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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Advancing Wikipedia, wiki projects, and free knowledge in Ukraine, 2022 and beyond/Yearly Report (2023)

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Yearly Learning Report (Year 2 - 2023)

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2024-02-29T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

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

Application Yearly Report (2022)

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General information

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

  • Name of Organization: Wikimedia Ukraine (Вікімедіа Україна)
  • Title of Proposal: Advancing Wikipedia, wiki projects, and free knowledge in Ukraine, 2022 and beyond

Part 1 Understanding your work

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

In 2023, Wikimedia Ukraine continued its work to advance Wikipedia, wiki projects, and free knowledge in Ukraine through five programmatic directions outlined in our strategic plan:

1) Fostering content enrichment of Wikimedia projects (e.g. organizing content campaigns such as article & photo contests, both with external partners and as support to community initiatives; cooperating with partners to advance GLAM projects)

2) Increasing the number and diversity of Wikimedia volunteers (e.g. working with institutions to implement the Wikipedia Education Program, holding events to attract underrepresented groups such as women)

3) Providing support to the existing Wikimedia community and working to develop its capacity (e.g. holding conferences and other events, conducting training sessions, providing scholarships for external events, offering support in crisis situations like the war)

4) Working to increase awareness about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement (e.g. working with media outlets, developing our presence on social media, creating informational and instructional materials)

5) Advocating for policy changes beneficial for free knowledge development (advocating for “free panorama” in Ukraine and free licenses on government websites)

A detailed narrative report describing all the activities implemented by Wikimedia Ukraine in 2023 is available on our website: https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=9363

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

We’ve employed a lot of strategies and approaches to implement Wikimedia Ukraine’s general goals and particular projects, but here we’ll emphasize three core ones:

1) Relying on existing best practices while iterating to develop programs.

Over the past years Wikimedia Ukraine has amassed a lot of expertise in implementing our flagship projects like photo and article contests or community events. Taking existing frameworks and repurposing them year-over-year is really helpful; but we’re also thinking about how to develop the projects so they can achieve more.

To take one example, our article contest CEE Spring has an established framework as it first held almost every year since 2015, and we relied on it to a large extent in 2023, but we also developed the project so it could have bigger impact specifically for undercovered topics (focusing on Council of Europe countries & incentivizing work on articles about countries that are undercovered on Ukrainian Wikipedia).

2) Working with partners and exploring new opportunities within existing partnerships.

As we mentioned in the 2022 yearly report, we collaborate with many dozens of organizations across our different projects – Ukrainian NGOs, international organizations, government agencies, and others – and involving them to unlock opportunities for collaboration is crucial. Particularly important are longstanding years-long partnerships that bring more sustainability to our work (e.g. partnership with the National Democratic Institute for gender gap projects like WikiGap & She Did It, with the Ukrainian Institute for Ukraine’s Culture Diplomacy Month).

An interesting finding in 2023 is that we were able to unlock new opportunities within existing partnerships by spending more time on learning about our partners’ capacity & being proactive in suggesting lines of work that make sense for both parties. As an example, we started working with another department within the National Democratic Institute to deliver a series of webinars on disinformation & media literacy for the Wikimedia community.

3) Staying in touch with the community, gathering constant feedback through meetings and surveys.

As we mentioned in our 2022 report, our aim is for all the projects to be community-driven or community-approved, whether by supporting ideas first suggested by community members or by consulting with the community and making it possible for every willing community member to join.

As community capacity continues to struggle as a result of the war, throughout 2023 we were conscious that we should be mindful of community members’ time and not overwhelm them with difficult feedback processes. Thus we tried to use existing avenues to get quick feedback – like distributing brief surveys and using existing meetings like Wikiconference.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

The highlight of 2023 for us has been long-term adaptation to wartime conditions. Compared to 2022, we understand that the war is unlikely to fully end anytime soon, and the situation has more or less stabilized, so more mid-term planning is possible (though long-term planning is still quite hard).

In 2023 we were able to bring back many of the projects and activities that couldn’t happen in 2022 because of the start of the invasion (like Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine, some other content campaigns etc.) and adapt existing projects to the war’s conditions (putting security limitations in place, embracing asynchronous communication where possible etc.)

