Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Black Lunch Table in 2022 and Beyond/Yearly Report (2024)
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Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
In 2024, Black Lunch Table's Wikipedia team made significant strides in expanding awareness and representation on the platform. We have always been focused on raising awareness of the Wikipedia knowledge gap around Black artists and creative workers. Throughout the year, we held 12 programs and engaged approximately 200 editors who contributed to updating 12,200 articles and creating 5,600 new articles spotlighting visual artists.
BLT's Photobooth remains a key initiative. This program aims to increase the visibility and representation of Black artists on Wiki Commons. Collaborating with professional photographers across the U.S. at partner events and host institutions, we captured portraits of artists and cultural workers, resulting in 127 new images uploaded to Wiki Commons. These photographs added crucial visual representation on the platform, helping ensure these artists' identities were more widely recognized there and across the web.
Our growing task list of over 1,400 artists remains a call to action, and we are proud of the community collaborations and collective effort that defined this year's progress. By exposing more people to the work of Black artists and the mission of BLT, we continued to diversify the demographics of Wikimedia users and broaden the cultural narratives preserved on the platform.
For example:
In October 2023, we held our signature roundtable, wiki editing, and photobooth events in Indianapolis in partnership with IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute. The connections we made with local editors led us to host another Photobooth in August 2024 at BUTTER, an art fair that foregrounds the work of black artists, with the organization Ganggang. The event was a success; we have great images of artists from Indiana and the region. In November of 2024, BLT hosted a photo booth for artists from local New Orleans with our partner, Antenna::New Orleans. While in NOLA, at this event, we met an artist who was wearing BUTTER art fair merchandise and realized that we had just missed one another at the earlier event but found commonality in being in both places, expanding the work awareness and impact of Black artists while also seeking community to support those efforts.
We're planning a second engagement at BUTTTER in 2025 and working to shape future Wiki engagement with Antenna::New Orleans as well. This is a desired outcome; it helps us know that we are meeting our goals, making connections between people and ideas from space to space, more deeply scoring the lines that already exist in communities and networks.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
Yes, 2024 into 2025 have been critical moments for BLT and reinforcing a solid foundation to build on. On the organizational front, 2024 was the year in which we piloted a shared leadership model—our co-executive directorship structure. This new leadership framework, which is shared leadership between three teams, has allowed us to foster a collaborative and inclusive approach to decision-making, strengthening our organization and deepening our commitment to our mission.
One of the essential tasks it has allowed us to undertake is a long-range strategic planning process. Through a nearly years-long process, BLT seeks to establish a five-year plan for the organization and, based on that plan, will determine benchmarks and guides for each team. Our three most critical goals in this process are:
- Clarifying Organizational Vision and Mission
- Attracting and Engaging Stakeholders
- Enhancing Fundraising and Financial Sustainability
As of this writing, the strategic process is expected to be completed by June 2025.
One factor that briefly slowed our momentum in 2024 but ultimately strengthened our foundation was staff turnover. We concluded employment with a longstanding Wiki Assistant and welcomed two new team members who were largely new to the Wikipedia space. While onboarding and training took time, both quickly adapted, and their enthusiasm and fresh perspectives have already expanded our capacity. As their proficiency continues to grow, so will our ability to execute programs with greater ease and impact.
Programmatically, we are working to deepen relationships with and in spaces. As noted above about connections between artists in NOLA and Indianapolis, from 2024 into 2025, we focused on the West Coast with a years-long residency with Santa Monica College. BLT introduced our work on the platform and off and is already working on how we can sustain a relationship annually with SMC and their students. The students lead, and BLT collaborated on resources produced from this engagement that support our work of directing receptive audiences to more information about artists and knowledge of how to use that information to improve Wikipedia
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1: Black Lunch Table's board is expanding. In 2024, we welcomed one member to our board, interviewed another, and added another member to our Advisory Council, which works with the board of directors and co-executive directors.
Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 and 4.2 Community connection: BLT hosted 12 programs throughout 2024, a mix of in-person and online events; we learned much from our earlier partnership with Pace Gallery, realizing our Wikimedian in residence from 2022-2023, earlier in this multiyear grant cycle, and have adapted smaller partnerships with more discrete and direct outcomes. In particular, we are pleased with the relationship we have started with Sixty Inches from the Center, directly working to support the creation of citable articles about Black artists.
From our partnership explanation: "Black Lunch Table's Wikipedia initiative mobilizes the creation and improvement of Wikipedia articles about Black artists' lives and works. Relational, citable written works are central to documenting an artist's life and work on Wikipedia. Sixty Inches From Center (Sixty) is a worker-led organization and publishing platform that produces collaborative projects about artists, archival practice, art history, and culture in Chicago and the Midwest.
