Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Diversifying Wikimedia’s content & contributors, removing barriers to knowledge & developing new ways of engaging with the public, partners, learners & contributors in the UK 2022/Final Report

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Final Learning Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-03-31T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

Application Midpoint Learning Report

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General information[edit]

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results. See the midpoint report if you want to review the midpoint results.

  • Name of Organization: Wikimedia UK
  • Title of Proposal: Diversifying Wikimedia’s content & contributors, removing barriers to knowledge & developing new ways of engaging with the public, partners, learners & contributors in the UK 2022
  • Amount awarded: 482054.5 USD, 355000 GBP
  • Amount spent: 355000 GBP

Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]

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

Within our 2022-25 plan (https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Wikimedia_UK_Strategy_2022-25), we articulated the approaches we planned to take towards our vision of a more informed, democratic and equitable society.

(1) Knowledge equity We focused on delivering projects around decolonisation, and marginalised knowledge and communities. The majority of our external partnerships are focused on this area, through content or community collaborations. More on this in Q7; full details of activities in quarterly reports in Q5.

(2) Information literacy We were pleased to support a number of ‘Wikimedia in the classroom’ university courses, (e.g. a SOAS course on Politics of Resistance) whilst also working on digital literacy work in schools.There has been growing engagement with university internship schemes, which are often framed in terms of the development of information literacy skills.

(3) Climate and environment The key development in 2023 was launching the Global Systems Institute Wikimedian in Residence for Climate. Project metrics include ‘topics for impact’, which while referred to within the 2030 strategy, isn’t well defined. This work is helping us clarify our own thinking about what counts as an impactful Wikipedia article, which we will in turn share with the wider movement.

Our delivery is underpinned by five strategic pillars. In 2022/23 our work within these was guided by separate strategies and plans including:

  • Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Framework and Action Plan
  • Volunteer Engagement Plan
  • Narrative, Communications and Digital Strategy
  • Development Strategy
  • Case for Support
  • Policy positions

Some highlights of achievements under these pillars are described elsewhere within this report - for example, external funding successes, new approaches to volunteer engagement, and advocacy work relating to the Online Safety Bill - but readers are also invited to read our forthcoming Strategic Report 2022/23 for more details of our activities in these areas.

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

Within our Progress Report (August 2022), we highlighted:

(1) Flexible and skilled staff that are able to respond to funding opportunities - this continued as we were able to deploy staff to projects we fundraised for through the year.

(2) Thought leadership around areas of programmatic interest (e.g. student internships model). With the preparation of our ‘Wikimedia and Democracy’ booklet, this has grown in importance

(3) Leveraging external partnerships (and tying them to our strategic priorities) - e.g. we have been in touch with Global Systems Institute for a number of years, but with the new strategic focus on Climate, and a funder lined up, we were able to align all the stakeholders towards an impactful project launching in 2022.

Further strategies we developed in the past year:

(1) Late in 2022 we restructured the Programmes delivery team, creating a more tiered structure with more capacity to take on new major projects. This has already enabled us to think more deeply about our work with Wikimedia Ireland.

(2) Similarly, as our projects grow in scope and scale, we are increasingly tapping into our wider network of contacts, drawing on their expertise when delivering Wikidata workshops, for example.

(3) With the additional capacity and focus brought by the Volunteer Coordinator post, we reflected deeply on how we manage our pool of 50+ community trainers. Identified strategies of building their engagement include yearly individual Trainer check-ins to touch base, Trainer catch-ups as a group activity (quarterly catch-up sessions are organised to identify needs, and offer peer-learning and networking opportunities), and Train the Trainer sessions (an additional session during the usual train the trainer course to bring new and established trainers together, thus supporting trainer community building).

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?

There have been new approaches in terms of the types of content we work with. For example, we collaborated with the disability organisation VocalEyes on accessibility data for heritage. We innovated with our volunteer strategy (supported by a new team member). We’d like to highlight one particular innovation - a ‘mini WIR’.


‘Connected Heritage’ is an externally funded 2021-22 programme. It builds digital skills of small heritage organisations, and has a funnel of engagement: webinars, then editathons, and finally ‘mini’ Wikimedians in Residence. A mini WIR is where a WMUK staff works with an organisation for 1 day/week for 2-3 months. As we reach out to new orgs, particularly those who have been left out of traditional structures of power and privilege, we find audiences reluctant or overstretched to be involved. The miniWIR adds capacity to a partner, enabling them to solve wiki issues that would otherwise block progress due to a lack of skill and time (e.g. complex file uploads). WMUK also benefits, because the lead staff member feeds insights back to us, and brings them into their next mini Residency.


