Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Art+Feminism/2016-2017

Eligibility

Hello, Art+Feminism colleagues:

Thank you for submitting your eligibility form on 5 September 2016. After reviewing your past grants we've determined that you are eligible to apply for a Simple Process Annual Plan Grant, once your final IEG report is complete. We are posting this eligibility confirmation prior to the completion of this report, since the delay is on WMF’s side and delaying this note further deprives the committee of some important information about the decisions that led to your eligibility. We appreciate your work to build the Art+Feminism project and your engagement during the eligibility and application process.

Here is some of the work we looked at while evaluating your eligibility for a Simple Annual Plan Grant. Art+Feminism has been receiving grants from the Wikimedia Foundation since 2014:

• Grants:PEG/MMandiberg/Art+Feminism_Editathons
• Grants:IEG/Art+Feminism_Editathon_training_materials_and_network_building
• Grants:IEG/Art+Feminism_Editathon_training_materials_and_network_building/Renewal

The Art+Feminism initiative has had international success, and is tackling one of the more difficult challenges of the Wikimedia movement. Through their funded work, Art+Feminism has developed training materials for edit-a-thons that attract a more diverse body of contributors and knowledge to the Wikimedia projects, and they have shared key learning from their experience in this area. In 2016, their work grew to 3500 articles improved by 2500 participants in 175 locations worldwide. Beyond this achievement, the Art+Feminism initiative is inviting many new users to make their first edit on a Wikimedia project who probably would not otherwise have become involved with Wikimedia at all, expanding the diversity of the group of people involved with Wikimedia projects overall. It may be important to note that the Art+Feminism team has expressed that they do not see more traditional metrics that focus only on content and retention as an accurate measure of the sum of their impact, since these metrics are not yet well-suited to address the issue of diversity in our movement.

2016 achievements include, reaching out to new institutions and partners in the Wikimedia movement, creation of a new website using information learned from a UX/UI review, and improvements of their materials after they were reviewed by community organizers.

Art+Feminism applied for affiliation as a Wikimedia User Group in September 2016, in order to increase their opportunities to coordinate with affiliates in the Wikimedia movement. Art+Feminism has been organized as an informal group, without a formal governance structure, and have previously received support as a team of individuals. Now that their project work is expanding, they are seeking a paid project manager. They have not set an annual budget or produced an annual report in previous years.

Through their reflective reports that detail what improvements will be made to future iterations of the project and why, Art+Feminism has demonstrated that they are group that is committed to learning, with the capacity to contribute to movement-wide learning in some important areas (such as emphasizing diversity and coordinating an international PR campaign), as well as the ability to successfully adapt their programs as they are implementing them.

Art+Feminism currently has a report for one IEG under review (with some financial information pending), and eligibility for a Simple APG is contingent upon the completion and acceptance of this report.

We look forward to reviewing Art+Feminism’s application!

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 21:27, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Questions from the Simple APG committee

From Anders

Thanks for your grant request, I have a few questions:

• what is the geographical breakdown of thte workhops being held in 2016 and planned for 2017
• How do yo cooperate with local chaprters if these exist at the area you are running your workshops?
• If and then in what way do you work to get postive media coverage of your workshops?
• If and then in what way have you collected best-practices from chapers running program locally, like these

Anders Wennersten (talk) 08:11, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten thank you for your questions. Here are some answers:

• what is the geographical breakdown of the workshops being held in 2016 and planned for 2017

Target Audience spans all 6 inhabited continents. Last year we held events in 30 countries, which created or improved articles on 15 different language Wikipedias: Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Spanish, Nepalese, Esperanto, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Swedish, Catalan, Welsh, Dutch. The US is the country with the largest number of events, as we are based here, and Canada is second, as two of the core organizers have roots there. You can see all of the 2016 events on our meetup page, and view a map of the majority of the events here, on this Google Map. We can never precisely predict the way the next year’s events will go, but we expect 2017 will build on the geographical reach of 2016, expanding into more countries and languages.

• How do you cooperate with local chapters if these exist at the area you are running your workshops?

We have reached out to chapters internationally, soliciting their participation in Art+Feminism edit-a-thons. For the chapters that do participate - please see our IEG Final Report - we are in frequent communication in the lead up to events, sharing ideas and materials. In 2016, we had a particularly fruitful relationship with Wikimedia UK, with Stuart Prior overseeing events across the United Kingdom, and with Wikimedia ES. We try to reach out to the beforehand, but we find that hasn’t always been successful; what happens is that they often reach out to us. We find the effort to be very cooperative.

• If and then in what way do you work to get positive media coverage of your workshops?

