Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Bay Area Wikipedians:New Generation (ID: 22640981)/Final Report
Application type: Standard application
Part 1: Project and impact
1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
Events organized:
April 10 2025: monthly meetup. Introduced four new editors to English Wikipedia and one new editor to Wikidata. Attendance: 22 people.
May 8 2025: monthly meetup and introduction to Open Street Maps and projects crossing Wikimedia and OSM. Introduced 5 new editors to English Wikipedia. Attendance: 25 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_May_2025
June 12 2025: monthly meetup and presentation of Wiki Women in red. Introduced one new editor to Wikidata. Attendance: 21 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_June_2025
August 2025: monthly meetup and Wikidata tutorial (open refine, wikibase). Introduced 5 new editors. Attendance: 22 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_August_2025
September 2025: monthly meetup and coworking tables. Introduced 1 new editor. Attendance: 15 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_September_2025
October 2025: monthly meetup and GLAM wiki presentation. Attendance: 15 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_October_2025
November 2025: monthly meetup and Wikidata birthday. Attendance: 33 people. Introduced 4 new editors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_November_2025
December 2025: monthly meetup and training with San Francisco Public Library reference librarian. Attendance: 16 attendees, 2 new editors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_December_2025
January 2026: monthly meetup and training was canceled due to the birthday celebration. Read more here: diff.wikimedia.org/2026/02/16/more-than-500-attendees-30-of-them-under-25-san-francisco-bay-area-celebrates-wikipedias-25th-birthday-in-all-its-diversity/
February 2026: monthly meetup and training. Attendance: 22 people. Introduced 1 new editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_February_2026
March 2026: monthly meetup and training renamed WikiSalon. Attendance: 25 people. Introduced 2 new editors.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_March_2026
April 2026: WikiSalon. Attendance: 26 people, 1 new editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_April_2026.
May 2026: Satellite event for the Wikimedia hackathon. 18 attendees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikimediawiki_Workshop_May_2026
May 2026: WikiSalon and editors peer-training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Bay_Area_Meetup_May_2026.
For this rapid grant, we built on the work conducted since 2022 to connect the local Wikimedia and open knowledge community. Regular events helped build trust and engagement and progressively developed into opportunities for formal skills development, reflected by our switch to Wikisalons alongside smaller meetups going forward.
A main impact of the grant has been to consolidate the community and the organization. Our mailing list for affiliate members has grown to 368 people, over 20 editors volunteer for the user group, which has greatly improved our capacity for both public outreach and community-focused work. Consistency of programming has been key to this development. The events also had strong positive impacts for local editors, the movement and wiki projects, as illustrated by our members survey and dashboard.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
- Dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/bay_area_wikipedians_20252026/programs
- Pictures: see event pages above and Commons category Wiki Bay Area https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_Bay_Area
- User group's projects in the period: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Wikipedians_User_Group/Projects
In our annual survey, we have found that 34% of meetup attendees report having taken additional editing responsibilities such as articles reviewing and patrolling, all attendees report feeling closer to the movement and 88% report feeling more informed, while half of attendees indicate editing more often and more boldly. Furthermore, all attendees reported a sense of community. However, the current events offering is limited due to funding limitations; members of the user group who were not able to attend events due to the location, time or lack of space for them to attend did not report these benefits. Finally, two thirds of respondents were eager to see more hackathons, editathons and GLAM partnerships.
The impact of this grant is that it enabled us to go from a loose group of editors meeting monthly, to an organization representing Wikimedia projects and building capacity for open knowledge projects in the Bay Area. Beyond the measurable metrics, we are now known to key partners, from local libraries and universities to the school district board, to museums and historical societies, and to other key communities such as nerd nite.
Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
We have used the existing materials and guides:
- https://www.glamelab.org/products/image-and-metadata-handbook-for-wikimedia-commons/#checklist-3-wikidata-wikimedia-commons-category-creation-and-sandbox-template-for-wikimedia-commons-metadata-management
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2025_Bay_Area_Wikipedians_-_Demystifying_Wikipedia%E2%80%99s_Gender_Gaps.pdf
Sample materials created for this project:
- Wikidata Birthday slides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenHistoricalMap_a_Linked,_Citation-_and_Integration-friendly_Map_Complement_to_Wikimedia_WCNA_25.pdf ; https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gcYmH7YiTHDImdl5wj-W1cK_Q_7mTwQvwkMKqEPQk1M/edit
- WikiGameJam Boardgame edition: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kl-XqsqEz6c4kJoUlkzyfpO48w0A7yU2jntEPZX4Gt4/edit?usp=sharing
- GLAM lunch and learn: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ki4G_m4FB4GjhWoDwCUxFSTrOWnBZLl8JGL2DYs6LWc/edit?usp=sharing
- Monthly trainings: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v7_amK3B8H4ev1uG6-zeU-5G7AZ4tec_XNzARsYpMKg/edit?usp=sharing ; https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v7_amK3B8H4ev1uG6-zeU-5G7AZ4tec_XNzARsYpMKg/edit.
- Hackathon: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DGRc573jideowMbcHAY6bFsG34DwVRJNAHf5JoqdiiM/edit?usp=sharing
We have also drafted a guide to starting a user group and organizing events, to be shared at WCNA 2026.
