Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Sverige – Supporting an equitable free knowledge movement by expanding our global initiatives and local fundraising
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Applicant details edit
Wikimedia username(s):
- User:John Andersson (WMSE)
User:André Costa (WMSE)
Organization:
- Wikimedia Sverige
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Applied previously and did receive a grant
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- Yes
H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- We have received grants from perhaps 15 or 20 different organizations over the years, many of them multiple times.
Happy to provide this data, but would suggest a more structured approach here, i.e. to capture the relevant info (based on what your plans are with this information, which is a bit unclear to me).
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Additional information edit
R. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Sweden
S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:
- International
S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
- Wikimedia Sverige has the following websites: https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lista_över_domäner Our primary website is wikimedia.se and our wiki is se.wikimedia.org.
Wikimedia Sverige has the following social media accounts and uses the following external websites for communication: https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lista_över_sociala_medier_och_externa_webbplatser
Wikimedia Sverige is our official Facebook page and our Instagram account is @wikimediase. The main Twitter account is @WikimediaSE.
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Proposal edit
1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?
Wikimedia Sverige works for all people to have free access to humanity's collective knowledge. With free knowledge, more people can learn and take part in information about the common problems that our society faces, and it is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
We envision a more digitized and interconnected world with everyone, everywhere contributing to both producing and consuming knowledge at no cost. We support organizations & individuals to contribute in various ways
2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?
Main challenge in the Access program: Challenge: The establishment of thematic hubs is one of the most prioritized areas in the 2030-strategy recommendations. Many things are still to be determined, such as the exact scope of the different hubs, about the division of work, and how to best organize them. Solution: We will experiment with forming a Thematic hub for Content Partnerships. Together with volunteers and affiliates from across the movement we will work to improve the amount and quality of content partners across the world share on the Wikimedia platforms. We will test how the work can be organized in six selected areas, to start with (outlined below). The initiative will help the overall process move forward as it will engage people with a concrete example to discuss. We will evaluate ongoingly and share insights as part of the strategy implementation process. (Contributing to Rec. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
Use: C: The knowledge on WP is not accessible for people that cannot read well for different reasons. S: We continue to develop our text-to-speech solution Wikispeech which allows people to listen to the content. We launch Wikispeech in more languages and build the tools needed to make it possible to add more languages over time. We encourage engagement with the tools and organize communication activities to gain adoption. We are working on forming a number of strategic partnerships, with e.g. Google, Mozilla and a number of research institutions. Our aim is to showcase the value and have Wikispeech added as a MediaWiki extension. (Rec. 2, 9)
Community: C: Both in the chapter and on the platforms we have many groups that are underrepresented. S: We will scale our activities across the country and create new activities to increase engagement. Online educational toolkits and events will be used to train new leaders. We will also increase our international work around the WikiGap initiative. A large external grant will hopefully allow us to make the investments to kick-start communities across the country in partnership with key organizations. We will investigate what groups are underrepresented. (Rec. 1, 6, 8)
Enabling: C: The ambitious initiatives above are costly and demand long term funding. WMSE is currently receiving most funding through project grants which creates uncertainties. S: The early experiments around fundraising done by the chapter will scale significantly and be coordinated with other Wikimedia organizations (Rec. 1, 4, 9, 10)
3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
Access: Experimentation with the thematic hub will focus on work in six different areas. An inclusive governance model for the hub will be developed, with different committees and networks supporting and guiding the hub. Already in 2022 we expect significant results to be achieved: 1. Our needs assessment to understand the interests, skills and needs in the global Wikimedia community continues. 2. The Helpdesk starts to support volunteers and affiliates hands-on with staff time. An int. expert committee guides the work. 3. Providing and supporting capacity building through online educational toolkits, development of portals and launching expert networks. With WMFR, WMDE (and more to come) we will be launching our new inter-affiliate exchange program “Grand Tour of Wikimedia”. 4. Supporting coordination and cooperation around international partnerships and the Wikimedia movement, mainly with UN agencies in 2022, especially around climate, health, gender and crises. 5. Improving, maintaining and building crucial software tools needed for content partnerships. We will improve ISA Tool and Pattypan, and support e.g OpenRefine in a consulting role. Incl. better documentation. 6. Continuing strategic data uploads that support future content partnerships. The work initiated with the Connected Open Heritage, FindingGLAMs and SDC initiatives continues.