BLT's x Sixty's collaboration will create an opportunity for emerging Black art critics and writers writing on Black artists, with a focus on contemporary exhibitions to be published. The underrepresentation of Black artists on Wiki mirrors the imbalance in coverage of Black artists in general publishing and critical art writing. We aim to increase the quantity and quality of citations possible for articles about contemporary Black artists on Wikipedia. BLT's x Sixty collaboration bridges the citation gap that exists between an artist's career and the criticism they receive–a discourse that is crucial to fulfilling Wikipedia's notability requirements."
This change and other adaptations have been directly informed by our community and the needs we understand about working to improve and bring awareness to the knowledge gap we are working on.
In addition to partners external to the Wiki community, BLT maintains relationships with other affiliates through casual support meetings with like-minded affiliates, more organized efforts with other affiliate leaders, and programmatic partnerships. For instance, BLT began planning a partnership with WikiNYC in 2024 to host an event in NYC that informs audiences why Wikipedia is important to artists and other public figures and what they can do to manage or improve their presence on such platforms. This event included a BLT Photobooth as well.
User group reporting [1]
Outreach dashboard [2]
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
We do not have an existing exit survey for our events, though that is under development. As a part of the strategic planning process(2024-2025), we have undertaken direct engagement with our participants to hear how our work has impacted them and what they are also seeking so that we can know how we may better direct our work. That survey can be found at the following link:
The results of this survey will be available and reported on at the end of our strategic planning process. We did not collect other impact-specific data.
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: women, young people, speakers of minority languages, other
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, speakers of minority languages, other
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Partnerships
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
BLT’s work with Wikimedia platforms focuses on raising awareness and promoting knowledge about Black artists and cultural workers. We aim to ensure that their stories, biographies, and works are documented and valued. Each aspect of our work involves participants from this community, helps develop content about underrepresented groups, and encourages their ongoing participation on Wiki platforms. Additionally, BLT seeks to raise awareness of knowledge gaps to all potential editors and contributors, with the hope that addressing these gaps and the prevalence of dominant editorships will enhance diversity on the platform. knowledge gaps and dominant editorships can be better attended to and diversity in all manners improves on the platform.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
Staff hired through the fund, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics for Year 3
[edit]| Wikimedia Metrics | Target (Year 3) | Results (Year 3) | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 700 | 590 | Outreach dashboard and views counts on social media platforms. Acknowledgement that at times the dashboard was not working so participant tracking was done manually or was not captured. |
| Number of all editors | 190 | 236 | Outreach dashboard, internal spreadsheets for participant tracking. Editor tracking over time was not a metric that we planned to capture. Partially because some participation is one time on Commons with new artist images uploaded and secondarily that our current training model does not account for editing over time.
Reports with more details about editing can be found at the following links: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/01/11/ghanaian-wikimedians-contribute-to-black-lunch-table-project-of-artists-with-colour/ https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_BW/Setswana_Wikipedia_Training_2 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visibility_of_black_artists https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikimedia_BW/Setswana_Wikipedia_Training_2 |
| Number of new editors | N/A | 236 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | 236 | |
| Number of all organizers | 3 | 3 | We could count Regional Proxies here but typically do not as they are not organizers as it is typically understood, we think of Regional Proxies as partners to our work. However in 2024 we did partner with two new Proxies in Ghana, so including here. |
| Number of new organizers | N/A | 3 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages (Year 3) | Target - Number of improved pages (Year 3) | Result - Number of created pages (Year 3) | Result - Number of improved pages (Year 3) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 15000 | |||
| Wikimedia Commons | 315 | |||
| Wikidata | 471 | 23000 | ||
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | ||||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total number of events | BLT brings artists and Institutions to the platform in unconventional ways, including through artist residencies, lectures, strong social media awareness, and published works. Our ability to engage these kinds of partners positively impacts the project as a whole.
Total partners: Return to IRL events has lowered these numbers as well as delays we experienced in 2023 programming due to staffing. BLT: Branded Digital Events 15 Black Lunch Table Edit-a-thons and Photobooths 15 Black Lunch Table Regional Proxy Engagements: 4 BLT contests: N/A contests revamped |
34 | 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 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
The skill development applicable internally and externally is under the same umbrella, which, in a way, is systems development. Programmatically, this means ensuring an SOP for all programs, managing files for programs such as our Photobooth, and archiving our content to make it accessible and support the improvement and awareness of artists' work on our task list.
