Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Australia 2022 - 2025

Follow-up questions on grant application

Hello Wikimedia Australia, thank you for putting in a grant application and for providing further clarifications. We are capturing the key questions and your responses here as well for learning and sharing with the wider community.

Note: The questions were posed by ESEAP Funds Committee and the Programme Officer and responses were given by Wikimedia Australia.

General

1) Wikimedia Australia Committee/ Board: How do you approach succession planning for the Board?

Wikimedia Australia:

• From 2020-21 we started to set geographic, gender and age diversity targets for the Committee, and reported against this (see section titled chapter governance): https://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/1/10/Simple_Annual_Plan_Grant_2020-21_Final_Report.pdf
• Succession planning is a cooperative activity of current Committee members. Discussion occurs in meetings leading up to the calling of the August Annual General Meeting. We put out general calls to members encouraging interested people to nominate, and actively approach members who have skills and attributes we need for a balanced, diverse Committee. Committee members are currently elected for one year terms however most members usually serve for around 3 - 5 years. Committee members usually begin as general members then may take on executive positions once they have experience with the committee responsibilities.
• The executive holds discussions on roles and succession planning for executive positions in the lead up to the Annual General Meeting. We are currently reviewing the Association Rules in regard to the length of committee membership with a view to extending it to 2 or 3 years to ensure greater stability and long term planning. Any changes to the Rules would need to be presented and passed at the WMAU Annual General Meeting held in August 2022.

2) What are essential skills required by the Committee/Board to thrive in their roles and how are you working with the committee to build these skill sets?

Wikimedia Australia:

• Committee members are nominated and elected based on their professional, community and personal skills, experience and training, their interest and experience with Wikimedia platforms and activities and their commitment to the purposes and aims of WMAU. The current board has a range of high-level professional expertise across libraries, research and educational institutions, government agencies and business, is a mix of genders, age and ethnicity and covers four states of Australia.

• The committee meets monthly via zoom as members usually live in various states across the country. The executive committee also meets fortnightly to discuss matters arising and convenes extra meetings as required to address urgent matters. Due to the pandemic the committee has not been able to meet face-to-face since 2018 – organising an in person meeting is a priority for 2022. Despite COVID restrictions, we were able to conduct a successful online strategic planning process in Dec-Jan 2022 and the community and committee has grown in strength and engagement in the last few years.

• We are also improving our onboarding processes for new committee members with extraordinary meetings, strategic planning and the provision of training on board responsibilities.

3) What are the geographical hotspots for Wikimedia activities in Australia? What is the existing distribution of membership and how does this influence areas of engagement?

Wikimedia Australia:

There have been limited in-person events in 2020-21 so data on this is limited and somewhat dated. https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Category:Events_by_State_or_Territory

• Events in Australian Capital Territory = 6
• Events in New South Wales = 24
• Events in North Territory = 5
• Events in Queensland = 26
• Events in South Australia = 3
• Events in Tasmania = 2
• Events in Victoria = 34
• Events in Western Australia = 52

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_territories_of_Australia

Membership distribution by state as at Aug 2021 is in the 2021 AGM report https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:2021_AGM/Secretary%27s_Report

Programme and Strategy

4) Programme and proposal timeline : Could you elaborate more on your content development strategy and stakeholder analysis for partnership? What is the desired outcome, your planning process and how will it guide your content/partnership development? Is the plan to make these documents publicly available, if yes, would it be possible to also add it as a metric and share it when ready? Do you plan to link diversifying funding to grow capacity and opportunities to the stakeholder analysis for partnerships?

Wikimedia Australia:

• We have started a mapping process of existing partnerships (https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Partnerships) and a project analysing types of GLAM and the best way to approach https://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/7/7d/WikidataGLAMReport.pdf

• It is our default is to publish all strategic, policy & operational documents on the WMAU website:

https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Governance

5) Could you elaborate more on what it means with regard to the increasing load of maintenance work required to keep Australian content relevant and accurate. How outsourcing specialist tasks such as data integration and technical tasks to consultants and contractors will help?

Wikimedia Australia:

Some background here: Census Implementation Tools - https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Census_Implementation_Tools_-_Request_For_Quote

6) Could you elaborate more on your Communications Strategy and how social media feeds into it? How does the data below compare to your regular social media engagement figures? And how do you envision it evolving with a project and communications coordinator managing social media?

Wikimedia Australia:

Number of people reached through social media publications:

• Twitter: 10,000 tweet impressions per month, 120,000 yearly
• Instagram: 40 likes per month, 480 yearly Facebook: 10,000 reach per month, 120,000 yearly

The above target represents around a 10% increase on the current year. We will audit our social media management and potentially use a platform like Hootsuite to implement a content schedule.

Learning and evaluation

7) Based on the feedback shared on learning and evaluation, were you able to incorporate some of the comments into your submitted application? If yes, could you share briefly? Alternatively, if you require more time and resources to build on this, how do you envision developing this further during the grant implementation phase and what support would you require?

Wikimedia Australia:

• This is a work in progress. We did discuss a plan to work on this based on the feedback as a priority in June/July 2022 in order to establish baselines and data collection points. We also budgeted for an external evaluation at the end of the first year of the 3 year plan which would involve surveying the community.

Staffing

8) Staffing: As Wikimedia Australia will be expanding the team of paid staff, what are some existing best practices that you hope to develop or already have in place to enable a conducive environment to work in? For example, these could range from putting together an employee handbook, type of team culture to recruitment policy etc.