Use: Wikispeech launched on svwp as a gadget in 2021. We aim to expand it in multiple languages, with enwp, arwp, euwp, nowp being worked on. Discussions with e.g. Google and Mozilla to include material continues. The Speech Data Collection Tool is launched to make an expansion to all languages of WP possible.
Community: Increased efforts to engage new participants to the communities. In Q3 we plan to initiate a national campaign about our org. to create awareness and engagement (also supports fundraising). Target groups are identified through mapping in early 2022.
The international coordination of WikiGap continues. More countries join and we use the campaign to initiate new partnerships with UN agencies. External grants supplement our work and allow us to provide opportunities in Ukraine and Uganda and evaluate them to scale up in 2023.
Enabling: We will increase our experimentation with local fundraising through street fundraising and fundraising through social media. Furthermore, more long-term project grant applications, not least EU grant applications with other affiliates will be developed.
4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?
Work starts to fulfill our new 4-year strategy (https://w.wiki/4TxA). Detailed goals for the organization will be dev. in Q1 2022. Some identified key objectives are:
- Conducting 6 experiments of possible tasks for the Content Partnerships Hub
- Developing 25 partnerships, including with 3 IGOs
- 40 countries participating in WikiGap
- 1,000,000 new statements on Wikidata and Commons (SDC)
- Wikispeech activated as a gadget in 2 more languages
- 100% more donations and members compared to 2021
5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?
Yes
5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?
- N/A
6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.
7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
Wikimedia Sverige has 10.45 FTE (December 2021). The organization also has a number of subcontractors, e.g. around financing and some IT systems. The organization has spent close to three years preparing for a rapid expansion of the team as part of its ambition to become a thematic hub. This work is outlined in the White paper that was published in 2021: https://w.wiki/4WFh If the thematic hub receives funding we would be ready and able to hire an entire team at a fast pace.
The current team consists of (in alphabetical order):
- John Andersson, Executive Director, User:John Andersson (WMSE)
- Sebastian Berlin, Developer, User:Sebastian Berlin (WMSE)
- Jenny Brandt, Organizational Assistant (50%) and Project Manager Membership and Donor Recruitment (50%), User:Jenny Brandt (WMSE)
- Maria Burehäll, Organizational Assistant, User:Maria Burehäll (WMSE)
- André Costa, Chief Operating Officer, User:André Costa (WMSE)
- John Cummings, Contractor, User:John Cummings (WMSE)
- Tore Danielsson, Project Manager GLAM, User:Tore Danielsson (WMSE)
- Alicia Fagerving, Developer, User:Alicia Fagerving (WMSE)
- Josefine Hellroth Larsson, Project Manager Education and Learning, User:Josefine Hellroth Larsson (WMSE)
- Eric Luth, Project Manager Engagement and Advocacy, User:Eric Luth (WMSE)
- Axel Pettersson, Project Manager, User:Axel Pettersson (WMSE)
- Karl Wettin, Developer, User:Karl Wettin (WMSE)
If the budget is fully funded we will expand our team with the following positions in 2022:
- 0.5-1 FTE Communications Manager or Communications Strategist
- 0.5-1 FTE Technical Strategist
- We also expect that we will support at least 2-3 UN agencies to hire for Wikimedian in Residence (WiR) positions in 2022 (the agencies will fund the positions directly).
8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Content Gender gap, Age (regency) , Geography, Language, Socioeconomic Status, Sexual Orientation, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)
8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.
9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.
Education, Advocacy, Public Policy, Climate Change and sustainability, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology, Diversity
10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Disabilities, Linguistic / Language, Age
11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?
Everyone is invited to participate in our activities, regardless from where you are. Our work around diversity and inclusion will scale even further in 2022 and onwards.
In the first half of the year we will continue to work on the international initiatives we launched in 2021 around the thematic hub and WikiGap. Both initiatives are connected and support each other around gender identity as we are utilizing WikiGap to form new partnerships as part of the hub work. We think that involving UN agencies will create new opportunities. Together with local affiliates we will also experiment with expanding the WikiGap initiative to cover LGBT+ biographies. As we organize the initiative for the fifth time we scale WikiGap to more countries and also work to expand the activities in the countries.
