Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia Israel/Proposal form
Community review has ended. You are still welcome to comment on these proposals, but the FDC and the applicants may not be able to respond to your feedback or consider it during the deliberations.
Please do not edit this proposal form directly. If changes are needed, applicants can request them on the proposal form's discussion page. Thank you!
Proposal by Wikimedia Israel to support its annual plan with ~US$268,000.
Program focus: Community Support, Content, Training, Free knowledge awareness
Wikimedia Israel has expanded its activity in 2015 in two main courses of action: supporting several Wikimedia Projects and their communities and expanding our collaboration with with key organizations in Israel. Key focus areas this year include working to expand and strengthen the Israeli Wikipedia community and to support other Wikimedia Projects’ communities, and improving the training infrastructure will empower the volunteer instructors and increase the number of edits following the workshops. Beyond these actions, our intention is to expand WMIL activities in a new direction - the creation of openly licensed materials, and to expand collaborations which will increase content and encourage public awareness about the importance of open data and of the public domain.
If you need to review the edit instructions you will find them in the editintro.
Eligible organizations may complete this form to request an Annual Plan Grant from the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) in the current round. This complete proposal form must be published in English on Meta by the proposal submission date for each round for your organization's application to be considered. No changes should be made to this proposal form and supplementary documents after these proposal submission date without written approval from FDC staff, and any proposal forms created will be considered 'submitted' after the proposal submission deadline unless the applying organization withdraws the application in writing.
The purpose of this document is to provide the FDC with an overview of your organization's annual plan, the alignment of the plan with the Wikimedia movement’s strategic priorities, and the potential impact of the plan. This proposal should complement any annual planning documents your organization may have such as your organization's annual plan and strategic plan: please complete all fields and add links to supporting documents where relevant. If any documents are submitted in draft form (e.g. an annual plan that has not yet been approved by the organization's General Assembly), please link to the final version of the document once it has been approved, even if it is approved after the deadline. If you are a representative of the applicant organization, you may request permission to add information to this proposal form on the proposal form discussion page. All requested changes will be reviewed by FDC staff.
Please review the documents describing the Annual Plan Grants process, including the FDC Framework, Guidancefor the FDC from the Board, and the FDC's past funding recommendations: FDC recommendations. These documents include critical information for applicants.
If you have any questions about the form, please contact FDCSupport@Wikimedia.org. If you have general suggestions or comments about the form itself, please leave them on the discussion page for this form.
A few terms used in the form:
FDC proposal form terms Wikimedia terms Learning & Evaluation terms
Basic information[edit]
- 1. In order to support community review, please provide a brief description of your organization's work in the upcoming year that can be used as a summary of your proposal. (This should be about 200 words, and should be easy for anyone to understand.)
Wikimedia Israel has expanded its activity in 2015 in two main courses of action: supporting several Wikimedia Projects and their communities and expanding our collaboration with with key organizations in Israel. Key focus areas this year include working to expand and strengthen the Israeli Wikipedia community and to support other Wikimedia Projects’ communities, and improving the training infrastructure will empower the volunteer instructors and increase the number of edits following the workshops. Beyond these actions, our intention is to expand WMIL activities in a new direction - the creation of openly licensed materials, and to expand collaborations which will increase content and encourage public awareness about the importance of open data and of the public domain.
- 2. Contact information.
- Legal name of organization: ויקימדיה ישראל ע”ר
- Organization's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd): 01/01-12/31
- 12-month funding period requested (mm/dd/yy–mm/dd/yy): 01/01/15-12/31/15
- Primary contact name and position in organization: Michal Lester Executive Director
- Primary contact username or Email: mlester@wikimedia.org.il
- Secondary contact name and position in organization: Itzik Edri ChairPerson
- Secondary contact username or Email: itzik@wikimedia.org.il
- 3. Amount requested.
Table 1
| Currency requested () | US$ () | |
| Total annual expenses of organization | 1,177,233 | 329,020 |
| Amount requested from the FDC for the upcoming year's annual plan | 960,000 | 268,306 |
| Amount to be raised from non-FDC sources (total from Table 5) | 218,045 | 60,940 |
| Amount to be drawn from reserves for the upcoming year's annual plan | - | - |
| Amount of FDC funds allocated for the current year's annual plan | 709,000 | 196,944 |
- 4. What is your organization's proposed rate of growth in total budget since last year? Please explain your organization's rationale if your proposed budget will increase this year.
Our growth rate is 35%. The increase in budget is the result of expansion in our activities, and stems from a number of reasons: Expanding our activity in education field: in light of our evolving collaboration with the Ministry of Education, there has been an increase in demand for workshops at schools. Lectures in academia have also expressed growing interest. In order to address existing collaborations and expand the activities we wish to hire a coordinator who is an expert in training and has acquaintance with the education field (14.2%). Also, based on the strategic plan executed this summer, we have expanded our activities to include a digitization program and an enhanced open knowledge on public domain and free content. The cost of the suggested activity in this field is 13% of the budget. Beyond these, the Wikimania activity in Mexico has led to a significant increase in budgeting for overseas travel. As a rule, flights from Israel are very expensive. A flight to Wikimania is estimated to cost $2,000 per ticket, compared to $700 for London this year. Also, in 2014, we didn't budget for two ED trips to EDs’ retreats in Europe. Moreover, there has been an increase in ongoing activity in all areas (increasing number of workshops, etc.) and a moderate increase in expenses for wages, rent, and regular expenses.
