Grants:APG/Proposals/2023-2024 round 1/Wikimedia CH/Impact report form
Purpose of the report
[edit]This form reports on Wikimedia CH's results for 2023 (1 January - 31 December). Wikimedia CH has recently become financially independent and does not rely on an Annual Plan Grant (APG) from the Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore, this report provides an overview of the year without strictly adhering to the APG format.
2023 snapshot: Key metrics for the year
[edit]Metric | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
Participants | 900 out of 1 050 | After COVID people are still afraid to participate in presence and in big events. |
Newly registered users | 150 out of 225 | The changes of the leaderships in the programmes had an impact on this value. |
Content pages created or improved | 30 000 out of 26 000 | |
Content reused by other Wikimedia projects | 10 000 out of 9 000 | |
People reached in Switzerland | 2 000 000 out of 1 550 000 - 1 650 000
|
Program impacts
[edit]Executive Summary
[edit]The year 2022 was one of significant change for Wikimedia CH. As the first year of our new five-year strategy, the past 12 months saw new focus areas, a new strategic impact direction, new ways of working and new team members. It was a crucial year in terms of personnel and capacity-building, as well as organisational structure and functioning. Despite significant changes within our team – long-time staff members left or transitioned to new roles and new members joined – we maintained continuity in our programmatic activities and expanded our influence as a chapter.
In a way, 2022 was the year we began to harvest the fruits of the last five years of work as an organisation. From 2017-2021, we laid the foundation for financial independence, for more strategic projects and for an integrated, mindful organisational culture. In 2022, we began to reap the benefits of that work as we implemented the new strategy, grew our team and continued diversifying our funding sources.
Our impact
[edit]From a programmatic perspective, 2022 was an important year for building relationships and engaging the community. It was the first year since 2019 that events were back in person after the pandemic, which allowed us to reconnect with volunteers and partners in new ways. That said, we maintained virtual collaboration for certain activities where appropriate, opening events up to contributors around the world and ensuring our work was accessible to all.
As in 2021, many of our projects and events centred around a uniting theme, the “Year of Sound”, to celebrate 100 years of radio in Switzerland. Programme GLAM, in particular, used this theme as a guide for many activities and as a way to build and strengthen relationships with Swiss cultural and historical institutions. (Visit our interactive map of where Wikimedia CH’s 2022 events took place; a static thumbnail of the map is featured here.)
The theme was key to many of our Programme Community activities as well. Per our new strategy, we focused on supporting community-driven initiatives around specific topics that engaged existing members and recruited new ones by appealing to their interests.
In Programme Education, we launched a new strategy and a concentrated annual plan, which included collaboration with our new impact direction, Experimentation & Innovation, to improve educational tools and approaches. We now have clear, precise objectives for a programme that previously lacked focus.
Supporting all of this were our outreach efforts, which included partnerships, advocacy, fundraising and communication. In 2022, we focused heavily on professionalising our communication channels, including refreshing our website and newsletter. We are starting to build out our membership engagement approach and are continuing advocacy efforts around important knowledge topics at the Swiss and European levels.
Our people
[edit]The most significant changes for our organisation happened within our team. Our long-time GLAM Manager left the organisation, while our long-time Education Manager transitioned to another role. Per our new strategy, we took this as an opportunity to rethink our organisation, not so much by creating new roles but by defining roles and responsibilities based on the idea of holocracy and related models.
Following the departure of the GLAM Manager in the beginning of the year, the whole team stepped up to ensure continuity. We also brought on board a new GLAM expert – first at a lower percentage and towards the end of the year at an 80% rate - to support the new GLAM Lead, who we recruited in Q3.
Meanwhile, the Education Manager transitioned out of the role to lead the new Innovation Lab in the middle of the year. We recruited a new team member to lead Education in Q3; however, she decided to become a consultant rather than an employee, which opened the position back up. We aim to have a new Education Lead in the beginning of 2023.
Programme Community saw its team grow to better meet the needs of our diverse community. As defined in our strategy, we hired a Community Lead for Switzerland – a position that did not previously exist – as well as a manager for the Italian-speaking community at 40%. We hope that these additions to the team will help us continue to nurture and grow our community.
As we look towards 2023, we are exploring how to tackle several open tasks, such as board and member management and various administrative tasks. As part of this work, we have engaged an accounting consultant. They will allow the team member who used to handle accounting to focus on overseeing tasks related to Salesforce, which is critical to supporting member and donor management.
Our organization
[edit]As mentioned, 2022 was a foundational year for our chapter as an organisation. In addition to starting to implement the new five-year strategy, we have spent significant time and energy exploring new ways of working to reach our strategic goals and strengthen our organisational culture.