The thematic hub also contributes directly to strengthening small Wikimedia communities across the world that have not received adequate support earlier. The aim is to coordinate and collaborate with them and provide hands-on support with staff time to allow them to scale their work locally. We will work with the new expert council to ensure not just a good distribution geographically, but also around ethnic or cultural backgrounds. We hope that we in 2022 will create the foundation for how to provide this type of support ongoingly through a formally recognized thematic hub in the following years.
In the second half of the year we will launch a new large initiative (if funded with a large external grant) where we will engage people in areas of Sweden that currently are underrepresented in our organization and on our platforms. We will develop and support local communities and initiatives across the country in partnership with local organizations. As we know that our platforms are popular for people that have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we will develop better support structures around this. This is as a subgroup of the women, elderly and teenagers that we are targeting. We will also investigate further what groups currently are marginalized and how to better support them.
The work with Wikispeech will reach its next phase as we scale to more languages and launch the Speech Data Collector tool. We will work with disabilities organizations in Sweden and abroad to engage people to contribute with needed data. Wikispeech itself is a key part of the technical infrastructure to allow people with disabilities to effectively contribute to our platforms.
12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?
In our events, we try to create a supportive environment by clearly stating the values expressed in the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy. Before the start of every event we present the Policy and we have a dedicated security officer for each event, that can be reached privately.
Since 2016 we have a policy for a diversity of perspectives: https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_för_en_mångfald_av_perspektiv
When we hold events, we try to make sure not to assume characteristics of other people, such as gender or religion, but rather aim for everyone to define themselves.
13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?
Yes
13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
As part of each of the proposed initiatives in this proposal we have presented about it multiple times at conferences and events. We have ongoingly had conversations with stakeholders in the Wikimedia movement to discuss their needs and how we can work together.
For our larger international projects we create portals on Meta where information about the initiative and how to engage is added. We have portals for our proposed Content Partnerships Hub (https://w.wiki/4WDh), the WikiGap coordination (https://w.wiki/Jvi), and for the Wikispeech development project (https://w.wiki/4WDi) Portals for our work around strategic data uploads are: the Connected Open Heritage initiative – where we focus on built cultural heritage and support for Wiki Loves Monuments (https://w.wiki/4WDj), the FindingGLAMs initiative – where we focus on cultural heritage institutions (https://w.wiki/4WDk), and we have actively worked with the GLAM and Culture team at WMF to improve the SDC portal (https://w.wiki/UR)
14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
Yes
14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.
We believe that partnerships are key to fulfill our vision. Over the years Wikimedia Sverige has focused more and more on content partnerships and have partnered with hundreds of organizations. Most often to share their content on the Wikimedia platforms or to have their experts contribute with their knowledge in different ways.
We are now a go-to resource for most of the GLAM community in Sweden and are frequently invited as an expert organization in many digitization and online topics. We also have dozens of university and educational partnerships and we are working actively with multiple intergovernmental organizations (mainly UN agencies).
We try to provide their staff with training and support and they often support us by becoming organizational members, by providing venues and other in-kind support when we request it. Some provide grants and other types of funding, and in most of our grant applications we ask different partners to express their support.
15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?
In 2022 we are establishing our new 4-year strategy and will develop a number of initiatives for which we will fundraise for. We ongoingly evaluate and iterate our work.
We intend to develop an application – to the Global council or other suitable body – to formally establish a thematic hub with long-term strategic ambitions. Currently we have moved staff members previously mainly working on the national activities to the international work, which has slowed activities in Sweden. If we receive funding for the thematic hub we will hire dedicated staff for the international work. These new hires will be from different parts of the world to bring knowledge and experiences we are currently missing.
When formalized as a hub we are convinced that large funding opportunities will open up for us, due to the clearer and larger role and the global reach. We are actively connecting our work to the SDGs to open up funding opportunities from e.g. development agencies, wealthy individuals etc.
For the national work we will develop a project focusing on activities across the country to increase awareness and engagement of our work. This will improve our possibilities for local fundraising, but it also has the potential to open up a 500,000+ USD/year funding opportunity from the Swedish Postcode Lottery.
We will use the extra funding we are applying for in this application to hire dedicated fundraising staff to increase the amount of funds generated in Sweden for the movement.
16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.
- Blank
17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Ensure Equity in Decision-making
18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.
- Yes
Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation edit
19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
Access: What are the most important tasks the Thematic Hub for Content Partnerships can contribute with for the Wikimedia movement? How can they be organized?
How can a Thematic hub be formally recognized in the Wikimedia movement? How should it be governed for recognition to be possible?
