Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Belgium Yearly grant 2023

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Applicant details

Wikimedia username(s):

Geertivp

LabDom Sam.Donvil Taketa

Organization:

Wikmedia Belgium v.z.w.

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?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Additional information

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

Belgium

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:

Local

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://wikimedia.be

https://be.wikimedia.org https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaBelgium https://twitter.com/Wikimedia_BE https://twitter.com/WikimediaBE_fr https://t.me/WikimediaBE https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA7vik_cnFiuHZb1oY3yFlg https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter https://app.spatial.chat/s/WMBEchat

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

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?

Build and execute projects to advance the gathering, structuring, and distribution of human knowledge, together with GLAM and educational, governmental, open knowledge organisations and institutions, and the user community.

Build a good relationship with the volunteer community, build collaborations with cultural institutions, including museums, libraries, archives, and heritage organisations/institutions. Together we can stimulate, support, and possibly fund certain initiatives.

We collaborate with neighbouring Affiliates, in the first place those using the same language as us, like Wikimedia the Netherlands, and Wikimedia France. We are member of Wikimedia Europe, and WikiFranca.

We participate with the European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting.

We actively participate with international Wikimedia Conferences, preferably by providing presentations.

We appointed two Wikimedian in Residence persons, each active in a museum for 6 months; they are financed by the federal King Boudewijn Foundation. We will provide technical training and coaching.

Make sure that we can do this in a safe, sustainable environment with respect for each other.

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

Growing the organisation by collaborating with GLAM and related cultural organisations, local, regional and federal governmental organisations and institutions, university and college educational institutions.

We want to support the (inter)national volunteer community by providing training and technical support.

We want to grow the number of board members, project leaders, volunteers, institutions and organisations with whom we do projects.

We want to have one (or more, parttime) freelance staff members, to offload the current volunteer persons, and to offer more support to our volunteers, and more and better communication.

We focus on the following languages: Dutch, French, German, and English. We want to have better linguistic equilibrium - Belgium has 3 official languages (60% Dutch, 40% French, 1% German) and English as international and common communication language. Currently the French community needs more volunteer involvement.

With only voluntary contributions we can't build a reliable long-term growth. Therefore we need paid staff. Let us start with a freelance, because of the complexity of Belgium social and tax laws, and rules. Freelance has the advantage that it can easily be adapted to the workload, it can simply be invoiced (between 2 parties 1:1) using an agreed hour rate as per accomplished work, without having the bureaucracy of having permanent staff (for the time being, avoiding the complex social and tax administration).

We need more volunteers to build upon. Having too few volunteers is a risk for the continuity of the organisation.

In a later stage we could have permanent staff, once we have an office that is open for the public. But this will require more management from the board and the chair.

We need projects together with the Community and other organisations and institutions. Partner organisations and institutions should complement our own volunteer time capacity to organise activities and perform project management.

We can educate those partner organisations on how the Wikimedia platforms can be successfully used.

Since 2022 we have 2 Wikimedians in Residence, thanks to the fundraising of the "Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund", having an additional advantage of being able to issue tax certificates.

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

EN: Engaging people in free knowledge FR: Impliquer tout un chacun dans la connaissance libre NL: Iedereen betrekken bij vrije kennis DE: Die Menschen zum Freien Wissen bringen

The association aims to : (statutory rules)

promote the free access and sharing of all knowledge; contribute to social and cultural issues related to free data and knowledge; to encourage and promote responsible contributions to Wikimedia projects; to help raise public awareness of Wikimedia projects.

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

Organise Edit-a-thons, museum collection description building on Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Heritage photo taking (Wiki Loves Heritage).

We have Wikimedians in Residence to collaborate with a museum to make their collection publicly known on the Wikimedia platforms (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia).

Give training to university, college, and highschool students on "Writing for Wikipedia". Provide students with the book (Schrijven voor Wikipedia). Stimulate professors to let their students use Wikipedia and related projects to write a paper, that is publicly accessible, instead of hiding it in a cupboard, or at the university library/archive.

Create how-to video's on our YouTube channel.

Perform projects together with museums, Digital archiving platforms, and other GLAM institutions.

Collaborate with Universities (History, Cultural History, Education, Digital Humanity, Sciences).

Collaborate with Heritage organisations.

Script automation (Wikidata, Wikidata query, ListeriaBot, Pywikibot, WDFIST).

Tools: OpenRefine, ISA Tool, Commons Campaign, Commons Montage, SDoC.

Help document and describe all those tools on the respective technical websites.

Present and train the use of all those tools to specific volunteers that require to use those tools.