Integral to this work has been rethinking our organisational structure to have less hierarchy and adopt a network approach. To this end, we have established a leadership team, which will also help us clarify roles and responsibilities. We are using principles from the work of Frederic Laloux around “teal organisations” to become a more holacratic, self-organising structure where each team member is empowered to self-manage. We are now on a path to developing our own tailor-made model based on these concepts and are thus organising in “circles” rather than in hierarchical roles.
We have also been busy with the work of professionalising our communication (see the highlight activity for the “Partnerships & Outreach” programme) and creating a working group around organisational sustainability in line with the Wikimedia Environmental Sustainability Covenant. From an administrative point of view, we split the budget for Education and Innovation, completing the creation of the Innovation Lab as a stand-alone programme.
Our future
[edit]We have become a trusted partner to organisations throughout Switzerland, Europe and the world, and we have earned a place at the table when it comes to important knowledge topics. As we look to the future, we are challenged with growing and structuring our organisation to respond to increasing demand without sacrificing the agility needed to advance free knowledge in innovative ways.
Strategy at a glance
[edit]Our vision
[edit]As Wikimedia CH, we:
- Open doors and bring people together with the aim of disseminating free knowledge for a smart and open society.
- Enable our communities to share knowledge and connect them with the Wikimedia universe.
- Are a collaborative and accountable association representing the interests of our multilingual communities in Switzerland.
Our mission
[edit]- To collect, curate and disseminate free knowledge.
- To promote the work of contributors (more information: Community website).
- To help Swiss memory institutions share their knowledge, collections and curatorial resources digitally with a global community through a global platform – all this to make (Swiss) cultural heritage and its diversity more accessible to the world (more information: GLAM website).
- To sensitise all levels of education to sustainable use of digital information (more information: Education website).
- To advocate for free knowledge, including at the political level.
Our strategy
[edit]Impact directions
[edit]- GLAM – We collaborate with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) throughout Switzerland to provide digital access to memory institutions’ collections and artefacts. We aim to share the country’s culture and history in a sustainable format and across all borders.
- Education – We deliver and collaborate on education programmes that advance learning at every level, for both children and adults. Our work supports lifelong learning as well as teachers and trainers at schools, universities and other institutions of higher education.
- Community – We help the Wikimedia CH community grow, supporting existing members and cultivating new Wikipedians. Among other activities, we train and mentor Wikipedia editors and support the diverse and multicultural interests of our community with targeted programming.
- Partnerships & Outreach – We believe in using our unique position in the field of information exchange to be an influencer on national and international issues concerning open access and open knowledge. We offer our viewpoints on copyright, technology and more.
- Experimentation & Innovation – Our Innovation Lab is a dedicated space for experimentation and improvement that helps us anticipate and address societal changes while optimising projects that advance our core purpose. We aim to create a safe framework to explore bold ideas, exchange knowledge and improve tools in an accessible, non-judgmental way.
Programme GLAM
[edit]Overview
[edit]The GLAM programme was significantly impacted by changes in the team this year. With the departure of the long-time GLAM Manager and the subsequent hiring of a new Lead, our goal was continuity rather than growth. While it was a challenge, the remaining team members stepped up to maintain the planned activities. We engaged a new team member, Amandine Cabrio, who first worked part-time and later moved to 80% with the new GLAM Lead, Sandra Becker. Sandra was previously a culture ambassador and has accumulated significant knowledge of the Movement as an active Wikipedian for more than 10 years.
Despite the upheaval in the team, Programme GLAM remained focused on strategic alignment, building partnerships, strengthening tech tools and expanding cross-chapter collaboration. The team kept very busy with activities around the “Year of Sound” annual theme, three in-person GLAM-on-Tour events, cross-chapter events like International Archives Week and International Museum Day, the GLAM Wiki group and GLAM Digital. These activities also helped us continue to develop and strengthen new and existing GLAM partnerships.
Highlight activity
[edit]A hallmark activity for the GLAM programme was International Museum Day 2022 (IMD2022) in collaboration with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the German and Austrian chapters and GLAM partners. As in past years, we supported the various events and initiatives that call on volunteers worldwide to increase the visibility of museums in Wikimedia projects.
For this year’s theme, “The Power of Museums”, we developed a coordinated communication plan for the 27 participating Wikimedia chapters and helped increase Swiss museums’ visibility through the WMCH Map Service. We also supported a Wikidata competition and various events around Switzerland and across borders.
