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Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia New York City/2016-2017

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Grant stage: grant in progress
Grantee: Wikimedia New York City
Amount granted: US$74,000 (-)
Funding period: 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 30 June 2017
Final report due: 30 July 2017

Application

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Background

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These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

  1. Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.
    Backer, Alice. "AfroCROWD Works With Libraries and Museums to Improve Representation on Wikipedia." Video: AfroCROWD at the Brooklyn Public Library. Crowd Consortium. 23 November 2015. and Allum, Cynthia. "Women leading movements to champion equality on Wikipedia: Frustrated by Wikipedia's male-dominated culture, women are spearheading efforts to record history fairly, and take control of their own stories." The New York Times. February 29, 2016.
  2. Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.
    Howard, Dorothy (Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Metropolitan New York Library Council). Video: Thoughts on scaling local GLAM initiatives. GLAM-WIKI: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Wikimedia. GLAM-Wiki Netherlands, The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek & National Archive of the Netherlands, 10-12 April 2015. Friday, April 10, 2015.

Link to these documents only if you have them.

  1. Link to your organization's staffing plan. 2016 Metrics reporting staffing plan
  2. Link to your annual plan. This organization does not currently have an annual plan.
  3. Link to your strategic plan. This organization does not currently have a strategic plan, but you can view the previous strategic plan.
    See 2011 WM NYC Strategic Plan

Please add your global metrics to this sheet. Contact APG staff if you need access. Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress. Wikimedia New York City is tracking their metrics using this tool: 2015 WMNYC_metrics v 02-23-2016.xlsx

Programs

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Program 1: 2016 Meetups

see Program 1: 2016 Meetups – further details

WM NYC Events through 2015
Source: WM NYC Event Archive. Note: The number of chapter events grew approximately 3-fold in 2015.

Consolidated Program Objectives

The events and activities in the WM NYC Meetups Program will engage existing contributors and new contributors in building community and in content creation and donation, with the aim of increasing and improving quality content on the Wikimedia projects, through meetups, edit-a-thons, education programs, and GLAM partnerships.


Editor engagement

  • 36 new contributors continue to make 5+ edits per month, 12 months after participating in an event, and 36 existing contributors report increased engagement as a result of their attendance at meetups and edit-a-thons or their participation in education and GLAM activities.
  • This will be done by 30 Wikipedia meetups of any sort in 2016, each of which will have at least 10 participants of any kind or 5 new users. Activities at meetups can be live Wikimedia contributions or training. All meetups will be facilitated by an experienced chapter member
  • WM NYC is looking to increase participation among diverse, under-represented populations. In addition to supporting initiatives to address the gender gap, WM NYC is looking to increase participation among groups unique to the New York City area, like members of African diaspora communities, specific cultural entities like WikiArte, #guggathon, etc.


New and improved content

  • In 12 months through 30 edit-a-thons, education partnerships, and GLAM partnerships, 50 articles will be created and 150 improved, and 12 images uploaded and used on a Wikimedia project, integrated on content pages (other than Commons). At least 2 organizations will facilitate media upload from their collections
  • Educational programs via support for WikiEdu efforts will include 5 schools will participate in Wikipedia Educational Programs with workshops or classroom assignments, 5 course pages will be created documenting student and class participation, 50 students will join as new users, 50 articles will be edited by participants in the education program


Scaling international programs

  • We will support 5 international programs related to these program activities through hosting either main node or satellite events for Year of Science, Wikipedia Day, Art+Feminism, Wiknic, Wiki Loves Pride, Wiki Loves Libraries/Open Access Week, Wiki APA (Asian Pacific America), Wikipedia Takes Your City, Black WikiHistory Month.
  • Support entails creating event pages that often serve as the main event page for global nodes, outreach, networking, resource sharing


See The SMART Process to Developing Measurable Objectives
See Designing SMART Proposals and Annual Plans'

Program 2: AfroCROWD

SMART GOALS


By December 31, 2016:


Goal: Support and foster virality

  • Objective: Develop toolkit and Training video for those in target group who want to hold editathons outside of NYC
  • Measure: 5-7 articles in the local or national press for the year (2 already: Voices of NY and NY Times)
  • Objective: Hold monthly events i.e. at least 12 this year (2 held already in NYC and 4 supported outside NYC)

Goal: Generate & Improve articles

  • Measure: About 100 for the year

Goal: Turn returning editors into active editors

  • Meet the needs of returning editors by developing programming suited to their needs
  • Encourage returning editors to add quick edits about the news they most follow on a regular basis
  • Create special roles for returning editors
  • Hold a Training the Trainers event for returning editors
  • Measures:
    • 5 editors attend more than one event or
    • at least one trainee editor organizes editathons outside of NY

