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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia UK - Funding request for 1st February 2023 - 31st January 2025/Yearly Report (2023)

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Yearly Learning Report (Year 1 - 2023)

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2024-04-01T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

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

Application

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General information edit

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

  • Name of Organization: Wikimedia UK
  • Title of Proposal: Wikimedia UK - Funding request for 1st February 2023 - 31st January 2025

Part 1 Understanding your work edit

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

Knowledge equity

In 2023 our work within knowledge equity involved both direct project delivery and deeper self-reflection to strengthen our practice. A key element here was the ‘Explore’ phase of the Innovation Fund project, which focused on barriers to engagement with Wikimedia projects experienced by small heritage organisations and communities. The key output of this project was a comprehensive report, with rich reflections and a list of recommendations for Wikimedia UK to consider; much of which chimes with our EDI action plan.

In Q1-2 we also collaborated with Tochi Precious, thanks to an internal designated fund. We held an online Train the Trainer for wiki organisers based in Africa, and launched a competition for the #EditFor HumanRights campaign.

The Knowledge Equity programme is the largest in terms of the number of partnerships and activities. To illustrate, just within one of our programmes, Connected Heritage, in Q1 we delivered an LGBT editathon, completed the Mixed Museum residency, supported microinterns at the Manar Al-Athar Archive, ran an event at the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre, and started a partnership with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (connected to a wider project about accessing digital skills at small organisations). For a full picture of what WMUK delivered in this area, follow quarterly report links in Question 5.


Information literacy

In terms of engagement with schools, we are developing a project with a freelance educator, collaborating on their project called the Sankofa Schools Project - aiming to to challenge misconceptions relating to the historical presence of people of colour in the UK. Having delivered several sessions already with a range of schools, we are intending to design a programme that could scale up this aspect of our work.

University student engagement is a major source of our ‘new editors’ metric, since it offers a sustained way to engage a class of students in a structured editing learning programme. In 2023 we worked with 19 courses. As a general practice, we aim to develop courses which thematically respond to our strategic themes, especially knowledge equity.

Some of the courses have an innovative design, tailored to the needs of the organisation - e.g. an 11 week free online evening course at a Further Education institution, which matched other courses offered to adults at this organisation.


Climate

Our main project in the Climate area is the residency with the Global Systems Institute. The first year of this externally funded activity ended in September, and we were very pleased to be successful in securing a 12 month extension after mid-year results were submitted. At the end of Year 1:

  • more than 76 editors have been trained over 8 editathon events
  • 287 articles have been edited (as a cumulative effort from both trainers and trainees

T-hese articles have been viewed over 13.8 million times since they were first edited

Year 2 features a new approach to expert engagement: reaching out to an entire research group in order to maximise the chances of attracting at least one researcher to review. The new ‘net zero’ Wikipedia article was published on the mainspace; it has spurred much discussion and content revision in the editing community about net zero and carbon neutrality. Year 2 will also see us engaging with the Spanish language Wikipedia, and we have established connections with Wikimedia Argentina to explore opportunities, such as connecting to the WikiforHumanRights 2024 campaign. The resident is also exploring Translators Without Borders and other possible partnerships.

There is a growing opportunity to use Wikimedia projects as a teaching tool within this climate residency. We are developing three MSc projects for the GSI Masters Student’s Solutions Project – one on AI (LLMs, and their use to improve readability of Wikipedia articles), one on environmental misinformation on different language Wikipedia’s climate change articles, and one on geographical bias in the content of Wikipedia’s climate change articles. Project funders have a keen interest in AI and this would be one of the ways of exploring the overlaps between AI, climate information, and Wikipedia.

An overarching highlight is our cross-cutting activity to work with the international Wikimedia community. This translates to our profile and recognition within the movement. We are co-running the international Volunteer Supporters Network, which is providing peer learning space for community development. Funded through the same Wikimedia 2030 strategy development grant, we are also delivering the ‘Changemakers Toolbox’ project (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/MSIG/Changemaker%27s_toolbox_-_introductory_resources_to_campaigning_and_advocacy).

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

Knowledge equity

Apart from our positive relationship with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we are also having an increasing number of touchpoints with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). There have been a number of AHRC project bids from our partners where Wikimedia UK was invited to offer a key element of dissemination, public engagement, or digital skills development within the proposed project. There is an opportunity here both for funding and increased profile for WMUK.

