Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/DCW Half-Yearly Strategic Budget Plan (ID: 22009982)/Final Report

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Rapid Fund Final Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-09-30T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Rapid Fund, Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Final

Application

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General information[edit]

  • Title of Proposal: DCW Half-Yearly Strategic Budget Plan
  • Username of Applicant: TheAafi
  • Name of Organization: N/A
  • Amount awarded: 4575.92
  • Amount spent: 3927.93 USD, 323758.56 INR

Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]

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

The major part of this project was to research and define a strategic growth trajectory for the Deoband Community Wikimedia. In order to define a strategic trajectory, we evaluated our previous works along with the methods adopted by other Wikimedia entities. We conducted meetups (DCW Progress Prism), established editathons such as DCW-K Editathon and formed the DCW Conversation Hour in order to work on our proposed activities. The learnings from each of these were subsequently evaluated including what we learnt from our previous work - to set up a well-defined strategic trajectory for our future growth. The summarised learnings are here:

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

This project mainly aimed to construct and develop a future strategy for the Deoband Community Wikimedia. We focused on the Movement Strategy Recommendation of Evaluation, Iteration, and Adaptation while conducting this study throughout the course of our work. A very effective strategy in achieving our set goals was our principle of evaluation. This helped us become critical of our own past-activities, and evaluate the programs that the global movement affiliates happen to do.

As a result of this, we established our global open conversation hour: the DCW Conversation Hour, inviting different subject experts once a month, to share their knowledge and experience with global open knowledge enthusiasts. This conversation hour may be called one of our major successes. This helped us make global connections that help DCW grow in the global digital work. Our July 2023 Conversation Hour was mentioned as a significantly helping resource on The Wikipedia Library in a recent Signpost issue.

We evaluated our Bhopal Photo Event and formed the Heritage Lens which has not only helped in having our thematic knowledge represented on Wikimedia Commons but been a significant way to attract new users in a very easy way.

3. Please use this space to upload media and other files that help tell your story and impact.


Field to type in URLs.

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

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups Neither agree nor disagree
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Strongly agree

5. 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?

N/A

Part 2: Your main learning[edit]

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

We were hoping to learn about diversity of content and information related to DCW's theme, and how better we can support our volunteers in bridging this gap. This led us to realising our "needs and requirements" We came to learn about how differently we can share the knowledge related to books that relate to our theme apart from just "digitisation". We invited Prof. Laurie Bridges in our August Conversation 2023 to know more about how we can navigate with initiatives like Every Book Its Reader in our local thematic context. We learned that giving internet support to our volunteers could be a very beneficial way to retain them, apart from other tokens of appreciation. Our main learning is the necessity of doing a needs assessment, and help develop local leadership skills.

7. 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?

The DCW Conversation Hour surprised us the most. It helped us easily bring people from academic and learning centers such as universities to join the conversations because of the way we formulated it. This helped us globally connect with experts on the "free-knowledge" and people who are seeking out opportunities. The attendees have included university assistant professors, affiliate leaders, and even PhD researchers. It helped us format some offline programs as well.

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

Evaluate, Iterate and Adapt - has been our core principle throughout our activities. We carried out our strategic research study with the same vision of evaluation and iteration, and look forward to adapting it in our future run. We have slightly tried identifying policies that hinder knowledge equity as well - and with this, we have formed a set of priorities, ideas, and activities, that we formed during this period. The first and foremost is our DCW Conversation Hour, a global open conversation hour by the Deoband Community Wikimedia for anyone in the world. We formed the Heritage Lens to help document global Muslim heritage within Wikimedia projects.

We have already begun using these learnings in our current activity plan for September 2023 - February 2024 term.

9. Documentation of resources: Use this space to upload any documents that would be useful to share with others (e.g. communications material, training material, presentations).


Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

N/A

Part 3: Metrics[edit]

10a. Open Metrics reporting

In your application, you defined some open metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with your metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in. Use the tables to report the result. Use the comments column to describe any aspects of this result that you find relevant. If the results were different from the initial target (goals) then you can explain why and what you learned from this. You can also provide any qualitative analysis regarding these results. In the last column please describe the tools and methodology used to collect this data and any difficulties you might have had.