Use and develop geospatial tools and queries using Wikidata query, and OpenStreetMap applications.

Use and train OpenRefine (prepare Wikipedia projects, edit-a-thons, campaigns).

Stimulate the writing of articles about less-described subjects (augmenting the cultural/language/geographical/regional/domain equity).

We advise museums about the advantages and how they can upload and document their collections on Wikidata: building a data model, document OpenRefine scripts. Mapping collections onto Wikidata properties. Collaboration with the Museum of Industry Ghent, Plantentuin Meise, Jenevermuseum Hasselt, Stadsarchief Leuven.

We apply and conduct as many activities as can be supported by our available volunteers, with the available budgets, and within the constraints of our (statutory) mandate.

We organise a weekly volunteer support session to answer questions online via a videoconferencing (Spatial Chat) platform. If required by the corona pandemic, we will do more online activities with the right communication tools.

More national communication through newspapers, radio, and television.

Public relations.

We have two Wikimedians in Residence:

KOERS, Museum of cycling in Flanders
Amazone, a federal womens association

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

No

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?

N/A

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Belgium/WMBE_projects

https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/KOERS._Museum_van_de_Wielersport

Activities and partners.xlsx

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

We need new/more (younger, and female) Board members; Mike & Sam want to be able to be replaced; Geert en Dominique are 60+; Diversity (skills, education, interest, background, responsibilities); We have a legal minimum of 3 board members => should go for 4-5;

Crucial tasks: project manager; communications manager (e-mailing, newsletter, website, social platforms); finance manager (fund raising, budgets); partner (collaboration) manager; training (knowledge, skills) manager;

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.

Content Gender gap, Geography, Language

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.

We organise Wiki Women Design edit-a-thons, about Women architects and designers. We write about local heritage. We have 3+1 languages in Belgium.

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.

Education, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology

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 , Linguistic / Language, Digital Access

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

We invite participants via a "Participate" button linked to the Programs and events tool. We document our projects on Wikipedia project subpages. We document the results via a Listeria query. We can perform analysis using Wikidata Query.

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?

We implement the UCoC; we welcome any participant that is behaving in a polite human way. We respect the privacy.

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 collaborate with all neighbouring Wikimedia Affiliates. We are member of WikiFranca and Wikimedia Europe. We collaborate with the international GLAM community. We are performing lectures about how we do project management. We publish those results on Wikimedia Commons, on Wiki project pages, on our YouTube video channel, and in our newsletters.

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

Yes

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.

We collaborate with Slowby, universities, colleges and high schools, multiple museums that want to publish part of their collection on Wikidata. We have collaboration with Avansa, the Flemish adult education organisation, and FARO, the Flemish heritage orgainsation.

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

We document everything on our wmbe-site, both financially, administrative, legislation, as technically. We attract new volunteers. We financially support our volunteers, individual, or via their projects.

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.

We have a sound governance model, we are flexible in adapting our projects.

Risk assessment.xlsx

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.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Innovate in Free Knowledge

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.

Yes

https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMBE_strategy_2019-2020

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

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

We are able to setup and manage repeated projects with GLAM and education institutions. In order to do that we are taking benefits of the mutual interaction of Wikidata, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and the related tools, both operational and metrics based.

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
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

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	We learn the public that Wikipedia is written by volunteers, not by paid authors. We learn them that anyone can contribute in a lot of ways, including funding our activities.	N/A
Number of editors	We welcome new editors, we give them an appropriate training, complementing their skills and knowledge. We provide them with the book "Writing for Wikipedia".	N/A
Number of organizers	We welcome university professors who assign writing tasks to their students about subjects related to their curriculum. We invite museums to organise writing sessions related to their collection. We seek libraries to conduct specific writing sessions. We support women organisations to create or amend Women in Red articles.	N/A

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
N/A	We seek GLAM institutions to provide us with public domain data, that we can upload to Wikidata, so that we can create lists of candidate Wikipedia pages. We can subsequently amend those Wikidata items with additional statements and relationships. When the Wikipedia pages have been written we register those pages on Wikidata. We check what languages are still missing, so that we can translate articles.	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.

We strongly believe the Foundation should have more automatic, and aggregated reporting available based on the data model: Campaigns > Programs > Events > Participation > Results.

A good start could be the project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/Foundation_Product_Team/Registration

Then have an extended reporting available, with a minimum setup required to be created by the affiliates.

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

(by increasing complexity) Programs and events dashboard Event Metrics tool Montage Wikidata Query Pywikibot programming Quary (only when required)

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.

40000 EUR

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

40000 USD

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

See the "Budget" upload

WMBE budget 2023.xlsx

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

N/A

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

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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