect funding to come from the Movement Strategy Implementation Grant program, not the General Support Fund, since this work would be tangential to Wiki Education’s own programmatic initiatives.
- 9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)
| Category | Yes/No |
|---|---|
| Education | Yes |
| Culture, heritage or GLAM | Yes |
| Gender and diversity | Yes |
| Community support and engagement | No |
| Participation in campaigns and contests | No |
| Public policy advocacy | No |
| Other | No |
Education
- 9.1.1. Select all your programs and activities for Education. (required)
- Editing Wikipedia Training, Wikidata programs
- Other programs and activities if any: N/A
- 9.1.2. Select all relevant audience groups for Education. (required)
- Vocational, tertiary, or higher education, Teachers or professors
- Other groups if any: N/A
Culture, heritage or GLAM
- 9.2. Select all your programs and activities for Culture, heritage or GLAM. (required)
- Supporting institutions to open up their collections, data, metadata, and research, Supporting GLAM professionals to incorporate use of Wikimedia in their work, through documentation, training, or Wikimedian in Residence programs
- Other programs and activities if any: N/A
Gender and diversity
- 9.3. Select all your programs and activities for Gender and diversity.
- Bringing in women and/or gender diverse participants and editors, Focusing on creating content about women and/or gender diverse groups, including biographies, intersectional topic areas and/or adding images, Focusing on creating content about marginalized (underrepresented) communities and their knowledge, Focusing on knowledge equity by bringing in contributors from underrepresented communities
- Other programs and activities if any: N/A
- 10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)
- CONSTANTLY ONGOING:
- Recruitment for Wikipedia Student Program (regular webinars on teaching with Wikipedia, communications work, asking existing instructors to recruit colleagues, etc.)
- Recruitment for Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program (outreach to expert communities, partnership development, communications work, etc.)
- Running Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program (supporting participants as they learn to edit Wikipedia and Wikidata); while courses run throughout the year, the month of December is traditionally slower due to holidays
- Maintaining the Programs & Events Dashboard (bug fixes, quarterly office hours, supporting technical interns who are working on Dashboard fixes)
- Engaging in the four primary stages of the gift cycle to be awarded grants from corporations and private foundations to support Wiki Education's Communicating Science and Knowledge Equity initiatives in the Wikipedia Student Program:
- Discovery: Identifying fundraising prospects through research and referrals that have alignment with our initiatives
- Cultivation: Securing phone calls and meetings with these prospects to solidify the project concept
- Solicitation: Drafting and submitting letters of inquiry and grant proposals for the project
- Stewardship: Recognizing funders' generosity with thank-you notes, grants announcements, mid-year and final grant reports that detail the impact of grant, and more
CYCLICAL WORK (WIKIPEDIA STUDENT PROGRAM):
- January-February: Students in spring term create accounts, make their first minor edits.
- March-June: Busy part of the spring term for editing; significant amount of content gets added to Wikipedia.
- July-August: A smaller number of summer term courses in progress; staff focus is on updating resources and onboarding courses for the fall term.
- September: Students in the fall term create accounts, make their first minor edits.
- October-December: Busy part of the fall term for editing; significant amount of content gets added to Wikipedia. Staff also onboard courses for the spring term.
- 11. Describe your team. (required)
Additional information about our team can be found on our website: https://wikiedu.org/about-us/
- Frank Schulenburg, Executive Director (salaried, full-time staff)
- LiAnna Davis, Chief Programs Officer; Deputy Director (salaried, full-time staff)
- Sage Ross, Chief Technology Officer (salaried, full-time staff)
- Helaine Blumenthal, Senior Program Manager, Wikipedia Student Program (salaried, full-time staff)
- Kathleen Crowley, Director of Donor Relations (salaried, full-time staff)
- Brianda Felix, Wikipedia Expert (salaried, full-time staff)
- Melissa Joseph, Scholars & Scientists Outreach Coordinator (hourly, part-time staff on grant-funded 12-month contract)
- Will Kent, Wikidata Program Manager (salaried, full-time staff)
- Jami Mathewson, Director of Partnerships (salaried, full-time staff)
- Megan Newsome, Data Scientist (salaried, full-time staff on grant-funded 12-month contract)
- Ian Ramjohn, Senior Wikipedia Expert (salaried, full-time staff)
- Andrés Vera, Equity Outreach Coordinator (salaried, part-time staff)
We have one open hourly, part-time position:
- Communications Associate, responsible for publishing blog posts and social media.