As a result of our work, IMD2022 saw significantly more Wikimedia chapters participating than in previous years, especially from the Global South. This is especially important as one of ICOM’s new strategic goals is around inclusivity in museums. Wikimedia CH supported the Wikipedia user group from Benin with a microgrant for a Benin Museum Tour with a workshop and edit-a-thon.
Key programme activities
[edit]- Celebrated 100 Years of Radio in Switzerland with thematic activities around the Year of Sound, including an audio workshop for SBB Historic and a conference at the ENTER Museum in Solothurn.
- Organised three in-person GLAM-on-Tour events in partnership with important GLAM partners: one at the Neues Museum Biel in June, another at the Zentralbibliothek Zurich in September and the last with the Montreux Jazz Archives in November.
- Created a series of WikiRomandie meetups for GLAM professionals to share how they contribute to Wikimedia projects and support each other as colleagues, despite working at different institutions.
- Supported International Archives Week 2022 in partnership with the Association of Swiss Archivists (VSA-AAS), focusing on the theme #ArchivesAreYou.
- Completed a joint pilot project with the Museum of Natural History Neuchâtel to digitalise a world-famous collection of fish fossils and make it freely available on Wikimedia Commons.
- Supported the 8th Swiss Open Cultural Hackathon (GLAMhack 2022) organised by OpenData.ch, bringing together those passionate about GLAM and coding to work on various projects focused on sound and audio.
- Organised and participated in various meetings with the GLAM partner group.
- Partnered with the City Library of La Chaux-de-Fonds for the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to make files from the Neuchâtel sound archives available on Wikimedia Commons.
- Cooperated with VSA-AAS to implement our map service on their website – a project that will be continued in 2023.
- Participated at the GLAM Europe meeting in Prague.
- Coordinated a partnership with the Museum of Communication to do a beta test there of the museum app Makumbushu by Kiwix.
- Rolled out the GLAM Statistical Tool to other chapters, and several have acquired it.
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GLAM-on-Tour, Montreux Jazz Archives
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Instagram ad for the Sept. WikiRomandie meetup
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Archives Day, Vernes College
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Historic collection of fish fossils freely available on Wikimedia Commons
Programme impact
[edit]Key accomplishments
[edit]- Helped increase the number of chapters participating in the IMD2022 to a record 27 chapters.
- Carried out all planned GLAM activities despite significant upheaval in the team.
- Succeeded in engaging two new members with the GLAM Wiki Network. Welcomed several new GLAM professionals to the community, including a curator who runs an art fair focused on female art and who has invited the GLAM Lead to speak in a panel discussion about improving data in female art during the fair’s next edition.
Lessons learned
[edit]- Annual themes (like 2022’s Year of Sound) should be planned well ahead of time in coordination with partners, as GLAMs plan their topics three to five years in advance.
- Despite working in very different institutions, GLAM professionals have common needs when it comes to editing Wikimedia projects. Fostering a sense of peer support motivates them to continue contributing to Wikimedia projects and makes them feel more empowered when discussing with the broader Wikimedia community.
- It is essential to clarify roles with everybody involved in a project to ensure efficient and effective collaboration.
- Mindfulness during project implementation with a stronger focus on clearly defined goals leads to more project success.
Looking ahead
[edit]In autumn, ICOM released a new definition of “museums.” The new definition includes key challenges for museums going forward, such as equity, accessibility, digitalisation, sustainability, knowledge sharing and others. In light of these challenges, we see an opportunity to support various topics related to museums. More specifically, we aim to explore ways to support more inclusive museums, amplifying access to museums’ wealth of knowledge and enhancing gender equity both in the professional field and in the collections’ representation of female artists. To this end, we will gather best practices from other GLAM institutions and like-minded organisations and then see how we can translate them to the Swiss museum landscape. We also aim to continue strengthening our relationship with ICOM, positioning our chapter as an important partner to help realise their strategic goals.
While we anticipate significant work around museums, we won’t forget other GLAM institutions. Throughout all our activities, we will continue to protect and promote free knowledge around heritage, culture and history, which has been threatened by recent events, such as the war in Ukraine, the COVID pandemic and climate change. We will continue to work towards gaining new partners, particularly among Swiss galleries, as well as strengthening our existing relationships with GLAM institutions and bolstering outreach to the community.
Programme Education
[edit]Overview
[edit]Programme Education also saw important changes in 2022. As the long-time Education Manager, Ilario Valdelli, transitioned out of the role to lead the new Programme Experimentation & Innovation, we welcomed a new team member to manage Education activities in the second half of the year. Unfortunately, that position is again open, and we had to start over with recruitment to fill it.
Beyond personnel changes, a key activity for the programme was the development of a new Education Strategy with the support of an external consultant. See the highlight activity for details about the new strategy.
