Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Wikimedia Österreich/Proposal form

Community review has ended. You are still welcome to comment on these proposals, but the FDC and the applicants may not be able to respond to your feedback or consider it during the deliberations.

Please do not edit this proposal form directly. If changes are needed, applicants can request them on the proposal form's discussion page. Thank you!

Proposal by Wikimedia Österreich to support its annual plan with ~US$315,000.

Program focus: Community support, Free content generation, Reach / free knowledge awareness, Movement sustainability

Wikimedia Österreich's annual plan comprises the following four strategic areas: community support, free content generation, reach / free knowledge awareness and movement sustainability. Centrepiece of WMAT's self-conception and strategy is to sustain motivated and active Wikimedia communities as a reliable service provider. Increasing diversity in our communities for us is a cross-cutting issue and therefore an aspect that plays a vital role in most of our projects and initiatives. We believe that success in these regards will automatically have positive effects on the enrichment of free content in the various Wikimedia projects. A strong focus of our work contentwise lies on Austria's cultural and natural heritage. We also believe that to perform well in all these areas in the long run, the national and international context of our work is crucial. Hence, we also focus on building strong partnerships inside and outside of the movement and engage in activities which co-create sustainable framework conditions for the wider movement in general and the DACH (WMDE, WMAT and WMCH) communities in particular. For public policy, we will focus our efforts together with other European chapters on the EU level, where we have the opportunity to make a difference.

Proposal form for 2014-2015 Round 1 not yet available

Hello, Claudia: We see that you've started your proposal form for the next round here, but please note that we are currently making revisions to the form, which will not be available until 1 September, and so the form you have started here will be out of date. Once it the new form and proposal form button are available, you may need to create the new form manually as the proposal form button might not work with a page that isn't empty. This can be done by copying and pasting the code from the new' proposal form once it is available. If you need any assistance with this at that time, we are happy to help. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 16:08, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice Winifred! We mainly created it to get the current version of the structure / questions for our internal preparations. We'll make sure to create a new version after September,1. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 09:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Sounds great, CDG (WMAT staff)! We just wanted to make sure you didn't end up doing any extra work as a result of changes to the form :) Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 21:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Your requested increase in funding

Even while your total budget is smaller than last year you are requesting an increase of FDC funding from 204 000 euro to 240 000 making it an increase of 17,5%. Your are of course aware that the Board has made a decision thta FDC funding should be capped, exscept in extraordainary cases. And you have an operation that has been running for some years and have a program, while being good, doses not for me show anyting som extraordianry so it could moivate this increase. Could you please expand of your reasoning behing this very big increase?.Anders Wennersten (talk) 09:41, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Anders, this point might indeed need some further clarification. During the last two years, WMAT went through considerable growth concerning partnerships, projects and activities, all of this with comparably lean organizational structures. However, to make this growth a sustainable one, we need to make sure that our scope of action is based on adequate financial and infrastructural resources, especially since we are planning for a two-year funding period here, where we expect further increase in these regards. This year we started this process by re-organizing our bookkeeping (as outlined in our last proposal and various reports).
A few numbers, to make our rationale a bit more tangible (These numbers are just examples that we have at hand on short notice and not a complete account of our current growth. More details will be delivered in the upcoming reports, especially the impact report):