In Autumn we launched a miniWIR at Mixed Museum, the digital museum and archive of social history of racial mixing in Britain. With only one full-time staff member, they rely on partnerships to conduct work, not only for producing content, but also for building support networks that help increase their capacity to connect, learn and share. Small orgs and community groups can also be isolated or excluded from academia or large cultural organisations. WMUK has wide and deep networks in these sectors, and we can offer an ability to connect these smaller organisations to the larger ones.

We have long understood the role we can play for individual development in digital upskilling and empowerment, but now realise that we can help smaller, marginalised organisations too in a similar way.

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

Our top level communication approach is informed by our 2022-25 strategy, where we outline key stakeholder audiences:
  • Knowledge seekers - individual readers and potential readers; researchers
  • Knowledge creators - individual contributors; content-holding organisations
  • Knowledge facilitators - staff; volunteer trainers; Wikimedians in Residence; funders
  • Knowledge holders - rights holders; content-holding organisations; communities
  • Knowledge gatekeepers - publishers; rights holders; legislators

Our communications plan addresses the information needs of each of these groups, tailored to what would engage them most with our work. A particular highlight here is our 2022 strategic report https://2022strategicreport.wikimedia.org.uk/ .

We also send a quarterly newsletter with key chapter updates and calls to action, to keep people informed and guide them to opportunities for engagement. This has over 3600 recipients with an average 40% open rate.

In terms of participation, each of the knowledge communities we identified (e.g. knowledge seekers) have activities designed to engage them with WMUK’s mission and work at a level appropriate to them. The 2022-25 logic model illustrates how various communities are invited to participate in our work (https://drive.google.com/file/d/147c06V-J0C7ObTzEZ9KGvvhHjvHUBtYb/view).

In 2022 we introduced several new initiatives focused on our community:

  • We set up a new Board subcommittee focused on Community Development, which will report to the full board on a quarterly basis
  • We introduced the Volunteer Coordinator post, tasked with outreach to new communities - strategy here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tEJkdMpLutTHHAGk5nMCcH5_eG5gCL_rc1NT0h0uX_Q/edit
  • We ran our flagship Train the Trainer course in-house - meaning it was delivered by existing staff rather than an external trainer. Whilst a new challenge, this allowed us to build deep connections with our new trainer cohort.

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.
2022 Strategic Report: https://2022strategicreport.wikimedia.org.uk/

Volunteer outreach strategy https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tEJkdMpLutTHHAGk5nMCcH5_eG5gCL_rc1NT0h0uX_Q/edit Q1 full report https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IhrTIlJH_ll7a1nXOaM_2v2LSdGUxcfNhUVXPHcXaq4/edit Q2 full report https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TnPLUVSbS54JGOpuaIfejs22CFZLlv89qDzOVJtZ5aM/edit Q3 full report https://docs.google.com/document/d/182KS8bglfGjhLrXoqlBBwZg6BXyrzzs02RNAhHLO2-o/edit Q4 full report https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h0ic9Vxj8h2TbENzeidtU7FCharC0WOWlktRvd76_vE/edit

WMUK Blog post: Taking the long view – my 10 years at Wikimedia UK: https://wikimedia.org.uk/2022/09/taking-the-long-view-my-10-years-at-wikimedia-uk/

Presentations from partnership projects (examples) WiR - Presentation on Wikimedia residency at the UoE to WM Australia community meetup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXMA_bF843w British Library project presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LvHxCbO3ZelQHaIWT9RfDDho53AguRYzx4ls7ks1MwY/edit#slide=id.p Wikimedian in residence https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/tag/wikipedia/

https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/learning-teaching-conference-2022/e4/

https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/Bulk%20%20data%20item%20creation%20using%20OpenRefine%20-%20tutorial%20by%20Maggie%20Lin/1_uro2ssh3 Blog post: https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/teaching-matters-top-10-of-2022/

Case study: A 121 Training Model for Learning to Edit Wikimedia Projects: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z2-q1syJqoM0L5jczAyj06Vdy7VIlHt1mbilg4JZ9U0/edit#heading=h.k2shgiu6p84r Year in review, Khalili Wikimedian in Residence https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/02/march-is-wiki-micro-internship-month-at-the-mixed-museum-and-manar-al-athar/ https://decolonisingwikipedianetwork.myblog.arts.ac.uk/londons-colonial-her-histories/ Decolonisation work example - Festival of Empire final report https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bFp_WBULR3HywAVtbrP3bzwKryiJaNyx/view?usp=sharing

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 Agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Agree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. Strongly 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?

