Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia South Africa:supporting the growth of the free knowledge movement in South Africa for 2023/Final Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2023-07-31T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Final
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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: Wikimedia ZA
- Title of Proposal: Wikimedia South Africa: supporting the growth of the free knowledge movement in South Africa for 2023
- Amount awarded: 84964.07 USD, 85123.33 ZAR
- Amount spent: 951517.36 ZAR
Part 1 Understanding your work edit
1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
- Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
- As a strategy we divide our acitivities into two focus areas. Outreach (increasing awareness of Wiki to the public) and Community support (giving support to established Wiki communities).
Outreach: over the years we have realized that whilst we are good at hosting events and teaching people about the Wikis such as Wikipedia but we are bad at filling up spaces with people who are likely to become Wiki contributors. We have found developing partnerships with mission aligned organizations is a force multiplier for our efforts as they can find and fill spaces up with people enthusiastic for the open knowledge mission. We will continue to pursue the strategy of developing these partnerships and running outreach activities with them that builds off both our strengths and is mutually beneficial to both our missions.
Community support: hosting regular community events such as meetups and regional conferences is a potent and tested means of building and growing our community. It gives everyone a sense of common purpose and enhances community health whilst promoting inclusion. Providing services to the editing community is also important as it encourages veteran Wiki editors to become involved in chapter activities. This is important as a) our mission is to support the Wiki community but also b) we need veteran Wiki editors to successfully host outreach activities.
That is why this two pronged approach is important and mutually supporting.
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?
- Yes, Wiki Loves Plants, our advocacy efforts at copyright reform and our Wikipedia language support through our developing partnership with SADiLaR.
Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
- In summary, through our email mailing list, through social media channels, through bimonthly chapter meetings, through monthly Wikipedia community meetups hosted by chapter, through annual events such as WikiIndaba, Wikipedia birthday and Afrikaans Wikipedia birthday celebrations.
Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
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.
6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Strongly agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Strongly agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. | Strongly 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?
- South Africa is a very diverse country with 12 official languages and large geographical and demographic differences. Creating an inclusive and welcoming environment is both an important and challenging imperative. Efforts have been made through partnerships with organisations like SADiLaR and the library organisations as well as through the internship program to increase the diversity of our volunteer editing community. These efforts have obtained mixed results but we have started gaining traction over the years and are beginning to see results. We are still pursuing possible future projects to better represented groups by supporting the growth of all the different African language Wikipedias whilst also encouraging the creation of new langauge Wikipedia such as the Kaaps and Xan language Wikipedias.
Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
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?
- We hoped to learn how to better grow the free knowledge movement, in particular Wiki communities, in the Southern Africa region. We have found this to be a gradual process involving much trail and error and consistent effort.
One of our innovative projects, Wiki Loves Plants, involved running an event on an entirely new platform that involved a new (although mission aligned and familiar) community, iNatralist. We found that we need to do a better job of notifying people of our events on iNatralist in addition to our traditional approach of marketing actives on Wikipedia/Commons. We have found that using the network of Wikipedia editors who are also established and respected iNatralist community members will likely greatly improve the impact of projects like this. This tactic of leveraging networks of people on Wikipedia who are also active on other platforms like iNatralist looks like a promising strategy we would like to experiment with in the future.
We continue to try and learn how to better overcome conflict, promote inclusion, unity and a common Wiki based culture within our own chapter whilst also increasing diversity and growth. This we have learnt is the most challenging focus of all and requires us to continually learn and use conflict resolution tools, promote constant dialogue, compromise, and remind people of Wikipedia's five pillars and common mission of free knowledge for ALL.
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
- Yes, one of our partners (SADiLaR) unexpectedly approached us with an offer to provide matching funding to do a series of Wikipedia outreach workshops to support the growth of African languages at multiple universities across the country. The chapter strives to cultivate relationships that will create opportunities like this.
We have also noticed that consistent work doing activities with partners will, over the course of years, start to produce results in the form of chapter members, new Wikipedia editors, diversity, and growing African language Wikipedias.
Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
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?
- Yes, implement duel network tactic for Wiki Loves Plants, continue to develop partnerships with mission aligned organizations to support the growth of African language Wikipedias.
Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
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)?