3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| 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 | Agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Strongly agree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Strongly agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Strongly agree |
| F. Other (optional) |
Part 2: Learning
4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: While we have been successful in reaching out to and mentoring new editors, we have not focused on tech so far. This is a missed opportunity given the Bay Area's status as a tech hub. We hope to learn how to best reach and engage technical contributors. We also want to learn how to best evaluate such a capacity-building initiative. It is harder to track the number of changes since they might be happening on different platforms and are not tracked by dashboards. We will track the number of attendees to the meetup and do a narrative report on their contributions.
Due to only receiving half of the grant amount requested, we were not able to focus on tech editors as we had planned. However, the tools developed by the group originated at the meetups or wikisalons from discussions and co-working. Building on members' feedback and our experience running a WikiGameJam, we hosted our first formal hackathon in May (which was successful per attendance and attendees feedback survey at supporting engagement and will to attend future events), and plan to apply the same principles that supported the user group at large once we receive sufficient financial support - regular events to engage, strengthen and expand our community of technical editors. This is a key strategic point for us, and we will continue reporting on the progress.
Learning questions that emerged during the year: how to ensure proper funding, administrative and programming support in a fast-growing movement organization. Given the affiliate recognition process was halted and changes were made to forbid non-affiliates to apply for general fund, we had to halt multiple lines of programming, in particular those focused on future audiences, content partnerships and technical editors. The administrative burden of running an organization like this is significant and cannot be properly done by volunteers for long. The lack of access to funding or support for fundraising for movement organizations that are not yet affiliates such as BAWUG limits growth, impact, threatens sustainability and creates significant risks of organizers' burnout.
We learned a lot from confronting these questions, and realizing that we had grown so much, that we needed to start thinking like an organization. This led us to multiple round of strategizing to focus on our core strengths given our location, funding and volunteers capacities. Specifically:
- we built on US or worldwide wikiprojects such as Wikiportraits to support participation in Wikimedia Commons;
- we refocused on training technical editors;
- we re-designed our communication to GLAMUs, to support programming but scale back from content partnerships (at the current moment);
- we built long term relationships with libraries, but limited them to readers-focused events (and limited their number);
- we redesigned the programming we offer to GLAMUs, from editathons to 'wikicurious'-type events;
- we sought additional sources of funding: from Art+Feminism, in-kind donations, sponsorships, etc;
- we invested in training the organizers and secured mentorship with regards to operations.
We are proud of all we accomplished as a team, and it was perhaps unavoidable to go through a period of unsustainable growth due to volunteers enthusiasts. We are entering a more mature phase - we've begun planning events for 2027 and creating more routine activities and document events with an eye to automate parts of the logistics and clear capacity for other events. We're also focusing resources on grant-writing and fundraising to give us capacity to expand.
Our application for 2026 reflects these learning experiences.
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
A challenge has been that, unlike any other organizing work BAWUG volunteers are involved in, there are always more attendees than people registered for events. This makes planning difficult at times. We have developed a number of strategies to avoid this issue, including using pre-event questionnaires, specific reminder to sign-up so we can place a food order, and reminding members registering for events automatically register them for the dashboard monitoring our content contributions.
We attribute this in part to the lack of features of the Events tool on en.wiki, which we use to ensure the streamlining with outreach dashboard and grant reporting. In particular, it does not offer a calendar feed, does not easily allow to contact previous attendees, and does not send automatic event reminders. This has resulted in needing to balance several events platforms.
Another surprising discovery has been the lack of recent, formal documentation about developing a user group.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
- WCNA presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q1LUrh-FXZkfpxO0wsoFkNI7TWOUdnH7bnb-6lzSaUY/edit?usp=sharing
- Reports at the monthly NARWHAL meetups for North American organizers.
- Planned WCNA 2026 presentation
- Informal peer support of other movement organizers
- Ongoing write-up of documentation for other movement organizers
Part 3: Metrics
7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 200 | 500 | This is based on the dashboard, however, please note that many attendees do not register through en.wiki and are not counted. |
| Number of editors | 12 | 25 | This is specifically about new editors counted at in-person meetups between April 2025 and March 2026. However, many more editors have gotten involved asynchronously, and this does not count our (350) members |
| Number of organizers | 3 | 20 | We expanded the core organizing committee to four people, and over 20 of our members volunteered. We did not track this particularly well due to privacy concerns but now have the necessary infrastructure to keep track. |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 100 | 588 | 5930 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 50 | 2470 | 100 |
| Wikidata | 300 | 78 | 1510 |
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diversity of editors | We will aim that 30% of the event attendees be non-men identifying contributors. During 2023-2024 events, this fluctuated between 10 and 20%. Hosting the meetups at Double Union will help us reach that goal as they will advertise events to their community. | 30 | This target was achieved, thanks to dedicated outreach efforts. | |
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
Yes
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
There is no unified benchmark for evaluating the impact of a user group, versus edit-a-thons or discrete events. We have had many discussions about our approach for evaluating the overall impact of our work, but will continue to reflect and adapt.
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
2492.51
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
2492.51
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Provide the link to the financial report https://drive.proton.me/urls/RRDBE3Z4VR#5Pr1cJZdUyNL contains the budget spreadsheet and all the receipts
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
We received half of the proposed budget. Thanks to in-kind donations, we were able to implement almost all of the proposed programs, and added a hackathon. We are $7.49 under budget.
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
Yes
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
$7.49 - to avoid going over budget.
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
C. I am planning to send them back to the WMF
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
14.3. 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
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)