The project has received a significant amount of positive press, more than we could handle at times. While we have worked well with the WMF communication team who have helped strategy, and helped with some pitches, and have been advised by art PR professionals as part of our relationship with POWarts, we have been fortunate in that the majority of press has come to us. From the ARTnews article that became the most shared article to date, to The New Yorker showing up unannounced at the sunday NYC event, the majority of the press comes from the importance of Wikipedia, the awareness of the gender gap, and the timeliness of our project. beyond following best practices, we’ve had to do very little pitching, the scale and popularity of the project has done the work for us. We provide some guidance to node organizers on how to reach out to press, and were pleased that the majority of the press last year was focused on node events other than the NYC one. In the coming year we will shift our focus a bit, pitching to simpatico journalists/news sources to solicit a more in-depth feature article that focuses on international collaboration, akin to the article “Hacking the Cannon” in Canadian Art.

• If and then in what way have you collected best-practices from chapters running program locally, like these

We have created several learning patterns about our experience coordinating the international effort:

• Hosting a multi-location edit-a-thon
• Creating a network of organizers

In addition we have found that some node organizers are starting to generate their own culturally specific best practices. Paris, for example, has created a “long-table” conference/seminar format that works very well for their community. We have given chapters their autonomy and when they innovate generalizable things we try to incorporate them into our materials. --Theredproject (talk) 18:23, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

From Nikola

Hello from me, Nikola, member of the Simple Annual Plan Grants Committee too. I have a few comments and further questions:

• I really loved the videos and the organizing kit. I consider them really useful and I encourage you to translate the videos in as many languages possible.
• I was surprised that the new website has only one event in it and the event archive is empty. Why is that so?
• It is great that you have very good press coverage. How did you and will measure it?
• I really loved the offered childcare. It is something which should be a standard and you are a leading example in this one.
• I am happy that the project manager earns a normal salary for New York, not extraorbitant, but also not too low. I miss the information how much the lead organizer and other perople's labor costs per hour, though. Would you please add that to the budget?
• You invest money in social media promotion. I encourage you to use the Wikipedia accouts on social media more actively. Jeff will surely be happy to help you. The WMF social media team can post and re-post your posts on social media from the accounts, which have millions of followers, for free.
• I consider a metric like "number of editors still editing 6 months after an edit-a-thon" very important in almost all projects. Why did you decide not to take it as a measure for success?

Best regards, --Nikola (talk) 10:11, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nikola, please find our answers below.

1) Thanks! There are efforts underway to translate the organizer’s kits - they are available in French and Spanish - which we welcome! In the past, we have left translation up to the nodes in deference to the importance of idiom and localization (e.g. Spanish in Mexico is different from Spanish in Spain). The videos are also very time consuming to produce, so we are wary of writing it into our grant unless we can dedicate funds to their development. (For example, one of our core organizers produces all of training videos currently and sees it as a large part of her labor for this project.)

2) This is only temporary, our website just launched with the conclusion of our IEG grant and we are still figuring out the most efficient way to populate the events page. It’s a lot of information in different formats to transfer over, so we didn’t want to rush into it. Within a month or two, you can expect to see all the past events listed.

3) In the past, we’ve decided not to use press coverage as one of our project metrics, choosing events and community building instead. But generally speaking, we measure it by the amount of articles and their quality (e.g The New York Times is of higher quality than Gothamist.com). If the committee strongly feels we should include press coverage as a metric, we are happy to do so!

4) We agree that it should be standard! This year we plan to create materials to help event leaders negotiate childcare with organizational hosts, as institutional red tape has been an issue in the past.

5) We based the numbers off of last year’s IEG budget, adjusted upward a bit for a year cycle . The lead organizers work well over 30 collective hours per week, but have privileged paying other organizers, committee members, and consultants for their labor over raising our honoraria. We are happy to add hourly rates to the budget.

6) That’s a great suggestion! The WMF has reposted/retweeted our posts in the past and we’ve written a couple of blogposts, too. We’ll definitely continue to build upon this strategy. But given that part of our mandate is bringing new editors into Wikipedia, we feel strongly that communication off-Wiki and WMF channels is important, as well.

7) This is a good question. We’ve been in discussions with the Wikimedia Foundation since our first edit-a-thon in 2014 about the utility of metrics in evaluating diverse projects and, specifically, in evaluating projects that seek to increase inclusivity within Wikipedia. Our grant application is under the old metrics system, but it is our understanding that a new system - which will not use “number of editors still editing 6 months after an edit-a-thon” as a metric, partially in response to our criticisms and the success of our project - will be piloted in a couple of months. While we see the relevance of this metric for some projects, we have thought long and hard about it and we honestly don’t think that it measures the kind of work we do. For example, under the old metric system, none of the core organizers of Art+Feminism count as active editors, given that much of our work is done out of article space or on meta, we often spend more time teaching than doing, and we take breaks from editing. From an ethical standpoint, we also see this type of metric as deeply gendered, both in privileging certain kinds of labor over others (for example, DOING over TEACHING) and in expecting the devotion of considerable amount of free time to editing - such that the work could only be completed by someone who doesn’t work a second shift. We talk about this and more in our Global Metrics review feedback.

thanks + best, --Failedprojects (talk) 19:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed and well thought answers. --Nikola (talk) 18:25, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I need a clarification, have two questions and a comment:

7) Do I understand correctly that you consider the editor retention metric a "deeply gendered metric"? Do you consider that editor retention and reducing the gender gap in editorship/content are mutually-exclusive concepts.