Goal: Bring Wikipedia to over 500 people in our target group

  • Measure: Over 250 people attend editathons
  • Measure: Over 100 people hear presentations at conferences or when we are invited to present
  • Measure: Over 100 people edit Wikipedia with us
  • Measure: Over 50 new people in target group follow us on Social Media


Plan
Activities

January

February

March

  • Art+Feminism 2016 @ MoMA (Saturday, March 5, 2016)
  • Presentation to Harlem Arts Alliance Monthly Meeting
  • WikiWednesday @ Babycastles (March)
  • Editathon to coincide with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (March 14-24). Sunday, March 20th, Afro-Decedent Women Leaders Editathon.
  • Women of African Disapora @ Hunter College. Thursday, March 24, 2016

April

  • Harlem Arts Alliance Editathon OR Brooklyn Public Library Editathon
  • Digital Blackness Conference, Rutgers University – Attendance and Presentation (April 22 –23, 2016)
  • WikiWednesday @ Babycastles (April)

May

  • La Guardia Community College Translatathon (In conjunction with Professor Ximena Gallardo)
  • WikiWednesday @ Babycastles (May)

June

July

August

  • Haitian Wikipedia Translatathon

September

  • Training the Trainers Editathon at the Brooklyn Public Library

October

  • Afro-Latino Hispanic Heritage Month Spanish/Portuguese Translatathon at the Queens Public Library (Sunday, September 18th) in commemoration of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th-October 15th)

November

  • Hunter College Africana Studies Editathon

December

  • Year-End Wikipedia Editathon Celebration at the Brooklyn Public Library in celebration of the year's editathons. Brings editors from past editathons together to edit new entries and work on old ones as well as recruit new editors and train them. (Sunday, December 18, 2016)
Impact
Target readership
Wikipedias
Wiktionaries
Other projects
  • Possibly other Wikipedias and Wiktionaries of African and afrodescendant subgroups that trainees revolve around organically.
  • Commons


Fit with strategy

What crucial thing will the project try to change or benefit in the Wikimedia movement? Please select the Wikimedia strategic priority(ies) that your project most directly aims to impact and explain how your project fits. Most projects fit all strategic priorities. However, we would like project managers to focus their efforts on impacting 1–2 strategic priorities. Examples of strategic priorities can be found here.

This project aims to help bridge Wikipedia's multicultural gap in editorship and in content.
The project primarily aims to increase participation of editors of African descent (including but not limited to self-identified African, African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American, Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian subgroups) in the Wikimedia movement.
We believe that this project would contribute to a positive perception of Wikipedia among users in these communities, and increase skills for contribution to Wikimedia projects.
The methodology we propose is to first introduce a larger audience to the editing process and Wikimedia concept, than to recruit individuals that show personal interest and enthusiasm, and involve them in a group of trainers that would be provided additional training and mentorship, so they could go back to their respective communities and train more people in using Wikimedia tools and projects. We believe that in such way we could build capacity and cohesion of a group of trainers, so they would be willing to continue working on Wikipedia content.


Organization Team

The proposed project is the result of a partnership between:

  1. Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AFROCroWd), an initiative which seeks to increase the number of people of African Descent who edit Wikipedia and partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge and culture movements, and
  2. interglider.ORG, a not-for-profit organization that promotes free knowledge and free culture ideas to produce cultural vibrancy and diversity and social and economic equality and innovation.
  3. Wikimedia New York City, the largest and most active North American local Wikipedia chapter
Workshop trainers
  1. Aliceba (talk) 19:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC), a Brooklyn-based free knowledge and free culture proponent who has been aggregating and disseminating Haitian citizen media since 2005 and is a former Francophonia Editor covering the french-speaking blogs of Africa and the Caribbean at Global Voices Online .
  2. Sherry Antoine, Project Manager
Support
  1. Project Manager
  2. Wikimedia New York City, the local Wikipedia chapter members assist with proctoring events
  3. Web hosting and technical support provided by Interglider.ORG
Evidence of past success
  1. Over 12 editathons held in 2015 at venues such as the Brooklyn Public Library, The Schomburg Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Queens Public Library.
  2. Several articles in the local and national press.
  3. Keynote address at WikiConference USA

Staff

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AfroCROWD Program Manager

  1. Please link to a detailed job description, which shows how this staff person will help your organization achieve its goals.

    AfroCROWD Project Manager Job Description
  2. How long is this staff person or contractor's planned engagement with your organization, and how many hours will they work over the course of this grant?

