Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki Loves Monuments 2023-24 International Coordination and Prizes

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Applicant details

Wikimedia username(s):

Ciell, Erinamukuta, KCVelaga, Ndahiro derrick, Romaine, Rodelar, Iwuala Lucy, Slaporte, Mesha Murali

Organization:

Wiki Loves Monuments International Organizing Team

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and did receive a grant

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

No

H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

N/A

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Wikimedia Österreich

Additional information

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

International (more than one country across continents or regions)

S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:

International

S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/

https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesmonuments/ https://twitter.com/wikimonuments https://www.facebook.com/WikiLovesMonuments/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/wikilovesmonuments/

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Wikimedia Österreich

Proposal

1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?

The international Wiki Loves Monuments team’s mission is to freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage, increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects and bolster local Wikimedia communities around the world. We do this by leading and facilitating an annual federated, global, low-barrier photo competition. Based on this mission and experience of the past twelve editions of the competition, the international team has identified that the following will be key areas of focus for the upcoming year:

Support to national contests: In its current form, the international team needs to support many local teams on a case by case basis (for example on tools, instructions, promotion etc.) thus limiting the scalability and ease of adoption by local communities. While established campaigns, which are generally backed by regional chapters, require minimal to no support from the international team, however, countries participating for the first or initial few times require support from the international team.

Curation of resources: Both at national and international levels, the competition requires a wide range of resources including but not limited to, documentation (guides on organizing, participating, monuments database etc.), technical tools (mainly Montage), campaign infrastructure (upload wizards and central notices) that needs support for maintenance and to add new developments according to the needs of the campaign.

Exploring new pathways for engagement to support knowledge equity: During 2021-22, the international team facilitated a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion review of the campaign, which has helped to surface several challenges faced by national organizers and also suggestions on making the campaign more inclusive. From these results, we will explore ways to implement recommendations into the future editions of WLM. The international team has an in-person meeting scheduled for May 2023 to work on this together.

Most of the work is achieved with volunteer efforts. The budget that would be provided through this proposal is primarily used to support international awards, staff support for the volunteer efforts, technical support to the existing tools, and translations. While these may only be part of the work, these are essential puzzle pieces to make the campaign as a whole a success.

2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?

WLM is an on-going effort to improve documentation of media (mostly images) related to cultural heritage on Wikimedia Commons, and sister projects. There are certain components of the campaign which take place year over year with more or less the same approach. Apart from the standard components of the campaign, we would like to improve in the following areas:

Proactive support to national organizers and new campaigns

While campaigns backed by established affiliates do not usually require much support from the international team, many require regular follow-up from the team and support to set up the necessary infrastructure. During the last couple of years, owing to several reasons including the pandemic and transitions within the international team, the number of countries participating each is on decline. For 2023-2024, we would like to reconnect and explicitly invite national teams that have not participated in the last few years. We will reach out to them personally, and solve outstanding problems, explore with the organizers the areas where we as an international team may be able to help and otherwise search for contacts in our network that can. We will offer alternatives for those where the communities and teams might feel ‘Wiki Loves’ fatigue, and feel like having the feeling of having completed the challenge of capturing the monuments in their country. However, there are more ways to make WLM fun, and we will offer new inspiration for those struggling with this. At the same time, we will also connect with national organizers in countries that have not participated before, but did indicate interest in the past years. We’d like to connect on a personal basis, and hear the complications they are facing to see if there is a way that we can help them out.

(Re)connect with partners in- and outside our movement

With the world partially opening up again after two years of Covid, we strive to reconnect with our partners in Wiki Loves Monuments. Our contacts with partners have been at a low ebb in recent years, and it is time to reinvest. We want to strengthen contacts with Europa Nostra, which has already been our partner since 2011, but also explore new partners for collaboration. Last year, for example, we got in touch with Ideas beyond Borders, and we planned our award ceremony at the UNESCO World Heritage Day last year. Partners like these can be of great value to Wiki Loves Monuments as a contest, and specifically at the national level. Local contacts can support our national organizers in setting up their photo contest by providing a working space and internet access, among other things. Among other things, this goal would elaborate on the suggestion from the DEI report, to build a larger international network to support the photo contest on a local level. Within the Wikimedia Movement, we would like to make an inventory of other projects that focus on the documentation of built heritage, as for instance Wiki Loves Heritage, and the Czech “Describe a monument” campaign, and reach out to find common ground where we can connect and build together.

Improving documentation and language availability for WLM

Another important point taken from the WLM 2022 DEI research is the availability of our documentation in different languages from English. We have started setting up the translation interface for our Commons pages and will do this more working towards WLM 2023. We want to prioritize the other 5 UN languages (ar/ch/fr/ru/sp) for these translations. If needed, we will reach out to the translators that have done the translations for us in these languages on the DEI research report. We will also update and enable translations for the WLM newcomers guide and will communicate new information this widely. Because the guide was completed last year, half way through the 2022 competition, we have not done so previously.