2) I understand that the diversity of the events is mirrored in the diversity (and therefore inconsistency) in the data to be ingested into the site.

However, given that this project website cost almost $9,000 [1], had external UI and UX testing, and the input data was already known: why was this difficulty not foreseen?

Could you please indicate how to plan to measure and report on the four goals that you have listed. Namely:

Continue to organize the international Art+Feminism Editathons

Continue to train new editors, facilitators and event organizers

Continue to improve organizational capacity

Increase participant diversity

Do you have any historical data on past even participants' continued involvement in Wikipedia editing? Have you run an cohort-analysis using Wikimetrics a few months after the event, for example, a common procedure for outreach edit-a-thons run by chapters?

I think that you could reach more impact by instead of appointing a 0,6 FET in New York ask chapters around the globe to assign staff in part of their time to helping you with the organisation of your project. Staff, who already is experienced in working on increasing diversity on Wikipedia.

Thank you in advance, --Nikola (talk) 20:18, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nikola. Sincere apologies that we didn't see these questions until today! Half of our team is out of the country right now, but we'll get back to you as soon as we can! Sorry for the delay. --Siankevans (talk) 19:46, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nikola. Thanks for these questions, please find our answers below.

1) We do not consider editor retention a deeply gendered metric, but we do believe the idea that the only way to make a meaningful contribution is to edit in article space only and to devote the majority of one’s time to editing Wikipedia is gendered, as that is only possible in the context where the reproduction of the household is someone else’s responsibility. You can take a look at our recent numbers to get a sense of our regular editors.

2) To clarify, it cost $7525; the additional items are unrelated assistance with our Social Hashtags plugin, and a map. Working with top notch talent (including the designer responsible for the original NYTimes iPad app, a Design Lead at Esty & Dropbox, etc) who were billing at significantly lower rates than they usually command because they believe our work is important. We budgeted $6000 for a UX/UI review, and were able to accomplish that at a significantly reduced cost because of their passion for our project, thus making possible a full redesign and development of a new site for only $1250 more. Given that many of the bids we received from other firms (even those who were giving us a discount) were well over $6000 just for the UX/UI review, we have accomplished a large amount given the labor, budgetary and time constraints.

When we drafted our initial proposal, we were only planning on having a UX/UI review that would lead to what we thought would be modest revisions to the existing site. Instead, the review recommended rather substantial changes to our entire web strategy. We only realized that we would need to migrate and/or input the data once the developer was building the site this summer; we decided to prioritize the completion of the overall site, with the understanding that we would add the data during the soft launch period (e.g. this fall). A soft launch is fairly standard in the web dev world.

As a side note, given the general focus in this APG Discussion on SMART approaches, this is a clear case where the findings changed our approach and our actions. The connection between the UX and Diversity review was the emphasis on mobile use (See Smale and Regalado’s research for example), thus it became clear that ensuring we had a website that was mobile first was imperative for our diversity goals.

3) We’ve had issues using WikiMetrics, as our numbers are very large and frequently break WikiMetrics when we try to work with them. We are actively in discussions with the Wikimedia Foundation on this issue and we are looking forward to this year, where Wikimedia NYC’s Metrics hire will be able to work with us on this process.

These are good questions about how to measure community building and diversity. We were told that Foundation wanted to include community building as a metric but didn’t know how to measure it. The work we are doing is cutting edge/edge case, so not all of our outcomes are straightforwardly quantifiable. If you have any suggestions, we would love to hear them!

4)That’s an interesting proposal, but it wouldn’t really work with our project for a number of reasons. One, the chapter system is not uniformly operated, funded or staffed. For example, the majority of the chapters in the USA do not have staff and often are taxed looking after their own local events to take on an approach that may be significantly different from their own, they may be loath to participate in, there may not be community interest, etc. And as FloNight said, there isn’t a record of the kind of cross-chapter coordination that your proposal would require, whereas our methods have worked going on a few years now. We would love to opportunity to help build such networks as a part of this process, and welcome your advice on addressing this challenge! Moreover, we do not know of equivalent projects that have emerged from the chapters that have been as successful increasing editor diversity or addressing the gender gap. For example, AfroCrowd emerged from/was inspired by our model, and Alice Backer has come to work closely with the chapter but it didn’t emerge from WikiMedia NYC. Two this route runs the risk of creating significantly more overhead labor, and each year we necessarily become progressively more operationally efficient and effective in response to our exponential growth. While we do want to work with international chapters, time differences and scheduling would become a potential nightmare when troubleshooting the amount of communication we get in the lead-up to the event, for example. We think a more effective model would be to have a PM to help us manage communications with international chapters, following the model that has become successful with StuartPrior in the UK. Three, part of our success comes from organizing and doing outreach outside of normal wiki channels. This is how we have been able to bring in new folks to the movement

thanks + best --Failedprojects (talk) 18:50, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

From Rubin

Hi, guys! thank you for your enthusiasm! I also find your Organizer's Kit as a great working material - it should be somehow promoted widely. I also have a couple of comments for your grant if you please:

• I added a comment to your budget breakdown about adding calculation of expense's share in total budget: it could make analysis easier for other people rubin16 (talk) 19:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
• I reviewed your diversity review and other relevant materials but still don't have full understanding of the ultimate strategic goal: is it a goal of high female share in total editors? High retention rate? Absence of barriers to become an editor? When will you decide that you achieved ultimate success? rubin16 (talk) 19:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
• where and how do you plan to search for PM? rubin16 (talk) 19:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
• I also have one idea or proposal: from the discussion above I see that you have no particular approved geographical areas for 2017 but from my point of view it should result from some preliminary analysis and work: I understand that you base in the US but I think that growing mainly in the US isn't a perfect option, you should involve new countries to your movement. And these new countries should be based on the analysis that will help to identify places with best efforts/result ratio rubin16 (talk) 19:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi rubin16 thanks for your questions. Please see some answers (and additional questions) below:

• I added a comment to your budget breakdown about adding calculation of expense's share in total budget: it could make analysis easier for other people

We are updating the budget in our weekly organizer's meeting right now, and should have this done by EOD today!

• I reviewed your diversity review and other relevant materials but still don't have full understanding of the ultimate strategic goal: is it a goal of high female share in total editors? High retention rate? Absence of barriers to become an editor? When will you decide that you achieved ultimate success?

In broad strokes our goal is, as it always has been, to increase female participation and improve content on women artists on Wikipedia. Are you looking for more metrics-based goals? Or is this question of a more philosophical nature?

• where and how do you plan to search for PM?

We anticipate posting this widely, in order to generate a large applicant pool. One of the lead organizers is participating in the WM NYC search or a metrics position; while still in progress it has been successful in generating a large and diverse applicant pool. We will be sending the request for applications to many of the same points of distribution:

• A+F Facebook
• A+F Meetup page
• A+F mailchimp email list
• A+F organizer direct emails
• NYFA ($70 fee, but worth it)
• Listservs
  • Library listservs
    • lat@aber.ac.uk
    • AUTOCAT <autocat@listserv.syr.edu>
    • acrldigitalhumanitiesig@lists.ala.org
    • digipres@lists.ala.org
    • acr-igdc-l@lists.ala.org
    • diglib@infoserv.inist.fr
    • A listserv for Metadata Librarians <metadatalibrarians@lists.monarchos.com>
    • sts-l@lists.ala.org
    • lita-l@lists.ala.org
    • sigah-l@asis.org
    • ARLIS-L@LSV.ARLISNA.ORG
    • wgss-l@lists.ala.org
    • asis-l@asis.org
    • DLF-ANNOUNCE@LISTS.CLIR.ORG
    • Visual Resources Association <VRA-L@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU>
    • ARLIS-LINK@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
    • Code for Lib <CODE4LIB@lists.clir.org>
    • ILI <ili-l@lists.ala.org>
  • Eyebeam
  • NYU ITP
  • CUNY GC ITP
• Personal outreach

We are going to reach out to our diversity committee for recommendations on where else to post this in order to generate more diversity in our applicant pool.

One question we have for you: Is there a WM community job board? (e.g. separate from the WMF job postings?) We do not know of one, but would welcome guidance in ensuring we do sufficient outreach inside the community.

• I also have one idea or proposal: from the discussion above I see that you have no particular approved geographical areas for 2017 but from my point of view it should result from some preliminary analysis and work: I understand that you base in the US but I think that growing mainly in the US isn't a perfect option, you should involve new countries to your movement. And these new countries should be based on the analysis that will help to identify places with best efforts/result ratio

Thanks for this suggestion! As you can see from our Meet-up Pages from 2014, 2015 and 2016, we’ve grown each year in terms of our international uptake. And we will continue to work on this in 2016. This year we will add international organizers (outside of the US and Canada) to our regional organizers lists, building on the relationships we forged last year. However, one of the major barriers for us has been that in the US the greatest event catalyzation has come from outreach to librarians via listservs, not through Wikimedia Chapters. We’ve had little success with the outreach we have done to non-English speaking listservs so far. Any advice you might have on similar outreach modes on an international scale would be welcomed! In addition, we’d like to hear more about your ideas: what do you mean by an “approved geographical area” and how would you define this? What kind of metrics and analysis are you looking for?

--Siankevans (talk) 20:04, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

One more set of Q from Anders

Thanks for your answers above. I still have two open concerns, also after reading Q&A from others

• I do not understand your apprach on Goals and metrics for you efforts. I am useed of seing these for all acitivites that spend money from the gerenal donations from the public, and am not able to follow ypuir reasoning why your efforts should be excluded from having these, even if rude or not the general metrics.
• your approach on what counties outside US to focus on. Donations from the publics is channeled to different recipients. I am concerned if the money channeld through your intiative with your focus could be done more costeffective using other channels, but with the same activites as you do, with like fundings going to the chapters. Is there a document describing your apporaoch(policy) on in which countries you will focus on doing your acitivites? And If not what is the reason you have not developed such a policy.Anders Wennersten (talk) 18:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten, thanks for these questions. I just wanted to give you a heads up that we will respond as soon as we're able; part of our team is traveling this week, so please bear with us. Thank you! --Siankevans (talk) 14:48, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten so sorry for the delay. I have a heavy teaching load right now and Jackie and Michael are out of the country. I think it's best to wait for Theredproject to respond to your specific questions about metrics, as he as done the most work with the WMF on thinking through how we handle metrics. Again, apologies for the delay while we address this concern!