What are the best ways for information that is of broad interest being made open and easily accessible, linked together and refined?
How can we work towards a societal change, where increased access to free knowledge is facilitated by practical means and thus becomes the norm?
Use: What language versions of Wikipedia are interested to have Wikispeech activated next? How will the service be used?
How can speech data be collected most effectively to add more languages to Wikispeech? Who is interested in contributing and why?
Community:
What activities or structures create most engagement in different geographical regions in Sweden? How do we reach groups we do not reach today?
How can training be provided to develop new movement leaders?
How can we best support existing communities?
Enabling: How can WMSE best take advantage of the wealth in Sweden to generate funds to cover the costs for the operations of the association? How can the chapter provide funding for the wider Wikimedia movement?
What messages are most useful to generate financial support for our work from the general public in Sweden?
20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.
| Main Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | We will survey all of the volunteers that have contributed to the organization’s work.
If a response is missing and can not be compiled in time for the report, the average for that type of volunteer activity will be used as a proxy. We have not systematically collected this data previously. 2022 will form the baseline. Therefore 0 is added as the target (even though we of course will aim for the number to be as high as possible). |
0 |
21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
The aggregated number is not for unique participants, but for each event they are unique. For each individual event we compile Global Metrics and aggregate them with a bot twice per year. The total number of participants in all of our activities: 3,000 with currently funded plans. 5,000 if the entire budget is secured. The expectation is that Covid-19 will limit what activities we can organize for at least half the year. |
5000 |
| Number of editors | The number of participants that have contributed with edits to one of the Wikimedia platforms, as part of one of our activities. This is measured e.g. by them being added to the Programs & Events Dashboard or signing up on a contest page.
For each individual event we compile Global Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. The total number of editors in all of our activities: 600 with currently funded plans. 900 if the entire budget is secured. The expectation is that Covid-19 will limit what activities we can organize for at least half the year. |
900 |
| Number of organizers | The number of organizers and volunteers involved in organizing an event. In this metric only the people that have not already been added to Total participants are included.
We will collect data on the self-stated gender of the organizers, with a goal that men, women and others should be well represented, with no group constituting more than 50%. For each individual event we compile Global Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. The total number of organizers in all of our activities: 200 with currently funded plans. 300 if the entire budget is secured. |
300 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | A content page is an article on any Wikipedia project.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
15000 |
| Wikimedia Commons | A content page is a Media file page or Data page on Wikimedia Commons.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
500000 |
| Wikidata | A content page is an Item or a Lexeme on Wikidata.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
30000 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.
It is unclear to us if an invited speaker to an event we host/organize are to be added as a participant or an organizer.
22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
For quantitative metrics from events we use the Outreach Dashboard.
For created/improved content pages:
- Quarry (quarry.wmcloud.org)
- EditGroups for Wikidata (editgroups.toolforge.org) and SDC (editgroups-commons.toolforge.org)
- Petscan (petscan.wmflabs.org)
For media usage:
- GLAMorous (glamtools.toolforge.org)
- BaGLAMa (glamtools.toolforge.org/baglama2)
For contest:
- On-wiki project pages
- Wikiloves
- We use dedicated bots we develop
For communication:
- Matomo
- FB Page insight
Financial Proposal edit
23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.
- 3560000 SEK
23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 393112 USD
23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
- For the equitable work around the thematic hub further funding will be needed from 2023 for us to be able to continue the work and establish a hub.
We are currently using a one-time grant covering part of the cost of launching this initiative, but are lacking the multi-year funding that is needed to sustain the work and to take on more long-term, strategically important initiatives (e.g. to establish a software development team focusing on content partnership software).
Our understanding is that this will be a separate funding process that will be outside, and on-top, of the General Support Funds application.
23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.
- N/A
Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.
- Other public document(s):
Final Message edit
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Year 2 Plan
Annual Plan for Year 2
1.1. Please upload or indicate a link for Year 2 Annual Plan. (required)
1.2. Please describe any major changes in your Annual Plan. If there are changes that require a budget change, please specify. (required)
Going into 2023 changed the structure of our WCF-financed projects in order to a) better align the projects with the new strategy which entered into force in 2022; b) reduce the overall number of projects; c) provide better opportunities for the project managers to adapt the activities to fit opportunities and synergies. The new projects are not merely a merging or renaming of the pre-existing projects but a mapping has been done to clarify which of the new projects inherits each of the old projects and decides whether earlier activities should be continued or not. This mapping between has been attached under Additional information below.