The delivery of phase 1 of Connected Heritage was a source of learning and iteration too, in the area of inclusion and barriers to participation. The project’s final phase was a small number of ‘mini Wikimedians in Residence’ - a collaboration model we designed as short term wiki placements. Initially, this was going to be delivered by one of our staff members; however, we iterated this into paying for the time of an existing member of staff at the partner organisation. This enabled them to spend staff time on wiki activities - with support and input from us - thus adding to available resources rather than creating a time deficit. Our thinking around time deficits was influenced by our work on the Innovation Fund research and feedback we received from potential partners.

In November we celebrated the achievements of the Protests & Suffragettes group, who we supported over the past year in delivering a different model of community editathons - see the linked report for details.


Information literacy

Having presented our research on Wikimedia and Democracy at the international EduWiki conference in May, we noted increased interest in framing Wikimedia’s education work in the context of nurturing civic space and developing skills for democracy. There is a lot of delivery activity in this area too. We have run projects around growing literacy skills - student placements and internships, collaboration with external partners. We also launched the project on advocacy skills, Changemakers Toolkit - this collaboration with Sheila McKechnie Foundation (https://smk.org.uk/) has produced a suite of introductory materials for people interested in using Wikipedia for change, on any level. There is a substantial amount of interest and support for this initiative within the global movement, which brings an opportunity to link up to WMF’s skill sharing initiatives.


Climate

In the second year of having ‘Climate’ as one of our three strategic programmes, opportunities started emerging to develop further work in this strategic area. We submitted a successful funding bid together with the Museum of London Archaeology for a ‘Coasts in Mind’ project, where in 2024 we will be providing editing workshops for coastal communities to document the impact of climate change in their area. In Q2 we joined the international Wiki Loves Earth competition with activity in Wales and Ireland; while the GSI resident appeared as a panel guest at WikiHour Africa’s Launch of the Africa Environment Campaign, another movement-wide climate related project.

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?

- Reflections from the Innovation fund encouraged us to think differently about partnership delivery. We now consider payment for people’s time in certain situations. We are also considering how, coming from a marginalised community, working on relevant Wikipedia content can be a traumatic experience, and what is our responsibility as workshop leaders to mitigate this. We are now engaging with small organisations, who - even with additional funding - are so stretched that they often do not have the capacity to work with us. This work is critical to the Knowledge Equity strand, since, critically, it’s often the small organisations that are custodians of marginalised heritage.
  • An overall delivery highlight was the Train the Trainer programme. Beyond an innovative programme design and covering a highly requested topic of hybrid training, the team has also set up a pre-course training on WikiLearn.
  • A development we were excited about was the recruitment of a part time Assistant Wikimedian in Residence to support the work of the Edinburgh University residency. This role covers event management and promotion, community building, and geographical outreach. This has boosted an already very productive residency, and provides a possible model for other residencies - an opportunity we highlighted in our regular Residents network meetings.
  • Acknowledging our challenges of raising funds for direct programme delivery with schools so far, we are exploring ways of working with teachers instead; which could potentially be funded by school training budgets. To support this, in January we organised and ran a focus group brainstorm around what a possible CPD (continuous professional development) programme for secondary school teachers could look like. We explored what might be important to include in a CPD programme and how this could work in different schools; capturing insights from teachers to help shape the structure, content and format of teacher training.

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

Our communications strategy outlines key stakeholder audiences. Knowledge:

seekers - individual readers and potential readers; researchers creators - individual contributors; content-holding organisations facilitators - staff; volunteer trainers; Wikimedians in Residence; funders holders - rights holders; content-holding organisations; communities gatekeepers - publishers; rights holders; legislators The communication plan addresses information needs of each of these groups, tailored to what would engage them most with our work. A particular highlight here is our 2022 strategic report https://2023strategicreport.wikimedia.org.uk/

In terms of participation, each of the knowledge communities we identified have activities designed to engage them with WMUK. The logic model illustrates how various communities are invited to participate in our work https://drive.google.com/file/d/147c06V-J0C7ObTzEZ9KGvvhHjvHUBtYb/view

In 2023 we started working with a board Community Development Committee, where we discuss strategies and activities designed to support our existing communities, and to welcome groups within our outreach plans.

