Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/WMEE Grant Application for 2025

Regional Committee feedback and questions

@Kruusamägi: Hello Ivo, and thanks for your General Support Fund proposal on behalf of Wikimedia Eesti. The Regional Fund Committee has completed an initial review of the proposal, and has the following feedback, questions, and comments to help support their review:

• Thank you for including slides summarizing the chapter's impact and progress over the last year. It is helpful to have greater context over the scope of the chapter's work across Wikimedia projects, knowledge of current challenges, and needs for outreach to other affiliates:
  • In terms of the claim that Estonia is largest contributor to Wikimedia Projects per capita, what data was used to make this conclusion? Is there clear evidence to suggest that this impact is being driven by chapter activities and community engagement to support Wikimedia contributions?
  • In terms of needing support for outreach to other organizations related to the Wiki Loves Science competition, what kinds of communications do you need support around, and what outcomes are you hoping to achieve with this outreach?
• The Regional Committee requests additional details on the chapter's planned collaborations the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs beyond the diplomacy-themed week, if other plans have been made at this time.
• Other government ministries were also mentioned in your outreach plans. What other government offices or ministries will WMEE contact, and what kinds of collaborations are you hoping to build?
• In terms of past events mentioned in the proposal in connection to your partners (e.g. Terminipäevak), is this collaboration expected for this next year as well? The timeline document provided suggests this is not confirmed yet.
• The committee appreciates that you've provided a timeline describing what programs will happens during through the year, but the committee would like some additional context on what these programs are, and are requesting that the timeline document be updated to include a brief 1-2 sentence summary of the content or substance of these events. To confirm, these summaries can be written in Estonian.
• An important factor for your request for an increase in your budget is based on inflationary increases in order to address wage stagnation. Do these reported statistics from the International Monetary Fund generally reflect the inflation the chapter has been experiencing in recent years? If not, would it be possible to provide some sources for these inflationary changes? Again, these sources can be written in Estonian, and we do not expect them to necessarily be available in other languages.
• Can more details be provided on your specific plans regarding SLAPP? While we understand that this is an important theme for your chapter, and that you intend to carry out some trainings on the topic, we don't feel we have a complete picture of your public policy advocacy work in this area. Furthermore, one area of confusion from the Committee is that this work will require more resourcing, but the proposal also acknowledges that this work is partially supported by separate funding.
• In terms of your progress toward your metrics and expected outcomes from last year, in what areas is the chapter generally on track to achieve these outcomes? Are there any areas where you expect to exceed or significantly not reach your expected targets, and if so, do you have any reflections on why?

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around the committee's feedback. To support the Regional Committee's review, please respond to committee feedback by Thursday, November 21st. On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

There exists no statistical analysis that ranks countries based on their contributions to Wikimedia, that we are aware of. Nevertheless, it is possible to look at existing statistics and compare them. One reference to the slides is to the Wiki passion list assembled by Ukrainians, that constantly ranks Estonians among top nations based on the number of active editors on Wikipedia per million speakers. Different metrics all strongly suggest excellent per capita results and as this also applies to Commons and many other projects besides Wikipedia, then it is pretty safe to assume we are easily number one among countries. In absolute terms, we do still lag behind significantly, but there are limits on what one might achieve with a population of 1 million compared to 20, 50, or 100 M.

The trick is that we excel in many areas. This goes back to chapter work as well: we don't try to be very good at one thing, but have something going on everywhere to have as wide a reach as possible. Naturally, it is still impossible to tell how big the effect of the chapter is, as there is no alternative reality without a chapter that we could compare ourselves to. We only have the following example. Back in 2010, when we set up this chapter, Lithuanians were also discussing with WMF about the possibility of their own chapter (it was asked, whether we want one chapter for the Baltics...). Back then Lithuanian Wikipedia was the biggest and growing faster than Estonian Wikipedia, which makes a lot of sense considering there are 3x more Lithuanians than Estonians. But in more recent times we have been growing faster and Estonian Wikipedia is the biggest in the Baltics. Hard to say how much is thanks to the chapter, but still. Chapter was started when at the end of the 2000s it was becoming evident that if we don't do something it is not likely we could keep on growing at the same pace. We see that decline in the Lithuanian example.

We have been running the science photo competition since 2011, and the request there has been the same since 2015 when we expanded that beyond Estonia: 1) help with banners and 2) help with reaching out to more Wikimedia organizations. We have asked that pretty constantly, but as there has been no reaction on that ever, then we are not overly optimistic. The underlying logic in itself is simple: 1) we could get more countries participating, if there would be better awareness of this event and 2) local Wikimedia organizations would benefit a lot if besides money-asking banners the other forms of banners would also get some attention.

We are still in talks about the collaboration with the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and even the details of the diplomacy-themed week are not settled. For that reason, it is unfortunately not possible to provide additional details. As for other entities, we are more active in the fields of media literacy, strategic communication, and cultural outreach. To put it briefly: we believe Wikimedia projects are a vital part of the information network and the state should pay some attention to that. Compared to the traditional ways of doing things, we could provide a significant increase in efficiency in some fields and Wikimedia projects could also benefit greatly from some state aid.