Wikimedia Australia:

• We will develop an employee handbook for induction and onboarding. We have some draft materials for this already. As a registered NFP we will also require numerous new policies for staff. These will likely be based on this Australian standard policy bank: https://communitydirectors.com.au/tools-resources/policy-bank inclusive of: Personal Leave, Unpaid leave, Carer's Leave & Compassionate Leave, Time in lieu policy; Performance Review Policy; Resignation and Retirement Policy; Staff Grievances and Dispute Resolution Policy; Staff Recruitment Policy; Financial delegations.

The Executive Director has a Diploma in Governance and has extensive prior experience setting up and drafting these for documents for other Boards. JChen (WMF) (talk) 08:58, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Multi-year General Support Fund proposal approved. Year 1 of grant approved in the amount of AUD 291,600

Congratulations! Your 3-year grant (1 July 2022 to 30 June 2025) request is approved in-principle. Your first year grant is approved in the amount of AUD 291,600 with a grant term starting 1 July 2022 and ending 30 June 2023.

The ESEAP Funds Committee is pleased to support the work of Wikimedia Australia. The Committee values the efforts in putting together the grant application and budget. Your application provides insights into your lived realities and a deeper appreciation of the Chapter’s multi-year strategic plan and annual plans.

The ESEAP Funds Committee and Programme Officer sees a number of strengths in your application. This includes

• Programme delivery and innovation: Plans to build on people’s engagement with the movement at a local, regional and global level with increased emphasis on participation, peer learning, sharing resources and expertise. Also noteworthy are a) facilitator programme where there is potential to standardise and scale outreach beyond existing hotspots in Australia and b) First Nations Reference Group to explore opportunities to improve cultural safety and control of content on Wikimedia platforms. We recognise its a first step in putting in place safeguards to welcome new people and content that are underrepresented in the movement.

• Organisational capacities: By reviewing this grant application and reading through the documentation of policies that Wikimedia Australia has in place for a predominantly volunteer run chapter (since 2009), it is evident that the leadership and community places strong emphasis on governance and organisational development. The planning documents in the pipeline such as content development strategy and stakeholder analysis for partnerships could be useful reference for the wider ESEAP community. Wikimedia Australia’s multi-year strategic plan and annual plan is clear and demonstrates strong alignment with the 2030 movement strategy.

We support your growth area which is exploring and being curious about learning and evaluation approaches/ tools that capture the breadth and depth of your work as a community. We are interested to learn more about your planned dashboard and the results of your upcoming in-depth study on attracting and retaining contributors to Wikimedia platforms and what makes that a safe, satisfying and rewarding experience for the Wikimedia Australia community.

In your 2022/2023 learning journey, the Committee and Programme Officer envisions you may require support in the following areas:

• Communications (e.g. storytelling; digital outreach);
• Learning and evaluation

For a start, you may find these resources useful (or contribute to the learnings) through the Let’s Connect Programme, Wikilearn platform and Wikiversity. We hope to continue conversations and support you through your grant lifecycle.

On behalf of the ESEAP Funds Committee, JChen (WMF) (talk) 04:38, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Follow-up Questions on Year 2 Plans

Dear Wikimedia Australia,

Thank you for providing your written responses to additional questions. See PDF document for more details. And for sharing an update on your progress for year 1 (2022/2023) as well as proposed activity plan for year 2 (2023/2024).

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 09:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Year 2 Plan Approved.

Hello Wikimedia Australia,

Congratulations! Your year 2 grant is approved in the amount of AUD 349,226. This is a continuation of the 3-year grant term starting 1 July 2023 and ending 30 June 2026. The adjusted breakdown is as follows: Year 1: AUD 291,600 (granted); Year 2: AUD 349,226 (adjusted); Year 3: AUD 329,969 (original - up for adjustments later). The updated 3-year grant amount is AUD 970,786.

The strides you are making

Being on the sidelines, hearing, reading about the progress you have made collectively as a team and community has been really inspiring. While this is captured in your progress from year 1 document (see above), I would also like to take the opportunity to highlight some of them here:

• The comprehensive calendar of events that you have refined overtime to meet the needs of the community
• Partnership with Wikimedian User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand in providing Wikidata Fellowships
• Continued and increased participation in global engagements, in addition to hosting ESEAP 2022 Conference and being part of the core team for the ESEAP Hub Interim Committee.
• Your focus (and work) on First Nations as a priority of growth has also been shared with fellow Wikimedians in the region who are moving in the same stride. And it has been also interesting to read about the projects that you are supporting to increase diversity of content and skills building.
• Your sharing and insights at a recent regional learning session on guidelines, key practices and documented learnings related to travel scholarships is particularly timely with more affiliates in the region securing travel budget for in-person conference attendance. The learnings and practical toolkit that we put together will support other affiliates to set up a scholarship award process that is more inclusive and equitable.
• The training resources that you have collated over time and hosted on your website for contributors are well viewed and referenced by wikimedians in the region. These links are included in learning and implementation sections of rapid fund grants. Here are two examples - Myanmar; Taiwanese.

More to come

• In the coming year, we also note that you'll be taking a moment to reflect by conducting a further evaluation of the impact of major programs thus far and have the intention to work with a facilitator to apply the evaluation findings into your workflows and wider community.
• We also look to learn more about your growing interest in the areas of research (congrats on securing research grant funding) and public policy. And how this could build on the momentum from partnerships funded under Alliances Fund (such as Analysis Policy Observatory).

Thank you and congratulations once again.

Regards, Jacqueline JChen (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)