Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2022/Final Report

Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 31 January 2023

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.

Name of Organization: Shared Knowledge
Title of Proposal: Shared Knowledge Annual Plan 2022
Amount awarded: 37052.48 USD, 32784 EUR
Amount spent: 2013879 MKD

Part 1 Understanding your work

1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

Shared Knowledge continues to increase the quantity and improve the quality of free content, mainly on Macedonian Wikipedia, through our editing challenges. We also aim to raise awareness of the Wikimedia movement using social media and organizing edit-a-thons, attracting new users to be introduced in the world of Wikipedia and sister projects.

Shared Knowledge continues to create ways to extend cooperation with other affiliated organizations, organizing a third photographic exhibition, this year dedicated to Japan. This exhibition has been done with the help of Japanese Wikipedians, who provide us images from Japan, and afterwards we contact the Japanese Embassy in Skopje, which they help a lot.

Our group, also, continues to extend cooperation with external institutions as part of our programme area Partnerships, where we successfully made contacts with numerous institutions and organizations.

Additionally, our group continues to document the country's natural and cultural heritage through our flagship expeditionary projects, where we aim to document specific, valuable and unique local knowledge and data for our country.

Shared Knowledge aims to raise awareness about knowledge in general, and we organized the first Wikidata workshop for our local editors, and other interested participants.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

Shared Knowledge practice to organize editing challenges, where we include editing days and editing weekends, throughout the year, proved to be effective in attracting editors to edit on different topics and areas of interest, apart from their primary interests. Editing days are organized every Tuesday and Thursday, so in total we have over 100 editing days, and over 50 editing weekends on different topics. These editing challenges help us to bridge the content gap on the Macedonian Wikipedia. With editing contests in duration of one month, we aim to have quality articles and on these activities we include prize funds, as editors make a commitment to edit in duration of one month, and they also edit longer articles, and many of them are featured articles afterwards.

In the area of support of our local community, we continue to have a programme for mini grants where interested volunteers can apply for such a kind grant of up to 50 euros. Although they can apply for different types of grants, interested participants mostly chose to take images from villages or cities. After community approval, participants can realize their proposal. Only after uploading images, they received the requested funds. In 2022, we have more than triple our projected metrics with this project.

Contacting organizations and institutions in our programme Partnerships proved to be working, as we realized successful activities with 35 different organizations/institutions, which helped us to realize our activities in the annual grant of 2022.

Local expeditionary projects continue with the same tempo and we proudly can say that we covered half of every village in the country, and in this way we continue to create local knowledge, using Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata projects.

Also, thanks to cooperation and knowledge of our users, we successfully have edited and created over 16,000 items on Wikidata, after receiving results of the long-awaited census in Macedonia, held in 2021.

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?

Wikiexperiments is a project by Shared Knowledge aimed at recording high-quality videos of systematically selected experiments for the purposes of illustrating important scientific concepts and phenomena in various sciences. This is an ongoing project that started in September 2015.

Editing challenges held by the community proved to have positive outcome on filling content gaps. Content gaps in many topics exist on all Wikipedias, so with editing challenges such as editing days, editing weekends, editing contests and cross-wiki collaborations (as CEE Spring), we aim to engage many users from a community involving them to contribute toa a specific topic of several topics in a specified period of time. With these challenges, we also prevent inactivity of some users, as they will have no idea on what to edit.

Expeditionary projects are on-site research activities carried out by our passionate editors and members of Shared Knowledge with the ultimate goal of creating or improving content on topics related to underrepresented regions. Thanks to this project we documented half of every village in the country, creating local content with creating good articles on Macedonian Wikipedia, uploading over 13,000 images on Wikimedia Commons and creating Wikidata items with precise geocoordinates, which enhanced coverage of objects with geo-tags from Macedonia.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

Communication between our affiliate and interested participants differ from the scope of the project, as well as from volume of the project.

Regarding our educational and science activities (as Wikiexperiments and WikiLectures), we mostly communicate firstly on personal level with teachers from high schools and university professors from universities in the country. Afterwards, communication with students has been done in collaboration with contacted teachers and professors.

For workshops (as Wikidata) and for edit-a-thons, we aim firstly to have collaboration with third parties (as NGOs or other expert organizations), and after that we combine efforts to have increased participation on the events.

About our projects WikiTranslate and WikiSketch, we contact students directly via phone and/or e-mail.

For our projects conducted on-wiki (editing challenges), our communication with participants has been done on Wikipedia, using mass messages, banner on top site, Village Pump, talk pages, etc.