The work in the externally financed Nordic Museum project will scale up during the year both in terms of uploads and in terms of activities and events aimed at getting the public to enrich the shared images on Wikimedia Commons.
The work in the externally financed International Copyright and Wikidata for authority control projects, both started in 2021, will continue largely unchanged into 2023, the last year of each of these projects. While the GLAM-partners and materials we are expecting to work with within the scope of our consultancy work will change in 2023, the overall scope is estimated to be the same.
A major change going into 2023 is that we are expecting to scale up the work with Development of the association 2023 significantly as we are looking to bring on a new part time communications officer, purchase and implement a new CRM system, experiment with membership recruitment and national fundraising through our websites and social media platforms. This is in line with our strategic goal of becoming a broad social movement in Sweden. This is in addition to continuing to improve our policies and guidelines and minimizing the potential impact of some of the identified risks to the association.
For our externally financed project Wikipedia for all of Sweden, which started in 2022, we will scale up the work in the four pilot regions of Sweden. The initiatives include fundraising and recruiting new members through Face-to-Face work and social media campaigns, launching an experimental Openness certification and expanding on our work with Learn.wiki. In addition we will be intensifying our activities in the four pilot regions in order to create more visibility for the chapter and the movement, kick-starting recurring activities such as meet-ups and events and establishing new partnerships.
Our intentions are to continue the work on establishing a Thematic hub for Content Partnerships for a detailed plan on our work around this see our application attached under Additional information below.
Our intention is to scale up the work around Wikispeech through an external application. In addition to making the text-to-speech component of Wikispeech available to a larger audience we are also looking into development and activities around making it more useful to editors and expanding the support for collecting speech recordings. The exact activities of the project are still being developed in dialogue with the funder. The partners involved in Wikispeech for AI which came to an end in 2022 will also be involved in this new project.
In our advocacy work aimed at politicians and other decision makers we are looking at expanding our network of like minded organizations as well as engaging them more in our work in order to push for political changes in line with the goal and vision of the chapter. We have secured external funding to further expand our efforts with this work.
In addition a project which came to a planned end in 2022 was Lowering barriers for WikiGap, continued work with our partner here (Wikimedia User Group Uganda) is planned but financing for such a project is not available until 2024.
Budget for Year 2
2.1. Do you request an increase or decrease from what has been approved for Year 2? (required)
- Yes, I am requesting a budget increase for Year 2
2.2. Please upload a detailed budget file or indicate a link to it for the Year 2 proposal. The revised budget should show your anticipated yearly budget from the beginning of Year 2 through the end date of the grant. (required)
- Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VtLmD_6g1moXXdwIOJSFLubIqS8gMduw5HL41R6hNTg/edit?usp=sharing
- WMSE Budget 2023 – WCF application - Non-Google Doc copy.pdf
2.3. What is the percentage increase you are requesting for Year 2 (with respect to the Year 2 budget submitted with your original proposal)?
- 4%
2.4. How much do you request for Year 2 in USD with the increase? (required)
- 376964 USD
2.5. How much do you request for Year 2 in your local currency with the increase? (required)
- 3916000 SEK
2.6. Please describe the main major changes in your new budget. Your response to this question should provide a brief summary of the changes and give the reasons for them. (required)
Note that we are requesting a budget change of +10% as compared to our Year 1 budget (in SEK), the increase is slightly smaller (+4.4%) when compared to our approved multi-year grant award for Year 2. Per the instructions above the used exchange rate is that of the original multi-year plan submission.
As in Year 1 the WCF-grant is not used for any of the activities pertaining to our work on establishing a Thematic hub; many of the proposed projects are entirely dependent on external applications which have not yet been secured; the WCF-grant only covers less than half of the chapter budget which is presented here.
The changes to the budget reflect the changes to the annual plan described earlier. The program sub-headings reflect our current strategy and the new projects have been sorted under these. The comparison below was made with respect to our original Year 1 budget, not the revised budget submitted later in the year to keep it more in line with the Annual Plan comparison.
There is an overall budget increase of 17%, this increase is unevenly distributed across the programs.
The Access program has a planned increase of 54% (22% WCF-financed) as a result of identified funding opportunities incl. consultancy work and a revision based on the 2022 spending.