    Project Manager has been on staff since August of 2016 and is an ongoing staff person that we expect to keep.
    0.40 FTE or 16 hours/week = 832 hours over 12 months, on an ongoing basis.
  3. Use a percentage of that person's total hours to show how they will spend their time on different programs and activities.

    Outreach: 35% -- Press, Partners, Public Speaking, Meetings
    Digital: 25% -- Social Media, Website Maintenance, Graphics
    Editathons: 25% -- Planning, Operations, Technical Assistance
    Administration: 10%
    Grant Reporting: 5%

Metrics & Reporting

  1. Please link to a detailed job description, which shows how this staff person will help your organization achieve its goals.

    2016 Metrics reporting staffing plan
  2. How long is this staff person or contractor's planned engagement with your organization, and how many hours will they work over the course of this grant?

    0.25 FTE or 10 hours/week = 520 hours over 12 months, on an ongoing basis.
  3. Use a percentage of that person's total hours to show how they will spend their time on different programs and activities.

    Event Metrics: 50% -- includes current and historical metadata gathering
    Community Management, GLAM Partnerships & Outreach: 40% -- community engagement, best practices, metrics on outside-of-chapter events, possible development of "Metrics in a Box" template / structures
    Administration: 10% -- reportage & compliance

Budget and resource plan

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Link to a detailed budget (that also includes a plan for raising the resources you need). :see WM NYC Budget Template

Additional sources of revenue

Additional sources of revenue, other than the Project and Event Grants Program, that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded.

  • No other cash funding
  • In kind funding includes the following:
    • Nonprofit discount from venues which provide physical space
    • Donated labor of local volunteer Wikimedia community organizers

Midpoint report

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This is a brief report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period: 1 April - 30 September.

Program story

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Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Here is the text you may use to add a story or link!

"Writing women into Wikipedia with the United Nations: the #HERstory editathons" by María Cruz, Wikimedia Foundation and Jeff Elder, Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Blog. August 29, 2016

Progress

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Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program progress. This should including reporting against each of the SMART objectives from your proposal.

US-WM NYC Midpoint Report

2016 Metrics & Reporting Job Posting

  • 2016 Metrics & Reporting Job Posting – Posted 27 September 2016
    • Resumes are being actively reviewed by hiring committee
    • Next steps timeline / status update to be determined at October Board Meeting

Spending

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Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending. US$14,860

Here is where your spending notes/explanations are.

Please note: Amount does not include AfroCROWD bridge grants.
Please see: FY 2015-2016 Finances for IRS filing year 2015

Final report

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This is the final report for your grant, describing your outcomes from the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017.

Program story

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Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

*

Learning story

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Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

Please see the Strategic Planning Retreat Learning Pattern, which we created to chronicle a recent learning story. *

Results

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Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Meetups

Salons and Wikipedia Day

The base of Wikimedia NYC activities is the organization of Wikipedia events for the public. This includes Wikipedia edit-a-thons, which directly produce content and get more global attention, but also monthly Wednesday evening salons for broader discussion and engagement with the general public, as well as occasional workshops and presentations for specialized communities, and our annual Wikipedia Day conference, this year held at the Ace Hotel with Katherine Maher and other speakers.

In the past year Wikimedia NYC participants have organized:

  • 20+ salons and lectures, including a monthly WikiWednesday, a Wikipedia Day conference, and presentations at academic conferences
  • 10+ specialized workshops for professional contributors including educators, librarians, and museum staff

Cultural partnerships

NYC is home to many institutions with both national and international influence. Wikimedia NYC has collaborations with many of them, and we have used this to leverage international wiki-collaborations. Organizations offer expert content and in return our community offers to help publish and distribute it through the Wikimedia projects. We have continued and amplified our traditional strength in the art world and with libraries of all kinds (public, academic, and institutional). More recently, we have worked to expand the GLAM model to focus on scientific institutions.

In the past year Wikimedia NYC participants have organized:

  • 100 Wikipedia editing events for 2000+ editors

Wikimedia NYC has collaborated with the following organizations in the last year -

University and College partnerships

Wikimedia NYC maintains a strong engagement with educators and other academics at universities in our city and region. We have helped lead presentations, faculty workshops, university-based editathons, and also student workshops for classes participating in Wiki Education Foundation and related assignment-based programs. The chapter has helped provide guidance to academics engaged with the Wiki Education Foundation programs, and has provided a local support network to those engaged in these projects, particularly from our chapter members who are themselves university faculty.