Community engagement[edit]
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This section provides the FDC an overview of your organization's work with volunteers and online contributors.
- 1. Which Wikimedia community or communities does your organization work with most closely, and which online Wikimedia project or projects does your organization's work support?
WMIL traditional target communities are:
- Hebrew-language Wikipedia
- As of Q3 2014, we have also begun working with the WikiSource community.
- The projects we support: Wikipedia.
We intend to support two additional communities this year: Wiktionary and MediaWiki Developers.
- 2. How does your organization know what community members / contributors to online projects need or want? Does your organization conduct needs assessments? How else does your organization consult the contributors and volunteers most involved with its work?
WMIL maintains continuous relations with the Wikimedia communities on a variety of channels:
- We run a mailing list in which our activists and volunteers can be updated on activities and issues, and where frequent discussions are made.
- Direct communication via the Community Coordinator's Talk Page.
- In our strategic process we distributed questionnaires examining how community members perceive the chapter's activity. These questionnaires indicated the strengthening of the relations with the community as a significant need.
- Additional means of contacting our volunteers directly, as detailed in the 2015 work plans (community support).
Organization planning and reports[edit]
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Please provide links to your organization’s planning documents and reports. All of these documents are required unless otherwise indicated.
Your organization's strategic planning documents, past reports, and current annual planning documents, are essential to our understanding of your organization's proposal. If you think you will have difficulty submitting any of these documents with your organization's proposal form by the proposal submission deadline, you should contact FDC staff right away. You may also provide notes to this table here, as well as links to any supplementary documents to this proposal form.
Table 2
Completed fiscal year Current year Upcoming year Annual plan (including budget) Working plan and budget (hebrew) and Proposal to FDC Working plan, Budget and Proposal to FDC Budget and Working plan (Hebrew and English). Community discussion around annual plan A Community discussion regarding the annual plan took place on a face to face meeting in Tel Aviv at 09/04/2012 A Community discussion regarding the annual plan took place on a face to face meeting in Jerusalem at 09/16/2013 Community discussion Annual report (including financial report) WMIL Financial statement 2013 Not required. Not required. Strategic plan - - Strategic Plan 2015-2-17
Table 2 notes:
Financials: year-to-date progress[edit]
The purpose of this section is to give the FDC an idea of how your organization is spending on your current grant, or during your current annual plan. The period defined as year-to-date should be the start date of your fiscal year you defined in Contact information, until 1 September 2014. Your projected amount should be the amount your organization expects to spend by the end of the current fiscal year you defined in Contact information.
Table 3
Current funding period planned / budgeted Year-to-date funding period actuals Projected end of current funding period In currency requested In $US In currency requested In $US In currency requested In $US Revenues (from all sources) 912,000 254,891 423,863 118,463 943,100 263,583 Expenses 877,456 245,236 340,212 95,084 827,855 231,373
Table 3 notes:
- 1$ = 3.578 NIS
- Year-to-date - Estimate based on Q2 figures, as we only produce financial reports quarterly.
Programs: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
This section is about your organization's programs. A program is a group of activities that share the same objectives. Please do not include information about your organization's operating activities in this section. You are welcome to provide information about activities like administration, staff and board training, fundraising, governance, and internal IT in another section of this proposal form or in a supplementary document. Please answer all four questions for each program.
Community Support
Strategic Goal: Expanding and strengthening communities of Wikipedia editors and Wikimedia volunteers.
Strategic Priorities: Increase participation, encourage innovation.
Strengthening our relations with the Wikipedia editor community will allow us to expand the volume of activity in the Hebrew Wikipedia as well as to support new initiatives coming from the community.
Strengthening and cultivating the relations between the Chapter and the Wikimedia community
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Maintaining a variety of communication channels vis a vis Wikimedia communities and Volunteers:
Initiate contacts with the community
- Use of 6 different channels to achieve maximum access:
- 4 various mediums within Wikipedia: ongoing updates on the chapter's Wikipedia page, The Village Pump, the "Miscellaneous" section (or page for off-topic discussions) on Village Pump, and the Message Board on a ad-hoc basis
- A bi-weekly mail update is delivered to all Chapter members
- Social networks – 30 quarterly posts on the Chapter's Facebook page and posts in interest groups according to need
Information from the community
- 5 monthly inquiries or comments on various topics
- Regular follow-up and monitoring of discussions on the community's as well as and requests on the Community Coordinator's Talk page
Personally contacting wikipedians on individual basis
- Every month the community coordinator will reach out to 2 active Wikipedians with whom the chapter has yet to make contact.