A key aspect of our Chief Executive’s role is to promote Wikimedia UK amongst key stakeholders, and advocate for open knowledge more broadly. Lucy is regularly asked to speak at events and conferences or to participate in roundtable discussions. The audiences for these events are varied but usually fall into the categories of knowledge holders and knowledge gatekeepers, according to the taxonomy above - including policy makers, journalists and organisational leaders. During 2023, the acceleration of generative AI has prompted considerable reflection and debate within civil society, and Wikimedia UK is increasingly seen as an important voice for “good tech” within discussions about AI and its relationship to content generation, moderation and governance; misinformation and disinformation; copyright; bias; and media and information literacy skills.

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.
-Connected Heritage – https://www.culturehive.co.uk/digital-heritage-hub/resource/stories/connected-heritage-unlocking-the-power-of-collaboration-using-digital-tools/

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 Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups Strongly agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Strongly agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors Not applicable to your fund
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?

This programme of work is informed by WMUK’s strategic pillars of 'Equity, diversity and inclusion' embedded across the organisation and 'A thriving national and international community'. All these activities are planned and implemented with the understanding of and desire to improve the volunteer experience, expand the volunteer offer, and diversify the volunteer base. Key examples include:
  • Community Leaders Survey
  • Annual Community Meeting, showcasing projects from volunteers
  • small grants programme
  • Implementation of recommendations from the Heritage Innovation Fund Explore phase report
  • Development of skills for existing volunteer pool and wider Wikimedia community through WikiLearn
  • Train the Trainer
  • Developing links with community cultural organisations that would be keen to partner with WMUK
  • Volunteer-led Events
  • Leading on from work done by the team in area of supporting new editors working in challenging spaces (often relating to knowledge equity), we are working on an idea for a seminar led by invited speakers to reflect on best practice in areas relating to: safeguarding of new editors; event design & expectation management; protection of vulnerable people; working in challenging content areas; diversity / equity approaches etc.

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 identified three learning priorities, in line with our three strategic programmes.
  • within Knowledge Equity, in 2023 we explored what barriers marginalised groups face in participating in our programmes. We investigated this through the externally funded Innovation Fund project. Its recommendations show a clear path in how we can improve - and we can share this learning with others too.
  • for Information Literacy and its role in creating an empowered civil society, we launched a Democracy+Wikimedia report. This extensive piece of work maps very clearly how Wikipedia activities increase participants’ information literacy, which in turns build their civic participation skills in four key ways:

(1)Providing open and free access to accurate information, (2) Improving information literacy skills, (3) Encouraging volunteering, (4) Providing accessible collaborative Infrastructure.

  • within Climate, we asked where our impact can be strongest, bearing in mind how broad this area is. In the first year of our climate Wikimedian in Residence project at the Global Systems Institute, we worked with the Institute’s concept of tipping points. The information about them was added to Wikipedia pages. The volume of content was small, but it's a pivotal concept that needs to be promoted more to the public. The Tipping Points research project also appreciated the value of sharing information through Wikimedia.

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

The key aspect here is that we were sometimes surprised to note the degree of external interest is certain aspects of our work.
  • We have been working on Wikidata, and even Wikibase, for some years, but in 2023 we started noting more unprompted interest from external organisations in Wikibase. Partners were exploring having their standalone databases, and sometimes had a degree of understanding that helped having implementation discussions with them.
  • We’ve been running a Train the Trainer course since 2012, but in a recent iteration this was delivered online, with an open call for international participants. We received more interest from Africa-based Wikimedians than anticipated, and decided to run a dedicated TtT course for this cohort. This is something to think about when we design future offers, which are primarily for our UK community.
  • Online Safety Bill advocacy received a lot of attention which was very positive for us; it did mean refocusing our CEO’s time on engaging with policy makers and doing fewer public speaking engagements, which had an effect on our ‘participants’ metric.
  • We are very pleased with the amount of interest and excitement around the Changemakers Toolkit project, and will be building on that in 2024.
  • We did not predict that WikiLearn will emerge as a great space to host some of our knowledge. We had two team members construct courses on the platform already, and will continue working within the platform.

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?