- It would have to be the experience of dealing with difficult and sometimes abrasive or myopic community members that have a tendency to alienate other community members. This has been a process that requires both tact, diplomacy, emotional discipline, honesty (applied diplomatically) and firmness (reminding people of Wikipedia's culture of civility and radical inclusion). This is a difficult task as these are personality traits and these people are also often highly respected and productive Wiki community members. This year we had to deal with two such people who, although they have very different beliefs, have very similar abrasive personalities. This is likely to be an ongoing challenge but it has reminded us of the importance of having a solid and widely accepted friendly space policy.
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.
- Please see report on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM_ZA/Annual_Report_2022-23
Part 3: Metrics edit
13a. Open and additional metrics data
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Participants | The number of individuals who attend or benefit from our project activities, either in person (offline) or virtually (online). | 100 | N/A | We need to do a better job of tracking participants during events and ensuring that we always collect the Wiki usernames of all attendees for better tracking. At the moment this is highly variable and dependent on who the chapter event organizer/host is on the day. | Wiki Dashboard
Attendance rosters Photographs Reports |
| Number of new chapter members | Number of new members to the Wikimedia South Africa chapter. | 40 | 28 | We have experienced decent growth this year and our total chapter membership now stand at 96 members. | Membership roster |
| Number of new Wikipedia articles | The number of new Wikipedia articles created in any of South Africa's 11 official language Wikipedias. | 4000 | 2971 | A conservative figure for the number of new articles created in multiple different languages of South Africa by participants involved in chapter activities. Only just added a few extra projects and new participants so numbers are not yet reflective of that, will update the numbers soon. | Dashboard |
| Wikimedia Commons uploads | The number of content items (photographs, videos, etc) uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Most of this content is likely to come from the Wiki Loves events. | 4000 | 624 | Wiki Loves Plants was not as successful at producing qualifying pictures as hoped due to a lack of awareness amoungst the botanical community on iNatralist. This will be overcome next time through a bigger awareness and networking campaign on iNatralist. | iNatralist
Dashboard |
| Number of new Wikipedia editors | The number of new editors to Wikipedia with a specific focus on new Wikipedia editors on African language Wikipedias. | 10 | 111 | Participants were highly likely to edit Wikipedia during the programme events but were a lot less likely to continue editing after the event. This is a normal experience with outreach acitivies. | Reports
Dashboard |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | 20 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | 9 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | For the long term we intent to continue focusing on the following five partnerships:
The chapter intends to build and grow relationships with many more partners but those are the current five that we are most focused on. |
5 | 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 | 4 | 3 | SADiLaR workshop, 3D advocacy, Fly digitisation | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | 1000 | 1010 | N/A | Based on internal chapter estimates and calculations from members. |
13b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 100 | 268 | We need to do a better job of tracking participants during events and ensuring that we always collect the Wiki usernames of all attendees for better tracking. At the moment this is highly variable and dependent on who the chapter event organizer/host is on the day. | Wiki Dashboard
Attendance rosters Photographs Reports | |
| Number of editors | 10 | 111 | Participants were highly likely to edit Wikipedia during the programme events but were a lot less likely to continue editing after the event. This is a normal experience with outreach acitivies. | Wiki Dashboard
Reports | |
| Number of organizers | 9 | 9 | Most volunteers are also board members and all were chapter members. This is normal given the structure and way in which our chapter functions. As a rule we tend to elect the most active chapter volunteers onto our board who then are further motivated to get even more involved. | Reports |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | N/A | 40 | 8061 | A total of 8061 articles were edited by WMZA project participants across various. | Dashboard |
| Wikipedia | Number of South African or African media sources reviewed in the compilation of the African reliable citation list. | 100 | 22 | Fell short of this target due to a lack of time. This effort will continue into 2023/24 | N/A |
| Wikipedia | Number of new African language Wikipedia's in incubation. | 1 | 0 | Sadly we were unable to get the Kaaps, Xan or Khoi language Wikipedias launched this year due to internal language community dynamics. | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 2971 | A total of 2971 new Wikipedia articles were created by WMZA project participants in this period in multiple language Wikipedias. | 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.
- It is not known to us how we can quantitatively measure things like community health or partnership commitment levels.