3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

We aim to reconnect online and in-person again (where possible) with participants, organizers and partners in- and outside the Wikimedia movement after the 2 years of online work and social distance. One example is attending the Europa Nostra jubilee gathering in Vienna with some of our national organizers and their best pictures, that we have been invited to. Another opportunity is Wikimania Singapore, where we plan to have a “Onboarding to Wiki Loves Monuments” pre-recorded video, and a hybrid Q&A session for WLM national organizers.

The international team now has almost completed its first year with supporting staff. The focus for the first year was on the onboarding in Q2 & Q3 of 2022, and the international competition support in Q4 of 2022 and Q1 of 2023. With WLM 2022 coming to a close at the moment of writing this grant request, we hope to finally get around to the wish for more user-friendly documentation. Currently, much of the documentation is several years old and somewhat outdated, and mainly only available in English. It is one of our priorities to support this area.

4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

Proactive support to national organizers and connecting

(Re)connecting: Inform local organizers, affiliates and (possible) partners about the contest, initiatives, and projects the international team is working on; Collect feedback and suggestions from local organizers; Hold regular internal team meetings to review work done and plan for the work that is ahead; pro-actively communicate with the WLM community; hold regular office hours; online or in-person presentations about WLM; exploring the local approach with the national teams.

Improving documentation and language availability for WLM

Having a part-time staff for project coordination allows for the team to prepare (or coordinate for others to prepare) communication material in multiple languages that can be used and/or built upon by national organizations; Facilitate communication channels; Update social media channels; Update wikilovesmonuments.org with the necessary/useful information; Update and communicate the international rules; Update and share documentation;

Having part-time staff support also allows more time for the team to:

In coordination with partners, provide support for the technical work in specific parts of the pipeline for the migration of data from Monuments Database to Wikidata. Support national teams with the setup and maintenance of the technical infrastructure for uploading; Support national teams with the setup and maintenance of the CentralNotice; Collect measures and data to be reported at the end of the program. Disseminate the results of the international jury; Maintain communication with international partners. Give specific suggestions and support to national organizers (mostly online, though additionally we offer onboarding sessions over Hangout to the countries participating for the first time); Collect & answer questions of the national teams; Crisis management for national contests; onboard and support new volunteers for the international team.

5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?

Yes, for 2 year

5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?

We are asking for funding for 1.5 years to align the grants circle with that of the fiscal sponsor. The goals and main tasks of Wiki Loves Monuments international as an annual photography contest will not change.

After this grant the plan is to integrate the funding into the budget of Wikimedia Austria as the fiscal sponsor. WMAT would then handle the fiscal and administrative side while WLM international will remain an independent team concentrating on the international competition and the support of the local groups. By doing so we aim to simplify and reduce workload on the team.

This plan was communicated with the community and national organizers through our mailing list and via Meta in more detail in January 2023, and there were no objections.

6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.

For the WLM International Team, the yearly cycle starts around June/July, with active outreach to the (potential) national organizers and communications about the upcoming competition. We help the national teams with setting up landing pages if requested, creating the category structure and the banner- and upload campaigns on Commons.

The photo competition itself runs from September until October, wherein national organizers are free to choose any time period ranging up to 31 days. The international team is standby for problems that may arise, and in the meantime will prepare the international jury. The top 10 images from the national contest need to be sent to the international team by December, the jury deliberates in Jan/Feb and the winners are typically announced in Mar/April of the new year, with prizes being distributed until May/June.

Q2 of every year is a time where the international team reflects on the past cycle, possibly onboards new members and takes time to prepare and communicate on a more meta level about the upcoming year.

From this grant, the full cycle for WLM 2023 (Q3-Q4 2023 and Q1-Q2 2024), and the first half (competition period!) of WLM 2024 (Q3-Q4) would be covered: WM Austria will be including WLM in their multi-year funding request from Q1 2025 onward.

7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

Yes, the core team is assembled. Additionally we are constantly looking to find new volunteers and will continue in the period of 2023 to 2024 to welcome new members to add expertise and effort, such as someone to focus on Wikidata, knowledge transfer, new participant engagement, data analysis etc.

Krishna (KC) Velaga
Stephen LaPorte
Romaine
Erina Mukuta
Lucy Iwuala
Rubén Ojeda
Derrick Ndahiro
Ciell
Mesha Murali
Manfred Werner (WM Austria staff)

8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geography, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

In 2021-2022 DEI research was undertaken and the final report was published on Commons, published with 10 additional translations. The report helped to identify areas where national organizers experience problems in participating, regarding the specific challenges of a photography competition about cultural heritage and gave suggestions on topics to work on in the upcoming years. Proposed improvements include improving and updating our documentations on the projects, more proactive communications and support peers to connect. Also a couple of specific topics have been identified that can be addressed in national WLM campaigns (for example if or under which circumstances taking pictures of heritage sites of indigenous people is welcomed by them, and the look and feel of the national WLM landing pages). We will make sure to communicate them to these national teams when we engage in personal contact for the WLM 2023 edition.