- Continuing connection with said volunteers throughout the year in order to retain three of them as active Chapter volunteers
Reaching out to inactive veteran editors
- We will try to reach out to 4-6 inactive veteran editors, in the hope of returning at least some of them to be an active part of the community. We are unsure of the nature of their re-involvement, as it will involve their specific fields of interest. We hope to make at least one “retired” editor become active again in 2015.
2 training development workshops throughout the year:
- 50% of volunteer trainers attend each workshop
- In each workshop, we practice the use of hands-on training tools
- The team encourages volunteers to use the training tools
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
The relationship between the Chapter and the community is essential in increasing participation, as in this manner we can inform our volunteers of the opportunities the chapter has to offer, find out the ongoing community needs as well as its requirements in special circumstances, such as a “hot” discussion topics or the launch of an enterprise that needs Chapter support.
The activities designated to achieving this goal address it on a number of complementary levels; the first level is publishing posts and updates through mass distribution. Our primary target audience uses a number of different channels within Hebrew Wikipedia. As we realize that not all Wikipedians and Chapter volunteers are continuously updated on these channels, we also use external methods like the distribution list and social networks. In this manner, we aim to reach optimal distribution and increase awareness and motivation to become an active part in the chapter's activity and to encourage collaboration for community projects. Along with publishing information on behalf of the community, we also attribute great importance to making all ways of communication with the chapter accessible, so that interested parties can easily reach us. To this end, we also provide volunteers the option of contacting us via Wikipedia, email, or social networks. In addition to these communication channels, the community coordinator monitors the continuous activity on the community pages and the relevant Facebook groups and other forums so that the chapter may offer assistance on its own initiative if and when necessary. Making individual contact is meant to complement and enhance the public / group discussions and enhance relations. This enables us to focus our efforts on Wikipedians who wish to be involved in certain types of activity. The gradual callout to volunteers who have yet to be contacted increases the circle of those individually active and express their unique abilities and personalities. Contacting veteran editors who have left Wikipedia allows us to receive a wealth of information on community activity, and open doors for new types of involvement for them. Training workshops are expected to have a double effect on increasing the activity volume: Firstly, enriching volunteers with skills and new knowledge can raise the quality and impact of the workshops and presentations they are guiding. The secondary effect would be that the improvement of the workshops led by the volunteers will hopefully result an increase in the number of edits.
9 face to face meetings to reinforce Wikimedia communities in 2015
These are 9 annual meetings comprise of:
- 3 Social gatherings per year (HEWP & ENWP birthdays + one additional meeting)
- Attendance of at least 100 participants in all the meetings, and 5% new participants in each.
- The activities in each meeting are organized with representatives from the community
- At least 2 enrichment workshops with external lecturers
- At least 10 participants in each meeting
- 70% of participants in each workshop expressed satisfaction with its contents
- 4 edit-a-thons in WMIL office
- Over 5 Wikipedians in each session
- Each participant edits or expands one article during the edit-a-thon
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
Gatherings and meetings contribute to increasing the community’s activity on a number of levels. Gatherings contribute to good relations within the community, and hopefully will help decrease the number of veteran editors that leave due to social reasons, while increasing the absorption of new editors who socialize with veterans. Moreover, these meetings allow for the creation of collaborations between editors, and sharing of ideas which grow to advancing activities on-wiki afterwards.
Expanding Wikimedia Israel's volunteer base
Recruiting 6 new volunteers for Chapter activities
- Recruiting 3 active volunteers from the Wikipedia community to take part in the chapter's activity. These volunteers will be part of the Chapter activities throughout the year, with a total of 30 annual volunteering hours per person.
- Recruitment of three volunteers outside the Wikipedia community to take part in the chapter's activity. These volunteers will also be part of the Chapter activities throughout the year, with a total of 30 annual volunteering hours per person.
How will these activities lead to results?
Expanding the circle of volunteers allows us to expand the chapter's activity, and start new programs as well as to operate existing ones more efficiently. Also, the more diverse projects we have, the more we are able to recruit volunteers. Volunteers from within the Wiki community strengthen the ties between the Chapter and the community and improve inter-communication and understanding. Volunteers from outside the community freshen the troops, remove workload from other volunteers and bring new knowledge and contacts from their content worlds. The external volunteers can also be a potential base for recruiting new editors, as they become familiar with the Chapter's activity and its connection with Wikipedia.
Encouraging and assisting volunteers and new members to create content
Financial Support of NIS 12,000 for volunteer activities to encourage innovative activities within the Wikimedia initiatives:
- Granting at least three microgrants grants based on the Chapter's grant committee recommendation and predefined criteria:
- Assistance in amending and submitting applications according to the predefined criteria
- Assistance and reference to more suitable solutions or platforms for applications that are not accepted
- One of the new grant recipients is to remain active as Wikimedian for six months after the program
- Financial support for two article writing competitions, to be held by request from the community
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
Grants aim to encourage activity by supporting initiatives stemming from volunteer interests instead of dictating topics or fields for support. This also implies on community initiated competitions.