The Use program budget has only a slight increase, but with a slight decrease in WCF-funding as a result of identified sources of external funding.
The Community program has only a slight in size but there is a significant shift in where the funding comes from (60% increase in WCF-funding) as a result of the Year 1 costs being higher than originally budgeted for and there being limited new financing opportunities for the work most closely linked to our communities. Additionally our own contribution to the Wikipedia for all of Sweden project is due during 2023.
The Enabling program has a planned increase of 33% (largely financed using non-WCF funds) to account for the needed investments (both time and direct costs) in implementing a new CRM system and scaling up our fundraising work.
The budget for overhead costs has only a slight increase, but there is a significant increase in the WCF-funding as we have identified less opportunities for other sources of funding to shoulder these costs in 2023.
There is a 70% decrease (90% decrease in WCF funds) in the planned addition to our reserves, this is a direct result of wanting to continue our ongoing work while coping with increased costs and limited opportunities for increased unrestricted funding.
Metrics for Year 2
3.1. Main open metrics (required)
| Metrics Name | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Increased volunteer involvement | An increase in the number of volunteers involving themselves in the chapter by taking on some responsibility within a project, an event or in the chapter itself. | 38 |
| Increased chapter membership | The number of individuals or organizations that are paying members of the chapter should increase by 40%, as compared to the previous year. | 600 |
| Increased number of organizational partners | The number of partnerships is increased as compared to the previous year. With a partnership being defined as a collaboration with an organization, rather than an individual; where there is an active choice from both sides to work together; and there is an intention of longevity of the relationship. | 98 |
| Diversity of organizers | We will collect data on the self-stated gender of the organizers, with a goal that men, women and others should be well represented, with no group constituting more than 50%. | 50 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
3.2. Core metrics (required)
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
The aggregated number is not for unique participants, but for each event they are unique. For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and aggregate them with a bot twice per year. |
3185 |
| Number of editors | The number of participants that have contributed with edits to one of the Wikimedia platforms, as part of one of our activities. This is measured e.g. by them being added to the Programs & Events Dashboard or signing up on a contest page.
For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. |
825 |
| Number of organizers | The number of organizers and volunteers involved in organizing an event.
For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. |
400 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | A content page is an article on any Wikipedia project.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
4675 |
| Wikimedia Commons | A content page is a Media file page or Data page on Wikimedia Commons.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
531100 |
| Wikidata | A content page is an Item or a Lexeme on Wikidata.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
40150 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
3.4. If you are introducing new metrics related to a major change in your budget or programmatic plans, please describe them below. (optional)
Please note that these are not all of our metrics. Operational goals are being developed and will be approved by the AGM in April 2023, these will also include metrics. The goals will be found at https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Verksamhetsplan_2023#Verksamhetsmål .
Additional information for Year 2
4.2. If there are additional links, files, or information you would like to share related to Year 2 planning, please add them here. (optional)
Links:
- Category for 2023 projects on the chapter wiki — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kategori:Projekt_2023
- Chapter direction for 2024 (when decided by AGM) — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Årsmöte_2023/Verksamhetsinriktning_och_ekonomiska_ramar_för_2024
- Work relating to the thematic hub will be regularly updated at — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Content_Partnerships_Hub
- Application for the Content Partnerships hub experimentation grant, detailing planned activities — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/MSIG/WMSE/Content_Partnerships_Hub_experimentation
- Application for the Wikipedia for all of Sweden project, detailing planned 2023 activities — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Wikipedia_för_hela_Sverige/Ansökan
- Application for Wikidata for authority control in 2023 — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil:FO2022-0006_redakterad.pdf
- Application for the DILLNOTE project — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:DIILNOTE/Ansökan
Additional note:
Please note that as 50% of our budget is non-WCF funding, and the majority of the remainder is grant based with the status of the grants not being known at the start of the year we often end up providing a revised budget later in the year when there is more information about what grants have been approved. Providing a 3-year version of our whole budget would therefore fill no useful planning purpose (a 3-year version of the WCF-financed part would be doable).
We would like to note that all of the comparisons above are therefore effectively comparing the Year 2 budget with the Year 1 budget, a process which is rather time consuming and largely duplicates the work more clearly done in the Yearly Report. It also ends up not being very informative as the changes to the non-WCF funded parts obscure the changes to the WCF funded parts.