Another important activity was the collaboration with the newly created Innovation Lab on the Women++ deploy(impact) Hackathon. Hackathon participants demoed potential improvements to key online educational tools, highlighting the benefit of having a dedicated space for experimentation and its demonstrable impact on the education sector and beyond.
Highlight activity
[edit]As mentioned in the overview, creating a new Education Strategy was critical to ensuring that Wikimedia CH remains at the forefront of the evolving education sector. With school curriculums changing to keep up with technological and pedagogical advancements, it is critical that we, too, evolve our approach. This evolution is essential to achieve our vision of being a relevant and recognised player in the Swiss education system.
Outsourcing the strategy’s creation was key to this goal. By bringing in an external consultant, we were able to refresh our internal knowledge while discovering new opportunities.
The new strategy focuses on six guiding principles:
- Engage, empower, network and trust teachers.
- Establish stable partnerships.
- Weave programmes and events, formal and informal
- Nurture regional good practices.
- Take care of collaborators.
- Share in the Movement.
These principles will guide initiatives in four key domains: media and information literacy, learning about topics, learning about web technologies, and developing and contributing to Wikimedia projects.
As in the past, Programme Education aims to support learners and educators from primary school to high school, higher education and life-long learning, both formal and informal. We aim to continue building and supporting scalable partnerships, event models and learning tools that make knowledge and learning resources available to students and teachers alike.
Key programme activities
[edit]- Collaborated with the new Wikimedia CH Innovation Lab to submit two challenges to the Women++ deploy(impact) Hackathon: one on the Wikimedia CH platform OpenEdu.ch and one on Wikimini, the Wikipedia for kids. (See the highlight activity for Programme Experimentation & Innovation for more details.)
- Organised an awards ceremony and related outreach for the Swiss winners from the Wiki Science Competition 2021 held at the end of last year. The celebration was a collaboration with Università della Svizzera Italiana, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and Foundation IBSA.
- Provided workshops to teach high school students how to write and edit articles for Wikipedia per requests from partner schools.
- Organised and led a workshop for teachers on “Understanding Wikipedia for real”.
- Offered an interactive workshop for young people called William Tell’s Escape Box as part of the Media in Piazza, a series of events in the canton of Ticino that brings together organisations and people working in the field of media and digital education.
- Partnered with Service Civil International (SCI) Schweiz to organise the Wikipedia Workcamp CH-SCI 4.1 Wikipedia for Peace & Media Responsibility with the theme of “Peace and Disarmament”.
Programme impact
[edit]Key accomplishments
[edit]- Identified potential improvements to both OpenEdu.ch and Wikimini as a result of the Women++ deploy(impact) Hackathon.
- Worked with the new Innovation Lab to advance free online educational platforms, including supporting Wikimini and migrating Le Dico des Ados onto our servers.
- Carried out all planned Education activities despite transitions within the team.
- Successfully collaborated with other programmes on various activities to ensure a more holistic approach to our Education goals.
Lessons learned
[edit]- Bringing in an external consultant to develop our new strategy helped refresh our internal knowledge and discover new opportunities.
- The strategy development process made it clear that we must remain up to date on the evolution of schools’ programmes and curricula to ensure that we make a real impact.
Looking ahead
[edit]In 2023, we will focus on what has been identified as “the missing link”: teacher training and lifelong learning. We will do this by strategically promoting the use of Wikimedia projects and specific tools (such as OpenEdu.ch and Dico des Ados) in schools and by offering a new certification that enables volunteer trainers to validate their work. We aim to create a more sustainable approach to the concept of “training the trainer” and empower teachers and trainers to use these tools in their classrooms.
Programme Community
[edit]Overview
[edit]In 2022, our work in Programme Community continued to be organised around four main areas: community health, community building, recruiting and international collaboration. Per our lessons learned in 2021, our activities focused even more on community needs and community-driven initiatives, such as a bilingual workshop in collaboration with Programme GLAM. We also began looking more at our online community and improving online projects for remote participants.
To better support our growing community, we strengthened the team this year by hiring a new Community Lead for Switzerland at 80% and a new Community Manager for the Italian-speaking area at 40%. With more team capacity, we will be able to get closer to our community members and volunteers to better understand and support their needs.
Highlight activity
[edit]One activity this year that exemplified our new Community strategy was a workshop we organised at the Buchwald Nature Teaching Centre (Naturlehrgebiet Buchwald). The goal of the workshop was to create and improve articles on natural topics, such as species and protected areas. We already began raising awareness for this topic at the end of 2021 with the Priroda Dossier Writing Competition 2021.
