Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia France-Funding request 2023-2026/Yearly Report (2023)

Yearly Learning Report (Year 2 - 2023)

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2024-07-30T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Yearly Learning Report (for multi-year fund recipients) , reporting year: 2023

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the grantmaking web service of Wikimedia Foundation where the user has submitted their midpoint report. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

General information

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving multi-year Wikimedia Community Funds to report on their yearly results.

Name of Organization: Wikimédia France
Title of Proposal: Wikimedia France-Funding request 2023-2026

Part 1 Understanding your work

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

Our strategic plan is implemented in around ten operational roadmaps ranging from GLAM and open science to the development of the free knowledge movement in France.

Some roadmaps for the year 2023-2024 aimed to renew and extend certain actions already undertaken in the past. This is the case, for example, of the Culture Libre label, which has seen a new promotion of cultural institutions, but also of Wikeys, which has been translated into several languages and whose distribution has begun in France. Other roadmaps mainly concerned the deployment of new activities, for example with the Open Science project composed of 3 components:

A component of Wikimedian residencies in several French universities
A technical and political component with a project to develop an analysis of the place of French research on Wikipedia in order to integrate Wikimedia projects into the government strategy on open science
A component for promotion and rapprochement with the scientific community by launching a Wikimedia research prize for next year aimed at rewarding scientific work on Wikimedia projects, the Wikimedia movement or the free movement by French researchers.

Finally, some roadmaps were reoriented during the year in order to adapt to national emergencies and issues, for example with the roadmap dedicated to the online community which underwent significant changes with greater support and involvement of the association with the communities, particularly during election periods. To achieve all this, we can rely on active and caring field volunteers with around a hundred people mobilized for these actions with more than 5000 volunteer hours but also on a stable staff team and civic service volunteers (3 during this year came to strengthen the team)

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

For almost 2-3 years, we have gradually changed our strategy in several areas. The first major change consisted in positioning Wikimedia France as an actor at the heart of several networks:

At the heart of the GLAM network by acting as an organization that rewards and promotes institutions committed to our values of free sharing and thus networking
At the heart of open science by signing a long-term partnership with the Ministry of Research, by inserting ourselves into government programs and interfering in already structured networks such as that of the URFISTs
At the heart of the free movement by bringing together actors of digital commons, by participating in events in France and acting for the establishment of a national coalition of digital commons capable of representing the interests of Wikimedia projects in a larger collective.

This does not necessarily work everywhere and it takes more time in certain areas such as the National Education system, a much more complex machine, and in which, even if Wikimedia projects are interesting educational tools, it is not necessarily easy to integrate in the long term.

Concerning field volunteering, our strategy is to strengthen the autonomy of local volunteer groups and to potentially develop Wikimedia France into a federation of associations. However, the issues are complex and require both the onboarding of the volunteer community, the implementation of new internal processes but also the changing of our statutes and some of our governance rules.

On the online community, we are gradually adopting a new strategy combining community protection, awareness-raising, representation with public administrations, and training. For the moment, the first success that we can see is that the online community is not closed to a stronger commitment from Wikimedia France alongside it and that there is even a demand. This strategy is also accompanied by a rebalancing towards slightly more technical missions within the association, including two projects around AI for next year. As for the long-term results, it is still too early to say.

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?

I don't know if it's up to me to say what is innovative or not or if we can easily compare our projects with those of other affiliates. Our method and our work philosophy has not changed much in recent years even if our projects have changed a lot:

listen to the trends and needs of the community and try as much as possible to respond to them
Follow the trends and try to seize the opportunities that arise and that could be very beneficial to the movement and therefore show flexibility.
Try as much as possible to form alliances and help the actors who are better positioned than us to respond to certain common challenges.

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

There is no shortage of moments of exchange and meetings with the French/Francophone community during the year. We obviously have our general assembly which allows us to take stock of the past year and to discuss with the members of the association (active contributors to Wikimedia projects). The French-speaking Wikiconvention and the Wikicamp are two other moments of the year where discussions take place to talk about the actions of the association. Volunteers are involved in the various projects.

