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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki Loves Monuments 2022-23 International Coordination and Prizes/Final Report

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Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-08-31T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

Application Midpoint Learning Report

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General information edit

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results. See the midpoint report if you want to review the midpoint results.

  • Name of Organization: Wiki Loves Monuments International Organizing Team
  • Title of Proposal: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022-23 International Coordination and Prizes
  • Amount awarded: 66723.2 USD, 61500 EUR
  • Amount spent: 51488.96 EUR

Part 1 Understanding your work edit

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

The Wiki Loves Monuments International team has the same 2 core goals for its work every year: support of the national WLM organizers and the organization of the international part of the WLM photo competition. For the WLM 2022 competition, we have again been able to do both.

More specifically for Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 the international team had set three main goals: 1) Support to national contests 2) Curation of resources 3) Exploring new pathways for engagement to support knowledge equity

While 1) has been successfully carried out, 2 and 3 were a bit more challenging, mainly due to experience and availability of volunteers and staff (which we will explain more in the following report). Our connected approaches/strategies to these goals for 2022 have been set as the following A) Collect, curate, and share best practices and building blocks B) Having a part-time staff for project coordination. We were partially able to carry out both, and will continue to do so in the new grant year of 2023-2024.

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

WLM 2022 was a very challenging edition, where the team faced unexpected challenges related to our capacity such as sickness from volunteers and staff. There was not much we could do to move our WLM strategic work forward: we had to prioritize, and limit ourselves to the very basics of Wiki Loves Monuments organizing.

We however did have an in-person team-meeting in May 2023 and were able to look ahead to the future, and make sure we as a team are still aligned on purpose and mission. We are looking forward to WLM 2023 with confidence. A link to the Commons page with the summary of this weekend is shared in this report.

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?

Following the WLM Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity Research outcomes, we started experimenting with the translate function on Commons for our information pages. Our information being available in languages different from English was found to be an important barrier for national organizers and their participants, and we want to prioritize this in our future communications.

We would have liked to work more with the translators that we connected with for the DEI report, and have paid translations for some of the documentations, but this was dropped as a priority with the limited availability of the team. We do want to take this up with the new grant, and we have written a Learning Pattern of the process for organizing paid translations from the experiences of the DEI report translations. (Link is included below)

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

39 national teams joined us for WLM 2022. Amongst them was one first-timer, the national team of Suriname. Both South-Sudan and UAE also intended to join, but did not arrive at the finish line.

We published 3 blogs on our own website on three very different topics, and one Winners-blog on Diff and Medium. We shared our final DEI report, including 10 translations, on Wikimedia Commons, with the relevant communications that go with it. We actively communicate via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram during the competition period, and we decided to also share content through our LinkedIn account more. We think this may be of additional value for organizers, jury members and winners in our competition, who want to mention their share in our competitions on their online resumes. We hope this more active presence will also create incentive to take on one of the organizing roles.

We created a Telegram channel for quick questions and trouble-shooting for national organizers, where they can exchange with fellow organizers or come find us when they need immediate advice.We use the mailing list for national organizers for exchanges with the community about our WLM-i internal practices, as well as to keep everyone updated on the competition. National organizers use the mailing list to exchange best practices, raise their struggles, or connect over different (but monument-related) topics. We mainly use Commons for WLM-related documentation and Meta only for everything grant-related. We used Meta in the past year to explain and ask feedback about the proposed change our to absorb the yearly WLM grant in the multi-year grant of our current fiscal sponsor, Wikimedia Austria.

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.

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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 Disagree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups Not applicable to your fund
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Not applicable to your fund
E. Encourage the retention of editors Not applicable to your fund
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Neither agree nor disagree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. Not applicable to your fund

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?

2022-2023 was the year WMF lifted the travel restrictions and the world as a whole started getting together in person again. This for the WLM-i team was a chance to reconnect with old partners, and to start working more actively with new partners – leaving the bubble, so to say. Partners are of great importance to our organizers, as they can often help them carry out their activities locally.

We are in the process of preparing an exhibition with our long-time partner Europeana, and also exploring a new partnership with the Dissonant Heritage Action Group (DHAG) from ICOMOS/UNESCO. Both are international partners with national branches, that have the potential to help national organizers in a very practical and hands-on way.

Part 2: Your main learning edit

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

The team had two learning priorities for this grant period: 1) How is WLM experienced by organizers and participants? 2) What is the retention from new participants?