As part of the partnership with the nature centre, the workshop was held on their premises, which allowed participants an immersive experience in a beautiful, natural setting. The workshop included a tour of the multifaceted area and an introduction to Wikipedia before participants set to work writing and editing articles, including a new article on the nature area itself.
The workshop was a great success in that we forged two communities together: our own and the community from the nature centre. As a result, several articles were and are still being created and edited. They primarily include list articles about protected areas, such as Flachmoore von nationaler Bedeutung im Kanton Graubünden, which are a good basis for additional work. While the workshop took place at the beginning of September, participants continue to work on articles around the theme.
Key programme activities
[edit]- Organised and led Frauenbewegungen-Mouvements féministes Biel-Bienne, a bilingual, community-driven Wikipedia workshop in partnership with the Biel library that trained new Wikipedians while creating and editing articles about women.
- Supported a series of WikiNeocomensia online workshops and professional meetups to enrich Wikipedia resources on the built heritage in the canton of Neuchâtel, engage local GLAM partners and train new Wikipedians. Starting to create articles in German.
- Advanced Wiki Droits Humains, a project to enrich Wikipedia with content about human rights issues while training new Wikipedians and teaching students at the University of Geneva to contribute to Wikipedia. Activities also included a workshop for the general public at the Bibliothèque des Bastions in Geneva.
- Supported several community-led writing workshops, including a WikiGap event focusing on women’s biographies in partnership with the Swedish Embassy in Bern and the German and Austrian chapters, a Women for Wikipedia workshop and the “Outreach Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 4 World Hearing Day 2023” on 18 November at the World Health Organisation in Geneva.
- Helped organise and attended three Wikicons: ItWikiCon (30 September - 2 October), the German-speaking WikiCon (7-9 October) and the French-speaking WikiCon (19-20 November). At the francophone WikiCon in Paris, members of our community and staff presented various projects.
- Supported the community-led Wiki Atelier at the SBB Historic Foundation in Brugg, which included audio files in addition to the usual articles and images in honour of our annual theme, the Year of Sound.
- Planned and led a Wikipedia workshop at the Schaffhausen Library as part of the cantonal Digital Days that focused on Schaffhausen biographies, especially of women.
- Held a workshop (led by Community Manager Ulrich Lantermann) about Wikipedia at a conference in Bern organised by the Swiss Federation of Youth Associations
- Organised a successful Wiki Loves Switzerland photo contest with the theme of Swiss natural parks. Participants submitted a record-breaking 2,304 photos!
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Flyer for "Feminist Movements in Biel"
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Wikimedia CH Instagram story about a workshop of the WikiNeocomensia Project
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Wikimedia CH picnic in Parc des Bastions, Geneva, part of the Wiki Droits Humains activities
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WikiGap focused on women's biographies – a cooperation between Wikimedia CH and the Embassy of Sweden in Bern
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Instagram save-the-date ad for the October Women for Wikipedia edit-a-thon
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Wild golden eagle by Giles Laurent, 1st place winner of Wiki Loves Switzerland 2022
Programme impact
[edit]Key accomplishments
[edit]- Created many new articles and improved existing ones through our various workshops and edit-a-thons, especially the workshop at the Buchwald Nature Teaching Centre and the bilingual workshop at the Biel library.
- Improved and created several in-depth, technical articles about asylum law and processes in Switzerland. This was especially important as a 2019 law reform made many existing articles on the topic obsolete.
- Through the Wiki Droits Humains project, we worked closely with refugees to ensure our work met real needs. A significant part of the process was creating a worklist with refugees and refugee-supporting associations around the key information they needed (or wished they had), then finding documentation to provide the information and making it accessible and understandable on Wikipedia.
- Garnered a record-breaking number of photos during the Wiki Loves Switzerland photo contest.
Lessons learned
[edit]- For the WikiNeocomensia project, separating the workshops from professional meetups gave more focus to both types of events. It also increased attendance and gained more (very positive) project visibility, as a journalist attended the professional meetup.
- While it is important that activities fill an identified need from partner organisations, it is equally important that we are not only a reactive service provider. We must also consult and lead such activities to plan properly and make a real impact on participants.
- The workshop at the Buchwald Nature Teaching Centre showed that there is significant interest in events around nature-related topics and that this theme can help introduce new editors to the Wikiverse.
- While we are often able to attract new participants to our events, newcomers need significant follow-up support to become regular contributors. Similarly, Wikipedia is difficult for students and new editors to grasp without a lot of support, which leads to contributions that are not up to standards and require correction.