Community Support
Strategic Goal: Supporting other open content communities
Strategic Priorities: Increase Participation, Encourage Innovation
Empowering other Wikimedia communities will expand our activity and enable new partnerships outside the community.
Supporting three other Wikimedia projects’ communities
Expanding collaboration with the Wikisource community during this annual plan year
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- Based on a list of sources chosen by the Wikisource community, we shall assist in releasing materials from the National Library and other libraries.
- At least 50% of the texts released with the chapter's assistance will be uploaded to Wikisource during 2015, with 50% undergoing OCR to accelerate the process
To rebuild an active community that will revive the Hebrew Wiktionary
Background:
Today there is no active Hebrew Wiktionary community. The Academy of the Hebrew Language has contacted the Chapter during 2014 to establish a meaningful collaboration. The idea of a course that will train volunteers to write Wiktionary articles arose out of joint brainstorming sessions. Collaboration with the most significant institution responsible for cultivation of the Hebrew Language will enrich the development of the volunteers and raise the prestige of the course. Additionally, this is the first time that an external organization is involved in the creation and consolidation of a Wikimedia volunteer community.
- Recruiting at least 20 volunteers to attend the course
- 80% of the participants complete the course
- 90% of the participants completing the course will edit 20 articles each
- 50% of the participants will be active editors for the three months following the course
Recruiting and consolidating a MediaWiki developer community of at least 10 members
Background:
In 2014 there were a number of unsuccessful attempts to create a group of developers within the Israeli Wikipedia community. After consulting with volunteers, we have decided to try and contact companies and organizations using MediaWiki to recruit a new group of volunteers.
- Contacting 5 large hi-tech companies that have community outreach programs, to recruit active volunteers throughout Q1 2015
- In case of successfully forming a MediaWiki community:
- They will create their own list of development priorities
- They will meet at least 7 times throughout the year
- The developer community will organize at least 2 local hackathons with 30 participants each, 50% of whom are not existing Wikimedia community members
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
In light of the strategic process where a significant need arose to expand activities to additional communities, we decided that in 2015 we would renew and launch activities in three Wikimedia communities. The relationships with the communities will increase the activity level.
Content
Strategic Goal: Developing human and technological infrastructure to promote the creation of openly licensed materials
Strategic Priorities: Stabilize Infrastructure, Increase Reach, Encourage Innovation
Background: Creating new methods of expanding Wikimedia Israel's activity to make open material accessible through a network of supporters, and creating a digitization program will increases the interest of new volunteers and partners and will creates opportunities for new initiatives, as well as directly contribute to one of the Chapter’s primary goals - providing access to openly licensed information and data.
Developing human and technological infrastructures to promote the creation of openly license materials
Creating a digitization program to scan 4000 pages to Commons in 2015
- Purchase a DIY book scanner from DIY Book Scanner project
- Publish and announce the project among Wikimedia community volunteers. At least 5 community members will scan and upload materials to the Commons throughout 2015
- Recruit two volunteers dedicated to scanning in the first half of the year
- 2 participants in the librarians' course will upload materials to Commons using scanners at the chapter offices
- Check feasibility for collaboration with the National Library and/or other libraries that operate scanning equipment in order to collaborate throughout second half of 2015
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
The scanning pilot will examine the ability of Wikimedia Israel to promote and publish openly licensed materials in an innovative manner. Moreover, we would be able to fulfill needs of community volunteers through making desired sources available (provided that they are in the public domain). Lastly, we hope that new collaborations might stem from announcing our digitization initiative.
Creating a network of librarians and archivists for promotion of open source knowledge
- Develop a course for librarians and archivists on the distribution of open knowledge as the first step to build the network:
- Recruiting 20 archive and library representatives for the course
- Participation of 3 WMIL existing partners in the course activity
- 70% of the course graduates will identify with the values of free content
- 50% of the participants will upload at least 5 significant items to Wiki Commons each, of which one item will be integrated into a Wikipedia article.
- 30% of the participants shall continue to upload items to Wiki Commons in the 6 months subsequent to the course
- 50% of attendees will participate in two follow-up meetings
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
Creation of a network of new partners responsible for knowledge bases will lead to promotion of open license materials.
Annual photography competition
- Hold an annual photography competition (such as WLM and WLE)
- Increase of 15% in the number of heritage sites on the list that is available for the competition
- 20% of the photographs will be of sites which were not photographed previously in the competition
- Recruiting a new organization as a partner for the competition
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
The WLM photography competition is very popular among the volunteers and draws new participants who join the Chapter. In order to maximize the opportunities arising from the competition, we will work to make it the first stage in a partnership with a partner,organization initially recruited for the competition, to later examine possibilities for releasing materials, expanding articles, and more.
Collaboration for free content
Strategic Goal: Establishing meaningful collaborations with knowledge-centric institutions
Strategic Priorities: increase participation, encourage innovation, increase reach
Long-term partnerships increase participation of new users and institution employees, promote the ideas of the movement and create opportunities for developing new programs and tools.