• Partnerships: When we applied for the first FDC grant in 2012 we had basically one major partnership (with the Federal Monuments Office). While this cooperation further prospered in the last two years, the establishment of our office in Vienna enabled us to reach out to many more partners which today inlcude (this only comprises partners that are already active in joint initiatives and/or projects, and there is potential for further/intensified collaboration):
  • Institutional partners: Federal Chancellors Office, the City of Vienna, Cooperation OGD Austria, the Austrian Academy of Scienes, Botanical Garden Graz, the University of Vienna, several schools in Vienna and Graz
  • Like-minded Organizations: Open Knowledge Foundation Austria, Initiative für Netzfreiheit Österreich, International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges IAAI
  • (Corporate) Sponsors: Canon, simpleshow, Internet Foundation Austria, Zotter
  • New / prospective partnerships: Federal Environment Ministry, United Nations Vienna, several educational institutions, several environmental organizations, several small GLAM institutions (e.g. regional museums), Austrian Chamber of Commerce
• Events: Since 2012 WMAT increased the number of hosted offline community events - for the Austrian community, but also for the wider German-speaking community, a domain that up until then had been mainly supported by WMDE, but since then has been developing into a shared responsibility between the DACH chapters.
  • Community events Austria: 2012: approx. 10, 2013: approx. 15, 2014 (so far): 25, 2015 (planned): 40
  • National and international events with external partners: 2012: 3, 2013: 4 2014 (so far): 6
  • DACH community events: Hosting at least one since 2012 (e.g. WikiCon, GLAMster, Wiktionary meet-up)
  • International events: Hosting of the first 150+ participants international event planned for 2016 (European Hackathon)
• Community: Our office became an integral part of community life in Austria, our services attract a growing amount of various volunteers (newbies as well as long-standing Wikimedians). This is due to the quality of our services (which converted many formerly sceptical Wikimedians into chapter members) as well as the increased level of activites mentioned above. Currently we associate face-to-face contact with at least 10 % of our most active volunteers on a weekly basis (with a changing composition of individuals) and also successfully integrate new volunteers into our chapter activities. In addition, we could monitor an increased level and/or quality of on- and offline interaction between volunteers.
  • New users: With our photo contests this year we could attract more than 50 % new users compared to the previous year.
  • Editor retention (WLM): 57 users participated in two out of three years since 2011, 31 of them in each of the three contests. 53 users from 2012 participated again in the 2013 contest, additionally there are 9 users who participated in 2011 but not in 2012, leading to a total editor retention of 62 in the 2013 contest. As stated in our previous reports, our jury system additionally enables recurring participants to get even more involved in the project: 3 of our 5 most active members of the pre-jury were only participants in 2012's WLM-contest. Numbers for 2014 have not been analyzed yet but will be included in the next reports.
• Content:
  • Media files: 2012: 10,665, 2013: 27,837, 2014 (so far): 39,000. For 2015 we don’t plan a growth at the same rate, as we had two exceptional photography projects that contributed to that number which won’t take place next year or can’t be forssen yet. Furthermore, the focus of our photography contests will not longer be on the quantity of content (but new users and gaps in documentation (especially WLM) ). The share of quality images increased as well, but as we started our current tracking system only this year we don’t have precise numbers for 2012/2013
  • Articles: The impact of our work on articles / written content is harder to measure, as we share the German language versions with other chapters. As we increased for example our support for several editing contests by more than 100 % over the last two years, the respective increase in content generation can’t be denied

In our opinion, we are close to an adequate level of performance for the size of our organization and expect to reach a plateau within the next two years. To reach this niveau, we had to go into advance payment (by drawing from our reserves in previous years) and neglected some investments as a result of a lack of resources. However, this approach is not sustainable in the long run. Hence, we need this financial growth for investments which create an operational framework that matches our programmatic and organizational scope.

Apart from investments due to an expected (but slowing) increase in the number and scope of programmatic activities (resulting from an expanded network of active volunteers and new/intesified partnerships), we need to adress the following infrastructural challenges:

• Adjust staffing level: Reduce workload and overtime, as outlined in detail in this proposal
• Adjust and maintain online infrastrucure: Most of our online infrastructure (website, member wiki, office applications, project management tools etc.) stem from 2012 or before, and were designed for needs of a less “professionalized” organizational structure, a more manageable scope of activities, and the collaboration of fewer individuals/ parties. As we gain more public awareness in Austria and expand our networks, there is an urgent need to present ourselves accordingly to external parnters (i.e. new, more dynamic website) and to provide and maintain a performant collaboration infrastructure tools to a broader and more divers set of project partners and volunteers.
• Adjust documentation: In order to become more effective we need to evaluate our work based on data. In order to collect and structure more data in future we need adequate processes and resources (first and foremost time and tools).

--CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions from FDC staff

Thank you for submitting this proposal for an Annual Plan Grant to the FDC! As the FDC staff, we have enjoyed reviewing it and learning more about the work you’ve done to date, and the plans you have for 2015. At this time, we’d like to know a bit more. Some questions have come up as part of our review, and we have a few requests for clarifications. Please let us know if any of this is unclear.

Thank you for your hard work! Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 00:28, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Confirming your financial information

Based on your budgeted spend for 2014 your proposed growth rate is -3.66% and based on your projected spend for 2014 your growth rate is 29.56% because you expect to spend 74.37% of the total budgeted. WMAT is requesting a 17.65% increase in FDC funding. This analysis is based on the following numbers:

• Budgeted spend 2014: €302,560
• Projected spend 2014: €225,000
• FDC funds granted 2014: €204,000
• Proposed budget 2015: €291,500€288,000€268,000
• FDC funds requested 2015: €240,000

The number for the proposed budget 2015 is incorrect, it is actually 288 000 EUR. Accordingly, our growth rate is expected to be 28 %. However, the projected spend is based on a very conservative calculation, as we plan to stock up our reserves as much as possible in order to have some more room for manoeuvre for the next two years and the multi-year funding pilot. What further reduces the projected spend this year is the fact, that we were able to cover some costs with the netidee grant that where originally budgeted to be covered by FDC grants (especially staff travel costs for events such as Wikimania), resources we won’t have to that extend next year.