Looking ahead
[edit]In 2023, we will continue to focus on organising our team and activities around the needs of our community. To this end, the Community Manager for the Italian-speaking area will become fully operative throughout the year, while all team members will work to develop a new Community strategy. Part of this strategy will include looking at how to scale our Community efforts going forward to better engage volunteers, as well as exploring a Train the Trainers programme to compensate trainers who give workshops to institutions – a clear demand from our community.
Partnerships & Outreach
[edit]Overview
[edit]Wikimedia CH is uniquely positioned to advocate for issues important to our Movement. As Switzerland is home to the United Nations and other international organisations and non-profits, as well as the European headquarters for many corporations and start-ups, our potential for impact at a political and social level is significant.
In 2022, as in past years, this meant aligning ourselves with the policy direction and stance of the Wikimedia Foundation and other chapters while fostering our collaboration with like-minded organisations, such as Parldigi and the Alliance Digitale in Switzerland and the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU) at the European level. An important step this past year was the creation of Wikimedia Europe – of which we are a founding member – to further strengthen the FKAGEU network and public policy outreach at the EU level. We have also begun looking at getting more involved in free knowledge as it relates to environmental issues and climate change.
Included in our outreach efforts are our communication and fundraising activities, which support all of our programmes. This year, we continued to strengthen our outreach tools and professionalise our communication channels.
Highlight activity
[edit]One of our main focal points this year was the professionalisation of our various communication channels. This work began in earnest in 2021 with the launch of our YouTube channel and the refinement of key messages. It culminated in 2022 with the complete refresh of our website and monthly newsletter, as well as the creation of various fundraising documents.
The website, in particular, was a massive project that required collaboration from the entire team. In addition to aesthetic changes, the website:
- supports new membership, fundraising and the community by making key information and links easy to find;
- aids journalists, media and partners with a revamped newsroom and press information;
- professionalises our chapter’s image to support our position as a trusted partner;
- allows visitors to get answers and further information through a chatbot that also connects them with a team member if necessary; and
- improves privacy for our website visitors and makes the site even more compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by replacing Google Analytics with Matomo. This open-source software allows for 100% data ownership. The data collected on wikimedia.ch remains in Switzerland, within our infrastructure, and will not be shared with any third parties.
We also continued building out our fundraising outreach by creating more professional documents to attract potential donors and partners, such as Cases for Support for the Education and GLAM programmes. Furthermore, we are working on case studies for key projects, such as Dico des Ados. In addition to these tools, we have improved our fundraising processes and approaches by:
- working to diversify our income sources by submitting requests for project-based grants, such as grants to fund edit-a-thons;
- optimising our database management, which is critical to enhancing our fundraising efforts; and
- creating an online informational booklet to encourage people to include Wikimedia CH in their will.
These activities and others create a strong foundation for our outreach and partnership efforts, as well as all of our programmatic activities.
Key programme activities
[edit]- Helped draft policy papers for Alliance Digitale to advocate for free knowledge and advance Switzerland’s digitalisation.
- Ran various media campaigns to support programmatic and outreach activities, including a joint release with Kiwix and an article on our website about Kiwix and Wikipedia in Russia.
- Worked with the Wikimedia Foundation to submit requests for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
- Helped submit a request for funding from the European Commission for MyUrbanTree, a project to encourage citizen engagement in urban forests.
- Participated in a digital humanities event at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne with a keynote speech and information booth. Had another information booth at the university’s Applied Machine Learning Days.
- Supported the creation of Wikimedia EU by recommending that the Wikimedia CH Board endorse the initiative.
- Signed a collective opinion piece submitted by Wikimedia France and published by Euractiv, an independent pan-European media network specialising in EU affairs, to form a new coalition of Digital Commons stakeholders at the European level.
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Wikimedia CH CEO Jenny Ebermann as a speaker at DHday 2022 at EPFL
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Instagram story for Wikimedia CH at "AI for Media & Democracy"
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Info booth at AI for Media & Democracy, part of Applied Machine Learning Days, 30 Mar. 2022 at EPFL
Programme impact
[edit]Key accomplishments
[edit]- Drove membership engagement and donations with personalised letters to key donors.
- Successfully supported a motion to release images of the confederation on the government’s opendata.swiss portal in collaboration with Parldigi.
- Launched our new website and updated the newsletter thanks to strong team collaboration to create the content, technical support from external service providers and a new design that applies the Wikimedia Movement style guidelines introduced over the summer.
Lessons learned
[edit]- When advocating for policy change, it is important to insist on getting answers as to why a project or motion has been rejected. In the example of the motion around releasing images to the public, our follow-up helped improve the argument and eventually led to success.