- Innovation Fund report provided us with an extensive list of recommendations of how we can make our partnership programmes more inclusive, accessible, and equitable. We hope to gradually work on implementing the recommendations that are particularly relevant to our work in the context of engaging marginalised heritage groups. One of these is being more open to offering payment to people’s time when they lead on organising activities for us (especially around knowledge equity) or when giving us their expertise (e.g. during user testing, consultations etc).
  • A key learning from our annual Community Leaders survey is that people have less time for volunteering, and doing a whole editathon may be too big of a task. We continue innovating and experimenting with smaller, bite-sized volunteer opportunities.
  • We will continue working closely with Wikimedia Deutschland and their Wikidata and Wikibase partnerships teams in response to the increased interest in it within our partners; We work better when we can supplement each other’s skills and capacities.
  • We will build on collaboration across civil society around information literacy and citizen skills - our messaging around changemaking, democracy, role of AI within knowledge, are all resonating strongly and can be great topics for raising the profile of WMUK and Wikipedia.

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)?

In the summer we were collaborating with the Royal Society who reached out to us to run a 2 day high-level workshop on misinformation - ‘Building resilience to future emergencies and disinformation through adult media literacy’. Topics included trust, evolving information environment, outreach to diverse communities, emergencies, AI.

We co-created the programme, and a lot of the ideas for speakers as well as suggested participants came from WMUK. The other co-organiser was the BBC, and it was fascinating to see how well connected we are in the sphere of misinformation and information literacy, even in comparison to the BBC or the Royal Society.

The group consolidated recommendations for the UK Government and key actors in information ecosystems.

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.
WikiLearn Train the Trainer (requires enrolment): https://app.learn.wiki/learning/course/course-v1:Wikimedia-UK+TT001+2023/home

Changemakers toolkit on meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Changemaker%27s_toolbox_-_introductory_resources_to_campaigning_and_advocacy

Heritage fund - overview video https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Connected_Heritage_-_Wikimedia_UK%27s_two_year_outreach_programme_to_small_GLAMs.webm

Innovation Fund report and recommendations https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heritage_Innovation_Fund_Report,_Lucy_Moore,_July_2023.pdf

Democracy + Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_and_Democracy_-_Wikimedia_UK_report_2021_(full_report).pdf

P&S report https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WM-tIlDw7dB-xLvFN6AQwLaNAMHQ_KFpTw_Oi_Uauz0/edit#heading=h.cktxihgk0yu8

Connected Heritage toolkit https://app.learn.wiki/learning/course/course-v1:Wikimedia-UK+WMUK_000_2+2023/home

How to run a Wikipedia editathon (for heritage organisations) https://www.culturehive.co.uk/digital-heritage-hub/resource/stories/how-to-run-an-online-wikipedia-editathon/

Wikibooks videos (specific to the DAReS project): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOmBhiMn6g0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk9yHAMBuK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zk-p6940i0

Part 3: Metrics for Year 1 edit

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Reach of content - image/article views By measuring the number of views of images and articles released/created directly through our programmes, we can have a better understanding of Wikimedia UK's reach. This is an important metric for our partners and external funders, and was introduced in 2019.

We are aiming for a target of 14 billion for 2023/24, although the Fluxx system isn't allowing us to input this figure (this glitch was also there last year).

N/A 3415156768 Article views = 7061813

Image views = 3408094955

This is a key metric to show our partners how much reach (impact) their released content has.

Image views include our work in Wales through the National Library of Wales, videos and photos from the collaboration with Visit Wales and National Resources Wales; the images from the University of Exeter/GIS through the residency, Khalili Collections and Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments competitions.

Article views stats come from our collaboration with our residencies at the University of Edinburgh, National Library of Wales and Connected Heritage events, among others.

Image views: Accumulative result from the GLAMorgan tool.

Pages: Accumulative results come from Event Metrics.

The tool we have been using for this indicator (Baglama2) has not been reliable and has not been updated for a while. We had to resort to using another tool (GLAMorgan) thus affecting our annual results - we did not reach our target here and we believe this is primarily due to the tool, rather than our performance.
Images/media added to articles % of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons which have been added to Wikipedia articles or other Wikimedia projects. Gives us a key indication about whether the content we are unlocking is addressing existing content gaps on wiki projects. 30 31 The primary sources of images and videos included contributions from sounds and clips added as part of the Recordings of pronunciation of words for Wiktionary project grant, images uploaded as part of the University of Exeter/GIS residency, the International Image Operability Framework (IIIF) Image Project at the National Library of Wales, as well as entries from online competitions such as Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. All uploads made as part of a collaboration with the chapter are tagged with the ‘Supported by Wikimedia UK’ category. On a quarterly basis, we use PetScan to get the results for how many images have been uploaded and how many have been used and where.
Language diversity Articles created and improved across x language Wikipedias, through our activities such as events and partnerships 30 68 Articles created and improved across 68 language Wikipedias, through our activities such as events and partnerships.