As for your question about international strategy, I think it's a very valid question. Over the years we've been running this project, we've received somewhat conflicting advice from across the movement as to how to handle outreach to international editors. For example, in 2014, Jane023 cautioned us against Scope Creep in doing outreach beyond English Wikipedia (see the discussion here). Historically, our approach to outreach both nationally and internationally has been rhizomatic. Our team responds to opportunities that are coming in from different geographies rather than targeting certain geographies. We do broad outreach to institutions via library listservs and are making some headway (see the discussion below) on reaching out to international chapters, but the only truly targeted outreach we have actually done, even on a national level, has been to Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States (HBCUs). And that decision was driven primarily by our mission to make sure that our project is truly intersectional in its approach. I hope this helps explain our strategy and I thank you for your patience! --Siankevans (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Anders Wennersten. Sorry for the delay, Failedprojects and I have been traveling and are just now online. Thanks for your question. We certainly don’t think we should be excluded from collecting data and reporting on our progress. To that end, we actually have been doing SMART metrics since our first grant in 2014. You can see the summary of last year’s metrics on our Final report which we linked to at the top of our annual plan. We have clear measurable metrics for this grant listed on the annual plan and on the metrics spreadsheet. We want to collect meaningful and useful data. As such, we support the new metrics standards which will go into effect in a matter of weeks. Regarding this transitional period, we were advised to disregard categories that were not in the new metrics if they were not applicable to our project, hence the disinclusion of both image related categories, and the total bytes added. If the committee feels it is essential for us to include these categories, we will do so at the committee’s request. We hope this is helpful in clarifying our approach to metrics reporting, and please let us know if you have further questions.--Theredproject (talk) 13:59, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Question from Ido: hiring, management and governance

First of all thanks for submitting this proposal, I'm excited by your global, diverse reach and the positive impact you've been achieving! Keep up the good work :) Sorry for posting a question so late into the process. I hope you can still provide some feedback.

My question regards the nitty-gritty of having paid staff around - A) you need someone to hire the Project Manager. Who's going to do what? This requires a significant amount of energy (usually, unless you have a candidate in mind...). B) After (s)he is hired, who is going to provide oversight and direction? My experience shows that if a person has too many "bosses", (s)he tends to get overwhelmed with tasks, and conflicting goals. C) Finally - a bit of governance - who's going to assess the quality of work to be done by the employee?

I'm asking all this because I'm unclear of your structure. Hiring an employee requires some formal structure, or things may get messy, fast. Alleycat80 (talk) 03:06, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alleycat80. Thanks for your questions. These are really valid and apologies we didn’t make this clearer in our proposal. We’ll try and answer your questions in the other you asked them. A.) All three of us will serve as the hiring committee. We have already begun drafting an announcement that we will post to NYC-specific job sites along with the various listservs and networks posted in our response to rubin16’s question above. We also already have a handful of candidates that we have informally approached about the position, and they have expressed interest. All three of us have a lot of experience on hiring committees of various kinds, as well Siankevans has project management experience in a relevant (tech non-profit) context. B.) This is a great question. Likely someone will take the lead on that, but we won’t make that decision until we hire someone for the position. Our rationale is that we want the person managing that position to have a good working style and relationship with that person, and it is possible that one of us will have had previously worked with the project manager in some capacity. C.) Again, good question. We already have some general infrastructure in place in terms of assessment. For example, the core organizing team meets weekly for several hours and we are using trello, streak and slack to track our work. As such, whoever is the direct manager will work with the other two organizers to assess and communicate the quality of the work done to the employee. Before the start date, measurable guidelines will be created and a trello board will be built out.

We totally agree that formal structure is required. All three core organizers have managerial experience outside of our Art+Feminism work and have put a lot of thought into collaborative working structures within this movement, including texts on the subject in our Organizer's Kit. Thanks + best, --Failedprojects (talk) 14:33, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

From FloNight/Sydney Poore

Art+Feminism is addressing two of the most challenging failures of the wikimedia movement, systemic bias and the lack of diversity of people affiliated with the wikimedia movement.

Systemic bias: Every event organized through Art+Feminism focuses on reducing the systemic bias in Wikipedia and the content in the other Wikimedia wikis.

Inclusivity Events organizated through Art+Feminism are designed to be more welcoming to people who might otherwise face barriers for participation. Art+Feminism events go beyond the goal of increasing participation of women. The diversity review is a good guide for eliminating intergroup bias that can suppresses the participation of minority and marginalized groups. In this regard, Art+Feminism brings expertise to the wikimedia movement that is lacking in too many projects, groups, and events.