According to our Qualtrix surveys, Organizers' main motivation to join was to increase awareness about heritage, improve its coverage on Wikipedia and the outreach to new and retention of previous contributors. Most organizers reached their goals, some partially, none said to have failed. All are considering organizing WLM again. Further development of tools (upload, Montage) was suggested. Satisfaction with the contest and the team's work is high. Most participants learned about WLM through banners or previous involvement, followed by word of mouth. 96% of all contributors will "maybe" or "definitely" participate again.

For question 2), 58% of the contributors registered their account during the 2022 contest. A deeper dive into the new participant pipeline also shows very interesting cross-competition participation with the different Wiki Loves campaigns throughout the year. Accounts that were active in, for instance, WLM are sometimes reactivated for participation in WLE, and vice versa. Lifetime retention (any edit 2+ months after competition) is 11.6: there is a retention bump around month 12: returning participants! Most of the retention happens on Commons (estimated 50-60% off cycle).

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

One challenge we saw where conflicting interests and opinions surfaced, was regarding the participation of countries that are involved in armed conflicts in the international contest. The team of WLM-i was asked to exclude the participation of a country because of its military aggression. Based on the existing competition rules and regarding the approach of Wikimedia projects as international and worldwide we found no grounds that would justify exclusion, also taking into account we would have to consider such a decision in regard to other conflicts as well. We chose to mediate, and the outcome of the mediation was that the national team decided that images from occupied regions were not accepted as part of the lists of the occupying country, and that the contributors were - to the team's knowledge - in no way related to organizations of the aggressor. We are in the process of evaluating this to find ways to address such conflicts in the future, but are aware that every individual situation asks for its own solution on a more detailed level.

Another unexpected occurrence was that our WLM-i supporting staff had to step back for personal reasons, just before the final jury rounds were completed and the WLM 2022 award ceremony, with all communications that are tied to this event, and also preparing for the in-person meeting. With the help of the remaining WMAT staff, we were able to pull everything together in the end.

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 issue described above was discussed at our in-person meeting in Vienna and we are looking into how to address this in the future so we can point to it in the public information about the contest. As practiced in the 2022 edition we don’t see ourselves in a position to decide which countries should be excluded because of conflicts or wars. On the other side we see that some organizers and communities may need more support than others because of the difficult situation they are in. Sometimes this may encompass financial support we address with our micro-grants. Sometimes it may be organizational support for activities or events regarding especially endangered regions.

Apart from that we have seen that communication with the participants can be improved, from us as the team of WLM international as well as in some cases from local organizers. The surveys had a good response rate but more people answering would be a valuable source of feedback.

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)?


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).

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Part 3: Metrics edit

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
# of countries participating As the international team, it is hard to measure participants. We can however measure the number of countries that take part in WLM. 40 39 With some countries participating regularly, some joining in again and others not returning in 2022 the target of 40 countries could almost be reached. Overall participation depends on the local community structure and persons or groups there who want to organize it and have the resources to do so. Collecting the data on the project page ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments ) and the tools on https://wikiloves.toolforge.org/monuments/2022
# of countries that did not participate in the three years before Not every country participates every year, but we love to see them return later! Hopefully the improved and updated documentation will help, as well as the availability in more languages. 5 3 Participation in many countries very much depends on the activity of a small number of organizers. We reached out and offered help, but in some cases it was not possible to find volunteers to organize the event. Nevertheless, an additional 8 countries participated again that did not in the one or two years before See metric 1
% of participants in our evaluation surveys The idea is to follow-up with participants, especially those who joined Wikimedia through the competition, at regular intervals after the competition is over. This includes a simple message (with help of translations done by the national teams) on talk pages of the participants on what they can possibly do after the competition is over. The goal is to improve retention.