16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships edit
17. Organizational Capacity
| A. Financial capacity and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| B. Conflict management or transformation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| D. Partnership building | This 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 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 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 is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| M. On-wiki technical skills | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| 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 | |
| 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 the Wikimedia Foundation, Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces)
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
- Lack of knowledge of available capacity building opportunities, Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, 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?
- WMZA has a unique management and organizational structure that uses a highly active board wherein very active chapter members propose, design, implement and report on all of our projects with support of the chapter and its staff. This means we can get a lot done for a low cost and we can easily access local social networks to develop partnerships. It also makes for a highly resilient chapter. However this comes at a cost of capacity, professionalism, and unpredictability in what projects will be done when and to what level of quality. We have now reached the limits of this model. As a chapter we will need to evolve this organizational structure to further build capacity whilst maintaining our passionate drive and community inclusive focus.
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
| A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | 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.
- Board members’ 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.
- Difficulties specific to our context that hindered partnerships, Lack of staff capacity to respond to partners interested in working with us, Lack of knowledge or capacities to reach out to strategic partners
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
- ==BCIC==
Boldness: be bold, don't be afraid to cold call or, even better, walk through the door of a potential partner organization that you have identified is mission aligned with the free knowledge mission and might be a good fit for your project ambitions. Communication: cultivate the partnership by regularly or often communicating with them and keeping them updated on what you are doing. Inclusion: include your partners in your events and projects that might involve them to see what projects they are interested in what they are not. Invite them to your community events to make them feel like they are part of the community. Consistency: be consistent over the course of years in reaching out them and talking to them, their plans might change in the future and become better for you.
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?
- Having a sense of belonging within the Wikipedia and free knowledge movement if fundamentally important to use and is the very reason for our existence. Not having a place within this movement is inconceivable for us and is infused in everything we do and stand for. An important part of this is being able to regularly converse with other affiliates and organizations within the free knowledge movement from around the world. This enables us to share experiences, contacts, and knowledge whilst creating an important sense of global community in persute of a higher mission that is to the benefit of all humanity.
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.
- Over the past 18 months we have noticed a significant increase in WMF interest in Africa and South Africa in particular. There has also be a notable increase in chapter employees from Africa and South Africa in particular. These have resulted in more WMF/WMZA communication and WMF involvement in WMZA activities which has organically brought us closer together.
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.
- Our organization's and our members personal investment in Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement has always been ABSOLUTE and infused in everything we do and say. It is fundamental to the nature of our organization's existence. It is not clear to us how it could increase any further.
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.
- We are very involved in copyright reform advocacy in South Africa and around the world through our efforts to get Freedom of Panorama and Fair Use included. Through these efforts we are very involved with, and a co-founder of, ReCreate South Africa. An umbrella advocacy group that calls for changes to South Africa's copyright law. We have also become involved with an supportive of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property which is an international effort calling for copy-left policies based at the Collage of Law at American University Washington DC. We have introduced them to the Wikimedia movement and they have been important in sharing legal knowelge related to copyright law.
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?
- Through community workshops, community and WMF open hours, and at events such as WikiIndaba and Wikimania. We love sharing experiences and advice from/with other affiliates.
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?
- Mostly informally at conferences like Wikimania and WikiIndaba. However this is going to crease greatly as we now (FY2023/24) regularity support user groups in the southern Africa region such as Namibia and Botswana through our fiscal sponsorship of them that involves mentoring and coaching.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance edit
30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 951517.36
31. Local currency type
- ZAR
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.
- Our accountants and book keepers are still in the process of writing up our independent financial review over the next few months. We will publish that report when they are done with it on the Annual Report 2022-23 page on meta. We had underestimated the cost of the internship program in this budget application which meant we had to reallocate budget from an unspent line item (WMF support & engagement) to the internship program.
34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
- ZAR 325,332.64 was not spent for various reasons. Some expenses, such as those relating to "WMF support & engagement" were instead recorded by either the chapter or the book keeper under the staff budget due to them being confused over this line item. Other funder were not spent as no program leader or event volunteer came forward to implement them. Other projects fell through due to the event partner loosing interest.
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 plan, and request, to use them in our next grant annual application for 2024-2027.
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.