Art+Feminism is successfully using a rhizomatic campaign to recruit new people in new institutions with a specific interest in addressing systemic bias and the participation gender gap.

Targeted outreach: It is essential to the wikimedia movement to have a broader base of participants. Art+Feminism's plan to do targeted outreach to people and institutions that are specifically interested in addressing the gender gap is key to their successful results to date.

Year	Locations	Participants	Articles
2014	31	600	200
2015	75	1500	900
2016	175	2500	3500
2017*	325	3500	6000

*projected based off of growth models

It has been challenging to for this project to grow while being staffed by volunteers. And I look forward to seeing the progress they make with a permanent employee.

I would like to commend Art+Feminism for organizing this ongoing to project with primary goals to addresses systemic bias and the gender gap. Every day the world is reading Wikipedia articles with systemic bias and that will not change until more people follow the example of Art+Feminism and make addressing diversity in content a top priority. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 13:47, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Questions from other community members

• In reading the Wikimedia Österreich 2015-16 interim report I note that it specifically refers to A+F:

...By accident, we learned about two events in the last six months, which were inspired by Art+Feminism - unfortunately, quite last minute in both instances, which made it hard to provide adequate support. The local organizers were not informed by the international team that there might be local Wikimedia groups or affiliates which could be of help (we heard of similar problems in other countries), in one instance the local organizers never even got any response from the international team at all (because the event took place after the peak of events in March) - so both organizers were quite happy when WMAT offered to help. On the one hand, it is very positive to have contacts to new groups which are interested in working on gender issues in the Wikimedia projects - via these two events we established contacts to various feminist groups who are interested in organizing a bigger event next year and push gender-related projects in Austria with more lead time. On the other hand, we still have concerns regarding the sustainability of the Art+Feminism initiative, when there is no connection to local groups or Wikimedians and apparently no ownership of the project and external requests outside of the main event cycle in March. We would strongly suggest that the international project team works together more closely with local groups and chapters in the future and/or mentions them as possible points of contact on their website. We would also be interested in the retention rate of former Art+Feminisim events and good practices to involve the participants beyond the edit-a-thons." -- Claudia.Garad

I have seen similar things happen with A+F events in my own personal experience (local wikimedians discovering the event by accident, and the art museum being at-best indifferent to attempts to help provide editing-training to participants), as well as heard this same problem reported from others in various countries. Given that it seems to be a consistent piece of feedback - that the local A+F event organisers don't interact with/contact/involve or even know of the existence of the local Wikimedia community - could you say how you plan to address this in the 2016-17 activities? Wittylama (talk) 16:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing that up Wittylama! One suggestion from my side would be to include contacts to local chapters near "ambassadors" section of the project page and a better training/information policy towards those ambassadors regarding Wikipedia, the communities, and the organizational structure of the Wikiverse. In our case it seemed to be one major point of confusion that potential A+F organizers thought that the Austrian amabassador could help them with all of their concerns but that was not the case and the amabassador seemed not to be aware of the aid available by the local chapter. I would be happy to support any effort aimed at improving cooperation with the local Wikimedia affiliates. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 17:43, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Claudia.Garad and Wittylama for bringing up your concerns. We’re always interested in constructive feedback on better supporting attendees and organizers alike.

And many thanks Claudia.Garad for offering your expertise! Indeed, outreach to international Wikipedia chapters and communities has been a challenge for us, given the diversity of organizational structures across chapters and groups worldwide. In the United States, we’ve had the benefit of Pharos’s extensive knowledge of the Wikipedia community to help us ensure that we can provide Wikipedians to local events where possible. Over the past year, we’ve made strides to better support outreach to the Wikipedia community worldwide, including cultivating relationships with Lfurter, StuartPrior, Jason.nlw, LinneaKarlberg, Muriel_Staub_(WMCH), 19Tarrestnom65, Yhhue91, May_Hachem93, Wotancito and more. We believe that we have made and will continue to make good faith efforts to reach out to international chapters, however on occasion we get no response from the local chapter, and in those instances we cannot be held responsible for their silence. For example, in 2015 Theredproject contacted every member of the board of Wikimedia Australia that had a publicly listed email address and received no response. The unfortunate outcome of this is that new editors wanting to hold Art+Feminism edit-a-thons in Australia have been made to feel uncomfortable organizing.

We are curious to hear more about Claudia.Garad’s suggestion of adding local chapters to our Ambassadors page. While we think this could be an excellent approach, we are concerned about just the occurrences you describe above, in which local Wikipedians are caught off guard by Art+Feminism edit-a-thon requests which do sometimes come in very last minute, even to us, the lead organizers. How would you recommend soliciting interest from local Wikipedians internationally? Are village pumps an option? I’ve had discussions elsewhere about how ineffective these can be for outreach purposes, so we’re curious to hear other ideas.