We will be conducting a data analysis to understand the retention of editors after 3, 6, and 12 months after the competition is over. We will average this for last three years and compare it with 2022's. That will help us to understand the impact of follow-up intervention. (the # below is a percentage of the total # of participants in the competition)

40 14 524 people responded to the survey we conducted after the competition. There were 3718 uploaders worldwide. To get a higher number of responses we want to review the survey and the distribution thereof. “Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 Participant Survey” with Wikimedia’s Qualtrics
Net Promoter Score Net Promoter Score is one of the metrics that we use to calculate satisfaction rate. According to the 2019’s organizers’ survey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019_Organizer_Survey_Report.pdf, page 29), the net promoter score for support received from the international team is -7 (the score is calculated as [promoter% - detractor%] * 100). Generally a score of 50 or above is considered good. For this iteration, our target would be to shift from a negative score to a positive score around 20-25. 20 66 0 organizers felt definitely not supported enough, 1 gave a grade of “rather not supported”: ⅔ of the answers were rather or definitely positive about our support. “Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 Organizer Survey” with Wikimedia’s Qualtrics, asking: Did your group receive all the support you needed from the WLM International team? 1 = definitely no / 5 = definitely yes
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

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants Number of participants, number of images uploaded, etc are very much indicative of the effort and success by the national teams. The above mentioned metrics are ones the international team has direct influence over.
Number of editors
Number of organizers
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

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).

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  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships edit

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 is low, and we should prioritise developing it
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 has grown but it should be further developed
K. Communications, marketing, and social media This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
M. On-wiki technical skills This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
N. Accessing and using data This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 has grown but it should be further developed
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.

Peer to peer learning with other community members (but that is not continuous or structured), Other

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

Other

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

The WLM-i organizing team had a rough year with limited availability of volunteers and staff and at the same time onboarding two new volunteers. We are looking forward to a more smooth WLM2023 campaign, and have been able to kick-off our preparations for WLM2023 early with an in-person team meeting in Vienna in May. In Vienna we spoke about the different needs and roles for our team, and new volunteers with a more technical orientation would be very welcome. One of the current team-members will take the lead in exploring new path-ways for participation (“Rest of the World competition”, or different) and we decided on how a deeper collaboration with Wikimedia Austria can take form.

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) 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 Neither agree nor disagree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Staff hired through the fund, Partners proactive interest

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

Other

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

We hope our 2022/2023 efforts to become visible in 2023 and 2024: working with external partners and maintaining these relationships takes time. Once the angles and goals for the collaboration from both sides are clear, a healthy and respectful relationship can be developed but maintaining these will always need personal attention from the team. WLM-i gives priority to partners that can a) help the national organizers with their resources (kind of resources very much depend on the country, and can vary from offering office space to internet access to prize sponsorships), b) improve the conditions for copyrights in the respective countries, and c) amplify the significance of Wiki Loves Monuments’ work.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration edit

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

The Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition was started by Wikimedia volunteers in 2010. With WLM “Wiki Loves” has become a concept that was broadly adopted in multiple ways and forms, as are the “Wiki Takes” photo walks. The ease to join a photo competition, the fun you can have when locating the monuments in your city or country, often together with other like-minded souls, and the excitement when sharing them through the projects, making your own heritage visible for the rest of the world: it’s all very much in the core what Wikimedians like to do. It’s why Wiki Love Monuments after 13 editions is still going strong and still has new countries and organizers joining every year.

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?

Stayed the same

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

N/A

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

Stayed the same

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.

Wiki Loves Monuments, through the international team as well as the national organizers, has strong ties with other organizations that operate in the fields of both GLAM and built heritage.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration edit

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?

A lot of our publicly available information can already be found through the links shared previously in this report. As mentioned, WLM-i is present on several social media channels, has its own website and blog, uses Diff, and has its own mailing lists. We hosted several Office Hours, attended and gave presentations at WikiArabia 2022 and Wikimania 2022, and were present at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023.

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?

N/A

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance edit

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

51488.96

31. Local currency type

EUR

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://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KcpPCeKAD5gZey_55CXaIvOz5tWpiYpqvoEj8hr6GUw/edit

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.

  • Inflation correction staff budget was facilitated from the under-spend;
  • Montage tool development budget is requested to be carried over to the current 2023-2024 budget.

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

EUR 7,500 budgeted for further development of technical tools were not spent: while at the Athens hackathon 2023 we found Wikimedians that would like to get involved, they are available from September 2023 onwards only. We therefore request this amount to be rolled over to the next grant 2023-2024.

Apart from the above, EUR 10,011.04 of the approved budget has not been used. The largest parts of this were reserved for translations and as contingency, both of which we could not prioritize in this edition, per reasons on availability of staff and volunteers as explained in this report.

The remaining part of EUR 19,988.96 still needs to be transferred to WMAT, in the form of reimbursement/second installment.

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future grant request with PO approval

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

We are onboarding the developer already, and expect them to start work on the jury tool Commons:Montage in September.

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.

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