- 12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)
We have an extensive list of current partners, and we will actively be recruiting additional partners during the grant term. Our partners tend to be academic associations whose members make excellent participants in our programs. Some examples of partnerships we expect to continue into 2024 include:
- American Physical Society: As of writing this proposal, the American Physical Society (APS) has sponsored six Wikipedia and one Wikidata course through our Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program over the last several years. About half of the courses have focused on adding biographies of diverse people in physics; the other half have focused on improving Wikipedia and Wikidata’s coverage of physics topics, including one course focused on the intersection of climate change and physics.
- Midwest Political Science Association: As part of our ongoing efforts to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of democracy ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, we are running a series of Wiki Scholars & Scientists courses with the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), whose members are political scientists. MPSA also plays an active role in encouraging their members who teach at higher education institutions to participate in our Wikipedia Student Program.
- Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities: We’ve recently begun collaborating with the Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities (HACU), whose members include Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the United States. As part of Wiki Education’s commitment to bringing more Hispanic and Latino/a/x student editors to Wikipedia, we’re exploring ways to create deeper alignment between our two organizations.
- 13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required)
- Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Manage Internal Knowledge, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt
Metrics edit
Wikimedia Metrics edit
- 14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)
- 14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.
All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.
| Metrics name | Target | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 13500 | Number of editors in Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program, plus instructors in the Student Program, in 2024 |
| Number of all editors | 13000 | N/A |
| Number of new editors | 12500 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | |
| Number of all organizers | N/A | N/A |
| Number of new organizers | N/A |
- 14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)
| Wikimedia project | Created | Edited or improved |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 15000 | |
| Wikimedia Commons | ||
| Wikidata | 5000 | |
| Wiktionary | ||
| Wikisource | ||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||
| Translatewiki | ||
| MediaWiki | ||
| Wikiquote | ||
| Wikivoyage | ||
| Wikibooks | ||
| Wikiversity | ||
| Wikinews | ||
| Wikispecies | ||
| Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia |
- Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)
Other Metrics edit
- 15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)
- Yes
| Other Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Words Added | Words added to Wikipedia | 11000000 |
| Instructor retention | Percentage of high-quality instructors who teach with Wikipedia again | 80 |
| Diverse new instructors | New instructors from HBCUs, HSIs, and/or TCUs joining our Student Program | 50 |
| Equity courses | New equity-related courses participating in the Student Program | 75 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
Budget edit
- 16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)
- Yes
- 16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)
We have an existing agreement with the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, from which we expect to receive $113,500 in 2024. We also have grants from the Guru Krupa Foundation, the WITH Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, among others, that stretch into 2024. We have also been fortunate to receive funding in the most recent grant term from the Hewlett Foundation, the Broadcom Foundation, and the Nielsen Foundation, and we hope all of these institutions — and the institutions whose work carries into 2024 from current grants — will renew their funding of our work in 2024 and beyond. We also expect to pursue funding from new organizations throughout the year. The number in question 16.2 represents just our expected revenue from non-Wikimedia sources in Year 1.
- 16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)
- 1776500
- 17. Your local currency. (required)
- USD
- 18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)
- 1891500 USD
| Year | Amount (local currency) |
|---|---|
| Year 1 | 600000 USD |
| Year 2 | 630000 USD |
| Year 3 | 661500 USD |
- 19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required)
- Yes
- 19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)
Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.
- 10
- 19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)
Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.
- approximately 4.2
- 19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)
- N/A
- 20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).
| Budget category | Amount in local currency |
|---|---|
| Staff and contactor costs | 490000 USD |
| Operational costs | 90000 USD |
| Programmatic costs | 20000 USD |
- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QffPeMLa74-gwoAv2V1hNXTYpTd-5WLvmrs_mBRqEtA/edit?usp=sharing
Additional information edit
- 22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)
We expect that our General Support Fund grant, as in the past, will be unrestricted. We’ve provided general estimates here, but given that the grant is unrestricted, we will move the funding around among salaries of 10 different staff, based on which other grants we are able to secure. Almost all of our staff have percentages of their salaries covered by several different restricted grants, and we deeply appreciate and value the flexibility of the Wikimedia unrestricted grant, which enables us to fill the gaps as they emerge based on other funding sources. We've also budgeted 5% increases each year of the three-year request in order to account for inflation and other cost increases.
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Feedback edit
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.