(Articles were created in 16 languages and Wikidata; articles improved in 52 languages and Wikidata; images were uploaded to Commons in 26 languages and 234 language versions.)

Methodology: Figures from this metric come from EventMetric reports from our activities and projects. For images, PetScan reports ran over a year, and Baglama2 for Wikipedia and other projects language versions.
Policy touchpoints WMUK-led responses to public consultations, policy discussions, and interactions with policy/decision makers on issues relating to open knowledge. 15 68 With WMUK being very active in the Online Safety Bill process, we have far exceeded the target in this area. This is likely to be an unusual year in this respect.

Beyond OSB, key engagements from 2023 include:

  • Our Programmes Coordinator in Scotland, Dr Sara Thomas, was involved in the Delivering Change Advisory Committee at Museums Galleries Scotland, contributing towards a successful funding application, and advocating for Wiki element to be included in the delivery phase of the project.
  • Our Executive Director, Lucy Crompton-Reid contributed to the Wikimedia Austria/Wikimedia Foundation’s submission on BOSE (upcoming online safety legislation).
  • Wikimedian Lucy Moore, helped the Leeds 2023 project to navigate Creative Commons licences, building towards a release of images from the project's work.
 Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy change entries every quarter.
Policy change A step further from ‘taking part in consultations’, this metric looks at the instances of when our advocacy work results in policy change on an organisational, sector or UK level. 5 11 Highlights of our work in this area for 2023 includes:
  • Jason Evans, the permanent resident at the National Library of Wales was elected to the Europeana Network Members Council.
  • The University of Edinburgh hired a WIR assistant - another wiki role in the institution.
  • We Secured multiple mentions of Wikipedia in House of Lords debates on the Online Safety Bill (OSB)
  • Wikimedia's amendments tabled by Lord Moylan (subsequently sponsored by Lord Vaizey and Baroness Fox) - OSB
 Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy touchpoints entries every quarter.
Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability Partnerships with external organisations to deliver on our strategy, active in a given year 40 90 In 2023, we collaborated with a diverse group of partners from cultural organisations such as Queer Britain, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Vagina Museum, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, and the Science Museum. Within the education sector, we partnered with Aberdeen University, Anglian Ruskin University, Glasgow University, Manchester University, Sankofa Schools, and the University of York, among others. Our engagement also extended to advocacy institutions, including the Open Rights Group and Rights and Security International. Run activity reports from our contact database.
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 % of female community organisers.

Every year we survey our community leaders about their participation in the Chapter over the previous year. This includes a number of questions on demographics, and we will continue to report on the results of this survey. This information is presented numerically, but since it surveys across various characteristics, it's not possible to propose a single number here. We continue to aim for 50% of our community leaders identifying as women. As per our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Framework and accompanying Action Plan, we are exploring ways of effectively measuring the diversity of our broader participant community (beyond community leaders) and will share the results of this through our reporting to the Foundation.

50 56 We also have results from an annual Community Leaders’ Survey 2024 - Results, Reflections and Recommendations

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6T-BQcep_vVsVGv4FLtww3c4TvkRYlcpBMNydCi3Ns/e dit

Surveys; contact database.
Number of people reached through social media publications This metric measures Wikimedia UK’s social media presence by capturing followers and views of our messaging across various platforms. As an example we track Twitter, Facebook, instagram, and WMUK website views, within this target figure. 45000 50187 In 2023, our chapter experienced notable progress in engaging with the community and disseminating our programmes. It's worth highlighting that the shift from Twitter to X had a noticeable effect on our follower count across our X accounts, although it seems to be picking up again at the end of the year. Using the analytics application for each social media platform we are active on, generate a report to get the numbers.
Number of activities developed This metric tracks the engagement efforts with volunteers across the UK, widening the charity’s geographic reach. We will desegregate by Location as we track the geographic spread of our activities, especially away from London. This is tracked manually. 150 259 This year, 70% of our organized events occurred outside of London, underscoring the expansion and diversification of our initiatives across the UK. We are still delivering some activities online or hybrid, providing greater accessibility for participants and expanding the scope of engagement opportunities available to the community. Events and projects are tracked in the WMUK activity tracking sheet and then counted to reach the total. We measure all events that were organised outside of London and calculate the total of events organised. This database is maintained on a quarterly basis and can be counted to report on this metric.
Number of volunteer hours Hours spent on activities by participants of WMUK activities (non WMUK staff), and by lead volunteers/community leaders. 25000 25743 A considerable portion is allocated to Wikipedia in classroom courses, which are conducted multiple times annually, alongside online editing competitions, community editors' involvement in projects, and writing drives that span several days throughout the year. Community organisers' participation is recorded in CiviCRM and includes the name of the activity, dates, start and end times, and volunteer role.