Please note that the number for funds to be raised from Non-FDC sources in table 1 is incorrect, of course it is supposed to be 48 000 EUR (some mistakes make it through several rounds of proofreading…). --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Claudia! We have corrected our records to reflect the 2015 budget as €288,000 and will adjust the projected growth rate accordingly to 28%. Would you please update Table 1 with the correct amount by using strikethrough so this information is consistent with that reflected in your revenues table? This change to the proposal form is approved in advance. Mistakes can happen, we obviously make them too! That's why we have this part of the process to make sure we are all understanding the same numbers :) Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk

Hi Winifred, I wanted to inform you that our grant request for subsequent funding for the open data portal by netidee was declined. This reduces our annual budget by 20,000 EUR, the new total amount is 268,000 EUR. As we got the maximal funds in the last round, this doesn't come totally unexpected. This only affects our ODP project and from our current perspective we think that we can stick to the goals outlined in this regard in the proposal by redistributing the rest of the current grant to focus on only the most essential tasks and activities and speeding up the quest for alternative funding / business models together with our partners. It also reinforces our decsision to stock up our reserves from our other funding sources so we have the potential for additional resources in this and other projects if needed. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 09:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions

1. What role will your staff will play in the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU?

   We will serve as a link between Dimitar and interested Austrian Wikimedians, as well as with the wider open culture movement in Austria, in order to exchange information and to recruit volunteers and experts. This year for example, we could win Thomas Lohninger as an advisor for the EU advocacy group, thanks to our extended network in Austria. Lohninger is a high profile, well connected Austrian web activist who among other things worked as Policy Advisor for European Digital Rights. His work concerning the net neutrality aspects of the Telecom Single Market regulation had a major positive impact on the plenary vote of April 3rd 2014. We want to continue this fruitful collaboration in the next years. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:28, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

2. How do you determine what individuals are in need of media competency concerning Wikimedia projects and free knowledge?

   We conducted some pilot workshops with interested educational institutions (schools and universities) this year, most of them resulted in partnerships that will serve as a basis for our future activities. As for schools, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education obligates all school teachers of all school subjects and levels to regard media education as a “principle of education“. The ministry suggests project-oriented learning to foster media competence and active civic involvement (ordinance on media education of 2012). Our workshops fit into these requirements and we contacted mainly reputable schools in the two major Austrian cities Vienna and Graz which can serve as role-models and multipliers. Concerning universities, we started a cooperation with the University of Vienna this year which we plan to continue and intensify. The collaboration resulted from a wish on the side of liberal-minded university staff, who approached us to start a dialogue on how, why, when and under what circumstances Wikipedia could and should be included into university curricula. The extend to which we can expand and reach out to further insitutions depends on the availablitiy of committed volunteers. This is also a reason why don't plan to set up a program which is especially dedicated to education in the medium run. A broader approach in our opinion would also require additional sources of external funding - possibilities will be explored next year. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 12:08, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

3. We understand that you have tested the model of outsourcing service provisions (like bookkeeping) and it hasn’t worked for you. What will be the general responsibilities of the proposed 50% time Administrative Assistant?

   Actually, outsourcing works quite well in most areas but in the case of our bookkeeping not to the desired extend. Preparing the documents for our external bookkeeper and the analog and digital filing is still very time consuming. So this will be delegated the Administrative Assistant. In addition, due to the general workload in our day to day operations, some tasks that don't need immediate attention tend to be neglected, like systematically updating our CRM with new contacts of partners, suppliers or donors. As mentioned in the answer to Anders' question above, most of our online infrastructure (website, member wiki, office applications, project management tools etc.) need to be adjusted to our current organisational needs and the Administrative Assistant will support us in this regard as well. Furthermore, our new colleague is supposed to assist our Community Manager in terms of community event management, travel planning for the volunteers as well as coordinating and maintaining our tech pool / photography equipment. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 11:16, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Gender gap and diversity

Hello, and thank you for the work that you all do for the wikimedia movement. I enjoyed reading about your past and proposed projects.