Internally, Managerial work to better manage and balance teams. As we have noted in previous reports from this multiyear funding, the founders of our organization departed, and an initial search for its first executive director was undertaken. That initial appointment proved short-lived. We learned much from that outing and built a better structure based on the missing pieces we learned from that process. The result is our co-leadership structure, which is nearly at the one-year point.
In addition to our annual reviews at the end of 2024, we asked the team to complete a 360 review on the successes and challenges of the co-leadership structure. The team generally responded positively, noting that "Clear ownership of initiatives and tasks is working well, which helps streamline workflows and responsibilities." Others remarked on our goal to consistently provide transparency, and there was a call to ensure all staff had contact with all co-eds. In general, the feedback let us know that we were moving in the right direction, and that has been gratifying to hear.
There have been challenges. Although we did a fair amount of research into other organizations that have shared leadership and laid out as much as possible, unexpected tasks or responsibilities have come up for which we were not sure who should manage or own. Through our strategic planning process, we have found that some elements of the team structure need to be amended to better suit our needs going forward.
Having systems in place, like our annual reviews and processes and procedures for all that we do internally and externally, makes a real difference in the outcomes of our work. Tools that support this work include Asana and establishing an organization-wide file schema. We look forward to how these systems' maturation and full implementation improves our work.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
Following our previous response regarding the improvement of systems, and in alignment with the completion of our strategic plan by 2025, we remain committed to this focus in the upcoming year. The strategic plan will outline an organization-wide structure along with a set of goals for the next five years. We aim to make these significant goals applicable, assignable, and attainable for both teams and individual roles. This structured approach ensures that we are well-positioned to fulfill our mission with impact and intention.
In our application for grant funding for 2025 we laid out the strategic planning process as we understood it at the time of application. It is detailed here again.
Stage 1: Preparation + assessment
- Staff survey (Sept 2024)
- 1-on-1 Board Interviews (Oct-Dec 2024)
- Leadership Stmt. of Objectives (Nov 2024)
Stage 2: Research + Analysis
- Stakeholder Mapping (Feb 2025)
- 1-on-1 Stakeholder Interviews (Feb-Mar 2025)
- External Data Collection (Feb 2025)
- Launch of Quantitative Survey (Mar 2025)
Stage 3: Visioning + Strategy Development (current)
- Deliverable: Mission and vision statement drafts
Stage 4: Drafting the Strategic Plan
- Strategy Development, Draft strategic goals and objectives.
- Review and Feedback, Share the draft with stakeholders for input and revise based on feedback.
- Deliverable: Draft of strategic plan
Stage 5: Finalization
- Final Revisions, Leadership reviews design and copy for errors and inconsistencies
- Deliverable: Final strategic plan with approval from the board
Stage 6: Implementation Planning and Communication
- Teams develop sub-goals that support organizational strategy and implement
- Deliverable: Implementation plan (internal document)
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Amount spent (USD) |
|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 250248 |
| Operational costs | 3315 |
| Programmatic costs | 13603 |
| Total (Year 3) | 268948 |
| Other revenue | 319460 |
| Remaining funds (Year 3) | 35902 |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
268948 USD
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 3315 USD
- Programmatic costs: 250248 USD
- Staff and contractor costs: 13603 USD
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 338096 USD
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 319460 USD
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
N/A
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: Yes
- 19.1. Please list the amount of unspent funds in your local currency. (required)
- 35902
- 19.2. Explain why you did not use the amount. (required)
- Due to an employee not fulfilling their expected hours and departing before the end of the grant period, we did not expend the full allocated amount for personnel. As noted, following the departure of a former executive director, we developed and launched a new co-leadership structure that brought a shift in organizational priorities. As a result, some originally planned programming initiatives, Wikimedian Fellow specifically, were postponed or reimagined, contributing to the underspend noted in the final budget.
- 19.3. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
- A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval
- 19.4. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
- The remaining funds from this grant period will be re-invested in our programs and staffing in the coming year, in line with our refreshed leadership vision. We’re focusing on strengthening our team and resuming some of the postponed initiatives. Below are more details on how we plan to use these funds in our current grant year.
- Paid three rate increases for BLT staff - $2500
- Funding a communication initiative that better explains our work and engages possible future stakeholders-$7500
- Expand the total funds available for BLT Regional Proxies, we relaunched our call and criteria for 2025 -$5000
- Additional team travel for Wikimania, originally budgeted for 1, now allotting for 3, $7500
- The bulk will be rolled back into it’s original programming line for Wikimedia Fellow, $13,402
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance 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 Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. 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
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