General participants’ time is recorded via the WMUK activity tracking sheet, including the duration of the event.

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants
  1. of people participating in WMUK activities either in person or virtually. With a variety of programmes we deliver, this is a very wide and diverse set - including attendees, trainees, volunteers, etc. The threshold of involvement is attending a talk by a WMUK representative, or higher. This definition does not include people organising activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly (i.e. people who donate money or in-kind resources to support the chapter’s activities). On the whole it is not relevant to our work to disaggregate between new and returning participants, although we do so for specific programmes where we want to show a total of unique participants (e.g. Connected Heritage programme).
 8000 7489 2023 participation numbers came from people attending editathons, workshops, presentations, training sessions, and education courses. Online photo competitions such as Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth, and online writing contests like the Core Contest and the monthly women in read editathons organised by the resident at the University of Edinburgh.

A lot of our work in the past year was focused on fostering partnerships and advocacy efforts towards the Online Safety Bill. This impacted the amount of people we reached through our activities - where normally we'd have a lot of participants from conference speaking engagements from our CEO, in 2023 she was focusing on individual advocacy engagements with policy makers.

Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for the spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates.
Number of editors Metric Description: # of NEWLY registered editors contributing to Wikimedia projects through WMUK activities - at events, project grants, through partnerships, course extensions and/or contests. Please note that because of the focus on outreach and community building within our work, we focus on capturing NEW EDITORS only. 1000 1049 The metrics for this measure come from editing activities overseen and coordinated by Wikimedians in Residence and contributions from Wikipedia in classroom courses, training sessions, editathons, and workshops led by volunteers and WMUK project coordinators held across the UK Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. Usernames are recorded and each event is entered in Event Metrics where a report provides how many people are participating in each event as a new user.
Number of organizers Metric Description: we’ve been tracking this metric for the past 3+ years and have a clear understanding of who counts as a movement organiser in our context (‘lead volunteers/community leaders’). We also survey them annually to check on community health. A lead volunteer is a person who is involved with Wikimedia UK as an event organiser, trainer, facilitator, project coordinator or conference speaker. These are trusted volunteers and community leaders who are in charge of projects by coordinating and taking accountability for their successful delivery, dissemination, completion and reporting; serving as a resource and support for other volunteers. The metric is for active leaders in a given year. 300 483 In 2023, community organiser activities encompassed academics leading educational courses, volunteers facilitating workshops, editathons, training sessions, contributing to Wiki projects through grants, and participating in online competitions and campaigns. Moreover, Wikimedians in Residence organized editing events and advocated within and outside their host institutions. Notably, a new residency has been established as a permanent fixture at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Community organisers' activities and partnership interactions must be recorded in CiviCRM by the WMUK Programmes Team, each entry must include: name of the activity, volunteer role, date, time spent, and status of the activity. A report is generated using CiviCRM on a quarterly basis.
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Wikipedia WIKIPEDIA. Stats for this metric come from a volunteer-led online core contest, Education courses, and various editing events led by the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh. 20000 65379 Stats for Wikipedia include articles improved as part of our Wikipedia in classroom courses throughout the UK; editors working on articles as part of the University of Exeter/GIS residency; articles resulting from the Wiki for Human Rights online competition; editing from the several Scot Wiki Writing Drives, among other events. Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for this spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates. The results from Event Metrics provide the articles by project.
Wikimedia Commons Media content contributed by partners and volunteers, uploaded to Commons 20000 24117 2023 Commons results come from 2023 images uploaded as part of the University of Exeter/GIS residency, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth submissions, and pronunciations sound clips for Welsh Places added to Commons. as above
Wikidata Wikidata items created or improved - mostly contributed by large scale partnership collaborations 200000 24102975 Figures from Wikidata include:
  • Items added as part of the PI bot project grant run by a volunteer.
  • Items created for Welsh place names by the resident at the National Library of Wales as part of the collaboration with the Welsh Language Commissioner.
  • Welsh labels for people added to Wikidata by the NLW resident.
 as above
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

No

15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.