I see that you all say that "increasing diversity in our communities for us is a cross-cutting issue and therefore an aspect that plays a vital role in most of our projects and initiatives." But I don't see specific measurable metrics, objectives, or goals related to increasing the participation of groups that have traditionally been under represented on Wikimedia projects. Have you collected information about how diverse your community is in general and also how diverse your chapter's membership is? In particular, do you know if women are participating in your events and programs? And if so, does the content on the WMF projects reflect a diverse group of participants?

Additionally, is any of the funds requested targeted at increasing the diversity of the content or community? FloNight (talk) 21:40, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Diversity has many dimensions, the two major areas we focus on is gender and regional diversity (which is in many cases linked to minorities and or minority languages / dialects in Austria, e.g. the Slovenian minority Carinthia). Genderwise, we have approx. 18% female members, the proportion of females among our most active volunteers who regularly participate in our projects and activities is roughly 10%. We decided to make diversity and integral part of our organisational culture, which among other values such as mutual respect or economic sustainablity should be reflected in all of our activities. In contrast to the strategy of having our own dedicated task force or program on this issue, which would make it easier to track measurable results and specially dedicated budgets, we believe that our cross-cutting approach will have more sustainable impact on more people in the long rung. Isolated activities run risk of being restricted to a few volunteers who want to engage in such activites (ususally the ones who have already adopted these values and know about the importance of these issues) and that the results stand somewhat alone. We also doubt that having (comparably easy to measure) goals like for example 50% of female participants at our events would constitute a truly meaningful number. Concerning content, apart from increasing the diversity among the volunteers who create it, we additionaly foster its pluralism by other means such as proactively promoting accredtations for fringe sports and women's sports to our photographers. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 10:49, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I think that your decision to increase diversity in the community (including reducing the gender gap) with a cross cutting approach is a fine idea. Promoting accreditation for fringe and women's sports is a great idea, too. But I'm not clear that these approaches prevents you from having targets about diversity that link to impact for your activities. I hope that you will reconsider and develop metrics that will tell the story of the work that you all doing. Some of these will be number driven and use targets that are measured. Other ways could involve storytelling and learning patterns. Both ways will be useful for evaluation for self assessment of work, and sharing with the broader wikimedia movement. Again, thanks for all of your hard work. FloNight (talk) 20:20, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary

Great that you mention Wiktionary, because it's probably the most promising Wikimedia project: compact stats show that reaching a certain critical mass in terms of (imported) content was crucial to then maintain a sustainable editing activity, in the (few) successful language editions. How do you plan to help de.wikt? If there is good source material (good public domain dictionaries to import), mass imports can do a lot of difference with few thousands € of investment. --Nemo 08:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Nemo! Our first planned step is to host the Wiktionary community event in Vienna in the first quarter of 2015, the planning has already started. This will be a good oportunity to assess together with the volunteers how we as a chapter can support them further in the next two years. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 21:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions from Risker about participant metrics

I realise that the chapters and affiliates have not really been asked to produce consistent participant metrics to date, so it is understandable if you have to give estimates for some of these metrics. When responding, please identify if the data you are providing is verified (e.g., a maintained membership database) or estimated.

1. How many members do you have? If you have different categories of membership, please give subtotals for each category.

   We have 142 members, all except of two are regular members in our database, two are corporate supporters (who pay 100 EUR membership fee instead of 15/20 EUR like regular members).

2. How many individuals volunteered for/participated in an activity sponsored by your organization so far this year, excluding special events like WMF-related conferences/Wikimania? (Please let me know what kinds of activities you're including.) Approximately what percentage of these volunteers are also chapter/affiliate members?

   We don't keep track how many of the volunteers active in our projects are formal members, as it doesn't have any relevance for us. Our services are available to all Wikimedians regardless of their membership status. The base of regular active volunteers in our projects consists of approx. 50 people (rough estimation based on project documentation).

3. What percentage of the individuals who have volunteered for or participated in your organization's activities in the past year are also active Wikimedians, or became active Wikimedians after participation? (Activity could include content contributions or administrative contributions on any project, developer contributions, committee membership, etc.)

   Not counting participants of outreach events and the like, the percentage of active Wikimedians in our activites is roughly 90%.

Thanks for any information you are able to provide. Risker (talk) 04:43, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

PS: Is there a reason you have not completed the section for proposed September 2015 milestones in relation to your request for 2-year funding? Risker (talk) 04:46, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

We included the milestones in the respective programs above together with the context information. Hence, we agreed with the FDC support team that this doesn't have to be written down twice in the proposal. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 21:23, 30 October 2014 (UTC)