Apart from this, some other innovations of 2023 included:

  • Increasing investment in online meetings, particularly educational webinars, as the community has been scattered across Ukraine and abroad. For example, we’ve started to organize regular webinars for the community of wiki educators as part of the development of our Wikipedia Education Program. They are useful both as real-time educational events and as an incentive to invest in creating instructional materials available on-demand later (e.g. recordings and notes).
  • Investing more time and effort in international partnerships, collaborating to learn and work together. Most notably, in late 2023 we were able to secure a grant from the Swedish Institute in collaboration with Wikimedia Sweden, Wikimedia Poland, Wikimedia Georgia and the CEE Hub — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Guard_Network.

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

The participation of the Ukrainian wiki community is central to Wikimedia Ukraine’s work.

All Wikimedia Ukraine’s key announcements are distributed on social media pages, onwiki pages (such as the Village Pump and announcement boards), mailing lists and other channels read by community members. So people don’t miss anything important, we also prepare monthly news digests distributed across various information channels.

We find it’s important to have a multi-channel approach and offer information across different mediums, as different people have different preferences (e.g. many people in Ukraine get information from Facebook and Telegram, but many community members are also used to getting updates on their Wikipedia talk page, while still others prefer an email newsletter).

Besides, the Ukrainian wiki community is essential to making crucial decisions about the organization’s general plan and about specific projects. Big projects like article contests typically have volunteer-led organizing teams which everyone can join through an open call (here’s an example for Wikimarathon, our flagship campaign: https://w.wiki/6LSp).

Wikimedia Ukraine’s annual and strategic plans are informed by community consultation where everyone can join through a synchronous online meeting and asynchronously on Wikimedia Ukraine’s website. See, for example, the open call to discuss the annual plan for 2024, which was done in the summer of 2023: https://ua.wikimedia.org/?curid=9002

We are also consistently informing the international community about our work, such as through publications on Diff and The Signpost, in Education and GLAM newsletters, by participating in international meetings and events. (More specific information is available in the full narrative report on Wikimedia Ukraine’s website).

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups Strongly agree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. Agree

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

Over the past years Wikimedia Ukraine has invested a lot of effort in the activities around helping close the gender gap on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. In 2023, we organized the WikiGap campaign on Ukrainian Wikipedia, “She Did It” challenge in Ukrainian Wikipedia , and the #SheSaid challenge in Ukrainian Wikiquote. Overall, these campaigns yielded around 1600 articles about women directly in 2023 (and have long been beneficial in promoting this topic more broadly), as well as have been beneficial in encouraging more women and other underrepresented groups to participate.

Thanks to our partnership with the National Democratic Institute, we also held two training sessions for community members on gender equality. The two events attracted over 100 participants (99 people participated in the first event & 25 in the second).

In 2023 we’ve also identified two other important underrepresented groups we’re supporting – seniors and Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority in Ukraine. Throughout the year we’ve developed important partnerships around these two topics and organized several events (like a lecture about Wikipedia for seniors in the Lviv region). However, we expect that 2024 will be the year when our exploratory efforts will yield more concrete results (e.g. we’re planning to hold a content campaign on Crimean Tatar Wikipedia devoted to creating articles on the most important undercovered topics in the spring of 2024).

Part 2: Your main learning

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8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

Here's what we've learned in relation to our key questions:

1) Encouraging Wikipedia volunteers to improve existing articles. Engaging volunteers to update and enhance existing articles, especially on crucial and popular topics, has proven to be challenging. Our experiences have underscored the complexity of motivating volunteers, highlighting the need for innovative strategies.

2) Identifying and bridging content gaps. We have reinforced our learning on the effectiveness of collaborating with partners and have adopted new technical methods for measurement, such as within the CEE Spring contest, where we evaluated how well each country is covered on Ukrainian Wikipedia & adjusted contest incentives accordingly.

3) Attracting underrepresented communities. With a new manager for the “Increasing participation” direction, we gained clarity on two new groups of underrepresented communities: seniors & Crimean Tatars. This has enabled us to start forming valuable partnerships, which we'll develop in 2024.

4) Achieving sustainable institutional growth: The overarching challenge impacting our institutional growth has been the ongoing war. Its development remains a primary concern for sustainability. However, we have also explored and implemented smaller-scale strategies to support our growth in the meantime, most notably with securing external funding from the Swedish Institute and working to expand NGO membership to engage new experienced volunteers in organizational activity.

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

The ongoing war has been the biggest factor, one that has the potential to bring unexpected surprises – of course, mostly negative ones – every day. (We detailed its initial impact & adaptation strategies in the 2022 report).

In some ways 2023 was a more stable year. For over 10 months of the year Kyiv & most of Ukraine didn’t suffer from regular power outages that had undermined our activity in late 2022 and the very beginning of 2023. This has allowed us a degree of operational consistency not possible prior.