The tool we have been using for the ‘Reach of content’ images metric (Baglama2) has not been reliable and has not been updated for a while. We had to resort to using another tool (GLAMorgan) thus affecting our annual results.

We would welcome guidance from WMF on how to solve this issue, as it's affecting our partnership work, and the work of Wikimedians in Residence.

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 edit

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
B. Conflict management or transformation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
D. Partnership building This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
F. Program design, implementation, and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
K. Communications, marketing, and social media This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
M. On-wiki technical skills This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
N. Accessing and using data This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
O. Evaluating and learning from our work This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
public policy advocacy
WikiLearn, course design

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, 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 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?

In 2020, we were awarded a grant to support fundraising capacity. The grant went on staff costs and was spent down in 2023/24. The period covered by the grant has been characterised by continued economic turbulence, with shutdowns and an ongoing cost of living crisis creating more competition for funding and a squeeze on charity giving. Despite this, WMUK’s income has risen from £867,439 in 2020/21 to £1,094,956 in 2023/24, with our annual grant from WMF representing 37% of our total income. Whilst there have been a number of factors that have led to this increase there is no doubt that the investment of £120,000 by WMF has achieved the goal of building the chapter’s fundraising capacity and strengthening our financial resilience and sustainability.

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, Board members’ outreach, 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.

Local policies or other legal factors, Other

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

In 2023 we concluded several externally funded partnerships with built-in evaluation. We captured and are incorporating learning from these.
  • Innovation Fund project was a research activity on the barriers to wiki participation by small community and heritage groups - report in supplementary docs
  • Heritage Fund learning was captured in a toolkit https://app.learn.wiki/learning/course/course-v1:Wikimedia-UK+WMUK_000_2+2023/home
  • We are learning about DEI approaches to partnerships through ‘Delivering Change’ initiative. So far this showed how inclusion can be lived in practice on a collaborative project.

We facilitate network meetings of WMUK’s 10+ Wikimedians in Residence. This core group can exchange ideas, approaches, and tools with each other and WMUK’s programme staff.

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?

There are three key pillars that we see as elements of fostering a sense of belonging to Wikimedia movement:

1. Leading on delivering projects that have a strategic importance to the movement - e.g. co-hosting the Volunteer Supporters Network, or being the lead local partner on the Online Safety Bill advocacy.

2. Giving knowledge back to the movement, and seeing that it resonates and is being used. We look forward to rolling out the Changemakers Toolkit, and supporting the movement in engaging with it.

3. Being a thought partner on work of strategic importance globally. E.g. at WMUK we have a strategic programme on climate change. Contributing to the global thinking on how Wikimedia can respond to the climate crisis fosters our sense of belonging.

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.

Building on the above, WMUK has wide-ranging expertise in the movement and therefore feel we contribute in a number of ways. We could be considered a ‘lab’, as we have developed and tested different models, innovated in delivery and worked with many different types of organisations. Number of our expert areas increased in 2023, to include:

Train the Trainer Advocacy and lobbying Indigenous languages GLAM, WIRs Evaluation Knowledge equity Open Refine skills Wikibase, Wikidata implementation Chapter governance

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.

- Newer affiliates use our policies, procedures, strategies and reports as models for their own work. For example, all Wikimedia Australia’s policies are based on our policy documents and adapted as needed.
  • We delivered wiki training for Wikimedia Deutschland’s staff
  • We are regularly asked for informal advice from other affiliates on a range of things such as volunteer development and training, partnership working, governance, fundraising, and equity, diversity and inclusion.
  • We have shared our expertise more formally through WikiMove and Let’s Connect.
  • We have delivered a Train the Trainer course specifically targeted at African editors.
  • We are collaborating with Wikimedia Community Ireland on a Celtic Knot minority languages conference

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.

WMUK’s work is oriented very strongly towards external partners, be it for direct delivery, or for broader advocacy activities. Our three strategic strands (Knowledge equity, information literacy, climate) all connect us to other activist movements - equity in heritage, civic empowerment, and environmental activism. Changemakers Toolkit especially will continue playing a role in linking us to civic power movements in the UK. Celtic Knot work links us to language activism communities.

Our advocacy work in 2023 around the Online Safety Bill strengthened our connections with players in the open internet movements.