We are guided by our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion framework, our strategic focus on knowledge equity, and the evolving volunteer engagement strategy. To highlight:
  • Funding was secured for a new research project - “Tackling Cultural Bias on Wikipedia: The Case of Religions and Worldviews”. An emergent finding is that English-language Wikipedia has more articles about core concepts of Christianity than about core concepts of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism put together.
  • Our partnership with VocalEyes is ongoing, where we are importing data on how accessible heritage sites are.
  • We started a collaboration with Tochi Precious, a Nigerian Wikimedian who will help us design and deliver a series of activities.
  • We are developing resources to support (new) contributors working in more contentious editing areas. It has informed the most recent iteration of Train the Trainer, with training sessions introducing ideas eg setting expectations for new editors, steering groups towards starting with small but high impact changes such as interlinking articles, signposting towards supportive WikiProjects. We met with Wikimedia LGBT+ to brainstorm. Medium term, we would like to create a training package for Wikimedians in Residence, staff and community leaders on supporting new editors in contentious spaces. The enforcement guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct will be taken into consideration too.

Part 2: Your main learning[edit]

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

-How can WMUK help the global Wikimedia movement to achieve knowledge equity?

This is a continual area of reflective practice for us, internally and through working with partners. A key learning opportunity in the second half of 2022 was our involvement in the ‘Delivering Change’ project, which supported nearly 100 museums in Scotland to make organisational and programmatic changes to increase access to culture. There is the potential to learn a lot from this project in terms of our own approach to knowledge equity. For example, not placing the burden of labour on minoritised groups, and a commitment to non-extractive and non-prescriptive ways of working with communities.

  • In what way can we deliver on building information literacy, and on creating an empowered civil society in the UK?

We have designed and released a booklet summarising our thoughts in this area; looking forward we will be using it for advocacy and promotion.

To highlight an example, we recently delivered a series of local history wiki workshops for Inverclyde Community Development Trust. This was funded directly to the Trust, with Wikimedia UK receiving a fee for our delivery. The programme was constructed to focus on skills development through Wiki training and editing, with the angle of capturing local history.

  • Where can Wikimedia UK have the strongest impact in terms of the climate crisis?

We have set up and launched a wiki residency with core focus on this theme - learnings to come in 2023 onwards.

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

Here are key developments captured in 2022, numbered for reference to Q10.
1. We were pleasantly surprised to see that partner organisations within Connected Heritage are inspired to seek opportunities to expand on wiki work beyond our engagement. At least two included wiki activity in their upcoming funding applications, and at another organisation an ongoing internship model has been tweaked to include wiki work.
2. An unexpected challenge of working within the information literacy setting is the level of digital skill we are working with and are expected to develop. For example, within one project (Inverclyde Libraries), lower digital skill in some of the group participants was quite challenging. This also meant participants weren’t editing as much as expected in between sessions, which affected programme design.
3. Digital literacy and its overlap with citizen engagement (as contextualised in the Wikimedia+Democracy research) is gaining momentum as an area of interest, with organisations such as Arts Council England now considering this within their Libraries remit.
4. We were very pleased to be able to launch the climate focused Wikimedian in Residence. Unusually the resident is employed by Wikimedia UK and seconded to the partner organisation - this could allow us to learn deeply from the collaboration thanks to that closer connection.

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?

Challenges gave us opportunities to reflect and consider what needs adapting. Referring back to the points in Q9, our learning is:
1. Re internship model - see more here https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/02/march-is-wiki-micro-internship-month-at-the-mixed-museum-and-manar-al-athar/ . This is an exciting development and, learning from the creativity of our new partners, we will be learning from new collaboration models, potentially implementing/marketing them elsewhere.
2. Re low digital literacy project delivery - We did pivot and still provided a worthwhile experience - it’s notable that the participants were asking very prescient questions about internet security and data sharing. For future projects of a similar nature, we need to focus more on expectation setting with partner project leads.
3. Re interest in information literacy as a tool for citizen empowerment - this could inform how we talk about and promote our work to major stakeholders such as the UK government.
4. Re climate, we are steering some of our existing programme towards climate-related topics. A Celtic Editathon in September had ‘climate’ as one of its suggested themes (with a number of thematic Wikipedia articles resulting from it), while the Edinburgh student award programme encourages students to look especially at areas of important world themes such as Climate Crisis. The Welsh Wikipedia editors have been working on the WikiForHumanRights articles, which again includes a climate focus.

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)?

In 2019, the UK government published a White Paper on Online Harms. Over the last four years this has developed into the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which is currently making its way through Parliament and which will establish a new regulatory framework for online services. WMUK has attended meetings and responded to consultations about this, urging the government and Ofcom (the appointed regulator) to consider the implications for Wikipedia. As it stands however, the requirements of the Bill in terms of content moderation, age gating and user verification are incompatible with Wikipedia’s model. Working closely with WMF we are therefore proposing a series of amendments to the Bill to be debated in Parliament, in the hope that changes can be made to protect our movement.