For new members for our off-wiki projects as our expeditionary projects, we use personal invitation, explaining who we are, what we do, telling them what they can do.

Also, Shared Knowledge constantly uses social media and e-mail services to inform broader public and participants on every project that we have in the past, so they can be informed about our activities and in the same to decide, if they want to be part of that activity or not.

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://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/January_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/February_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/March_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/April_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/May_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/June_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/July_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/August_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/September_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/October_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/November_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/December_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/Impact_reports/Q1_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/Impact_reports/Q2_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/Impact_reports/Q3_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/Impact_reports/Q4_2022

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/General_report_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.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups	Agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Neither agree nor disagree
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?

With our current grant, Shared Knowledge tries to include more women in our projects, and we traditionally organize WikiGap initiative in a form of edit-a-thon, along with editing week after the edit-a-thon. Also, we always strive to have more members/participants and to organize activities across the country, i.e. to have geographically dispersion.

Additionally, Shared Knowledge through additional funding for Movement Strategy Implementation Grants starts a new project for Capacity development for underrepresented communities (CDUC), where we aim at reaching out to underrepresented communities in order to get them involved in the Wikimedia movement. It involves working with two types of underrepresented communities: 1) speakers of endangered minority languages and 2) users of sign languages. Of the first type, the project covers the Aromanian-speaking and Romani-speaking communities in Macedonia; and of the second type, it engages people with hearing loss in Macedonia who use the Macedonian Sign Language. The project runs in the period from 1 June 2022 to 31 January 2023 and consists of three phases. With this project we would like to promote Wikimedian projects to them and introduce Wikipedia to these communities.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

In our 2022 annual plan, we grade the total sub-programs of the three programs on a priority scale with high, medium or low priority.

In high level priority we mentioned expeditionary projects, Wikiexperiments (Science) and QRpedia (Partnerships), which we successfully finish with outstanding results.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

The unexpected was the non-implementation of two projects. Those are Cinematheque of Macedonia Project which should have consisted of a photoshoot and editing workshop, and from the Youth Cultural Center Skopje Project which should consisted of image takeover and editing workshop. They failed due to external factors i.e. withdrawing the collaboration of the mentioned institutions due to their busyness (as they claim to).

To an unexpected degree is the low medium coverage of our certain projects/activities. Before and during the start of some photo contests, we send draft texts to many major and minor, nationwide or local media such as TV channels sites, entertainment sites, and other types of internet media that could publish it. Often the reaction is quite low with about unfortunate 5-10% success rate.

The unexpected is, usually in photo and editing contests, when some new and sometimes recurring participants register to participate and they have a slow start and quit, or they give up before it started. Some people claim to be busy for their nonparticipation.

Before we visited the Nikola Nezlobinski Museum in Struga, we contacted their head office and the director of the Museum verbally agreed to and gave us permission to visit them. At the visit, suddenly they wanted a request paper for our visit, which we did not carry, hence it was not obliged to us by them from the start. It ended up with not making a photoshoot in the interior of the museum and its exhibits.

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?

The newly acquired knowledge and experience from 2022 should be implemented in the future same and similar projects in the upcoming years.

Every individual project should be presented with its highlights so they themselves could benefit if they participate. We should put an emphasis on the possible newly acquired skills that the individual could get, the certificate for participation he/she could receive for his/her contribution that could benefit him/her at some third party organizations who value the individual’s volunteerism. The partnered organizations should be told that our collaboration i.e. activity enriches their organization’s resume, indirect promotion and labeling their organization as a volunteer entity when it comes to the free content and informal education. We tell the academic staff that by demonstrating in videos of experiments or lectures, they ease their future lectures in their respective educational institution by default.

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)?

When it comes to explaining to other people, it can be said that the work is very dynamic. A lot of information could be learned via editing and exploring. That a lot of new people and contacts got met and the social skills can be upgraded. In many moments it feels like a recreational activity due to the interactiveness and pleasure of the work.

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.

N/A

Part 3: Metrics

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Uploaded photographs used in articles	The number of distinct photographs used in articles.	3622	2,184	N/A	Keeping an updated manual data recording divided in quarters and mid years.
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

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	The number of hours spent by volunteers to support the organisational work.	18497	13264	N/A	N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of participants	In this number, Shared Knowledge includes all of the participants, including organizers. Majority of these participants are in Community Programme (400 fo 709).	709	472	*305 were new participants 167 were returning participants	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, contributions).
Number of editors	In the numbers of editors, we include new and already active editors who undertakes participation in one of our projects along the whole period of the grant proposal for 2022.	509	182	*105 were new editors 77 were returning editors	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, alongside their contributions).
Number of organizers	In the number or organizers, Shared Knowledge includes people involvement into trainings, participants on expeditionary projects, people in juries after finishing of photographic contests, etc.	20	35	* 19 organizers in H1 18 organizers in H2 2 organizations had collaboration in the both halves of the year.	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, alongside their contributions).