Goal: Creating sustainable relationships with new institutions, retention and expansion of existing collaborations
Developing our collaboration with the Ministry of Education
- Gifted students:
- Providing editing skills to students in 15 gifted student classes all over Israel – overall 450 students
- At least 60 new articles or expanding articles will be written by gifted students. 80% of the articles written will be uploaded into the article space.
- 5% will continue to edit independently.
- Training teachers:
- At least 200 teachers will be trained in one of six offered online seminars (These written courses are defined as stage one of the pilot).
- 80% of the trained teachers will acquire skills for a better understanding and use of Wikipedia (Talk Pages, Feedback on Article, Search options, etc.)
- 70% of teachers trained will gain understanding of Wikipedia as an efficient pedagogic tool.
- 20% of teachers trained will use materials provided by the workshops in their classes.
- Another cycle of online seminars in the upcoming school year (September 2014-July 2015) will be an evidence to the Ministry of Education's Pedagogic Department satisfaction from the pilot.
- The writing of stage two in online seminars that will consist of the training of teachers to edit in Wikipedia
- Publishing the first stage of the program to the international Wikimedia community
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
We started working with gifted students in 2013. Throughout 2014, we expanded this activity and reached an agreement with the community regarding the students' activity on Wikipedia. In 2015, WMIL would like to further expand our activity with gifted students in the format of this pilot, in order to aim for a wider acceptance of this model within Israeli schools. In the end of 2015, WMIL will finally reach to a point where we will be able to significantly evaluate the success of our work with gifted students. In some schools the program's goal is writing articles about local sites in their city and/or local figures using materials found in the local archives. This may also lead to a further collaboration between WMIL and municipal archives.
The training online seminars is being developed during Q3 2014 and shall launch in December 2014 and continue during this annual plan year. The online seminars shall expose hundreds of teachers to the use of Wikipedia as a significant learning tool, and can integrate them into writing articles. In the upcoming years, teachers, students and Ministry of Education staff will be part of the Wikimedia community and help promote the idea of open content in Israel. The Curriculum for the teachers’ seminars will be translated and will be available to the Wikimedia community worldwide
Maintaining and developing the collaboration with the National Library to expand the free content released by the library
- 1 edit-a-thon at the National Library for active Wikipedians, jointly planned with the Wikipedian in residence in the National Library
- Attendance: at least 8 Wikipedians
- Writing or expanding at least 4 articles
- At least 10 items will be uploaded to Commons
- Assistance to the WikiSource community to release of texts to be OCR’d from the library.
- Monthly editing workshop for the public at the National Library (10 per year)
- 60% of participants will report at the end of the workshop that they are familiar with editing skills, and 10% of participants will continue editing 3 months subsequent to the workshop
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
The National Library is WMIL's primary strategic partner. In 2015 we intend to move the focus of activity from workshops conducted by Wikipedian-in-residence, along with chapter volunteers, to release of content and activities that respond to the needs of Wikimedia communities. In the frame of our collaboration with the Ministry of Education (see below), at least one school will come to the National Library to find materials that will complement the articles written throughout the year.
Creating relationships with new institutions:
Creating Collaboration with two Academic Institutions in order to expand writing articles as an academic assignment 2 lectures to two academic departments or institutions with which there has not been any previous collaboration will be conducted.
- 20 lecturers will be exposed to this initiative
- At least 2 lecturers will join the project
- Article writing will be integrated as an assignment in at least one additional academic course
- 50% of students in participating courses will select article writing as an elective academic task.
- 70% of articles will be uploaded to the Wikipedia article space..
- The success of the partnership will be proven by the lecturer's interest in continuing the collaboration.
Expand the collaboration with Israeli Antiquities Authority
Background: In 2014, a significant partner joined our WML photography competition: the Israeli Antiquities Authority. It is Israel's most prominent historical institution responsible for excavation, collection, and storage of archaeological artifacts. The partnership with the Authority is a meaningful opportunity for WMIL to enrich Wikimedia programs.
Expanding our collaboration with the Antiquities Authority in 2015 will hopefully lead to the release of images and texts and the enrichment of volunteers by tours and lectures, and even an adoption of the Wikipedian in Residence model at the Authority.
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
Collaboration with new academic departments and the Israeli Antiquities Authority will enlarge the Wikimedia projects with new materials.
Training
Strategic Goal: Improving the training infrastructure for Wikimedia initiatives
Strategic Priorities: Increase participation
Improving the skills of our volunteer trainers will increase their effectiveness and thus participants attending chapter training workshops will get better Wikipedia editing skills.