Year 3 Plan
Annual Plan for Year 3
1.1. Please upload or indicate a link for Year 3 Annual Plan. (required)
1.2. Please describe any major changes in your Annual Plan. If there are changes that require a budget change, please specify. (required)
In 2024, the association's activities are expected to be continued at a slightly reduced level compared to 2023. This conservative starting point is due to the fact that long-term financing from WMF has become increasingly uncertain and financial prudence is therefore a must. The reorganization decided on in 2023 and implemented in 2024 focuses on improving the long-term financial conditions.
This is a planned change that has been brought forward and accelerated due to the economic challenges. The organizational change took significant time in late 2023 and early 2024, delaying some of the preparations for the new year that is usually worked on in this period.
The changes that have taken place will primarily have a negative impact on the association's work with workshops and presentations where staff will, to a lesser extent, travel and carry out these types of outward-facing activities. The type of introductory presentations about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement, that are organized to create awareness about the association and the Wikimedia platforms, will be significantly reduced.
In previous years, these training efforts have been deemed necessary to establish a necessary knowledge base in the GLAM sector in Sweden to anchor the value of working with the Wikimedia platforms at the partner organizations and to lay a foundation for being able to design joint projects. In this sector, however, the state of knowledge is judged to be sufficient for the association's current capacity for collaboration. The work of getting GLAM experts to systematically contribute to Wikipedia articles has been shown in evaluations to be very limited in scope and is not sufficient to justify the relatively high costs at this point in time. By contrast we see that training GLAM experts in systematically contributing to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata has resulted in them continuing to contribute larger amounts of data.
If resources had been available, however, similar educational initiatives could have been given to other smaller institutions, or to other areas such as folk high schools or civil society — both of which showed great potential. Parts of the educational activities may be picked up in the future if additional funding can be secured.
To make up for this reduction, more resources will be spent on developing online training material (e-learning) adapted to different target groups, as well as an increased focus on digital communication. Office staff will still carry out training on more complex technical subjects, mainly as integrated parts of larger projects.
Two hiring processes were started in the last quarter of 2023. This was possible because dedicated grants could be secured for: (1) work with data entry for the Metabase initiative, as well as (2) external communication with a focus on membership recruitment and donations via social media – which is expected to be a important step in broadening our funding sources and providing financial stability in the longer term.
A number of current staff members will refocus efforts towards fundraising and membership recruitment and the new communication staff will develop a number of campaigns. Overall significant investments will take place to increase the association's visibility and to increase the association's financial resources in the medium and long term.
We are very actively applying for project grants in 2024. This takes significant effort, but we are hopeful it will also bring in significant funding. In total we are in the process of applying for around 1.68 million USD through 9 applications. Not all funding, if secured, will stay with us, but it will all benefit free knowledge initiatives. Most of the grants we are applying for are multi-year. The applications cover three main topic areas: (1) increasing online accessibility and connected technical development, including LLMs; (2) cultural and natural heritage in danger; and (3) lobbying and opinion building to improve laws and regulation affecting our work, including AI legislation. A number of smaller research grants will also be explored.
Our multi-year efforts to build interest and awareness in the humanitarian aid community is bearing fruit and we now see more opportunities around internationally oriented grants than in previous years. An exciting news is that Wikimedia Sverige has been approved as a member of ForumCiv, a Swedish civil society organization for international development. This means that we can apply for funding, 50,000–300,000 USD, in their two yearly calls for applications. These applications are only for international projects and would need to include other Wikimedia affiliates.
The largest resources in 2024 will be spent on ensuring that several of the major initiatives that have been worked on for several years will continue to be developed in order to be established on a more permanent basis. This year, too, it is primarily about establishing the association as a Thematic hub for content partnerships, contributing to ensuring that Swedish and international legislation is in line with the needs of the Wikimedia movement, and taking important steps to launch both speech synthesis and the speech resource collector for Wikispeech. All these parts are expected to continue even in 2025 and subsequent years. For all these initiatives we are applying for further grants — the funding provided from the WCF grant by the Wikimedia Foundation will be used for the self-funding that is needed and surrounding costs.
Work will be done to further develop or refocus campaigns that the association runs — this includes efforts such as WikiGap and Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments. Steps will be taken to try to develop a concept that builds on the three campaigns, where the focus is on creating opportunities and commitment to contribute to digitizing endangered cultural and natural heritage through crowdsourcing.