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
Full report Wikimedia+Democracy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_and_Democracy_-_Wikimedia_UK_report_2021_(full_report).pdf

Diagram - Mapping the role of Wikimedia in Civic Participation https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mapping_the_role_of_Wikimedia_UK_in_Civic_Participation.jpg

Intern booklet https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Going_further_with_student_engagement.pdf

Commons booklet https://bl.iro.bl.uk/concern/books/5aebbd8b-ce57-4a30-b4cf-50fb9d42c88f

Results of information literacy annual survey https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rK6D0E5_-CXUfx2I7wClzQyV0-znn4GnPpjw6Q_vQlQ/edit

Editing in difficult spaces - https://www.are.na/sara-thomas/supporting-new-editors work in progress

Case study: A 121 Training Model for Learning to Edit Wikimedia Projects: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z2-q1syJqoM0L5jczAyj06Vdy7VIlHt1mbilg4JZ9U0/edit#heading=h.k2shgiu6p84r

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG78FlEkXaA&list=PL66MRMNlLyR5GttxrSrYD3QWkFVYwHEO&ab_channel=WikimediaUK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zctpWIRpns&list=PL66MRMNlLyR5HY0GrBEZZQGBR7QXUtAiM&ab_channel=WikimediaUK

Connected heritage: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15ik0FCPUoOi84bBGTeOyVA7KY5vUfCtx43J0vKJMAe4/edit#heading=h.mjma3evog5s5

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hUs4z3kIkFRz1UP-DDCSmHT5pKvvFT_U9dM3YJeFTqw/edit#slide=id.g11a3d70a199_0_187

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WxUkda_mydRBBprYe9gvTY-9-yeLIaZZRdrHpvOl3GQ/edit#slide=id.p1

Part 3: Metrics[edit]

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Reach of content - image/article views By measuring the number of views of images and articles released/created directly through our programmes, we can have a better understanding of Wikimedia UK's reach. This is an important metric for our partners and external funders, and was introduced in 2019. The target for articles is 123 million. The target for images is 5 billion. The composite target is therefore 5,123,000,000. 2147483647 N/A A= 4,068,727

I=10,393,510,054

Image views include our work in Wales with activities organised around Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments (12,538,540 in the last quarter of 2022) and our work with the National Library of Wales.

Article views include work that took place as part of our partnership with the Khalili Foundation and the new residency at the University of Exeter/GIS on Climate Change.

Image views: Accumulative result from Baglama2 and Glamorgan tool.

Pages: Accumulative results come from Event Metrics.

Images/media added to articles % of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons which have been added to Wikipedia articles or other Wikimedia projects. 20 54 Videos and images were mainly from the International Image Operability Framework (IIIF) image project at the National Library of Wales, and uploads from work with the National Resources Wales, Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth competitions. All uploads made as part of a collaboration with the chapter are tagged with the ‘Supported by Wikimedia UK’ category. On a quarterly basis, we use PetScan to get the results for how many images have been uploaded and how many have been used and where.
Education courses The number of courses organised across the UK. These might have run over several semesters or spread over only one semester at a higher education institution. Please note that this is a cautious target that reflects the impact that the pandemic has had on this work, with our results falling from 20 courses in 2019/20 to 9 in 2020/21. 8 14 In 2022, our resident at the University of Edinburgh coordinated 6 courses including: Translation Studies MSc, Korean Studies MSc and Global Health Challenges Pg. Other courses took place at Universities including (MA in Journalism - Derby Work Based Learning at the University of Derby, African History/HY32035 at the University of Dundee, International Education and Development at the University of Sussex, Politics of Resistance 2022 course at SOAS, The Carolingians and the Invention of Order course at the University of Kent).

This is an impressive result given that the education sector in the UK has been struggling amongst ongoing strikes, and difficulties of covid adaptation.

Education courses are counted on a quarterly basis, pulled from WMUK’s programmes team’s updates and reports from residencies.
Policy touchpoints WMUK-led responses to public consultations, policy discussions, and interactions with policy/decision makers on issues relating to open knowledge. 15 25 Key engagements from last year include:

​One of our Programmes Coordinators, Stuart Prior, contributed to a paper for the Science Museum Journal, focused on the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection programme. Our CEO ​worked with WMF on key messages/policy position for this interview: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64285220 We met with staff from Museumse Galleries Scotland following our response to a consultation about their strategy review. We are continuing to work with them onopen knowledge advocacy strategies. Our CEO gave a presentation at a roundtable event for academics and opinion-formers, focused on public service media at the British Academy.

Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy change entries on a quarterly basis.
Policy change A step further from ‘taking part in consultations’, this metric looks at the instances of when our advocacy work results in policy change on an organisational, sector or UK level. 5 6 Examples of policy changes include:

Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums updated the licences on a number of photos of items in their collection to allow for upload to Commons (as part of a partnership project with us). The Science Museum changed various image pages through our Wikimedian in Residence programme. End-of-residency recommendations include asking for dedicated copyright support and more open licensing. The resident at the National Library of Wales gave a presentation for the Advisory Board of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography. CC-BY-SA was agreed upon a few years ago but it hasn't been implemented yet. The resident has raised this with the committee and has produced implementation guidelines.

Contributions from the Programmes team and the Chief Executive are logged and tracked in a spreadsheet along with the policy touchpoints entries on a quarterly basis.
Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability Partnerships with external organisations to deliver on our strategy, active in a given year 40 56 In 2022, our partners included actors from the education sector (University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, SOAS, London College of Communication, Liverpool University, Bangor University, among others); major cultural institutions such as the British Library and Science Museum; umbrella bodies such as the National Institute for Health Research, CILIP and Museums Galleries Scotland; the Welsh Government; and smaller heritage organisations such as Devils Porridge, Mixed Museum, Llên Natur, and Swadhinata Trust. Run activity reports from our contact database.
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees Every year we survey our community leaders about their participation in the Chapter over the previous year. This includes a number of questions on demographics, and we will continue to report on the results of this survey. This information is presented numerically, but since it surveys across various characteristics, it's not possible to propose a single number here. We continue to aim for 50% of our community leaders identifying as women.

As per our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Framework and accompanying Action Plan, we are exploring ways of effectively measuring the diversity of our broader participant community (beyond community leaders) and will share the results of this through our reporting to the Foundation.

N/A 54 Volunteer survey demographics here starting page 9 https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:Community_Leaders_2023_Report.pdf Annual volunteer survey.
Number of people reached through social media publications This metric measures Wikimedia UK’s media presence by capturing everyone that has engaged with the chapter’s social media platforms (including engagement with the Welsh community). To note, all of our social media activity is very closely related and strategically relevant to promotion of the work within the proposal. We include WMUK Twitter, WMUK Facebook, WM youtube, WMUK instagram, WMUK blog views, WMUK website views within this target figure, for the first year of this proposal. 65000 49678 Last year our tools did not provide robust data for the first two quarters of the year which has impacted the numbers we can report. We have a new analytics tool set up for 2023/24.

This result still marks an underlying increase compared to the 2021 performance. Despite the setback with the tools, the chapter has achieved growth in our interactions with the community and sharing our work with them. We can see that looking at individual results of various tools (eg Twitter). It's mostly our own website stats that were disrupted ad affected the final result.

Using the analytics application for each social media platform we are active on, generate a report to get the numbers.
Number of activities developed This metric tracks the engagement efforts with volunteers across the UK, widening the charity’s geographic reach. We will desegregate by Location as we track the geographic spread of our activities, especially away from London. This is tracked manually. 150 301 68%of events organised this year took place outside of London - showing the growth and diversification of our work across the UK.

A lot of activities are still carried out online or in a hybrid mode as some people still find it easier to attend and engage in our events remotely.

Events and projects are tracked in the WMUK activity tracking sheet and then counted to reach the total. We measure all events that were organised outside of London and calculate the total of events organised. This database is maintained on a quarterly basis and can be counted to report on this metric.
Number of volunteer hours Hours spent on activities by people involved in WMUK activities, and by leading volunteers. 25000 26132 This metric shows the value of time volunteers give to their activities and helps inform our future programming. A large amount is spent on education courses - as they are run several times throughout the year - plus online editing competitions that run for several days. Community organisers participation is recorded in CiviCRM and includes the name of the activity, dates, start and end times, and volunteer role.

General participants’ time is recorded via the WMUK activity tracking sheet, including the duration of the event .