Open Metrics Summary
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Articles General number of articles 500 143 Content creation was not the main task of this project, however, we did some trials of our strategic recommendations, and established the ECW-K Program in collaboration with Kashmiri Wikimedians User Group, helping create 77 articles on Kashmiri Wikipedia alone. Fountain
Collaborative programs Local collaboration 1 3 We were able to form a collaboration with Kashmiri Wikimedians User Group, and established the DCW-K Editathon, that aims to bridge the knowledge gaps related to DCW's themes on Kashmiri language Wikipedia. Kashmiri language has a very low digital infrastructure, however, we were able to have 77 articles created on this edition of the encyclopedia, which was beyond our expectations.

We were also able do a collaboration with Mazahir Uloom, an old Islamic seminary in India, which released around 60 images under a free license as a part of our Heritage Lens initiative. We were also able to do one cross-border collaboration with Project Korikath, the first iteration of which helped in getting around 89 images uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.

Fountain/Commons
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

10b. Core Metrics reporting

In your application, you defined targets for some core metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with each core metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in. Use the tables to report the result. Use the comments column to describe any aspects of this result that you find relevant. If the results were different from the initial target (goals) then you can explain why and what you learned from this. You can also provide any qualitative analysis regarding these results. In the last column please describe the tools and methodology used to collect this data and any difficulties you might have had. Note: a table will appear for each Wikimedia project content contribution you defined in your proposal.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants General participants 50 45 This includes our participants of DCW-K Editathon, Heritage Lens, and DCW Conversation Hour, the latter allowing non-Wikimedia people to engage in our conversation hour as well. Manual
Number of editors Experienced editors 10 8 This includes experienced editors from our projects: DCW-K Editathon and the Heritage Lens Manual
Number of organizers Experienced organizers 5 8 We initiated Heritage Lens subject to our strategic recommendations, and were successful in making few organizers who have successfully helped organize and bring some new editors to Wikimedia Commons, helping contribute to our Heritage Lens initiative. We have advisors, leadership development coordinators, communications specialists, apart from these trainers. Manual
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
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 N/A N/A N/A

12. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? This could include things like a lack of time or resources, or the expertise in your team to collect this data. It could also include difficulties with particular data collection tools.

No

12a. State what difficulties you had.

N/A

12b. 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?

N/A

13. Use this space to upload any documents and provide links to any tools you have used that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, program and event dashboard link, project page on Meta).


Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

We have tried to use some free tools/collaborated with some Wikimedia staff to record some Conversation Hours.

14. Have you shared these results with other Wikimedian communities (either affiliates, user groups, volunteers, etc., different to yours)? This can include things such as data and direct outcomes, lessons you have learned, or information on how to run or recreate your programs.

Yes

14a. If yes or partially, please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how.

We have timely shared our strategic learnings with the wide Wikimedia community through the Diff blog. We have adopted these learnings, together with the principle of evaluation, iteration, and adaptation, in our monthly DCW Conversation Hour as well. We discuss our progresses, evaluate our learnings, and adapt these for our sustainable growth, internally, through the DCW Progress Prism.

Part 4: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]

15. & 14a. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

323758.56 INR

16. Please state the total amount spent in USD.

3927.93 USD

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

17a. Upload a financial report file.


17b. Please provide a link to your financial reporting document.

DCW Half-Yearly Strategic Budget Plan

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.

17c. 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.

N/A

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

Yes

18a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

An amount of INR 53,384.44 (641.96 USD) has remained unspent. This belongs to two different lines from the original budget plan. We have not been able to incorporate our organisation legally due to certain complications around related to selection of an appropriate communication/registered office address. The second line is more relevant to graphics (making of a logo/submark that works well with our institutional settings), and some amount because of less equipment support needs. We are hopeful of navigating around making of a legal framework and the logo rebranding very soon.

18b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future grant request with PO approval

18c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

We plan to seek a reallocation once we are done with getting our paths cleared for the legal paperwork and incorporation, and also the logo rebranding.

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

Yes

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

Yes

21. 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

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


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