Wikimedia NYC has partnered with fourteen universities and colleges, each of which has hosted more than 3 Wikipedia events in the past year:

The wiki pedagogy underlining the LaGuardia Community College projects were also examined in two scholarly articles by LaGuardia faculty. "Wikifying Science Fiction’s 'Grand Dame': The LaGuardia Community College Octavia E. Butler Project on Wikipedia" (on the long-term work of students and scholars on the Butler entries) is set to appear in the Modern Language Association collection Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia E. Butler, edited by Dr. Tarshia L. Stanley, while "Connecting Wikipedia and the Archive: Building a Public History of HIV/AIDS in New York City" (on the student work at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives GLAM) is forthcoming June 2017 in the journal Wiki Studies.

Technology

Wikimedia NYC participants include software and tool developers as well as non-technical community members who pilot test the tools which developers produce. We have recently engaged more with Wikimedia Foundation staff and other MediaWiki-based technologists in our region, and have built a stronger basis for community tech development.

We have championed the broader use of the Programs & Events Dashboard. Initially developed for the Wiki Education Foundation, we have used it for editathons and other chapter events as well as Art+Feminism and other global Wikimedia affiliates. Our adaptations have been supported by further tech development by the Wiki Education Foundation in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The chapter helped host the Enterprise MediaWiki Conference and a public tech event for the ‘Wikipedia Takes Manhattan’ photography contest with Open House New York. For the year of 2017, we are holding a monthly Sunday afternoon hackathon at the Ace Hotel, bringing together both tech and content contributors to find areas of connection for relevant tech development, ranging from templates to tools to bug-filing.

Contributor to a global movement

Located in one of the most populous immigrant cities in the nation and a global hub for numerous technological, cultural, medical, and business interests, Wikimedia NYC has striven to develop models of activity types not just useful for itself, but equally for other Wikimedia community groups.

Project organizers in Wikimedia NYC host events with the intent to set example for future other events in NYC and around the world. This happens because NYC is a big city with 100+ public Wikipedia events every year, and also because Wikimedia NYC includes a diverse base of about 50 people who have organized a Wikipedia event in the last year.

This includes connecting regionally, including leading almost all of the public training sessions at WikiConference North America, as well as globally, like the WikiArte campaign which grew beyond the MoMA event to embrace Wikimedia affiliates throughout Latin America, modelled on some of longer-term work helping to support Art+Feminism both locally and globally.

Afrocrowd

Goal: Bring Wikipedia to over 500 people in our target group

Measure: Over 250 people attend edit-a-thons

  • AfroCROWD has grown into a very connected and engaged community not only in the New york City area, but in partnership and solidarity with other programs within the Wikimedia community and with partners and editors in other cities in both the United States and Abroad.

Measure: Over 100 people hear presentations at conferences or when we are invited to present

  • Well over 142 people have heard our presentations at conferences or when we are invited to present: Our seminar with the Black Lunch Table at the Art+Feminism conference for example attracted 48 people. We spoke at the pre-event for the WikiCon USA in San Diego where over 30 saw our presentation which was also video taped by the foundation and webcast live. We also facilitated a Wikipedia training session there picking up 30 more eyes over the course of 3 days who saw our presentation video. In addition, outstanding AfroCROWDer Wynnie Lamour spoke spoke at the event. AfroCROWD was invited to speak at the Digital Blackness conference at Rutgers University where we welcomed 34 attendees to our panel. Beyond this, we also presented at the Wiki Indaba conference, the Allied Media Conference in Detroit and the Black Girl Nerd conference in New York and have been invited to Keynote Wikiconference North America 2017 in Montreal, Canada. Videos of our presentations have also been played on social media to audiences widely.
  • Measure: Over 100 people edit Wikipedia with us
  • We have well surpassed this goal with over 327 people editing Wikipedia with us at our monthly edit-a-thons this period.
  • A total of 469 AfroCROWD event participants in the target audience took part in our events from April 1 in 2016-March 11, 2017.
  • They learned how to edit articles and contribute entries to Wikipedia,
  • added 15,009,111 bytes total,
  • created 51 brand new articles,
  • edited 546 articles,
  • made 2,848 edits,
  • and added 65,541 words.

Measure: Over 50 new people in target group follow us on Social Media

  • AfroCROWD has a robust social media campaign, posting 4-6 days a week. This paid off with a growth from 650 followers, for example on Twitter, in November, 2016 to 800 followers March 27th, 2017. A growth of over 150 followers in 5 months which is three times faster than the rate we projected.