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants Metric Description: # of people participating in WMUK activities either in person or virtually. With a variety of programmes we deliver, this is a very wide and diverse set - including attendees, trainees, volunteers, etc. The threshold of involvement is attending a talk by a WMUK representative, or higher. This definition does not include people organising activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly (i.e. people who donate money or in-kind resources to support the chapter’s activities). On the whole it is not relevant to our work to disaggregate between new and returning participants, although we do so for specific programmes where we want to show a total of unique participants (e.g. Connected Heritage programme). 8000 8033 A large proportion of our participation numbers in 2022 came from people attending talks and presentations led by WMUK staff or residents.Education courses and people attending events as part of our Connected Heritage project also contributed to these results. We also supported several online competitions during the year such as Core Contest (online editing competition), Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for the spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates.
Number of editors Metric Description: # of NEWLY registered editors contributing to Wikimedia projects through WMUK activities - at events, project grants, through partnerships, course extensions and/or contests. Please note that because of the focus on outreach and community building within our work, we focus on capturing new editors only. 1000 1135 The largest cohort of new editors comes from WMUK’s education courses run across the UK throughout the year. The rest comes from editathons, training workshops and volunteer schemes - mainly through our WIR programmes. Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. Usernames are recorded and each event is entered in Event Metrics where a report provides how many people are participating in each event as a new user.
Number of organizers Metric Description: we’ve been tracking this metric for the past 3+ years and have a clear understanding of who counts as a movement organiser in our context (‘lead volunteers/community leaders’). We also survey them annually to check on community health.

A lead volunteer is a person who is involved with Wikimedia UK as an event organiser, trainer, facilitator, project coordinator or conference speaker. These are trusted volunteers and community leaders who are in charge of projects by coordinating and taking accountability for their successful delivery, dissemination, completion and reporting; serving as a resource and support for other volunteers. The metric is for active leaders in a given year.

300 381 In 2022, Wikimedians in Residence were our most active organisers. Delivering and/or organising training, editathons, presentations, participating in advocacy meetings, and leading meetings with GLAM and/or education stakeholders. Two of our residencies are permanent positions in their respective institutions, further cementing open knowledge work. The rest of the contributions come from academics running Wikipedia in classroom courses, community members running online editing competitions and project grants. Community organisers' activities and partnership interactions must be recorded in CiviCRM by the WMUK Programmes Team, each entry must include: name of the activity, volunteer role, date, time spent, and status of the activity. A report is generated using CiviCRM on a quarterly basis.
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Wikipedia Metric Description; Number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects as a result of Wikimedia UK partnerships, residencies, project grants, classroom courses, editing events, etc. The main projects that we will work on through the funding are:

Wikipedia (we work across a number of language versions) Wikimedia Commons Wikidata Wikisource

As per our other metrics, the target below is for the first year of this grant, 2022/23.

750000 190666 Wikipedia stats include Welsh Wikipedia articles for hills published as part of Wici Lleoedd project at the NLW; articles created and/or improved as part of the Scot Wiki Writing Drive organised by our Programmes Coordinator in Scotland; editing events organised by the Global Systems Institute residency at the University of Exeter, education courses and online competitions. Events and projects are tracked through WMUK’s activity tracking sheet. The input for this spreadsheet comes from monthly reports from residencies, WMUK’s programmes team, and staff updates. The results from Event Metrics provide the articles by project.
N/A N/A N/A 375503 WIKIDATA. Stats for Wikidata come from working with the volunteer community in Wales involving celtic languages and Wikidata training, a volunteer running a project grant Pi Bot, partnerships with the National Library of Wales and the National Institute Health Research as above
N/A N/A N/A 64731 COMMONS. Additions to Commons include videos uploaded by the National Resources Wales, the NLW’s IIIF image tagging project; uploaded batch of Welsh places articles for Wicipedia Cymraeg by the NLW resident; image submissions from the Wiki Loves Monuments competition. As above.
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

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.

In some instances, tools have been down with little technical support on how to get around them. It would be useful for more support from the Community Resources team with not only providing tools defined by WMF but also details of the process. More support when there are technical problems would be good too and how to work around the tools. Often our reports are time sensitive to get the most accurate data, and when the tools are not performing there is limited time to find solutions. Furthermore, it would be useful to have a space or channel to connect with people working on metrics from other affiliates as a way to help each other and share our monitoring and evaluation approaches.

We've had minor challenges in social media metrics because of change of website and external tools.