Developing training tools and instructions for effective training workshops
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- Production of 3 educational videos in Hebrew
- At least 60% of the workshops conducted by volunteers shall incorporate these videos in 2015
- Integration of the videos in help pages and in follow up emails distributed to all workshop participants
- Distribution of videos in all chapter information bases and distribution among partner institutions
- Creation of an independent Wiki Syntax exercise drill in open source
- Use the exercise as a training tool in 60% of the editing workshops conducted by volunteers
- Writing of a curriculum for editing course (which includes more than a single meeting)
- Redesigning the single-meeting workshops, using the curriculum developed in 2014
Use of these training tools is to be implemented in:
- 6 single editing workshops for the public, taking place at the chapter offices, and 4 single workshops at partnering institutions and 10 monthly editing workshop. At least 10 participants in each workshop.
- 60% of participants will report at the end of the workshop that they are familiar with editing skills, and 10% of participants will continue editing 3 months subsequent to the workshop
- 2 editing courses for targeted interest groups throughout the year. At least 6 attendants in each course.
- 90% should feel that they have acquired editing skills
- Each course will result at least 6 new articles and expansion of 6 existing articles
- 20% of participants should continue editing for 6 months after the course.
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
In recent years, WMIL volunteers have conducted many workshops. In order to increase their effectiveness, we would like to develop professional training tools to assist them. These training tools include educational videos, to be watched by participants during and after the sessions, so they can practice and repeat the information learned, as well as a Wiki Syntax exercise, used for exercise basic editing abilities. Improving training skills will increase the enjoyment of volunteer instructors and increase the number of edits following the workshops. Simultaneously, we would like to promote a model of a Wikipedia editing course for groups interested in a particular field of knowledge. We believe that, such groups will be more motivated to enrich Wikipedia with knowledge from their field of knowledge. The courses will increase the number of articles, and hopefully the number of editors as well.
Free knowledge awareness
Strategic Goal: Raising public awareness to the importance of open data and to the public domain and its expansion
Strategic priorities: increase participation, increase reach
Creating collaborations and activities to increase awareness to open data and the public domain creates infrastructure for expanding activity, and will lead to the expansion of Wikimedia initiatives
Renewing our public activity on issues of open data vis a vis policy makers Objectives, Activities, and Targets
Understanding our scope of action in Q1 2015:
Background: In late 2011, Wikimedia Israel managed to promote a process leading to the government decision to release state-owned images to the public domain. Unfortunately, this decision was never fully implemented. As part of our strategic plan for 2015-2017, WMIL have decided to renew our efforts to establish a dialogue with policy makers in order to promote public awareness on issues regarding the ideas of public domain and freedom of information. As a first stage, we need to re-examine our area of activity and determine our course of action only after this analysis.
- Mapping current activities in the fields of open data and public domain, and choosing a course of action
- Joining coalitions for promoting the public domain and publishing content under open licenses
Production of Wikipedia Academy conference
- The conference will host 100 participants, out of these 10 will be Wikipedians, and 30 new participants who have not previously attended.
- 2 Wikipedians will be on the convention content committee
- Recruiting lecturers from diverse genders and fields
How will these activities help us to achieve our goal?
The Wikipedia Academy conference will lead to significant public exposure and media coverage to the chapter's activity. We will use this year's convention as an additional tool for discussion of general domain issues.
To develop relationships between WMIL and one other organization in Israel supporting open knowledge, by initiating a mutual project
The Public Knowledge Workshop and WMIL will organize a festival for civil actors, representatives of NGOs from various of fields and journalists. In the event, the organizations will showcase open knowledge initiatives in the civic-tech space and include keynote speakers from movements and groups promoting open knowledge that is accessible, sharable and useful. The festival will include:
- At least 60% of the organizations active in the field of open knowledge will take part
- At least 100 participt attended the festival in order to become acquainted with the various organizations.
- The event will include introductory talks on Wikipedia and Wikimedia and tools developed by the Public Knowledge Workshop and other interested NGOs, which make public information accessible.
- Three workshops showcasing these will be held throughout the festival.
- As a result of the festival, 3 workshops will be held throughout the year, attended by 8-15 representatives of participating organizations
- At least 2 participants of each workshop should expand Wikipedia articles
- 10% of all attendants should continue to edit 3 months after the workshops
How will these activities lead to results? Through our partnership with The Public Knowledge Workshop, and hopefully other such organizations, we will strengthen relations between free data organizations and NGOs, which will enrich Wikipedia with content from diverse ranges of knowledge fields, and work together on promoting open knowledge in Israel.
Communication and publicity
Strategic Goal: Strengthening our involvement internationally - sharing experience with, and learning from the international Wikimedia community
Strategic Priorities: Increase participation, encourage innovation
Sharing internationally our volunteers’ most impactful activities, as well as experiences and lessons learned through translation of program documents will help familiarize the global community with our programmatic experience here in Israel. Translating reports and learning patterns from English, as well as allowing for some travel grants, will reveal to the Israeli Wikimedia communities ideas and programs from around the world, and will encourage the adoption or duplication of successful programs and methods from the international community. Not less important, this two-way communication will enhance the sense of belonging to an international Movement in our local communities.
