Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia New York City strategic implementation/Yearly Report (2024)
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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.
One of the big challenges the chapter addressed with this grant was a lack of staffing infrastructure to ensure that Wikimedia New York City was running fully as a nonprofit and creating all of the processes to run as a 501c3. At the very end of year 1, we hired our first Executive Director and in year 2 we moved into the implementation phase of our strategic plan. This included developing operational standards and processes, investing in software platforms that manage workflows, fundraising, developing new partnerships, and analyzing our community and where we were best suited to support. Another challenge for the chapter and across the movement as a whole was engaging and retaining new editors from diverse communities. We launched our Wikicurious series in July 2024 to specifically engage beginner editors using themes and creative activations to draw in new audiences.
We also wanted to deepen our relationships with existing partners and expand to develop new partnerships, particularly with institutions outside of the typical open source network. Our 2024 Wikipedia Day was the biggest one the chapter has ever had with close to 350 people attending in person and over 2,000 event registrations, which we can credit towards partnerships, press engagement, and heavy social media marketing. Similarly, Wikidata Day so a large turnout of participants. The launch of our NYC 400 campaign in alignment with the 400th anniversary of New York City also gave us the opportunity to explore new partnerships and engage the general public in a meaningful way through the nominations process. In terms of our outreach in the education sector, this year we began our first official Wikimedian in Residence program at City University of New York (CUNY) and have seen a lot of excitement about the program from the university system. Finally, we ended this fiscal year off with the largest Wikipedia edit-a-thon at the United Nations headquarters in NYC, in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Italy and Sri Lanka UN Missions.
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)
Having an Executive Director was pivotal in the success we had this year. The power of a dedicated representative whose full time job it is to oversee and manage the programs and operations of the chapter has made a huge difference in the quality of our work. We would like to build on that by hiring more staff over the next few years to support the growth of the chapter if we have the funding to do so. Our Wikicurious series was also a success in NYC which is why we're expanding the series across the United States, specifically focusing on areas where there hasn't been a lot of Wikimedia public programming. As one of the few chapters in the U.S. our goal is to help provide capacity to areas of the country that need it, especially in the absence of a North American Hub or entity that's helping to support resource distribution and programming across the region. We'll also be prioritizing our Wikimedian in Residence program based on the level of interest we've had and hope to expand the program across many other universities in New York City over the coming years.
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).
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 will also be presenting about our work at Wikimania in Kenya this year.
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.
We have a discord channel where we gather feedback from the community. This year we're focused on developing more formal systems for collecting feedback including surveys, interviews, and impact reports. For our Wikimedian in Residence program we have a quarterly report that outlines everything that was accomplished that quarter and includes testimonials from participants.
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, indigenous groups , LGBTQ+ groups, people from lower socioeconomic status, young people, speakers of minority languages
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, people with disabilities, neurodiverse people, indigenous groups, LGBTQ+ groups, speakers of minority languages
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships, Wikimedians in Residence positions
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)
Thinking outside of the box when it came to engagement and experimenting with new ways to connect with these audiences.
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):
Permanent staff outreach, Board members’ outreach, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics for Year 2
[edit]| Wikimedia Metrics | Target (Year 2) | Results (Year 2) | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 1000 | 1500 | |
| Number of all editors | 500 | 800 | |
| Number of new editors | N/A | 800 | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | 800 | |
| Number of all organizers | 10 | 10 | |
| Number of new organizers | N/A | 10 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages (Year 2) | Target - Number of improved pages (Year 2) | Result - Number of created pages (Year 2) | Result - Number of improved pages (Year 2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 172 | 9805 | ||
| Wikimedia Commons | 1209 | |||
| Wikidata | 44 | 57000 | ||
| Wiktionary | ||||
| Wikisource | ||||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | ||||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
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 | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner Edit-A-Thons | Develop a year long series of beginner edit-a-thons in partnership with Civic Hall. Each edit-a-thon will be focused on a different theme. | Beginner editors | Expansion of series | Because the Wikicurious series was such a success in New York, we expanded across the country. | N/A |
| Stabilize Org Infrastructure | Set up standards and procedures for nonprofit functions. | N/A | N/A | We now have more streamlined operational processes and the software and tools to manage projects more efficiently. We also used our board retreat to discuss the process from transitioning from a volunteer board run organization to a staff run organization. | N/A |
| Diversify Audience | Expand programming through partnerships with at least three new institutions who have limited experience with Wikimedia platforms. | 3 | 10 | Developed partnerships with 10 new organizations who were not previously engaged in our programming. | 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 |
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).
Yes, the grant supported leadership coaching for our Executive Director along with professional development opportunities like legal compliance training which has been particularly helpful as Wikimedia has been coming under attack in the U.S.
This grant has also supported digital safety trainings for our community, in particular around preventing doxing and how to protect their privacy online.
We've also integrated new program management tools into our planning like Asana and Slack.
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)
We would like to focus on policy advocacy and what we can do as a chapter to help make sure Wikimedia can continue to operate fully with all of our protections in place in the U.S. We plan to coordinate more with the Wikimedia Foundation policy team to support efforts in the United States and join coalitions.
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).
Wikimedia NYC's governance structure consists of one full-time paid Executive Director and one part-time paid Project Manager who run the day to day operations of the organization and make programmatic decisions. We have a volunteer board (no less than four and no more than twelve) that provides general oversight of Wikimedia NYC operations and in collaboration with the Executive Director make strategic decisions about the vision, mission, and plans for the organization. Board members are elected every year at the annual members meeting. For a full description of our governance structure please see our bylaws page: [9]
Wikimedia NYC has a code of conduct that was created by the chapter and is utilized at every event and program: [10]
The code of conduct is published on every event page and we ask attendees to commit to adhering to the code of conduct at our events. For in person events, we also share about the code of conduct at the start of every program and also have print outs at the registration table. For larger events, we also have a pop up banner with the key parts of the code of conduct in large print for attendees to review with a QR code that links to the full text.
Along with the code of conduct, we also created a photography policy this past fiscal year that we employ at every event (both in written form and as an announcement at the beginning of each event) to make sure attendees respect people's privacy: [11]
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 | Amount spent (USD) |
|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 193397.08 |
| Operational costs | 21063.68 |
| Programmatic costs | 25693.05 |
| Total (Year 2) | 240153.81 |
| Other revenue | 51000 |
| Remaining funds (Year 2) | N/A |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
240153.81 USD
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 21063.68 USD
- Programmatic costs: 193397.08 USD
- Staff and contractor costs: 25693.05 USD
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 101000 USD
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 51000 USD
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)
The total amount spent includes a rollover from the year 1 budget due to delay in hiring staff.
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: No
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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