We have secured external funding for a number of projects focusing on legislative change through lobbying and opinion building. This successful fundraising allows us to increase our work around public policy significantly and we are able to more than triple the amount of staff time for this type of work. We have also secured funding for more work with linked open data with a significant grant allowing GLAM staff to work closely with us for two years. Finally, we have secured funding for tool development of strategically important software for content partnerships.
We are also applying for grants from Wikimedia Foundation for further work with the thematic hub for content partnerships and to cover the implementation cost of a new CRM system.
Budget for Year 3
2.1. Do you request an increase or decrease from what has been approved for Year 3? (required)
- Yes, I am requesting a budget increase for Year 3
2.2. Please upload a detailed budget file or indicate a link to it for the Year 3 proposal. The revised budget should show your anticipated yearly budget from the beginning of Year 3 through the end date of the grant. (required)
- Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Ssmzs-zPW00QitVsX_9ADFa0HEpQbz3zI_R05DynEw/edit?usp=sharing
- WMSE Budget 2024 – WCF application - static copy.pdf
2.3. What is the percentage increase you are requesting for Year 3 (with respect to the Year 3 budget submitted with your original proposal)?
- 0%
2.4. How much do you request for Year 3 in USD with the increase? (required)
- 457112 USD
2.5. How much do you request for Year 3 in your local currency with the increase? (required)
- 4249930 SEK
2.6. Please describe the main major changes in your new budget. Your response to this question should provide a brief summary of the changes and give the reasons for them. (required)
Metrics for Year 3
3.1. Main open metrics (required)
| Metrics Name | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Increased volunteer involvement | An increase in the number of volunteers involving themselves in the chapter by taking on some responsibility within a project, an event or in the chapter itself. | 40 |
| Increased chapter membership | The number of individuals or organizations that are paying members of the chapter should increase by 40%, as compared to the previous year. | 660 |
| Increased number of organizational partners | Due to organizational changes the number of partnerships is expected to decrease as compared to the previous year. With a partnership being defined as a collaboration with an organization, rather than an individual; where there is an active choice from both sides to work together; and there is an intention of longevity of the relationship. | 100 |
| Diversity of organizers | We will collect data on the self-stated gender of the organizers, with a goal that men, women and others should be well represented, with no group constituting more than 50%. | 50 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
3.2. Core metrics (required)
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
The aggregated number is not for unique participants, but for each event they are unique. For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and aggregate them with a bot twice per year. |
2700 |
| Number of editors | The number of participants that have contributed with edits to one of the Wikimedia platforms, as part of one of our activities. This is measured e.g. by them being added to the Programs & Events Dashboard or signing up on a contest page.
For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. |
205 |
| Number of organizers | The number of organizers and volunteers involved in organizing an event.
For each individual event we compile Core Metrics and collate them with a bot twice per year. |
165 |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | A content page is an article on any Wikipedia project.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
690 |
| Wikimedia Commons | A content page is a Media file page or Data page on Wikimedia Commons.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
156000 |
| Wikidata | A content page is an Item or a Lexeme on Wikidata.
The metric focuses on the number of unique content pages created or improved, not the amount of edits to each page. |
70500 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
3.4. If you are introducing new metrics related to a major change in your budget or programmatic plans, please describe them below. (optional)
N/A
Additional information for Year 3
4.2. If there are additional links, files, or information you would like to share related to Year 3 planning, please add them here. (optional)
Links:
- Category for 2024 projects on the chapter wiki — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kategori:Projekt_2024
- Chapter direction for 2025 (when decided by AGM) — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Årsmöte_2024/Verksamhetsinriktning_och_ekonomiska_ramar_för_2025
- Work relating to the thematic hub will be regularly updated at — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Content_Partnerships_Hub
- Application for the Content Partnerships hub capacity building grant, detailing planned activities — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/MSIG/WMSE/Capacity_building_in_the_Content_Partnerships_Hub
- Application for A network of Places in 2024 — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil:FoU_med_Arkdes_-_F2023-0062_redakterad.pdf
- Application for the HeritageGuard Network project — https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil:HeritageGuardNetwork_application_to_Svenska_institutet.pdf
- The Knowledge rights in Sweden project:
Additional note: Please note that as more than 50% of our budget is non-WCF funding, and the majority of the remainder is grant based with the status of about half of these grants not being known at the start of the year we often end up providing a revised budget later in the year when there is more information about what grants have been approved.
Feedback edit
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.