Increase international cooperation and exchange
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- Sharing knowledge with the international community on 4 significant WMIL projects throughout 2015
- Sharing international knowledge with local community – at least 6 activities taking place in other chapters or published in the Foundation's publications will be translated to Hebrew and distributed to the WMIL communities.
- WMIL will facilitate the participation of 4 representatives of the Israeli Wikimedia community in Wikimania 2015 and 2 people participating in the European Hack-a-thon or other similar conference.
- WMIL board members and ED will attend the Wikimedia Conference in 2015
How will these activities lead to results?
As part of the increasing dialogue between Wikimedia communities and WMIL we have learned that writing and sometimes even reading in English is a challenge for some of our volunteers. Therefore, starting in 2014 we have already decided to fund the translation to English of selected content which our volunteers wish to publish on international networks. In 2015, we will complement this by adding the Hebrew translation of key international projects and learning patterns. The translation will function as a bridge that will assist into extending the international activity of volunteers from various Wikimedia communities. Exposure to new ideas from overseas may encourage recreating these on a local level, as well as inspire new projects and programs. Equally important, this will allow us not to repeat mistakes in selecting and carrying out projects that have happened abroad.
Staff and contractors: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
- 1. Please describe your organization's staffing plan or strategy here, or provide a link to your organization's staffing plan or organogram.
Our staffing plan is proportional with planned growth in programmatic work for next year, as we are only adding staff to handle educational programs - where we most of the new activities with the least existing experience. Additional new programs will be managed or supported by existing staff.
- 2. List of staff by department or function.
- Numbers for current staff should include staff your organization has hired or plans to hire in this current funding period, and proposed staff should include staff your organization will hire in the upcoming funding period. You should include both permanent staff and longterm contractors in this table and list the number of fulltime equivalents, where one fulltime staff person would be 1.0 (for example, if your organization has 2 part-time staff working at 50% each in a department then you would list the number of fulltime equivalents (FTEs) as 1.0, while if your organization has 1 full-time staff person working at 100% then you would also list the number of fulltime equivalents as 1.0).
Table 4
Department or function FTEs by end of current year FTEs by end of upcoming year Explanation of changes Executive Director 1 1 Activities Coordinator 1 1 Community Coordinator 0.50 0.60 Increasing workload and amount of overtime. Partnership & Education Coordinator 0 1 Increase of activities with The Ministry of Education and other organizations. Total (should equal the sum of the rows): 2.50 3.60 Total staff expenses (currency requested) 465,000 625,000 Total staff expenses ($US) 129,960 174,678
Table 4 notes:
- 3. Did your organization made any significant changes to your staffing plan since publishing your organization's most current annual plan at the beginning of the funding period, such as hiring more or fewer staff than planned or hiring staff on a different schedule than planned? Please describe any significant changes here.
In our 2013-2014 APG proposal, we requested one FTE for educational and academic coordinator. After our proposal was partially funded, we’ve decided to hire a 0.5 FTE communities coordinator, who started working on April 2014.
- 4. What overall percentage of staff time is spent directly on programs?
76% in 2014.
Financials: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
Detailed budget: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
- Please link to your organization's detailed budget. This may be a document included on this Wiki (Meta) or as a publicly available spreadsheet.
Revenues: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
Please use this table to list your organization's anticipated revenues by revenue source in the upcoming year. Use the status column to indicate if this funding is guaranteed, whether you are in the process of requesting funding, or whether you are planning to request funding later. Please feel free to include in-kind donations and resources, as applicable.
Table 5
Anticipated revenues for the upcoming funding period Revenue source Currency requested US dollars Status (e.g. guaranteed, application)
Surplus 2014 115,245 32,209 Assessment Private donations 2,000 559 Assessment Sponsorships 50,000 13,974 planning to request Membership fees 800 224 planning to request Collaborations 50,000 13,974 in process Total revenues (should equal the sum of the rows): 218,045 60,940 - In-kind donations 40,000 11,179 Assessment In-kind - volunteer hours 50,000 13,974 Assessment
Table 5 notes: If your organization has significant funding other than FDC funds, please note how those funds will be used.
Operating reserves: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
Please use this table to report information about your organization's planned operating reserves. Since this information is included here, you should not include it as part of your planned program or operational expenses. There are some restrictions about how much FDC funding your organization can use to build up your reserves.
Table 6
Local currency $US Total anticipated amount in operating reserves (by the end of the current fiscal year) 0 0 Total existing reserves from the current year to be carried over as reserves in the upcoming year 0 0 Total to be added to reserves in the upcoming year (excluding FDC funding) 0 0 Total to be added to reserves in the upcoming year from FDC funding only 0 0 Total planned reserves in the upcoming year (should equal the sum of the rows except the first): 0 0
Table 6 notes:
- WMIL has no reserves and do not plan to have in the upcoming year.
Expenses: upcoming year's annual plan[edit]
- 1. Expenses by program (excludes staff and operations).