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
Dashboards - examples (we would have more than 100 in a year)


Annual community leaders survey https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/File:Community_Leaders_2023_Report.pdf (demographics starting page 9)

Theory of change https://drive.google.com/file/d/147c06V-J0C7ObTzEZ9KGvvhHjvHUBtYb/view

Our metrics reference sheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/162i54FQEvmPWTBrpj4liPqlAqbF2Adhj3rWkpPYsx88/edit


The Connected Heritage project has focused on helping the cultural heritage sector improve the digital skill level of staff and volunteers, particularly at small- and medium-sized organisations. Data collection has taken various approaches: surveys after events to measure confidence in digital skills; individual case studies to gain insight into impact on organisations we have collaborated closely with; and data collection through the outreach dashboard to demonstrate the impact and reach of editing events. Surveys after the webinars showed an increase in attendees’ confidence around the potential of Wikimedia for impact and digital preservation; editathons had an even greater impact - likely due to them being more interactive with time to explore topics in more detail - and attendees reported a greater increase in their confidence in various aspects of digital skills, including creating content and critically evaluating sources. Our most recent data tracking sheet submitted to the NLHF compiles details of digital outputs and reach of articles edited through the Connected Heritage programme, drawing on the outreach dashboard for data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Y28xsLaGAFlXCaFhykTtlpILQG_64Os/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=110788318406433683192&rtpof=true

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships[edit]

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
B. Conflict management or transformation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
D. Partnership building This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
F. Program design, implementation, and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation This capacity has grown but it should be further developed
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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
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 has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
M. On-wiki technical skills This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N. Accessing and using data This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
O. Evaluating and learning from our work This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion work
hybrid/online working

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 in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces), Using capacity building/training resources onlinee from sources OUTSIDE 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.

Other

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

We have some reservations about the framing of your question, as it assumes a low starting point. Notwithstanding that, specific areas to highlight include:
  • The creation of a new Volunteer Coordinator post and board subcommittee for Community Development
  • The appointment of two full time posts within Finance and Operations, replacing two part time posts
  • The restructure of the Programmes Team, which has created a more tiered structure, with two new manager posts increasing our leadership capacity and staff skills
  • Working towards the delivery of our ambitious EDI Action Plan, including our first staff survey on culture and values and becoming a Disability Confident Employer.
  • Recognition of our work to diversify our governance, with an Affiliate Spotlight Award

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, Other

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, Local policies or other legal factors

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

Be very mindful of the partners’ context (in 2022 in the UK, this included university strikes, post-pandemic adjustments, governmental flux - including changes in leadership and within relevant departments - all of which created uncertainty around planning and strategic priorities)

Especially when working on knowledge equity projects, be very mindful of not placing the burden of labour on minoritised groups, and hold a commitment to non-extractive and non-prescriptive ways of working with communities.

Establish the partners’ priorities - do they have a focus on online reach, public facing events, skills training, or something else? Wikimedia work can be adapted to these needs so presenting some options and listening to what partners prioritise gives an opportunity for both to benefit.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration[edit]

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

This sense of belonging is built through active participation, and through a sense of a shared strategic commitment. The commitment is developed through Wikimedia UK sharing in the knowledge equity vision. We are actively connecting our strategy to the overarching direction, while also seeing it resonated in the overall vision. This gives a sense of building the future of our movement together.

In terms of growing the sense of belonging through action, in 2022 this meant:

  • Joining forces to protect the future of civic space and open knowledge through advocacy
  • Participating in and contributing to movement initiatives and collaborations, such as Universal Code of Conduct
  • Collaborating with WMF or affiliates as a partner on high level activities such as strategic comms, advocacy, Volunteer Supporters Network initiative.
  • Attending movement gatherings, offering our expertise to others.

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.

The increase is in part thanks to meeting in person with movement colleagues.

It’s been rewarding to give back to the movement, e.g. delivering Languages Conference for the international communities (and a resulting Train the Trainer for volunteers in Nigeria for 2023), or supporting VSN.

WMUK was the winner of the inaugural Affiliate Spotlight (Governance) Award, which gave us a platform to share our learning. It attracted a lot of positive comments, while also giving us opportunities to share with them 1-1.

We’ve had requests for exchange from WMDE (volunteer engagement), WMNL and WMAU (Train the Trainer). Our ED presented at the WMF’s led learning platform, Let’s Connect, on affiliate governance and leadership (together with the ​​Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team at WMF).

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.

While our commitment to open knowledge is consistently high, in 2022 it has expanded due to the external legislative context. With the Online Safety Bill progressing through parliament, it has become more pressing and pertinent to support free knowledge. Our sense of investment in the mission has therefore grown.

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.

There are a number of allied movements to which we are able to connect, and together become more impactful in our mission of protecting and growing open knowledge.

The key ones in 2022 were:

  • Players in the digital rights space, e.g. Big Brother Watch, Open Rights Group.
  • Protectors of civic space, information literacy, like CIVICUS
  • Decolonisation initiatives in the cultural space in the UK
  • ‘Museums for climate emergency’ coalition

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration[edit]

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?