However, the war is still very much a reality. Just a few weeks ago Wikimedia Ukraine’s office suffered from a blast caused by a Russian missile attack on Kyiv, leading to a shuttered window in our office. This didn’t have any direct negative consequences for us (no people were affected, and the landlord covered the cost of repair), but it’s a stark reminder of the extreme conditions we’re operating under.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

Our general priority is iterating on existing activity & continuing with programs like content enrichment, community support and editor recruitment, while growing institutional capacity and steadily developing our programmatic work. We’ve detailed our plans for the coming years & our planning approach in our 2024-2026 General Support Fund application: https://w.wiki/9KUw

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

Despite the war, we wanted to support our community with international scholarships and make sure Ukrainian experience is heard. It was not easy. Firstly, military-age men need a bureaucratic permission to go abroad. We still managed to get a few, and we relied on 60+, women and Ukrainians living abroad for the rest. Secondly, Ukrainian air space is closed, so the closest airports are in neighbouring countries. We succeeded here as well despite everything: for the CEE Meeting we relied on a Moldovan airline who cancelled each of the legs the day before departure, but Ukrainians still made it. But sadly we failed to send our scholar to Wikimania: the ambassador of Singapore in Ukraine is in Singapore, so getting a visa from Ukraine happened to be too difficult of a mission for us.

12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
English-language materials:

Ukrainian-language materials:

We also have detailed onboarding guides for staff members with different roles (communication manager, office manager, WLE manager), which we are not ready to make fully public but can share upon request.

Part 3: Metrics for Year 2

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13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Partnerships Strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability. Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 134 100 Target not met as some major projects like Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine have not recovered fully since the start of the full-scale war Manual counting, Google Forms signups
Number of stories prepared for blog & social media The number of original stories for Wikimedia Ukraine's blog and / or social media accounts that focus on Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, Wikimedia Ukraine's activity, free knowledge 120 150 Target met and exceeded – we maintained strong communications profile throughout the year and shared both topical and “ever-green” stories written by both Wikimedia Ukraine staff and volunteers with the wider community. Data from the platforms: WordPress & social media accounts
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A


13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 5090 6140 Target exceeded, primarily thanks to strong results of the “Increasing participation” program, including content campaign participants & non-editor participants for online events Onwiki registration, Quarry, Wiki Loves tool for photo contests, Programs & Events Dashboard, Wikimedia Hashtags tool, external registration forms, counting number of participants on Zoom / Google Meet calls for webinars
Number of editors Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 4170 4540 The same as with the “Participants” metric Onwiki registration, Quarry, Wiki Loves tool for photo contests, Programs & Events Dashboard, Wikimedia Hashtags tool
Number of organizers Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 220 220 Approximately (after adjusting for double counts) in line with the target thanks to strong Wikimarathon & photo contests (where jury members are counted as organizers) Manual counting, Google Forms signups
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Wikipedia Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 6730 9290 Target exceeded, primarily thanks to strong results of the “Increasing participation” program, including content campaigns Built-in tools onwiki (# of pages in the category / # of template transclusions), onwiki self-reporting, Quarry, Wiki Loves tool for photo contests, Programs & Events Dashboard, Wikimedia Hashtags tool
Wikidata Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 460 292 Target not met, primarily because the International Museum Day campaign, which brought strong results on Wikidata last year, was not held as planned Onwiki self-reporting, Programs & Events Dashboard
Wikimedia Commons Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 60890 82308 Target exceeded, primarily thanks to strong Wiki Loves Earth results Built-in tools onwiki (# of files in the category), Wiki Loves tool for photo contests, Programs & Events Dashboard
Wikiquote Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 480 798 Target exceeded, primarily thanks to several strong content campaigns (WikiGap, #SheSaid, CEE Spring, Wikipedia for School) Onwiki self-reporting
Wikisource Please see the spreadsheet with Wikimedia Ukraine's detailed metrics plan with distribution for each program - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1219987476 420 3059 Significantly exceeded because of a strong content campaign on Wikisource Built-in tools onwiki

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

No

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

NA

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
More detailed metrics with distribution per each program: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvIKm_GBPgbQvAUr5v0CguIPjncc06EFEd4QTaN5LqQ/edit#gid=1471840224

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships

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17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
B. Conflict management or transformation This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
D. Partnership building This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
F. Program design, implementation, and management This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
J. Governance This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
K. Communications, marketing, and social media This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
M. On-wiki technical skills This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N. Accessing and using data This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
O. Evaluating and learning from our work This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
N/A
N/A

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Peer to peer learning with other community members (but that is not continuous or structured), Using capacity building/training resources onlinee from sources OUTSIDE the Wikimedia Movement, Using capacity building/training resources online from sources WITHIN the Wikimedia Movement

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

Like in 2022, while our organizational capacity grew slightly in some dimensions in 2023 and we made operational improvements, we haven’t been able to make a big leap because of the war and the resulting lack of capacity among the core volunteers and the broader community.