We have searched our email account and cannot find a message from someone in Austria that we did not answer. These instances are pretty rare for such a large scale project (179 events in March 2015 alone), so we have yet to come up with a complete plan for how to assess and address them. And, this year, we’ve written a Project Manager into our grant to help handle exactly this kind of thing. When we started this project over three years ago, we never anticipated this level of growth; the three core organizers all work full-time+ jobs outside of their Art+Feminism work, so managing all the events directly has become untenable. So, we look forward to additional organizational help this year in ensuring that all our organizers, and contacts within the Wikimedia community feel supported!

However, to some extent, we also believe these issues are somewhat inevitable. Wikipedia is an open source project and by empowering people to edit, they may in turn actually feel empowered to edit and organize on their own. From our perspective -- and I speak especially from my own as a librarian who is invested in information literacy and inclusive practices in pedagogy -- the most important thing is making new editors (especially women and people of color) feel welcome in the community and empowered to engage with it. This project, like Wikipedia itself, belongs to everyone. Of course, as you mention above, this includes making sure local Wikipedia chapters feel included, provided they want to be and can participate with a spirit of openness to new ideas and methods. This is where we believe the collaborations mentioned above and your feedback will be key to greater success in this arena. At the end of the day, we firmly believe in the efficacy of our combination of grassroots organizing, experiential pedagogy, and good ol’ fashion consciousness raising. We look forward to continuing this next year, and look forward to doing it with you! :)--Siankevans (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Siankevans for your prompt reply. Concerning local affiliates: I think at least for the bigger organizations with staff it shouldn't be a problem to put a name of an employee there who is in charge of diversity matters or partnerships (The latter might also be interesting in this context, as it might help to reduce costs for your events. Venues and catering seem to be a major part of your budget, both are easy ways for in-kind donations in our experience, and standing contacts and partnerships from local affiliates might help in this regard). It's also not so much a matter of whether we want or not - I personally consider it our job to provide at least basic support for such initiatives :-) I can bring that topic up at the next call with the other Executive Directors in case you are interested. I agree that it can sometimes be more challenging to find the responsible contact in a local context without professional structures, as responsibilities among volunteers are sometimes not as clearly defined and documented. But here too, a broader network of professional and volunteer Wikimedians might be helpful to find the right people. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 19:00, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) for this generous suggestion! It would be truly wonderful if you could bring this up with the other Executive Directors, and let them know we'd love to a.) add anyone willing to our Ambassadors page and b.) would happily schedule time to discuss our outreach plans, support efforts, and training documentation. Typically, it's tough to schedule these calls with all three of the core organizers, so often one of us will take the lead interacting with a specific group. For example, I've worked primarily with StuartPrior of WM UK via email and Skype to talk through any funding, training, and support issues with local events in the United Kingdom. We often respond best to emails, as well, so please feel free to contact us directly at info@artandfeminism.org. --Siankevans (talk) 14:54, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Claudia.Garad, Wittylama, Siankevans, I greatly appreciate the challenge of doing global work in the Wikimedia movement. It is challenging to understand community and cultural norms and expectations of Wikimedia groups around the world.

Chapters and affiliates in the Wikimedia movement do not have strong track records around joint collaboration. We are kind of dysfunctional in this regard. :-) So, I don't think that this is something that we should over emphasis when measuring their initial efforts to work with affiliates.

In recent years, more collectives and collaborations are developing (some regional, some language based, and some topical.) Maybe there is good information to be learned from some of these cross chapter or cross wiki projects.

Going forward, I see Art+Feminism adding valuable insight around global collaboration and encourage them to specifically capture lessons learned around the best practices for international collaboration in the Wikimedia movement. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 23:56, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Sydney Poore/FloNight, I can only speak for my corner of the Wikiverse, but our cooperation with chapters in the DACH (German-speaking communities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) regions came a long way in the last few years, resulting in some magnificent projects such as CEE spring. So yes, there is definitely potential to learn from cross chapter or cross wiki projects. ;-) --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 13:10, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Sydney Poore/FloNight for your thoughts and CDG (WMAT staff) for your feedback. I agree, I think that a Learning Pattern on global collaboration could be a really great place to start. We would also love to speak with others working cross chapter/cross wiki project as I think a learning pattern could benefit form the expertise of folks like Women in Red, for example. If you have examples of people to reach out to, we'd welcome that! --Siankevans (talk) 14:53, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Committee assessment and decision

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: The committee recommends full funding for Art+Feminism’s application in the amount of $99,820, although several committee members did not support fully funding this application due to substantial concerns. The committee has decided together to move forward with a decision for full funding, and put a monitoring plan in place to address these concerns. The committee recommends the following plan for monitoring and review: An additional review after the first staff person is hired, to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to support and manage the new employee in the first months of 2017. A review after Art+Feminism has submitted their midpoint report, to monitor how recommendations highlighted in the concerns section below are being followed (e.g. improved regional coordination, engagement with the international movement, effective evaluation), with an option to reduce funding for the remainder of the year.