These activities contribute strongly to the variety and range of content on Wikipedia. AfroCROWD editors are also significantly improving coverage of underrepresented topics and communities. For instance hidden figures in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math as we tackled with the Accenture African American Employees Resource Group (AAERG) Edit-a-thon in February, 2017 or important women of African descent in art and design as we hacked into at our packed seminar with the Black Lunch Table at the famed Museum of Modern Art. This was during the Art and Feminism edit-a-thon conference. We enjoy working with Art and Feminism, as we did again at our edit-a-thon at the acclaimed Fashion Institute of Technology’s library this March, 2017 for an edit-a-thon focused on Black women designers.

The program will continue on with monthly events, there are three already in the works in the New York City area. We also participated in Berlin at the Wikimedia Conference at the end of March, 2017. We regularly do outreach to participants in a variety of platforms on social media, on-wiki and via email blasts and have engaged in a campaign to add new names via all platforms to our growing email subscriber list. We also put out a monthly newsletter of coming events and news about happenings in the Wikipedia community.

To train new trainers, we plan a Training The Trainers (TTT) seminar every summer to prepare volunteer Wikipedia instructors we call Wikipedia Coaches from the ranks of those more advanced AfroCROWD editors, in hopes they will grow the skills necessary to help greener newcomers. AfroCROWDer Grey J. for example has even assited us by helping at an out of state edit-a-thon in Connecticut in June 2016. AfroCROWDer Lynda Fletcher has not only published 15 new articles, but gone from newcomer to speaking on panels about her AfroCROWD experience and research and recruiting others. AfroCROWD participates regularly within Wikimedia NYC Wiki Wednesdays meetings and also promote coming Chapter events like the monthly Wikimedia NYC Meetup at the Ace Hotel in New York City. The meetup focuses on improving Wikipedia user tools like the Wikidata game and others. AfroCROWD is also maintaining relationships with partners. The Black Librarians’ Caucus, for example, is a case in which pursuing longer termed partnerships really paid off. We approached the librarians to participate in the recent 1 Librarian 1 Reference (#1Lib1Ref) Wikimedia Campaign.

The librarians originally were skittish about the notion of supporting Wikipedia activities, but we pursued connection by connecting with leadership, attending Caucus meetings and eventually being invited twice to present about the AfroCROWD initiative to their board. This began a dialogue with the group about the uses of Wikipedia, and the site’s value to librarians, how its constant growth and improvements were helping to protect the integrity of Wikipedia's information, and how their educated input could make it even stronger and more useful to them and library patrons.

Members of the New York Black Librarians’ Caucus were soon participants at our events and we partnered with them for an edit-a-thon at the Brooklyn Library. That event attracted 20 people who edited 9 articles, made 39 edits and created 2 new articles. Their contributions from this effort have been viewed more than 1,653,944 times so far.

From our interaction with the Caucus, we can safely say that many librarians were sensitized to the Wikipedia experience. We continue to attract more librarians in connection with 1 Librarian 1 Reference to this day and their partnership opened the way to other similar Black Librarian organizations they sent our way. We look forward to continue working with them.

  • Point of Growth: Growth has been steady for the AfroCROWD project, and partnerships have been an important part of the growth. As the number of partners grow, we would like to continue improving the way we maintain those relationships. In addition to supporting partners on social media through relevant re-tweets and announcements, for example, we are looking for other ways to continue the conversation about our mutual topics of interest.

Testimonialsː

AfroCROWD Partner, Helen Lane, Librarian, Fashion Institute of Technology: “The best decision I made as the organizer of International Women's Day Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the Fashion Institute of Technology, was to join forces with AfroCROWD... Their established network of volunteers, their drive to recruit participants and their on-the-ground assistance and leadership made the event the success that it was. I can't say enough good things about the energy and focus of Sherry Antoine and Alice Backer.”

AfroCROWDer, now partner, Clairesa Clay, BLERD: “I have participated in AfroCrowd events for two reasons: 1. The ability to insure, effect, and memorialize the digital Footprint of African diaspora history and 2. Thankful that AfroCrowd can provide the knowledge for me to make entries on Wikipedia- a possibility I did not think [available] before.”

AfroCROWDer, Linda Fletcher: “I have found the work that Afrocrowd does to be useful and rewarding. I am a strong supporter and have attended many of the edit-thons and events. Attending the events have helped me in developing research skills. By researching the work of others I have gained a deep appreciation for the work and commitment that people have made to improve the lives of others.Writing Wikipedia articles have given me knowledge to share with others on and off line.”

AfroCROWDer Grey Jones: I participate with AfroCROWD for “Community: I like connecting with black folks to correct inaccuracies about the American historical narrative.”

Spending

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Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

***DRAFT*** WM-NYC 2016-17 APG Final Spending Report

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period.

$50,788