- Program expenses are the costs associated specifically with your organization's programs. These costs do not include operating expenses or staff salaries, which will be described in separate tables. For example, program expenses may be the costs of an event, the costs of outreach materials specific to a program, budgets for microgrants and reimbursements, or technical costs associated with specific programs. The programs listed in this table should correspond to the programs you have listed in the programs section of this proposal form.
Table 7
Program / initiative In currency requested In $US Strengthening and cultivating the relations between the Chapter and the Wikimedia community 41,600 11,626 Supporting other communities that deal with open content 22,000 6,149 Developing human and technological infrastructure to promote the creation of openly licensed materials 77,000 21,520 Establishing meaningful collaborations with knowledge-centric institutions 15,000 4,192 Improving the training infrastructure for Wikimedia initiatives 17,800 4,975 Raising public awareness to the importance of open data and to the public domain and its expansion 37,500 10,481 Strengthening our involvement internationally - sharing experience with, and learning from the international Wikimedia community 106,900 29,877 Marketing and Advertising 21,000 5,869 Total program expenses (should equal the sum of the rows) 338,800 94,689
Table 7 notes: If your organization has significant funding other than FDC funds, please note how those funds will be used.
- 2. Total expenses. Please use this table to summarize your organization's total expenses overall.
- These are divided into three expenses categories: (1) staff expenses from Table 4 (including staff expenses for both staff working on programs and operations), (2) expenses for programs from Table 7 (does not include staff expenses or operations expenses), and (3) expenses for operations (does not include staff expenses or program expenses). Be sure to check the totals in this table to make sure they are consistent with the totals in the other tables you have submitted with this form. For example, your total program expenses excluding staff will be equal to the total in Table 7, while your total staff expenses will be equal to the total in Table 4 and your total expenses will be equal to the total in Table 1.
Table 8
Expense type In currency requested In $US Program expenses (total from Table 7, excludes staff) 338,800 94,689 Operations (excludes staff and programs) 213,433 59,651 Upcoming staff total expenses (from Table 4) 625,000 174,678 Amount to be added to reserves in the upcoming year (from Table 6) 0 0 Total expenses (should equal the sum of the rows) 1,177,233 329,020
Table 8 notes:
DESCRIPTION SUBJECT TO CHANGE: During 2014-2015 Round 1 we will be launching a multi-year funding pilot program where APG applicants can request a two-year funding commitment from the FDC. Participating organizations will provide the FDC with information about milestones for two-year programs during the next year's proposal cycle (2015-2016 Round 1), as well as with their annual plans and budgets for the second year.
Not all organizations will be participating in this program since it is a pilot, and a list of organizations eligible to apply for multi-year funding will be announced soon. This section is included in the current version of the proposal form, to ensure that it is available to any organizations that might need it if they are participating in the pilot. Please do not complete this section unless you know your organization is eligible to participate in this pilot program.
- 1. Will your organization be seeking a two-year funding commitment from the FDC during this proposal cycle?
- We have just drafted our strategy documents which frame our long-term goals for 2015-2017. We feel that it will be wiser for us to evaluate the viability of our strategic goals this year, and advance to longer-term programmatic planning in next year’s APG.
- 2. Please use this table to show which programs you will continue over a two-year period and list some milestones that you would like to report on after the first 8 months of your programs (to be achieved by 1 September 2015)
OPTIONAL: Multi-year funding pilot program[edit]
- DESCRIPTION SUBJECT TO CHANGE: As part of this pilot program, your organization will be asked to report on milestones reached by 1 September 2015 for your two-year programs by 1 October 2015. This information will be reviewed by the FDC during the 2015-2016 Round 1 proposal cycle, along with your annual plan and budget for the second year of funding, after which the second year of funding will be released by the FDC.
Table 9
Program name Start date Completion date Milestones (by 1 September 2015) Notes 1 2 3 4 5
Table 9 notes:
The FDC or FDC staff may reach out to you for more information about your two-year plans as part of this pilot program, or may need to make changes to this section of the proposal form based on early learnings from this pilot. Participating organizations, please bear with us.
Verification that this proposal requests no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation for political or legislative activities[edit]
Please enter "yes" or "no" for the verification below.
- The term “political or legislative activities” includes any activities relating to political campaigns or candidates (including the contribution of funds and the publication of position statements relating to political campaigns or candidates); voter registration activities; meetings with or submissions and petitions to government executives, ministers, officers or agencies on political or policy issues; and any other activities seeking government intervention or policy implementation (like “lobbying”), whether directed toward the government or the community or public at large. Grants for such activities (when permitted under U.S. law and IRS regulations) should be sought from the Wikimedia Foundation Project and Event Grants Program.
I verify that this proposal requests no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation for political or legislative activities YES
Once this proposal is complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
Please do not make any changes to this proposal form after the proposal submission deadline for this round. If a change that is essential to an understanding of your organization's proposal is needed, please request the change on the discussion page of this form so it may be reviewed by FDC staff. Once submitted, complete and valid proposal forms submitted on time by eligible organizations will be considered unless an organization withdraws its application in writing.