- We invested a lot of time and energy in requesting project-based grants but only got a few positive responses. We learned that it is not easy to gain the trust of charitable foundations.
Looking ahead
[edit]In 2023, we will maintain and expand current activities, advocating for issues such as copyright, freedom of panorama and net neutrality that are important to us as a Movement. As a founding member of both Wikimedia EU and Wikifranca – a coalition of French-speaking chapters – we will support and develop both structures to help them become viable. We are also in the beginning stages of several important potential partnerships. Last but not least, 2023 will have a theme to guide outreach for the whole of our chapter: “175 years of the Federal Constitution – our contribution to a stable democracy”. This theme will enable us to continue to expand our visibility and explore new fields of both action and outreach.
Experimentation & Innovation
[edit]Overview
[edit]In 2022, we launched a new strategic impact direction around experimentation and innovation, also referred to as the Innovation Lab. The goal of the programme is to create a space and a framework for Wikimedia CH to become a learning organisation while identifying and advancing projects that support our core purpose. It aims to anticipate societal changes with room for experimentation and innovation while also optimising current programmes by improving the selection and quality of new projects and enhancing existing tools. The new programme was first introduced in our chapter’s latest five-year strategy to address the need for more innovation within the Wikimedia Movement.
In the Innovation Lab’s inaugural year, the programmatic activities focused on the foundational work of developing a strategy. To ensure the lab met real needs identified by our community, we conducted a community survey and held various workshops to define what innovation meant within the Movement and what a Wikimedia innovation space might look like.
As a result of this work, we not only launched the Innovation Lab but also began various projects and partnerships through the new programme, including a successful collaboration with Women++.
Highlight activity
[edit]The first major project of the Experimentation & Innovation programme was a collaboration with Women++, a network that promotes the participation and inclusion of women in the Swiss tech ecosystem. Following several exploratory meetings with the organisation, we partnered to support their deploy(impact) Hackathon, which ran from 8 October to 19 November.
As part of the partnership, we submitted two challenges: one on how to better categorise content on the Wikimedia CH platform OpenEdu.ch and one on how to improve the usability of Wikimini, an online encyclopaedia for and by students. We also funded two of the prizes.
The Women++ deploy(impact) Hackathon was a great success. The event received more than 400 applications from all around the world and from a variety of technical backgrounds. Meanwhile, 76% of the participants were women. It was also successful from an impact perspective, as the work done around OpenEdu.ch and Wikimini has the potential to significantly improve both tools. As online educational tools are core to Wikimedia CH’s Education strategy, this project exemplified how the Innovation Lab can advance our mission while benefiting our other strategic impact directions.
We are still seeing positive outcomes even months after the event. One of the sponsors, the Bootcamp Academy, liked our challenge on data analysis of OpenEdu.ch so much that they want to organise another hackathon in their academy. We will explore a potential collaboration in 2023.
Key programme activities
[edit]- Created a strategy for the programme, a process that included a workshop to explore how an innovation space might work and a community survey that got more than 250 responses.
- Provided tools and new methodologies to other programmes to improve their processes and activities. For example, the Innovation Lab collaborated with Programme Education to improve free online educational platforms, including supporting Wikimini and migrating Dico des Ados onto our servers. This work supported the goal of teaching students about using collaborative online tools and digital media, underlining the opportunities that innovation can unleash to advance our organisation’s mission.
- Implemented an Innovation Lab that not only created space for experimentation but also fortified and improved ideas for implementation. Combining this work with knowledge-sharing and mentoring, we aim to ensure the efficient use of new and existing tools to reduce risk and strain on Wikimedia CH’s resources.
- Established partnerships with technical partners, mainly in the fields of innovation and science and information technology.
- Helped the other programmes introduce innovation into their activities by proposing innovations sprints and the concept of continuous improvement (particularly, the Plan-Do-Check-Act method) for their projects.
- Launched a working group dedicated to exploring climate change and created a replicable framework that other programmes and affiliates can use.
Programme impact
[edit]Key accomplishments
[edit]- Created the programme strategy through 2026, as well as a concrete annual plan for 2023.
- Successfully collaborated with Programme Education to submit two challenges to the Women++ deploy(impact) Hackathon, demonstrating how the Innovation Lab can support our other programmes.
- Created a framework and lab to incubate and improve existing projects, such as the GLAM Statistical Tool, Wikimini, Dico des Ado and others.
- Engaged a community of scientists and technicians who are enthusiastic about free knowledge.
Lessons learned
[edit]- Innovation programmes like this are quite new within the Movement. Except for a few chapters, similar initiatives are scarce within Wikimedia. It has therefore been quite challenging to define what innovation is and what the community’s expectations are.