Among the volunteer missions proposed during this year, we had actions as diverse as holding a stand, member of a jury, tutor of a cultural institution, technical development on Lingua Libre, trainers… We also have a weekly newsletter for our members and regular communications on Wikimedia projects.

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.

N/A

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	Neither agree nor disagree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	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?

We are still carrying out important activities in favour of linguistic diversity with a major update of Lingua Libre and continue to actively support associations such as Sans pagEs. The work on the online community should also improve the participation of new people on Wikimedia projects, particularly African populations, thanks to a close collaboration with WikiFranca

Part 2: Your main learning

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

With the support of the Ministry, the integration of training in universities and with researchers has progressed well with more than 700 doctoral students and researchers trained thanks to the legitimacy provided by the partnership. Will we be able to continue it if the partnership ends? Similarly, will the people trained continue to edit? For the moment we do not know. As for education, for some time now, we have been encouraging the use of Vikidia, an encyclopedia for 8-13 year olds, which is increasingly supported by the Ministry of National Education, and which is a platform more suited to young people. The organization of the VikiAcadémie, a contribution competition bringing together all the academies of France is a great success that we hope to continue in the years to come. For the transformation of practices within cultural institutions, the label seems for the moment to fulfill its function.

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

nothing to report

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?

Two new priorities emerged during the year:

a reorientation towards AI-oriented projects through partnerships and consortia that should provide the community with more powerful tools
An increase in our investment in the online community to both improve community processes and facilitate the integration of new people but also respond to the political and legal issues that weigh on Wikimedia projects

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)?

The reorientation of part of our activities towards more technical aspects (AI) and our new capacity to seek larger funding and in consortium on a European scale is an interesting and promising new challenge.

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 for Year 2

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Number of professionals active on Wikimedia projects having been trained by Wikimedia France	The professional audiences targeted by Wikimedia France are those of national education, culture (museums, libraries, archives...) of the scientific world (universities, research laboratories...)	150	800	The Wikimedian in Residence program is responsible for a good portion of the training	University registration and evaluation system as well as more classic tools of the movement such as the dashboard
Number of active local and thematic groups	A local or thematic group is considered active when it is made up of at least 2 members and has carried out at least 2 activities over a year.	35	20	We still have work to do in this area to strengthen local groups	N/A
Percentage of volunteers or employees who participated in at least 1 project of the association during the year among those who declared a diversity criterion	Diversity criteria: (gender, language, geography, level of study, socio-professional category, disability) Number of volunteers or employees ticking at least one diversity criterion who participated in a project / Number of volunteers or employees ticking at least one diversity criterion	70	0	no yet evaluated pour 2023-2024	N/A
Number of volunteers who declared having participated in at least 1 project of the association	Percentage obtained during the survey sent to all members up to date with their subscription in September of each year	60	N/A	not yet evaluated, our annual survey take place in september	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments
Number of participants	N/A	5000	5500	partials results
Number of editors	N/A	2000	1500	partial results
Number of organizers	N/A	60	50	mix between jury members, organizers of activities at local and national level

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Wikipedia	N/A	3000	3500	N/A	N/A
Wikimedia Commons	N/A	200000	300000	Lingua Libre is the most impactfull project	N/A
Wikidata	N/A	150000	N/A	not yet evaluated	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?

Yes

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.

N/A

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

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 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 has grown but it should be further developed
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 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 capacity has grown but it should be further developed
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 from outside the Wikimedia Movement, Using capacity building/training resources onlinee from sources OUTSIDE the Wikimedia Movement

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

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

N/A

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	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, 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.

Lack of interest from partners, Difficulties specific to our context that hindered partnerships

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

be open to opportunities, target the largest institutions as priorities and then put the necessary means in place to meet their expectations

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?

I don't really understand the meaning of this question. We carry the ideals and values of the movement at the heart of all our actions and I don't really see what elements to bring

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.

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?

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

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?

Partially

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Participate to international meeting, propose conference and one-one meeting on certain topics

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

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

425000

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.

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.

N/A

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.