Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Egypt Wikimedians User Group Annual Plan 2023-24/Final Report
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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.
This year, after a period of inactivity and limited financial resources, our main strategies—as defined in our 2024/25 Strategic Plan—focused on:
- Rebuilding and revitalizing the group as quickly and effectively as possible.
- Learning and evaluation, by gaining new experiences that will benefit us in the coming years.
- Using a “Parallel Planning” approach, by developing short- and long-term plans to be pursued simultaneously in support of sustainable growth.
and based on these priorities, we implemented three types of plans:
- Capacity Building and Sustainability
- Purchased necessary supplies, tools, subscriptions, and equipment.
- Hired essential staff.
- Established an internal system to ensure the group’s continued operation.
- Created a list of both short- and long-term tasks.
- Formed four local working groups to operate in parallel.
- Purchased necessary supplies, tools, subscriptions, and equipment.
- Hired essential staff.
- Established an internal system to ensure the group’s continued operation.
- Created a list of both short- and long-term tasks.
- Governance
- Implemented internal regulations approved by group members.
- Established communication channels with members.
- Prepared ongoing reports.
- Clarified job descriptions for all employees.
- Strengthened the authority of the elected board to monitor executive bodies.
- Created dedicated email addresses to receive feedback from members.
- Implemented internal regulations approved by group members.
- Established communication channels with members.
- Prepared ongoing reports.
- Clarified job descriptions for all employees.
- Strengthened the authority of the elected board to monitor executive bodies.
- Community Building
- Engaged with long-standing members.
- Involved experienced Wikimedia contributors by offering them roles within the group.
- Developed an easy-to-use registration system to encourage new members to join.
- Reactivated the mailing list and group chat rooms to facilitate communication with the community.
- Engaged with long-standing members.
- Involved experienced Wikimedia contributors by offering them roles within the group.
- Developed an easy-to-use registration system to encourage new members to join.
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)
This year was our first year with grants so we didn't have plans in previous years, we started with an initial plan focused on a few key tactics:
- Making all sessions hybrid (online + offline) to enable wider volunteer participation.
- Building stronger connections with universities and schools.
- Making use of new tools and technologies.
- Increasing activities and presence on social media.
Overall, everything went well, but as expected, there were challenges and unexpected situations. To address this, we kept our activity plan flexible, adapting to circumstances when needed, and focusing on what worked best. Some important lessons included:
- We noticed that volunteers were most enthusiastic about workshops related to their areas of interest or specialization, such as editing. Instead of holding just one session, we expanded these into two or three, which had a clear positive effect on the results.
- The most active volunteers turned out to be teenagers still in school (study and exam dates vary in our country). To support them, we adjusted activity schedules so they could take part more easily.
- one of our photography competitions received little interest because volunteers could not travel far to take photos on the theme. To solve this, we organized a dedicated photography trip. Participation was much higher than expected and we got a good uploaded photos, and this also motivated more people to join later competitions.
Through group activities, we discovered many topics missing from Wikipedia in all languages—especially local cultural topics, crafts, folklore, and issues related to marginalized groups. This gave us valuable ideas to build on for the next grant plan.
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).
July 2024 - Dec 2024:
Jan 2025 - July 2025
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)
Yes, we published many posts on Wikimedia Diff:
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.
Yes, we've put a lot of emphasis on engaging with our community and building numerous communication channels, including the mailing list, a Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook group, and we also read public comments on our social media posts. We also hold a monthly online meeting with group members and listen to their feedback. We also hold in-person meetings with group members following sessions and workshops. Occasionally, we conduct a survey of members, but we've found that most prefer direct communication with us.
In general, we (as group board) add all the feedback we receive and put it in a specific file, so that we can use it later in preparing any plans, as many of them are really important and good comments.
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, people with disabilities, indigenous groups , people from lower socioeconomic status, young people, other
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, neurodiverse people, indigenous groups, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, 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)
We created a project like this so that anyone can provide us online with the names of topics that have not been written about in Wikipedia. This project is specifically directed at non-editors who do not have experience in editing articles or people from the general public. This project helped us a lot in revealing the gap and topics that have not been written about, which allows professional editors to write about them.
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):
Board members’ outreach, Volunteers from our communities
Part 2: Metrics
[edit]| Metrics name | Target | Result | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 1300 | 11500 | 3000 in Wikipedia
8500 in Wikidata |
| Number of all editors | 200 | 220 | we calculate the new members fir User group |
| Number of new editors | 150 | 107 | |
| Number of retained editors | 27 | 41 | |
| Number of all organizers | 12 | 15 | We have (before June 2024)
4 board members + 3 paid staff + 4 unpaid staff + 4 four regional coordinators (on 4 regions across Egypt) After (July 2025): 3 team leaders (Tech Club, Free Photo Team, and "Wiki Awareness" Team) + 12 Mentor for sessions (experienced Wikipedia admins and editors) + 3 consultants (unpaid - outside Wikimedia) |
| Number of new organizers | 20 | 18 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages | Target - Number of improved pages | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 1000 | 2000 | 3000 | 6120 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 7000 | 2231 | 4322 | |
| Wikidata | 2800 | 26000 | 48000 | |
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | ||||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | 20 | 25 | ||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
Tool used and comments (optional):
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): Yes
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 name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| wikipedia pages | create new pages or improve it | 3000 | 9120 | |
| new photos on Commons | we target by Photography competitions and photography tours to achieving more numbers than previous years | 7000 | 6553 | |
| wikidata | items on wikidata | 2800 | 26000 | |
| wikisource | create topics in wikisource depend on GLAM activities - 4 trips - 4 topics for each trip.
every topic contain 3- 5 pages in wikisource |
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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).
For the group as a whole:
The use of paid tools (like: Google Workspace) helped some improve their administrative skills. We also had to listen to YouTube tutorials on how to use these tools to make work more organized, easier, and faster.
Conducting numerous workshops and sessions also helped us acquire skills in giving lectures, technical skills (such as handling devices and presentation tools), and logistical skills, such as bringing the most important tools required for sessions and easily handling food and drinks for attendees.
Volunteers benefited from some of the programs and tools available to them to organize contributions. Photographers learned technical skills to upload photos easily.
Some staff (due to their roles) also learned communication skills and how to interact professionally with various local entities.
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)
Technical skills: We are currently working on finalizing our website, which will not only be a place for information and photos, but will also serve as a platform for organizing sessions and events. Members can view them in detail, and then, through their accounts, book any session with a few simple clicks (without having to fill out forms as we used to).
Therefore, there will be a focus on technical aspects, as this will reduce staff time and effort and make sessions and events run more smoothly, especially as their number increases next year.
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).
During Wikimania 2025, we created a poster explaining the group's journey, what we did, and the challenges and difficulties we faced. It contains a lot of useful information about our experience:
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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 | Planned / received budget for this category (EGP) | Amount spent (EGP) |
|---|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 310000 | 244600 |
| Operational costs | 585000 | 502900 |
| Programmatic costs | 455000 | 384800 |
| Total General Support Fund | 1375000 | 1132300 |
| Other revenue | ||
| Remaining funds from General Support Fund | 195070 |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
1132300 EGP
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 502900 EGP
- Programmatic costs: 384800 EGP
- Staff and contractor costs: 244600 EGP
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): No
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): EGP
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): EGP
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)
- 195070
- 19.2. Explain why you did not use the amount. (required)
- We received the grant late (in December) due to fiscal sponsor problems, so there were 4 months of unpaid expenses such as salaries, some sessions and competition prizes.
- 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.
- Many of the activities we conducted last year will be implemented during this period, and their costs are not included in the new grant.
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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