Yes

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

Team members have been connecting and sharing with others, especially around volunteer engagement. We’ve had requests for discussions and exchange from Wikimedia Deutschland (including a presentation on our strategy development process at their board away day, and further sessions on volunteer engagement), Wikimedia Netherlands and Wikimedia Australia (around our Train the Trainer). We are planning a learning exchange session at WMDE to be delivered in May. Our joint application for the Volunteer Supporters Network (together with Wikimedia Argentina) is in progress. Edinburgh University’s WIR also shared with the Education User Group on Teaching Wikidata approaches. Lucy also presented at the WMF led learning platform, Let’s Connect, on affiliate governance and leadership (organised by Marti Johnson and the ​​Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team at WMF). (https://twitter.com/wikimediauk/status/1602347680541319168?s=20&t=xEv8l-HXlNZtEg9rZPOyPA)

Wikimedia UK was the winner of the inaugural Affiliate Spotlight (Governance) Award, which gave us a chance to share with the movement our learning and development on governance.


We are also sharing on a programme level, e.g. while being represented by Wikimedians in Residence, for example:

We would welcome suggestions on how and with whom to share:

  • Interns booklet
  • Information literacy research
  • EDI work, action plan

We are keen to hear suggestions from our Grant Officer - Where can we share? What do others need that we could provide? How to engage with the Let’s Connect on the above?

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?

-We participate in expert networks e.g. GLAM group, Executive Directors group, Affiliates Fundraising group
  • We join conferences e.g. CEE, Summit, Wikimania, and use them as opportunities to present
  • We participate in emerging Hubs such as Wikimedia Europe and present our work there
  • We draw on informal networks and connections made by various staff - movement members regularly get in touch with us to get advice on e.g. Wikimedians in Residence, or invite us to deliver training events
  • Another significant overarching initiative is potential hosting of the international wiki Volunteer Supporters Network. This resulted from our existing activity within the network. It’s an opportunity for us to build our profile while benefiting from learning within the network itself.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]

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

355000

31. Local currency type

GBP

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://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DDB14izNp5sshzeKIzZmhX8VvCsWESTF/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115927732425242812733&rtpof=true&sd=true

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.

The attached financial report has three columns. These set out the budget for 2022/23 as per our funding proposal; the actual position at the financial year end (bearing in mind that our accounts are not yet audited); and any variances between the two.

The grant of £355,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation was spent in its entirety during the 2022/23 financial year (which ran from 1st February 2022 to 31st January 2023).

The total income for the year was £975k. This includes Gifts in Kind of £219,936, the vast majority of which is in relation to Wikimedians in Residence, funded by host institutions. The grant from Wikimedia Foundation therefore represents 36% of our total income for 2022/23.

In addition to our grant from Wikimedia Foundation and Gifts in Kind as described above, Wikimedia UK generated funds from a range of other sources. We received individual donations of £221,614, against a £212,000 target in our proposal budget, plus £16,000 in major donor income (which is any donation of £1,000 or more from an individual or private trust) against a target of £15,000. We also secured restricted grants for specific projects of £83,663 (including the second year of our Connected Heritage project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund) and unrestricted funding of £60,466 towards our programme costs. We were a little under target in both Gift Aid and earned income.

Within expenditure, we were more or less on target in terms of our unrestricted expenditure on partnership programme costs. We were underspent on Volunteer Support, largely because we decided to deliver the programme in house rather than with an external trainer. There was also an underspend on fundraising costs.

We ended the year with an overspend on both staff salaries and other staff costs. Between developing the budget for our proposal and the actual start of the new financial year, we had some staff changes in the team culminating in the appointment of a full time Finance and Operations Coordinator, replacing two part time posts of 2 days and 1.5 days. Later on in the year, our longstanding Director of Finance and Operations gave notice of her retirement. This led to unbudgeted costs in staff salaries - as we recruited in time to enable a good period of handover to the new postholder - and within staff other costs, as we worked with a specialist recruitment consultancy to appoint to this crucial role. There were small savings on a range of administrative costs, and our small contingency was unspent.

Our annual reserves target is identified using a risk-based methodology to calculate the cost of our highest financial risk materialising; or between three to six months of operating costs (whichever is higher). At the end of 2022/23 our unrestricted reserves are within the level determined by our Board of Trustees as optimal.

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.

A few points that would be great to pick up in a conversation:
  • Keen to support the development of monitoring and evaluation functions at the Foundation based on our experience - do feel free to get in touch.
  • Capacity question doesn’t recognise that an affiliate has worked in the past to develop in this area, and is currently pleased with where it is at. There are several aspects of capacity where we feel we operate on a high level and are working to maintain it, rather than grow.
  • “feelings of belonging and connection to the movement” - interesting area, we haven’t tracked it, seems like a new concept. Would be good to discuss to understand the desire to report on it and WMF’s understanding of it.
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