- While other programmes and projects don’t focus on scientists and technicians, these types of volunteers can bring high-quality content to Wikimedia projects in areas like engineering and new technologies.
- Collaboration with the chapter’s other programmes is essential to make a real strategic impact. We do not aim to innovate for innovation’s sake but, instead, want to meet real needs arising from our community and through our programmes to advance our core purpose.
Looking ahead
[edit]In 2023, we will continue to build upon the foundations we created in 2022 through the following focal areas:
- Define the incubator structure and the projects to incubate.
- Define the service to support other programmes.
- Engage in thematic areas.
- Strengthen technology and engineering aspects.
- Align strategically with the other programmes.
- Build in-house knowledge.
- Build Innovation Partnership Management.
- Define the organisation and IT structure.
- Expand cross-chapter collaboration and knowledge sharing.
As this is a new programme, we will also work to define metrics to measure our impact.
Looking ahead as a chapter
[edit]In 2023, we will have a theme to guide outreach for the whole of our chapter: “175 years of the Federal Constitution – our contribution to a stable democracy”. Through this theme, we aim to highlight the critical role of free and neutral knowledge sources like Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in advancing a more knowledgeable society. We hope that the theme will not only give focus to our activities but also drive partnerships, membership and fundraising among like-minded organisations and people who want to protect democracy.
We will also continue our work to professionalise and strengthen our organisation. We are already developing new strategies for Programmes GLAM and Community, as well as a plan to boost membership. We will continue refining our organisational structure based on our new team’s competencies and strengthening our back office and administration. Last, we will try out a new format for the General Assembly that includes keynote speakers and panels to attract and engage members. Throughout all our activities – programmatic and organisational – we remain committed to being a learning organisation and will continuously test, adjust and improve from our experiences.
Revenues received during this 12-month period
[edit]Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan Exchange Rate 1.00487 1.00487 Membership fees (3000) CHF 14,000.00 4,130.00 10,881.99 0.00 0.00 15,011.99 14,068.18 15,085.10 WMF Fundraising Costs (3402) CHF 153,420.00 41,049.43 606.60 0.00 0.00 41,656.03 154,167.16 41,858.89 As foreseen for now Donations WMCH (3410) CHF 1,438,000.00 155,504.62 746,742.52 0.00 0.00 902,247.14 1,445,003.06 906,641.08 As foreseen for now Pro Bono / In-kind donations (3420) CHF 2,500.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2,512.18 0.00 Internal processes need to be revisited here to make things more efficient TOTAL CHF 1,607,920.00 200,684.05 758,231.11 0.00 0.00 958,915.16 1,615,750.57 963,585.08
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Spending during this 12-month period
[edit]Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan Exchange Rate 1.00487 1.00487 PROGRAM 1 - GLAM CHF 130,000.00 29,000.51 20,000.45 0.00 0.00 49,000.96 130,647.40 49,244.98 37.69 Many invoices will only come in later in the year; development of spent as foreseen. PROGRAM 2 - Education CHF 116,500.00 9,589.14 1,183.79 0.00 0.00 10,772.93 117,080.17 10,826.58 9.25 The Education Expert was only hired in June; programmes have been on hold until then as the recruitment took a long time. PROGRAM 3 - Community CHF 117,600.00 32,674.81 1,680.57 0.00 0.00 34,355.38 118,185.65 34,526.47 29.21 Most of the expenses will be shouldered in the second half of the year (WikiCons etc.) Program 4: International and National Relations CHF 127,000.00 25,228.32 17,804.20 0.00 0.00 43,032.52 127,632.46 43,246.82 33.88 Expenses as expected; many invoices come in later in the year and a major friendraising event is planned in October. PROGRAM 5- Innovation CHF 157,000.00 8,362.30 8,062.11 0.00 0.00 16,424.41 157,781.86 16,506.20 10.46 The programme is only really starting now to produce projects after an initial planning phase. The budget will be spent in Q3/4. The programme is also supporting other impact directions where new leads needed to take ownership and move forward. Staff Wages & Expenses CHF 1,367,570.00 289,890.27 285,187.70 0.00 0.00 575,077.97 1,374,380.50 577,941.86 42.05 As foreseen Operations (excludes staff and programs) CHF 413,336.00 95,481.93 101,712.32 0.00 0.00 197,194.25 415,394.41 198,176.28 47.71 TOTAL CHF 2,429,006.00 490,227.28 435,631.14 0.00 0.00 909,434.01 2,283,320.59 913,962.99 37.44
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Signature
[edit]- Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
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