The timeline for 2025 is not set. For instance, we applied to organize the CEE meeting in Tallinn, but that went to Greece. We are waiting for a reply on the SLAPP program application, which will arrive early next year. In terms of strategic partnership, the application for the 2025-2027 period has not yet been opened. With some events, it also depends on discussions with partners, and with some events, we are still waiting for the results from this year to see if we should repeat them or try something new. As for Terminipäevak, it is fixed on January 31st.

In 2024 we had 9 article-writing competitions, 4 photo-collecting campaigns, and one copy-editing competition. There are quite many of them and for that reason, it may not be reasonable to describe all of them. First, a lot of that is recurring, and second, it may carry the attention away from what we are aiming for here (i.e having better outreach). We also don't know how the strategic partnership might go, and that has been the main funding source for competitions in recent years. However, we plan to reduce the number of competitions next year.

IMF data does reflect the inflation, but there are two important factors to consider: 1) our salaries are already significantly below the national average and 2) salary growth has been over 7% for most years and has thus outpaced inflation a lot (except 2022, when consumer price index rose 19,4%). So if we just look at inflation, then we keep on falling more and more behind. Not to mention that we have had salary increases only in some years and not the others and that is how we have fallen so far behind already. As an example, we have given 2016 figures (10 years before 2025). The average salary has grown 84% since then, but our funding has only increased 20%. If we would like to offer at least an average salary and assume that to be ca 2200 in the next year, we would need a 34,1% increase in the salary fund. And staffing expenses are already almost 70% of our grant request.

The SLAPP project would be separately funded (if the application is a success) and carried out together with Wikimedia EU and the University of Amsterdam as a multi-year project. That means it would be an important topic for the chapter in the next two years, but not very relevant for the current grant application on monetary wise, as this is funded separately. But the potential financing from that is related to what salaries we would have in 2025.

As for our 2024 progress, things seem to be going well and mostly as planned. Where we have struggled a bit, is with increasing the number of volunteers, where we had less progress than hoped for. Here we are looking for more ways to recruit, but that is a slow process. One example is that we are starting to look at what we might do together with foreign students studying in Estonia.

Kruusamägi (talk) 23:27, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 107,607 EUR

@Kruusamägi: Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 107,607 EUR with a grant term starting 1 January 2025 and ending 31 December 2025.

The committee supported full funding for Wikimedia Estonia’s proposal, and recognizes the chapter’s needs to address inflationary effects it has been doing its best to manage over the past few years. The committee also felt the proposal demonstrated several strengths in its education, GLAM, and communication programmatic plans. Wikimedia Estonia strategy identifies specific audiences that the chapter is prepared to support, such as high school students, seniors, and GLAM institutions, while also fostering international cooperation through its events.

In order to sustain Wikimedia Estonia at this level funding next year, the committee shared some concerns that they would like the chapter to work carefully on over the next year:

• Wikimedia Estonia should be careful in how it is framing data related to the number of active editors that contribute to Estonian language Wikimedia projects in relation to the organization’s specific impact. While it may be true that data supports that Estonia has a high number of editors per capita, different evidence or data is needed to show that the programs and outreach the affiliate does is primarily responsible for those outcomes. For example, there are highly active communities in the Wikimedia movement that are not associated with a particular affiliate, or an affiliate operating at a smaller scale.
• With more stable staffing, the committee would like Estonia to prioritize its volunteer recruitment work and goals towards supporting more new organizers, as well as members and program participants.
• The committee would like Wikimedia Estonia to consider a different programmatic approach for its work for its next proposal. The committee is not satisfied, for example, that many of its programs are contests that rely on incentivizing participation rather than supporting volunteer engagement. For its next proposal, Wikimedia Estonia should reduce the number of contests it is running and consult with its members and the volunteer community on other programs / topics of interest.
• Existing contests should focus on areas where there are known topical gaps. If it’s the case that there is a lot of existing coverage of Estonian monuments, the committee requests that you consider a different topic for these campaigns. For example, the committee noted that many protected, natural areas of Estonian lack images (et:Eesti_kaitsealade_loend / en:List of protected areas of Estonia), so Wiki Loves Earth may be a more productive alternative.
• The committee would like to see improvements in the metrics you are collecting and reporting on your programs based on your strategy. Currently, your impact in participation and content is clear, but not much beyond that based on your evaluation plan. Some suggestions to consider include:
  • To understand the impact of your cultural partnerships, noting the number of content donations donated by cultural partners or what kind of content they are donating, and
  • To understand how to help attract and retain members and volunteers, evaluating and documenting the motivations of existing and new volunteers in your community, which could be done via survey or through discussion.

We look forward to Wikimedia Estonia’s work and achievements over the next year. On behalf of the Regional Committee, Nataev ^talk 20:41, 9 December 2024 (UTC)