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	Content generated on the Macedonian Wikipedia of all of our projects.	7547	3263	2,840 new articles, 346 improved articles, 57 new templates, 7 improved templated, 2 created modules, 11 images uploaded on the Macedonian Wikipedia.	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, alongside their contributions).
Wikidata	In this number, we include Wikidata items created during projects and editing challenges, along with Open Data Programm of Shared Knowledge, where we will work only on content in Wikidata.	27547	19156	15,777 improved items, 379 created items.	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, alongside their contributions).
Wikimedia Commons	Expected number of uploaded images on Wikimedia Commons.	5000	5826	N/A	Manual data keeping divided in quarters, mid years, whole years of the participants (total and new, alongside their contributions).
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.

The was no general difficulties of stat gathering.

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.

N/A

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
B. Conflict management or transformation	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values)	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 is low, and we should prioritise developing it
J. Governance	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 is low, and we should prioritise developing it
N. Accessing and using data	This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
O. Evaluating and learning from our work	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
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 by a Wikimedia Movement organizing group (i.e., Affiliates, Grantees, Regional or Thematic Hub, etc.), Formal training provided from outside the Wikimedia Movement, Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of awareness of capacity building needs, Lack of knowledge of available capacity building opportunities, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

Our capacity has grown with the addition of two new 2022 members (Dragana Niseva and Teodora Veljanoska) who were part at one of our community project. They offered to volunteer and to create a Wiki Club within our structure and promoted among the high schoolers. When it comes to organizations and institutions, the Slovenian Center Skopje NGO (made and edit-a-thon), Youth Council Next Generation NGO (made a mini workshop within the WikiSketch Lessons project) and the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, Skopje (made a filming session within Wikiexperiments) will continue to collaborate and cooperate in 2023.

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame)	Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups	Neither agree nor disagree
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, Board members’ outreach, Staff hired through the fund

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Local policies or other legal factors, Lack of interest from partners

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Four institutes collaborated at editing and video collaborations; The Macedonian National Theater and six basketball club at making photo sessions; Museum of Štip - consultations with the museum; 15 institutions and organizations collaborated in making of workshops; KK Naviko Akademija FMP collaborated by providing their photo archive; Skopje City Mall, East Gate Mall, CDI Macedonia, Europe House, Sveti Nikole Municipality gave us space for workshops; Loging Electronics and Production Laboratory (FabLab) of FEIT organized a event and they invited us to speak; Skopje Zoo - human resource assistance for the installation of the QR-code plaques in their zoo;

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration

21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

Our organisation has been active in enriching and promoting the Wikimedia projects for nine years, which is a sufficient period of time to develop a strong sense of belonging to the Wikimedia movement. During the years, we have worked on a wide variety of projects and extended collaborations with many communities and organisations in the movement as well as external partners. Some of our long-term projects, such as Wikiexpeditions and Wikiexperiments, have become a landmark of our organisational identity, whereas the novelties in our annual plan every year nurture the feel of belonging and strengthen our place as an important factor 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?

Increased significantly

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

Our sense of belonging increases with the successful implementation of our projects and activities every year as well as our efforts to innovate in free knowledge and share our experiences.

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Increased significantly

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

The programmes that our organisation works on become more complex over time and require investment of more volunteer time and efforts. Given that the volunteer work is invaluable, the sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia movement increases with every additional volunteer hour and effort.

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.

Our projects and activities in the past have been directed towards bridging the gender gap and filling content gaps on topics that can be closely associated with many other movements, yet those have never played any central role in our motivation to contribute to the Wikimedia movement.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration

We 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?

Hence our work is transparent, all our activities are available on our monthly, quarterly and annual activity reports. The other Wikimedians (so as other people outside of Wikimedia) could find the reports, examine them so they can implement whole projects, parts of the projects, or it can give them an idea for a similar project. They could see our approach and systematics of work.

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

We do this occasionally (less than once a month)

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

Our head members of SK are always part of the Wikimedia conferences where they share the current activities and experience. Also our knowledge and activity is shared via our online reports.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance

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

2013879

31. Local currency type

MKD

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.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Shared_Knowledge/Financial_report_2022

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.

The budget report is complete.

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.