9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology, Diversity

10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background

11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?

There are two broad categories for engagement with Wiki Loves Monuments, participants and organizers. Participants are users who upload images during the competition, and organizers include national organizers, the international team, and other stakeholders.

For participants

Central Notice is one of the most effective ways to inform the community about the competition when it starts and also newcomers, who are participating in the campaign for the first time. In addition to central notice, we use our social media channels linking to relevant blog posts on our website and complementing the channels of national chapters and organizers to inform the non-Wikimedia communities. In 2023, we aim to develop a strategy for our outreach on Social Media and we are exploring the opportunities that the Linkedin platform has to offer, in connecting with the national teams and sharing updates, but also for engaging with past international prize winners and (former) members of our international jury to increase the awareness of our competition.

Special prizes: Special prizes are ways to encourage contributions/participation from specific groups. For example, in the past, we have seen having a special prize for a region increased participation from the region in terms of the number of national competitions organized. Some of the categories where special prizes can be awarded are newcomers, underrepresented regions, emerging communities etc.

For organizers

Mailing lists continue to be our main channel of communication with national organizers, and we have set up a Telegram Channel for the national organizers in the competition that allows for quick troubleshooting and pinging the international team. We want to continue the monthly office hours where national organizers can gather to discuss challenges and share ideas, along with a specific topic of focus. As already practiced, more proactive communications will be done during the outreach phase of the campaign.

12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?

Typically, the WLM International Team does not organize physical events. The only activity the international team hosts are the online office hours where we ensure friendly space, and we actively monitor our channels including on-wiki pages. The events organized locally related to Wiki Loves Monuments are handled by the respective national or regional teams, chapters, and user groups.

13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

We have published a summary of our 2023-2024 grant request on Commons and notified national organizers of the new request through our mailing list.

14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

No

14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

N/A

15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

Sustaining the work of Wiki Loves Monuments has been a successful struggle since its first editions in 2010 (NL) and 2011 (international). We constantly have to make efforts in maintaining a cooperative community of national organizers and improve documentation. All focus areas defined will help in the sustenance of Wiki Loves Monuments beyond this year. We are very much looking forward to our 3 million photo upload for Wiki Loves Monuments 2023.

16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.

The current Wiki Loves Monuments international team is small, and can become vulnerable when the more experienced members step out - for whatever reason. We want to make sure that Wiki Loves Monuments can live on beyond our personal memberships, this is where the focus on updating documentation and best practices come from. Also, having permanent staff support will really benefit the contingency for the team.

For international competitions like Wiki Loves Monuments, geopolitical tensions can be a risk. We try to handle this with caution, and where possible seek appropriate solutions in coordination with involved local teams and/or the community.

17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.

Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Manage Internal Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.

No

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

We would like to evaluate the campaign with surveys similar to what we conducted in previous years. Surveys help us learn what worked, what didn’t and what areas can be improved. The goal of the surveys is to evaluate the campaign both from the perspective of national organizers and also the participants.

20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.


Main Metrics	Description	Target
Net promoter score	satisfaction from organizers and participants: Net Promoter Score is one of the metrics that we use to calculate satisfaction rate. According to the 2019’s organizers’ survey (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019_Organizer_Survey_Report.pdf, page 29), the net promoter score for support received from the international team is -7 (the score is calculated as [promoter% - detractor%] * 100). Generally a score of 50 or above is considered good. For this iteration, our target would be to shift from a negative score to a positive score around 20-25.	20
Number of countries participating	Number of countries participating in total.	40
Returning countries after a pause	Number of countries that did not participate in the last three years.	5
Participants in our evaluation surveys:	Percentage of participants that participate in our evaluation surveys.	40
N/A	N/A	N/A

Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.


Additional Metrics	Description	Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A

21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	N/A	N/A
Number of editors	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers	N/A	N/A

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
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

21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

Note: Number of participants, number of images uploaded etc. are very much indicative of the effort and success by the national teams. The above are only the metrics the international team has direct influence over.

22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

https://wikiloves.toolforge.org/
https://quarry.wmflabs.org/
https://montage.toolforge.org/#/
Surveys for which will be using Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com/au/) under WMF-provided license

Financial Proposal

23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

76254 EUR

23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

83075 USD

23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q5Di15aM4FprdA9lpCOOkqDFr6hzoD7teplEacOLql0/edit#gid=219480186

WLM 2023-2024 budget.png

23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.

Requested budget is for 1,5 years, to align with WMAT's cycle from Jan 2025 onward. Due to the nature of our competition and the timeline explained, our expenses are not equally spread out over the year.

This is explained more by remarks in the G-drive excel sheet, but we are happy to answer any questions about this.

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Other public document(s): DEI 2021-2022 research report: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/DEI_research_2022/Final_report

Final Message

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback

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