Strengths identified by the committee: The committee recognizes that the Art+Feminism team is bringing new approaches and valuable expertise to the Wikimedia movement. This project attempts to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of the Wikimedia movement, and it is clear that the team is very dedicated to this work. Art+Feminism is one of few Wikimedia affiliates that primarily or exclusively do gender-focused work, and their work addresses a critical need for the movement. The Art+Feminism project has brought new people and content to the Wikimedia movement, and this approach is being adopted with enthusiasm by many volunteers around the world. In several cases, the Art+Feminism project has jump-started activities among volunteers around the world who might not otherwise have been activated, including activities that are now supported by several other APG groups, including Wikimedia Switzerland and Wikimedia Espana. While Art+Feminism does not yet have a systematic approach to measuring quality, some of their content has been widely viewed. Art+Feminism has leveraged their use of PR and media in the US to draw more people into their work, and their planning includes thoughtful elements like childcare. The Art+Feminism team considers diversity in a thoughtful way, with an ongoing commitment to considering many different aspects of diversity in its work. Past reports for their IEGs have shown thoughtful reflection and a dedication to learning. The current plan builds on the team’s achievements and knowledge, and includes realistic targets that are aligned with the project’s goals.

Concerns identified by the committee: The committee at large had some concerns about this application. At nearly $100,000 (the limit for Simple APG), this is a significant commitment for the movement, and results should be commensurate with this level of funding. Costs of maintaining staff and contract services in New York City, are relatively expensive for the movement. At this level of funding, we would expect to see more evidence of a transparent planning process that engages a number of stakeholders. While past results are impressive by Art+Feminism’s own standards and metrics, the group still requires development in some areas. Art+Feminism is an informal group without experience managing staff, and is requesting funding for 0.6 FTE for the upcoming year. The committee and WMF still have limited experience funding applications from informal groups that include staff, and the Art+Feminism team may require additional support or monitoring in this area. Given that activities are focused during March and the months leading up to March, the value of bringing on a staff person with a year-long contract is not yet clear to all committee members. Art+Feminism is a newly recognized user group that needs to strengthen their ability to engage with other groups and organizations working in the Wikimedia movement, particularly organizations like Chapters with a regional focus. In this application, the committee was disappointed not to see a clear plan for how this project would develop in different parts of the world and involve existing local groups. As Art+Feminism expands globally, it will be essential to establish better working relationships with local Wikimedia groups. Better coordination will have several benefits for the movement, including exchanging expertise and capacity with local groups, coordinating resources for gender gap initiatives across the movement, and more involvement of different parts of the Wikimedia community in this important project. As funding for this project increases, so do standards for engagement with the international Wikimedia movement. Some committee members also had serious concerns about the Art+Feminism team’s approach to evaluation and defining metrics, while others thought differently about the role of metrics, and were content with those provided by the grantee. Defining relevant metrics that include SMART targets and a clear link to the project’s goals is essential, now that Art+Feminism is requesting a significant amount of Wikimedia funding (including funds for part-time staff) to support their project. Some committee members acknowledge that Art+Feminism is working in an area where the Wikimedia movement has not yet established good practices for metrics, and their methods are comparable to those used by other organizations in the movement; yet, as a leader in this area, the development of useful metrics will be critical as a foundation for successful project management as activities and funding grow.

For the Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee Chinmayisk (talk) 04:17, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for these recommendations. Due to the size of this funding request, it may take some time to deliver WMF's official approval. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 22:17, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Decision from WMF

Funding decision: Thanks to the committee for this thoughtful decision, and to the Art+Feminism team for your work in planning and discussing your application. WMF will fund this grant as recommended, in the amount of $99,820 for twelve months. No budget adjustments are necessary. Congratulations! Given the concerns noted by the committee, we will work together to adhere to the monitoring schedule recommended here, and to make sure these concerns in the areas highlighted by the committee are addressed in the coming year. Janice and I will be in touch this week to move forward with your grant agreement and arrange the first transfer of funds. All the best in 2016-2017. Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 05:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Extension for expense report at the midpoint

Hello, A+F colleagues! I'm placing a formal notice here of an extension until 30 August for the financial part of your midpoint report, since you are unable to complete this until you receive the information from your fiscal sponsor. The remaining portion of your midpoint report is accepted. We also understand that more detailed metrics will come. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:00, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion from Rohini

Hello,

Firstly, I would like to commend and thank the Art+Feminism project for its work towards establishing gender equity over the past few years. As another member of the Wikimedia movement who works on issues of diversity and inclusion, I am aware from personal experience of how challenging and emotionally taxing and your work can be.

Secondly, I have a suggestion about the subscription-based meeting platform used by A+F. The cost of the subscription is a tiny percentage of the project's budget, so my concern is more related to digital rights than expenditure. It would be useful to explore platforms that are dencentralised and oriented towards maintaining the digital security and privacy of their users. This is especially important when working with marginalised communities, minorities, sensitive geographies, and individuals and groups who are at risk of profiled and/ or surveilled. I will be happy to recommend some of these alternatives if the A+F team decides to take up my suggestion. -- Rohini (talk) 04:03, 14 November 2017 (UTC)