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?

-We participate in expert network groups e.g. GLAM, Executive Directors, Affiliates Fundraising
  • We join conferences e.g. CEE, Summit, Wikimania, and use them as opportunities to present
  • We participate in emerging Hubs such as Wikimedia Europe
  • We draw on informal networks and connections made by various staff - We are regularly asked for informal advice from other affiliates on a range of things such as volunteer development and training, partnership working, governance, fundraising, and equity, diversity and inclusion
  • We host Volunteers Supporters Network with Wikimedia Argentina, facilitating knowledge exchange and regularly presenting our work there
  • We are starting to set up WikiLearn courses that are open to the movement
  • We produce Diff blogs and promote them through social media channels for maximum reach

There is always scope for more and we'd be interested in the Grant Officer's suggestions of what could be expanded.

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

We do this regularly (at least once a month)

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

-We participate in expert network groups e.g. GLAM, Executive Directors, Affiliates Fundraising
  • We join conferences e.g. CEE, Summit, Wikimania, and use them as opportunities to present
  • We participate in emerging Hubs such as Wikimedia Europe
  • We are regularly asked for informal advice from other affiliates on a range of things such as volunteer development and training, partnership working, governance, fundraising, and equity, diversity and inclusion
  • We host Volunteers Supporters Network with Wikimedia Argentina, facilitating knowledge exchange and regularly presenting our work there
  • We are starting to set up WikiLearn courses that are open to the movement
  • We produce Diff blogs and promote them through social media channels for maximum reach

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance edit

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

410000

31. Local currency type

GBP

32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SFRJUFG5QaHELIx-RD9-YXJSNTzZVc1io-Xn5pjL66M/edit#gid=660879148

33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

The grant of £410,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation was spent in its entirety during the 2023/24 financial year (which ran from 1st February 2023 to 31st January 2024).

The total income for the year was £1,536,956 (please note that we are recognising the £442k for the second year of multi-year funding in 23/24 due to UK Charity Accounting requirements as it was received in the bank in December 2023. This has been moved into a Designated Fund for spending in the 24/25 financial year). This includes Gifts in Kind of £167,340, which is in relation to Wikimedians in Residence, funded by host institutions. The grant from Wikimedia Foundation therefore represents 55% of our total income for 2023/24.

In addition to our grant from Wikimedia Foundation and Gifts in Kind as described above, Wikimedia UK generated funds from a range of other sources. We received individual donations of £234,760, against a £226,000 target in our proposal budget, plus £14,500 in major donor income (which is a donation from an individual of £1,000 or over). We also secured restricted grants for specific projects of £178,095 (including the final year of our Connected Heritage project and additional funding for the Innovation Fund project, both funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund). These restricted funds contributed £16k towards unrestricted activities and additionally include £135,931 towards staff time. We were significantly above target for gift aid at £60,628 against a target of £22,125 due to staff investing time in collecting claims from previous years that weren’t previously collected.

Within expenditure, we were more or less on target in terms of our unrestricted expenditure on partnership programme costs. We invested this additional gift aid income in External Relations & Comms compared to a budget of £10k for the production of a short and engaging animation to increase engagement with our work and secure additional donations from individuals. We additionally invested in Fundraising, working with storytelling consultants to work with the whole staff team on how we tell our story to engage donors, funders and partners, and additionally with a fundraising consultant to work with the fundraising team to utilise their bid-writing expertise.

There was an increased spend on staff salaries which was in line with the increase in income from restricted funds - staff time has to be increased to support these projects. Additionally, in line with inflation, core staff received an increase in salaries (approx. 10% across the board). We also extended the Volunteer Coordinator role into a permanent part-time position.

Our annual reserves target is identified using a risk-based methodology to calculate the cost of our highest financial risk materialising; or between three to six months of operating costs (whichever is higher). At the end of 2023/24 our unrestricted reserves are within the level determined by our Board of Trustees as optimal.

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.

We support WMF continuing to consider multi-year planning, especially for the affiliate annual grant funding. This allows for a strategic approach and planning for sustainability.

Strategically, WMUK has a particular interest in volunteer community development, and advocating for civic space. The two 2030 grants we secured in 2023, the Volunteer Supporters Network and Changemakers Toolkit, are exemplars of this. We hope to continue finding synergies and collaborations with WMF on these themes, providing movement leadership where helpful and appropriate.

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