(Note: in response to question 17 we picked option “This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it” in cases where capacity isn’t low but couldn’t have grown because of the war – such an option wasn’t available in the original question).

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups Agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups Strongly agree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Permanent staff outreach, Staff hired through the fund, Partners proactive interest

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Difficulties specific to our context that hindered partnerships

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

The lessons we identified in 2022 still hold and haven’t changed in a major way:
  • There’s a lot of proactive interest from potential partners (everyone knows Wikipedia), but it’s important to set correct expectations for them (e.g. emphasize that we are not Wikipedia, we don’t influence Wikipedia content directly etc.)
  • Big NGOs and INGO are typically the best partners. Government agencies can be good partners, but set the expectations right and be prepared for bureaucracy. Commercial companies are rarely good partners.
  • Partnerships need continuous time investment, signing a memorandum is not enough (and sometimes is even the opposite of really achieving something

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration

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21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

Being a part of the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement means that our organization, Wikimedia Ukraine, aligns with the mission of making knowledge freely accessible to all. This would bring a sense of purpose and pride to our work, as we contribute to a larger global effort to promote access to information. Belonging to the movement would also allow us to collaborate and share resources with other organizations, strengthening the impact of our efforts. It would bring us a sense of community and a shared commitment to the values of the movement, inspiring us to continue our work in promoting a more informed and connected world.

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Somewhat increased

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

It had already been high but somewhat increased thanks to growing international partnerships, such as within the CEE Hub and Wikimedia Europe.

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Somewhat increased

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

It had already been high but somewhat increased thanks to growing international partnerships, such as within the CEE Hub and Wikimedia Europe, and we did our best to keep it high by making sure Ukrainian community members can participate in international events despite the war.

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

With the war Wikimedia Ukraine got more connections with the cultural preservation movement. A major part of this effort was the Ukrainian Cultural Diplomacy Month focused on sharing information on personalities and phenomena associated with Ukrainian culture. Wiki Loves Monuments attracted a lot of media attention by reaching the milestone of 100K monuments in our open-access database, exceeding the coverage of the government register. Our previous photo contests together with our advocacy to get government content released under a free license made Wikimedia Commons a unique place for documenting both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of damaged cultural heritage during the war. Some of our other work, such as Wikisource proofreading campaigns, also supports the cultural preservation movement.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration

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We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Partially

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

We’re sharing the results of our work in various ways – by posting on mailing lists and Diff, by participating in group meetings (such as SWAN meetings, regular meetings of the ED group, CEE Hub building meetings), and in personal conversations.

In March, we plan to share an English-language version of Wikimedia Ukraine’s yearly report detailing our activities in 2023 with other affiliates through the Wikimedia-l mailing list.

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

We do this regularly (at least once a month)

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

Please see our answer to question 27a.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance

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

140870.72

31. Local currency type

USD

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

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
https://ua.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9385

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

While our capacity was more stable in 2023 than in 2022, the project expenses we planned in advance did not fully match both our capacity (community and partners) to implement these projects and the expenses needed. Some projects were cheaper than planned (for example, due to partner generosity), while others were more expensive (for example, because wartime challenges required significantly more money to overcome).

Our major overspending line was Trainings and Community Events (-6 662.39 USD overspent), as we decided that it is important to keep enabling the community members to meet, discuss, share and improve their skills, as well as sharing Ukrainian experience abroad. This came at the cost of more complex (and more costly) travel and organising more decentralised events to reduce the need for long-distance travel.

Our biggest underspending line was Advocacy (none of the 4446.35 USD spent). The Ukrainian Parliament adopted a major copyright reform just in December 2022 taking effect in January 2023 (with unfortunately some last-night changes pushing the text further from the one we wanted), and topics we advocated for became a very low priority for a wartime society. In addition, our advocacy coordinator opted for a career change and we decided to put the replacement on hold until a clearer project emerges. We intend to rethink the Advocacy project in 2024 in wartime conditions.

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.

Thank you for taking the time to review our report! We look forward to further conversations.